THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. A.D. 1763-1814. (continued 2)

The emperor then haughtily withdrew. The poor Princess Borghèse fell upon the floor in violent hysterics; and Napoleon, having been apprised of the fact, sent his physician to attend her, bearing also the information to her, that it was the command of the emperor that she should be perfectly recovered before the next day. So Pauline could not feign sickness, and was obliged to resign herself to her fate. But even Napoleon himself could not conquer women’s tears; and although his unwilling relations were forced to obey his imperial command, that fatal train of the empress, measuring twelve yards in length, was borne by weeping queens and princesses, who did not even try to conceal their tears of mortification; and they doubtless then realized that an empress of royal birth was not after all such a desirable acquisition to their family as they had supposed. If poor Josephine had not been too generous to be spiteful, and too sad to note aught but her own humiliation and woe, she might have felt herself somewhat avenged by her unconscious successor. As the gorgeous spectacle passed through the magnificent gallery which connected the Tuileries with the Louvre, a child exclaimed to its mother:—

“Mamma, why does the queen of Holland cry? I thought queens were always laughing.”

Poor Hortense! It was indeed cruel in the extreme, that she should have been forced to bear the mantle of the woman who was so unjustly supplanting her own mother.

Whenever Josephine’s friends conversed in her presence regarding the woman who had taken her place, she was careful to avoid the slightest remark which could be construed into a censure of Maria Louisa, though her sorrow could not be concealed. “He will never love her,” she exclaimed with deep feeling; “he has sacrificed everything to his politics; but his first wife—yes, his first wife, will forever possess his confidence.” And she did not deceive herself in this belief, for the ex-empress had reason upon many occasions to exult in the irresistible ascendency she still exercised over Napoleon.

On hearing of the birth of the king of Rome, Josephine evinced her generous sympathy by making a present to the baby archduke of a little carriage drawn by two superb merinos. The emperor was much pleased with this kind attention, but when he spoke of it to Maria Louisa, the Austrian was offended; for she could never endure to hear a word of praise regarding the woman who had preceded her, and she always tried to prevent Napoleon’s visits to his former wife. But the emperor never ceased to honor Josephine by frequent letters, hurried visits, and constant delicate attentions. Josephine was never forgotten by him, and he always spoke of her with new and increasing interest. He was displeased with certain of his courtiers who affected to forget the forsaken Josephine. “Have you been to Malmaison?” he would inquire of them. “How does the empress?” and these fickle courtiers perceived that if they would please the emperor, they must pay their respects to Josephine. Often when returning from a hunt, Napoleon would go and surprise Josephine at Malmaison with a visit, and walk with her in the garden, conversing with the greatest interest about all his affairs; she was still his most intimate confidant. To Josephine alone could he confide his inmost thoughts, sure of never being betrayed, and always receiving her most devoted interest. The emperor would often send word to the grand écuyer to detain the Empress Maria Louisa at the riding-school; and then took advantage of the moment of liberty to go and surprise Josephine at Malmaison. It is said that Napoleon was much displeased with Madame de la R., because, having been in Josephine’s service, she proposed to fulfil the same duties for the Empress Maria Louisa. “No,” said he with indignation; “she shall not. Although I am charged with ingratitude towards my wife, I will have no imitators, especially among the persons whom she has honored with her confidence and loaded with her favors.”

After her divorce, Josephine passed her time alternately at Malmaison and the château of Navarre. She here dispensed daily bounty to multitudes of poor families, who were the recipients of her generous benevolence and the objects of her personal care. The following touching incident is said to have occurred just before Napoleon set out on his fatal campaign to Russia.

The Empress Josephine was seated in her gallery of paintings, when the emperor came upon her unawares, and found her reading that passage in the life of Diocletian relating to his abdication: “O ye, who have seen me seated on a throne, come now and see the lettuce which I have planted with my own hands!” Napoleon appeared to be singularly impressed by these words, and said to Josephine with unusual tenderness: “My wife” (for so he continued to call her), “I shall, perhaps, terminate my course in the same way, and take pride in showing the beautiful fruits of your gardens, cultivated by my own hands, to the envoys of the different nations who may come to visit Napoleon the Philosopher.”

