Empress Josephine Part 26

"N. B."

The victory which Bonaparte implored from his destiny was soon to take place; and the battle of Mondovi, which followed the capitulation of Cherasco, made Bonaparte master of Piedmont and of the pa.s.ses of the Alps. He sent his brother Joseph to Paris, to lay before the Directory pressing considerations concerning the necessity and importance of concluding a permanent peace with the King of Sardinia, so as to isolate Austria entirely in Italy. At the same time Junot was to take to the Directory the conquered standards. Joseph and Junot travelled together from Nice by means of post-horses, and they made so rapid a journey that in one hundred and twenty hours they reached Paris.

The victor's messengers and the conquered flags were received in Paris with shouts of rapture, and with a glowing enthusiasm for General Bonaparte. His name was on every tongue. In the streets and on the squares crowds gathered together to talk of the glorious news, and to shout their acclamations to the brave army and its general. Even the Directory, the five monarchs of France, shared the universal joy and enthusiasm. They received Joseph and Junot with affable complacency, and communicated to the army and to its general public eulogies. In honor of the messengers who had brought the standards and the propositions of peace, they gave a brilliant banquet; and Carnot, proud of having been the one who had brought about Bonaparte's appointment, went so far in his enthusiasm as at the close of the banquet to tear his garments open and exhibit to the a.s.sembled guests Napoleon's portrait which he carried on his breast.

"Tell your brother," cried he to Joseph, "that I carry him here on my heart, for I foresee he will be the deliverer of France, and therefore he must know that in the Directory he has only admirers and friends." [Footnote: "Memoires du Roi Joseph," vol. i., p. 62.]

But something else, more glorious than these salutations of love from France and from the Directory, was to be brought back by his messengers to the victorious commander-his wife, his Josephine; he claimed her as the reward of battles won. Joseph was not only the messenger of the general, he was also the messenger of the lover; and before delivering his papers to the Directory, he had first, as Bonaparte had ordered him, to deliver to Josephine his letter which called her to Milan. Napoleon had thus written to her:

III.

"TO MY SWEET FRIEND!

"CAEN, the 3rd Floreal (May 24), 1796.

"My brother will hand you this letter. I cherish for him the most intimate friends.h.i.+p. I trust he will also gain your affection. He deserves it. Nature has gifted him with a tender and inexhaustibly good character; he is full of rare qualities. I write to Barras to have him appointed consul to some Italian port. He desires to live with his little wife away from the world's great stream of events. I recommend him to you.

"I have received your letters of the 16th and of the 21st. You have indeed for many days forgotten to write. What, then, are you doing? Yes, my dear friend, I am not exactly jealous, but I am sometimes uneasy. Hasten, then, for I tell you beforehand that if you delay I shall be sick. So great exertion, combined with your absence, is too much.

"Your letters are the joys of my days, and my happy days are not too many. Junot takes to Paris twenty-two standards. You will come back with him, will you not? .... Misery without remedy, sorrow without comfort, unmitigated anguish, will be my portion if it is my misfortune to see him come back alone, my own adored wife! He will see you, he will breathe at your shrine, and perhaps you will even grant him the special and unsurpa.s.sed privilege of kissing your cheeks, and I, I will be far, far away! You will come here, at my side, to my heart, in my arms! Take wings, come, come! Yet, journey slowly; the road is long, bad, fatiguing! If your carriage were to upset, if some calamity were to happen, if the exertion. ... Set out at once, my beloved one, but travel slowly!

"I have received a letter from Hortense, a very acceptable one indeed. I am going to answer it. I love her much, and will soon send her the perfumes she desires. N. B."

But Josephine could not meet at once the ardent wishes of her husband. She had, on the receipt of his letter, made with Joseph all the necessary preparations for the journey; but the ailment which had so long troubled her, broke out, and a violent illness prostrated her.

Bonaparte's suffering and anger at this news were unbounded; a terrible restlessness and anxiety took possession of him, and, to obtain speedy and reliable news from Josephine, he sent from Milan to Paris a special courier, whose only business it was to carry a letter to Josephine.

The general had nothing to communicate to the Directory; it was only the lover writing to his beloved! What fire, what energy of pa.s.sion, penetrated him, is evident from the following letter:

IV.

"TORTONA, at noon, the 27th Prairial,

"In the Year IV. of the Republic (15th June, 1796).

