Empress Josephine Part 47

Therefore, Josephine gathered all her courage; she pressed her hands on the mortal wounds of her heart, and kept it still alive, for it must not yet bleed to death; her children yet claimed her care.

Josephine, therefore, left the castle of Navarra for that of Malmaison, thus fulfilling the wishes of the Emperor Alexander, who desired to know Josephine's wishes in reference to herself and to her children, and who sincerely wished to become acquainted with her, that he might offer her his homage, and transfer to her the friendship he once cherished for Napoleon.

Josephine received in Malmaison the first visit of Alexander, and from this time he came every day, to the great grief of the returned Bourbons, who felt bitterly hurt at the homage thus publicly offered before all the world by the conqueror of Napoleon to the divorced Empress Josephine, who, in the eyes of the proud Bourbons, was but the widow of General de Beauharnais.

Notwithstanding this, the rest of the princes of the victorious allies followed the example of Alexander. They all came to Malmaison to visit the Empress Josephine; so that again, as in the days of her imperial glory, she received at her residence the conquerors of Europe, and saw around her emperors and kings. The Emperor Alexander, with his brothers; the King Frederick William, with his sons; the Duke of Coburg, and many others of the little German princes, were guests at her table, and endeavored, through the respect they manifested to her, and the expressions of their esteem and devotedness, to turn away from her the sad fate which had come upon all the Bonapartes.

But her heart was mortally wounded. "I cannot overcome the fearful sadness which has seized me," said she to Mlle. Cochelet, the friend of her daughter Hortense; "I do all I can to hide my cares from my children, but I suffer only the more." [Footnote: Mlle. Cochelet. "Memoires," vol. ii.]

"You will see," said she to the d.u.c.h.ess d'Abrantes, who had visited her at Malmaison, "you will see that Napoleon's misfortune will cause my death. My heart is broken-it will not be healed." [Footnote: Abrantes, "Memoires," vol. xvii.]

She was right, her heart was broken, it would not be healed! It seemed at first but merely an indisposition which seized the empress, and which obliged her to decline the announced visit of the Emperor Alexander, nothing but a slight inflammation of the neck, accompanied by a little fever. But the disease increased hour after hour. On the 27th of May, Josephine was obliged to keep her bed; on the 29th her sufferings in the neck were so serious that she nearly suffocated, and her fever had become so intense that she had but few moments of consciousness. In her fancy she often called aloud for Napoleon, and the last word which her dying lips uttered was his name.

Josephine died on the 29th of May, 1814. That love which had illumined her life occasioned her death, and will sanctify her name for ever as with a saintly halo.

She was buried on the 2d of June in the church at Rueil. It was a solemn funeral procession, to which all the kings and princes a.s.sembled in Paris sent their subst.i.tutes in their carriages; but the most beautiful mourning procession which followed her to the grave were the tears, the sighs of the poor, the suffering of the unfortunate, for all whom Josephine had been a benefactress, a good angel, and who lost in her a comforter, a mother.

In the church of Rueil, Eugene and Hortense erected a monument to their mother; and when in 1837 Queen Hortense, the mother of the Emperor Napoleon III., died at Arenenberg, her corpse was, according to her last wishes, brought to Rueil and laid at her mother's side. Her son erected there a monument to her; and this son, the grandchild of Josephine, is now the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III.

Josephine's sacrifice has been in vain. Napoleon's dynasty, for whose sake she sacrificed happiness, love, and a crown, has not been perpetuated through the woman to whom Josephine was sacrificed-not through Maria Louisa, who gave to France and to the emperor a son, but through the daughter of Josephine, who gave to Napoleon more than a son, her love, her heart, and her life!

Providence is just! Upon the throne from which the childless empress was rejected, sits now the grandchild of Josephine, and his very existence demonstrates how vain are all man's calculations and desires, and how like withered leaves they are carried away and tossed about by the breath of destiny!

It was not the emperor's daughter who perpetuated Napoleon's dynasty, but the widow of General Beauharnais, Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie.

Josephine, therefore, is avenged in history; she was also avenged in Napoleon's heart, for he bitterly lamented that he had ever been separated from her. "I ought not to have allowed myself to be separated from Josephine," said he, a short time before his death in St. Helena, "no, I ought not to have been divorced from her; that was my misfortune!"

THE END