“So much the better,” answered Josephine; “then should we be happy indeed.” But soon her eyes filled with tears, and she said with inexpressible sadness: “My friend, you have a new wife and a son; I desire henceforth only to aid you by my counsels. But should you ever be free, or should the blast of adversity ever deliver you to your enemies, come, come, O Bonaparte, to my cherished asylum!”

Josephine was very desirous to behold the young king of Rome. Madame Montesquieu, by the order of the emperor, went to Trianon with her august élève. Hither Josephine went, and when she beheld the young prince, she lavished her caresses upon his baby face, exclaiming with streaming eyes: “I now pardon her freely for the wrong she did me in coming to usurp my place. I am now willing to overlook all my husband’s errors, and concern myself solely about the happiness of a father.”

Napoleon’s overthrow was the result of political errors, into which he was led by evil advisers. They were:—

“1. The unjust war in Spain; an almost insupportable draught upon the blood and treasure of France, and utterly unproductive of profit or glory.

“2. The divorce of his wife Josephine,—a matter of cold-blooded calculation; a wrong determination as to the results to arise from the respective positions of the objects upon the political chessboard. It was discarding a French woman for an Austrian princess. It offended France; it shocked all hearts by an apparent indifference to the love of a noble-minded, innocent, faithful, and beautiful woman.

“3. The unfortunate campaign to Russia, an effort which France was not then strong enough to sustain; though it was one of the grandest displays of military power in the history of the world.”

And yet, with all Napoleon’s plans, it was not his son who afterwards sat upon the French throne, but the grandson of Josephine,—the son of Hortense and Louis Bonaparte who subsequently reigned over France as Emperor Napoleon III. What had the cruel and iniquitous divorce availed after all? Thus a wise Providence seems to declare to the sons of men through the sequences resulting from such historical events, Ye shall not do evil, presuming to imagine that thereby good may arise!

Napoleon’s unfortunate and unjust war with Spain proved in the end to have been an enterprise regarding which the keen intuitions of Josephine had not deceived her. She was endowed with an instinct so perfect, which enabled her to foresee the future with such marvellous skill, that it amounted with her almost to a gift of genius; and she was seldom deceived respecting the good or evil tendency of any of Napoleon’s measures. When informed that the emperor intended to place Joseph Bonaparte upon the throne of Spain, she declared that “she was seized with a feeling of indescribable alarm.”

“When Bonaparte separated from Josephine, he left the woman who had exercised a great influence upon his destinies. It was she who had in a manner launched him upon fortune’s car, who knew how to uphold him in spite of envy, who was the guardian angel sent by Providence upon the earth to repair a thousand wrongs; and from the moment he repudiated her, Napoleon, the invincible Napoleon, began to be a prey to fearful forebodings. This false step was a triumph to his enemies, and all Europe was amazed that a man whose former achievements had covered him with glory, should thus, with a sort of ostentation, run after the daughter of a sovereign whom he had subdued by force of arms. ‘From that moment’ (such was the general exclamation) ‘that Napoleon shall start this scandalous project of a divorce, and, not content with severing the bonds which are for him not less sacred than advantageous, shall dare aspire to the hand of the august daughter of the Cæsars, Napoleon is no longer anything of himself; he is but an ambitious man. He will tremble for the result of the part he is acting, for he will seek to sustain himself by force and not by popular favor.’”

As the disasters of his last days gathered around Napoleon, he said to Josephine on one occasion, when paying her a visit at Malmaison:—

“Josephine, when my soul is filled with pain, I feel the need of a true friend into whose bosom I may pour my sorrows. What astonishes me is, that men should study every other science except that of happiness. ’Tis only in retirement that I have found it, and that I may, perhaps, hereafter meet with it!”

Josephine said, regarding the taking of Paris by the allied sovereigns:—

“My courtiers could not long conceal from me the occupation of the capital. I found myself almost in the sad condition of the family of Darius. Should I await the orders of my husband’s conquerors, or should I go and implore their generosity? The melancholy state to which Bonaparte was reduced wholly engrossed my feelings and my thoughts. I was resolved to share his death, or to follow him into exile.”

“Noble-hearted woman! What a contrast does this feeling present to that which actuated his second wife, who abandoned him as readily and with as little compunction or concern, as though her child had been the son of a German boor, and not of one as great as Cæsar or Alexander!”

