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Empress Josephine
by
Napoleon had already had Eugene with him, and together they had seen the glory of battle. Now Hortense was sent for, and they were made Napoleon’s children by adoption. These were days of glowing sunshine and success and warm affection.
And so Napoleon with his family returned to France amid bursts of applause, proclaimed everywhere the Savior of the State, its Protector, and all that. Civil troubles had all vanished in the smoke of war with foreign enemies. Prosperity was everywhere, the fruits of conquest had satisfied all, and the discontented class had been drawn off into the army and killed or else was now cheerfully boozy with success.
Napoleon made allies of all powers he could not easily undo, and proffered his support–biding his time. Across the English Channel he looked and stared with envious eyes. Josephine had tasted success and known defeat. Napoleon had only tasted success. She begged that he would rest content and hold secure that which he had gained. Success in its very nature must be limited, she said. He laughed and would not hear of it. For the first time she felt her influence over him was waning. She had given her all; he greedily absorbed, and now had come to believe in his own omniscience. He told her that on a pinch he could get along without her–within himself he held all power. Then he kissed her hand in mock gallantry and led her to the door, as he would be alone.
When Napoleon started on the Egyptian campaign, Josephine begged to go with him; other women went, dozens of them. They seemed to look upon it as a picnic party. But Napoleon, insisting that absence makes the heart grow fonder, said his wife should remain behind.
Josephine was too good and great for the wife of such a man. She saw through him. She understood him, and only honest men are willing to be understood. He was tired of her, for she no longer ministered to his vanity. He had captured her, and now he was done with her. Besides that, she sided with the peace party, and this was intolerable. Still he did not beat her with a stick; he treated her most graciously, and installing her at beautiful Malmaison, provided her everything to make her happy. And if “things” could make one happy, she would have been.
And as for the Egyptian campaign, it surely was a picnic party, or it was until things got so serious that frolic was supplanted by fear. You can’t frolic with your hair on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Napoleon did not write to his wife. He frolicked. Occasionally his secretary sent her a formal letter of instruction, and when she at last wrote him asking an explanation for such strange silence, the Little Man answered her with accusations of infidelity.
Josephine decided to secure a divorce, and there is pretty good proof that papers were prepared; and had the affair been carried along, the courts would have at once allowed the separation on statutory grounds. However, the papers were destroyed, and Josephine decided to live it out. But Napoleon had heard of these proposed divorce proceedings and was furious. When he came back, it was with the intention of immediate legal separation–in any event separation.
He came back and held out haughtily for three days, addressing her as “Madame,” and refusing so much as to shake hands. After the three days he sued for peace and cried it out on his knees with his head in her lap. It was not genuine humility, only the humility that follows debauch. Napoleon had many kind impulses, but his mood was selfish indifference to the rights or wishes of others. He did not hold hate, yet the thought of divorce from Josephine was palliated in his own mind by the thought that she had first suggested it. “I took her at her word,” he once said to Bertram, as if the thing were pricking him.