44. Death

Happy the man to whom it is granted to close a beautiful and worthy life with a beautiful and worthy death! Happy Josephine, for whom it was not reserved like the rest of the Bonapartes to wander about Europe seeking for a refuge where they might hide themselves from the persecutions and hatred of the princes and people! To her alone, of all the Napoleonic race, was reserved the enviable fate to die under the ruins of the imperial throne, whose fragments fell so heavily upon her heart as to break it.

For France the days of fear had come, for Napoleon the days of vengeance. The nations of Europe had at last risen with the strength of the lion that breaks his chains and is determined to obtain liberty by devouring those who deprived him of it, and so those irritated nations had with the power of their wrath forced their princes, who had been so obediently submissive to Napoleon, to declare war and to fight against him for life or death.

The conflicts, battles, and endless victories of the constantly defeated Austrians, Prussians, Russians, and English, belong to history--this everlasting tribunal where the deeds of men are judged, and where they are written on its pages to be for ages to come as lessons and examples of warning and encouragement.

Josephine, the lonely and rejected one, had nothing to do with those fearful events which shook France; she played no active part in the great drama which was performed before the walls of Paris, and which closed with the fall of the hero whom she had so warmly and so truly loved.

Josephine, during those days of horror and of decisive conflicts, was in her pleasure-castle of Navarra. Her daughter, Queen Hortense, with her two sons, Napoleon Louis and Louis Napoleon, was with her. There she learned the treachery of the marshals, the capitulation of Marmont, the surrender of Paris, and the entrance of the foreign foe into the capital of France.

But where was Napoleon? Where was the emperor? Did Josephine know anything of him? Why did he not come to the rescue of his capital, and drive the foe away?

Such were the questions which afflicted Josephine's heart, and to which the news, finally re-echoed through Paris, gave her the fearful response.

Napoleon had come too late, and when he had arrived in Fontainebleau with the remnants of the army defeated by Blucher, he learned there that Marmont had capitulated, and that the allies had already entered Paris, and all was lost.

The deputies of the senate and Napoleon's faithless marshals came from Paris to Fontainebleau to require from him that he should resign his crown, and that he should save France by the sacrifice of himself and his imperial dignity. These men, lately the most humble, devoted courtiers and flatterers of Napoleon, who owed to him everything--name, position, fortune, and rank--had now the courage to approach him with lofty demeanor and to request of him to depart into exile.

Napoleon, overcome by all this misfortune and treachery which fell upon him, did what they required of him. He abdicated in favor of his son, and left Paris, left France, to go to the small island of Elba, there to dream of the days which had been and of the days which were coming, when be would regain his glory and his emperor's crown.

Amid the agonies, cares, and humiliations of his present situation, Napoleon thought of the woman whom he had once named the "angel of his happiness," and who he well knew would readily and gladly be the angel of his misfortune. Before leaving Fontainebleau to retire to the island of Elba, Napoleon wrote to Josephine a farewell letter, telling her of the fate reserved for him, and assuring her of his never-ending friendship and affection. He sent this letter to the castle of Navarra by M. de Maussion, and the messenger of evil tidings arrived there in the middle of the night.

Josephine had given orders that she should be awakened as soon as any one brought news for her. She immediately arose from her bed, threw a mantle over her shoulders, and bade M. de Maussion come in.

"Does the emperor live?" cried she, as he approached. "Only answer me this: does the emperor live?"

Then, when she had received this assurance, after reading Napoleon's letter, and learning all the sad, humiliating news, pale, and trembling in all her limbs, she hastened to her daughter Hortense.

"Ah, Hortense," exclaimed she, overcome and falling into an arm- chair near her daughter's bed, "ah, Hortense, the unfortunate Napoleon! They are sending him to the island of Elba! Now he is unhappy, abandoned, and I am not near him! Were I not his wife I would go to him and exile myself with him! Oh, why cannot I be with him?" [Footnote: Mlle. Cochelet, "Memoires," vol. ii.]

But she dared not! Napoleon, knowing her heart and her love, had commissioned the Duke de Bassano expressly to tell the Empress Josephine to make no attempt to follow him, and "to respect the rights of another."

This other, however, had not been pleased to claim the right which Josephine was to respect. Napoleon left Fontainebleau on the 21st of April, 1814, to go to the island of Elba. It was his wish to meet there his wife and his son. But Maria Louisa did not come; she did not obey her husband's call; she descended from the imperial throne, and was satisfied to be again an archduchess of Austria, and to see the little King of Rome dispossessed of country, rank, father, and even name. The poor little Napoleon was now called Frank--he was but the son of the Archduchess Maria Louisa; he dared not ask for his father, and yet memory ever and ever re-echoed through his heart the sounds of other days; this memory caused the death of the Duke de Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon.

Napoleon had gone to Elba, and there he waited in vain for Maria Louisa, to fill whose place Josephine would have gladly poured her heart's blood.

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