"To Josephine: My life is a ceaseless Alpine burden. An oppressive foreboding prevents me from breathing. I live no more, I have lost more than life, more than happiness, more than rest! I am without hope. I send you a courier. He will remain only four hours in Paris, and return with your answer. Write me only ten lines; they will be some comfort to me. ... You are sick, you love me, I have troubled you; you are pregnant, and I cannot see you. This thought bewilders me. I have done you so much wrong, that I know not how to make amends for it. I found fault because you remained in Paris, and you were sick! Forgive me, my beloved. The pa.s.sion you have inspired in me has taken my reason away; I cannot find it again. One is never cured of this evil. My contemplations are so horrible, that it would be a satisfaction to see you; to press you for two hours to my heart, and then, to die together! Who takes care of you? I imagine that you have sent for Hortense. I love this child a thousand times more, when I think she can comfort you somewhat. As regards myself, there will be no solace, no rest, no hope, before the courier whom I have sent to you has returned, and you have told me in a long letter the cause of your illness, and how serious it is. I tell you beforehand that if it is dangerous I will at once go to Paris. My presence would be called for by your sickness. I have always been fortunate. Never has Fate stood against my wishes, and to-day it strikes me where only wounds are possible. Josephine, how can you delay so long in writing to me? Your last laconic note is dated the 3d of this month, and this adds to my sorrow. Yet I have it always in my pocket. Your portrait and your letters are always under my eyes.

"I am nothing without you. I can scarcely understand how I have lived without knowing you. Ah, Josephine, if you know my heart, could you remain without writing from the 29th of May to the 16th of June, and not travel hither? Have you lent an ear to faithless friends, who wish to keep you away from me? I am angry with the whole world; I accuse every one round about you. I had calculated that you would leave on the 5th, and be at Milan on the 15th.

"Josephine, if you love me, if you believe that all depends on the recovery of your health, take good care of yourself. I dare not tell you not to undertake so long a journey-not to travel in the heat, if you possibly can move. Make small journeys; write to me at every stopping-place, and send me each time your letters by a courier. ... Your sickness troubles me by night and by day. Without appet.i.te or sleep, without regard for friends.h.i.+p, reputation, or country!-you and you alone! The rest of the world exists no more for me than if it were sunk into oblivion. I still cling to honor, for you hold to it; to fame, for it is a joy to you; if it were not for this, I would have abandoned every thing to hasten to your feet.

"Sometimes, I say to myself: 'I trouble myself without cause, she is already well, she has left Paris and is on the way, she is perhaps in Lyons.' ... Fruitless deception! You are in your bed, suffering- more interesting-more worthy of adoration; you are pale, and your eyes are more languis.h.i.+ng than ever! when you are well again, if one of us is to be sick, cannot I be the one? for I am stronger, I have more vital power, and would therefore sooner conquer sickness. Fate is cruel, it strikes me through you.

"What sometimes comforts me is to know that on fate depends your sickness, but that it depends on no one to oblige me to outlive you.

"Be careful, my dearly-beloved one, to tell me in your letter that you are convinced that I love you above all that can be conceived; that never has it come to me to think of other women; that they are all in my eyes without grace, beauty, or wit; that you, you entirely, you as I see you, as you are, can please me and fetter all the powers of my soul; that you have grasped it in all its immeasurableness; that my heart has no folds closed from your eyes, no thoughts which belong not to you; that my energies, arms, mind, every thing in me, is subject to you; that my spirit lives in your body; that the day when you will be inconstant or when you will cease to live, will be the day of my death, and that nature and earth are beautiful to my eyes only because you live in them. If you do not believe all this, if your soul is not convinced of it, penetrated with it, then I am deceived in you, then you love me no more. A magnetic fluid runs between persons who love one another. You know that I could never see, much less could I endure, a lover: to see him and to tear his heart would be one and the same thing; and then I might even lay hands on your sacred person. ... no, I would never dare do it, but I would fly from a world where those I deem the most virtuous have deceived me.

"But I am certain of your love, and proud of it. Accidents are probations which keep alive all the energies of our mutual affections. My adored one, you will give birth to a child resembling his mother; it will pa.s.s many years in your arms. Unfortunate that I am, I would be satisfied with one day! A thousand kisses on your eyes and lips! .... adored wife, how mighty is your spell! I am ill on account of your illness. I have a burning fever. Retain the courier no longer than six hours; then let him return, that he may bring me a letter from my sovereign. N. B."