While Josephine was at Navarre, and anxiously awaiting the next news from the captured city, she received word from the minister Talleyrand, inviting her to return to Malmaison, to meet there the Emperor Alexander and the king of Prussia, who had expressed a wish to see the queen of that palace of enchantments. Of her interview with these sovereigns, Josephine says:—

“I thanked those magnanimous princes for having had the generosity to honor with their presence the forsaken wife of Bonaparte; I recommended to their kind consideration that brave army which had long displayed such prodigies of valor; I pleaded the cause of those brave soldiers who still formed a bulwark around the hero of Austerlitz; and I claimed, earnestly claimed, the liberty of the man whom I still loved. I forgot all his wrongs towards me, and thought only of his misfortunes.”

The Emperor Alexander of Russia said to Josephine: “I congratulate you on having reigned over the French, a nation so worthy to be well governed; I congratulate you on having known how to make friends while on the throne, friends who have followed you into retirement. ’Tis to you, madame, that France is in a great measure indebted for the tranquillity she enjoyed during the first years of your husband’s reign. Had Napoleon continued to listen to your advice, he would probably now have reigned over a great and generous people. All the sovereigns in Europe, and myself the first, would ultimately have applauded the wisdom of his institutions and the strength of his government.”

When Napoleon returned from Elba to Paris, and was once more receiving the acclamations of his adherents at the Tuileries, he is said to have fallen into a “melting mood,” a few nights after his return thither, and he sent for M. Horan, one of the physicians who had attended Josephine in her last illness. After talking about his former wife with much feeling, to whom he certainly was attached even when he so cruelly abandoned her, he said to the physician:—

“So, Monsieur Horan, you did not leave the empress during her malady?”

“No, sire.”

“What was the cause of that malady?”

“Uneasiness of mind—grief.”

“You believe that?” and Napoleon laid a strong emphasis on the word believe, looking steadfastly in the doctor’s face. He then asked, “Was she long ill? Did she suffer much?”

“She was ill a week, sire; her Majesty suffered little pain.”

“Did she see that she was dying? Did she show courage?”

“A sign her Majesty made when she could no longer express herself, leaves me no doubt that she felt her end approaching; she seemed to contemplate it without fear.”

“Well!—well!” and then Napoleon, much affected, drew close to M. Horan, and added, “You say that she was in grief; from what did that arise?”

“From passing events, sire, from your Majesty’s position last year.”

“Ah! she used to speak of me, then?”

“Often; very often.”

Here Napoleon drew his hand across his eyes, which were filled with tears. He then said:—

“Good woman! My excellent Josephine! She loved me truly, did she not? Ah! she was a Frenchwoman!”

“Oh yes, sire! she loved you, and she would have proved it, had it not been for dread of displeasing you; she had conceived an idea.”

“How? What would she have done?”

“She one day said that as empress of the French she would drive through Paris, with eight horses to her coach, and all her household in gala livery, to go and rejoin you at Fontainebleau, and never quit you more.”

“She would have done it! She was capable of doing it!” exclaimed Napoleon, with deep emotion and eyes full of tears; and then he asked the physician the most minute questions about the last hours of Josephine: the nature of her disease, the friends and attendants who were around her at the hour of her death, and the conduct of her two children Eugène and Hortense.

How different was Josephine’s fidelity to the man who had even cut her to the heart by his cruel desertion when he was at the height of his glory, but whom in his dire misfortunes she did not cease to love and desire to aid, from the cold apathy of the woman who had taken her rightful place!

After the fall of the emperor, and his departure to the island of Elba, Josephine fell into a profound melancholy. For several days she preferred to remain alone. Her ladies noticed that she often perused a letter which the emperor had written to her from Brienne, in which he said:—

“Josephine, while revisiting the spot where I passed my early childhood, and comparing the peaceful hours I then enjoyed with the agitations which I now experience, I am constrained to say to myself, I fear death no longer—to me it would this day be a blessing,—but I would once more see Josephine.”

Speaking of Napoleon at this time, she is reported to have said: “I am the only one to whom he intrusted all his secrets—all except the one which has caused his ruin; and had he communicated that to me in season, I should still have enjoyed his presence; and by means of my counsels he would perhaps have escaped these new calamities.”