These were the first letters which Josephine received from her loving, tender husband. They are a splendid monument of affection with which love adorns the solitary grave of the departed empress; and surely in the dark hours of her life, the remembrance of these days of happiness, of these letters so full of pa.s.sionate ardor, must have alleviated the bitterness of her grief and given her the consolation that at least she was once loved as perhaps no other woman on earth can boast! All these letters of Bonaparte, during the days of his first prosperity, and of his earnest cravings, Josephine had carefully gathered; they were to be, amid the precious and costly treasures which the future was to lay at her feet, the most glorious and most prized, and which she preserved with sacred loyalty as long as she lived.

This is the reason that, out of all the letters which Bonaparte wrote to Josephine during long years, not one is lost; that there is no gap in the correspondence, and that we can with complete certainty, from week to week and year to year, follow the relations which existed between them, and that the thermometer can be placed on Bonaparte's heart to observe how by degrees the heat diminishes, the warmth of pa.s.sion disappears into the cool temperature of a quiet friends.h.i.+p, and how it never sinks to cold indifference, even when Josephine had to yield to the young and proud daughter of Austria, and give up her place at the side of the emperor.

Of all the letters of Josephine to Bonaparte, which were now so glowing that they seemed to devour him with flames of fire and bewildered his senses, and then so cold and indifferent that they caused the chill of death to pa.s.s over his frame-of all these, not one has been preserved to posterity. Perhaps the Emperor Napoleon destroyed them; when in the Tuileries he received Josephine's successor, his second wife, and when he endeavored to destroy in his own proud heart the memory of the beautiful, happy past, he there destroyed those letters, that they might return to dust, even as his own love had returned.

CHAPTER XXV.

JOSEPHINE IN ITALY.

Bonaparte's letter, which the courier brought to Josephine, found her recovered, and ready to follow her husband's call, and go to Milan. But she was deprived of one precious and joyous hope: the child, which Bonaparte so much envied because it would pa.s.s many years in Josephine's arms, was never to be born.

In the last days of the month of June Josephine arrived in Milan. Her whole journey had been one uninterrupted triumph. In Turin, at the court of the King of Sardinia, she had received the homage of the people as if she were the wife of a mighty ruler; and wherever she went, she was received with honors and distinction. To Turin Bonaparte had sent before him one of his adjutants, General Marmont, afterward Duke de Ragusa, to convey to her his kindest regards and to accompany her with a military escort as far as Milan. In the palace de Serbelloni, his residence in Milan, adorned as for a feast, Bonaparte received her with a countenance radiant with joy and happy smiles such as seldom brightened his pale, gloomy features.

But Bonaparte had neither much time nor leisure to devote to his domestic happiness, to his long-expected reunion with Josephine. Only three days could the happy lover obtain from the restless commander; then he had to tear himself away from his sweet repose, to carry on further the deadly strife which he had begun in Italy against Austria-which had decided not to give away one foot of Lombardy without a struggle-and not to submit to the conqueror of Lodi. A new army was marched into Italy under the command of General Wurmser, the same against whom, three years before, on the sh.o.r.es of the Rhine, Alexandre de Beauharnais had fought in vain. At the head of sixty thousand men Wurmser moved into Italy to relieve Mantua, besieged by the French.

This alarming news awoke Bonaparte out of his dream of love, and neither Josephine's tears nor prayers could keep him back. He sent couriers to Paris, to implore from the Directory fresh troops and more money, to continue the campaign. The Directory answered him with the proposition to divide the army of Italy into two columns, one of which would act under the commander-in-chief, General Kellermann, the other under Bonaparte.

But this proposition, which the jealous Directory made for the sake of breaking the growing power of Bonaparte, only served to lift him a step higher in his path to the brilliant career which he alone, in the depths of his heart, had traced, and the secret of which his closed lips would reveal to no one.

Bonaparte's answer to this proposition of the Directory was, that if the power were to be divided, he could only refuse the half of this division, and would retire entirely from command.

He wrote to Carnot: "It is a matter of indifference to me whether I carry on the war here or elsewhere. To serve my country, and deserve from posterity one page of history, is all my ambition! If both I and Kellermann command in Italy, then all is lost. General Kellermann has more experience than I, and will carry on the war more ably. But the matter can only be badly managed if we both command. It is no pleasure for me to serve with a man whom Europe considers the first general of the age."