Among the last words uttered by the faithful Josephine, were these, regarding Napoleon, whose loved portrait she then gazed upon: “Banished to an island under a foreign sky, torn from France, from a wife and a beloved son, from all his friends; fallen from the palaces of kings, among the hills of Elba, overcome by cares and fatigues, sad and melancholy, alone amidst the dwellers upon that island, there still remains to him one faithful Pylades, and a few warriors who have voluntarily shared his exile. Bonaparte can never find consolation in his deep misfortunes, except in the reflection that there still remains to him one true friend who hath never ceased to watch over his precious life. But, alas! she is lost for him.”

“Josephine, Bonaparte’s last friend; Josephine, the first object of his ambition, and the only woman whom he truly loved. Bonaparte was fortunate while her lot was connected with his. His after-life was less miserable while she survived. Dying, she still wished to press his hand; his name was the last word she uttered, and her last tear fell upon his portrait.”

Time destroys great reputations, but that of Napoleon’s first wife will be deathless while woman’s self-sacrificing love remains.

“At least,” said Josephine, with dying breath; “at least I shall carry with me some regrets. I have aimed at the good of the French people; I have done all in my power to promote it, and I may say with truth to all who attend me in my last moments, that never, no, never, did the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte cause a tear to flow.”

Beautiful May had already clothed the gardens of Malmaison with verdure and adorned them with radiant flowers. The sunset tints crimsoned the western horizon, and tipped the white clouds with purple and gold. The birds in the groves were softly carolling their vesper songs, and the gentle breeze, swaying the delicate leaves, fanned with caressing touch the fevered cheek of the dying Josephine, who, with eyes fast dimming in death, gazed once more through the open window upon the loved beauties of her favorite Malmaison, which on this 29th of May, 1814, seemed to have put on new loveliness to comfort the gentle spirit so soon to take a fond and last farewell. As the shadows of twilight deepened, and the dying empress looked once more on the portrait of her idolized husband, the emperor, she exclaimed, “L’isle d’Elbe——Napoleon!” and closed her eyes on earth, and passed beyond the portals of mortal life.

“The death of Josephine threw all France into tears, and even strangers shared in the general sorrow. They witnessed the universal regrets her death occasioned, and it may be truly said, to the praise of both the friends and foes of Bonaparte, that, on this mournful occasion, all united to scatter flowers upon the tomb of the woman who had adorned the happy days of the illustrious exile.”

On the 2d of June, the funeral honors were paid to the mortal remains of the Empress Josephine, in the parish church at Ruel. Commissioners from the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia headed the procession, which proceeded from Malmaison to Ruel. Many foreign princes, marshals, generals, and officers of the French and allied armies escorted the renowned remains.

The military consisted of Russian Hussars and the National Guards of France. The chief mourners were Prince Eugène, the Grand Duke of Baden, Marquis de Beauharnais (brother-in-law), Count de Tascher (nephew), Count de Beauharnais (cousin), and the grandchildren of the deceased empress.

The funeral oration was pronounced by the Archbishop of Tours, while the bishops of Evreux and Versailles assisted in the religious ceremonies. The body of the empress was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was afterwards placed in one of sycamore wood covered with black cloth. The casket was deposited in a vault in the church at Ruel, over which was raised a chapelle ardente formed of funeral hangings; the altar, richly decorated in the form of a tomb, and the altar-piece, representing a cross, were surmounted by a canopy. On the right was placed a statue of Immortality, on the left that of Religion. A sepulchral lamp was suspended in the middle of the chapelle ardente.

Queen Hortense, who had been conveyed to the church before the funeral obsequies, knelt for a long time beside the tomb, with her brother, after the other mourners had left the church.

The spot is now marked by a monument of white marble, representing the empress kneeling in her coronation robes, and bears this simple and touching inscription:—

EUGÈNE AND HORTENSE TO JOSEPHINE.

The widow and the orphan went daily to weep by her tomb. Many of her faithful friends continued to make visits to the last resting-place of her whose memory was honored by universal respect and sincere mourning. The poor and the rich alike honored her life and mourned her death. “What now remains to Josephine is the recollection of her good deeds,”—a more fitting memorial than costly monument or marble sarcophagus of most elaborate art.

As an empress, none can claim a more exalted place, as the personification of grace, beauty, and queenly dignity. But it is as a woman—as a wife and a mother—that the brightest halo of glory crowns the pure brow of Josephine; and as Love’s Martyr, she has gained the highest place amongst the self-sacrificing women of historic fame.