Carnot showed this letter to the Directory, and declared that if Bonaparte were to be given up, he would himself resign his position of secretary of war. The Directory was not prepared to accept this twofold responsibility, and they sacrificed Kellermann to the threats of Napoleon and Carnot.

General Bonaparte was confirmed in his position of commander-in- chief of the army in Italy, even for the future, and the conduct of the war was left in his hands alone.

With this fresh triumph over his enemies at home, Bonaparte marched from Milan to fight the re-enforced enemy of France in Italy.

On this new war-path, amid dangers and conflicts, the tumults of the fight, the noise of the camp, the confusion of the bivouac, the young general did not for one moment forget the wife he so pa.s.sionately loved. Nearly every day he wrote to her, and those letters, which were often written between the dictation of the battle's plan, the dispatches to the Directory, and the impending conflict, were faithful waymarks, whose directions it is easy to follow, and thus trace the whole successful course of the hero of Italy.

To refer here to Bonaparte's letters to Josephine, implies at once the mention of Bonaparte's deeds and of Josephine's happiness. The first letter which he wrote after the interview in Milan is from Roverbella, and it tells her in a few words that he has just now beaten the foe, and that he is going to Verona. The second is also short and hastily written, but is full of many delicate a.s.surances of love, and also that he has met and defeated the foe at Verona. The third letter is from Marmirolo, and shows that Bonaparte, notwithstanding his constant changes of position, had taken the precautions that Josephine's letters should everywhere follow him; for in Marmirolo he received one, and this tender letter filled him with so much joy, thanks, and longings, that, in virtue of it, he forgets conquests and triumphs entirely, and is only the longing, tender lover. He writes:

"MARMIROLO, the 29th Messidor, 9 in the evening "(July 17), 1796.

"I am just now in receipt of your letter, my adored one; it has filled my heart with joy. I am thankful for the pains you have taken to send me news about yourself; with your improved health, all will be well; I am convinced that you have now recovered. I would impress upon you the duty of riding often; this will be a healthy exercise for you.

"Since I left you I am forever sorrowful. My happiness consists in being near you. Constantly does my memory renew your kisses, your tears, your amiable jealousy; and the charms of the incomparable Josephine kindle incessantly a burning flame within my heart and throughout my senses. When shall I, free from all disturbance and care, pa.s.s all my moments with you, and have nothing to do but to love, nothing to think of but the happiness to tell it and prove it to you? I am going to send you your horse, and I trust you will soon be able to be with me. A few days ago I thought I loved you, but since I have seen you again, I feel that I love you a thousand times more. Since I knew you, I wors.h.i.+p you more and more every day; this proves the falsity of La Bruyere's maxim, which says that love springs up all at once. Every thing in nature has its growth in different degrees. Ah, I implore you, let me see some of your faults; be then less beautiful, less graceful, less tender, less good; especially be never tender, never weep: your tears deprive me of my reason, and change my blood into fire. Believe me, that it is not in my power to have a single thought which concerns you not, or an idea which is not subservient to you.

"Keep very quiet. Recover soon your health. Come to me, that at least before dying we may say, 'We were happy so many, many days!'

"Millions of kisses even for Fortune, notwithstanding its naughtiness. [Footnote: Fortune was that little peevish dog which, when Josephine was in prison, served as love-messenger between her and her children.] BONAPARTE."

But this letter, full of tenderness and warmth, is not yet enough for the ardent lover; it does not express sufficiently his longing, his love. The very next day, from the same quarters of Marmirolo, he writes something like a postscript to the missive of the previous day. He tells her that he has made an attack upon Mantua, but that a sudden fall of the waters of the lake had delayed his troops already embarked, and that this day he is going to try again in some other way; that the enemy a few days past had made a sortie and killed a few hundred men, but that they themselves, with considerable loss, had to retreat rapidly into the fortress, and that three Neapolitan regiments had entered Brescia. But between each of these sentences intervene some strong a.s.surance of his love, some tender or flattering words; and finally, at the end of the letter, comes the princ.i.p.al object, the cause why it was written. The tender lover wanted some token from his beloved: it is not enough for him always to carry her portrait and her letters, he must also have a lock of her hair. He writes:

"I have lost my snuffbox; I pray you find me another, somewhat more flat, and pray have something pretty written upon it, with a lock of your hair. A thousand burning kisses, since you are so cold, love unbounded, and faithfulness beyond all proof."

Two days afterward he writes again from Marmirolo, at first hastily, a few words about the war, then he comes to the main point. He has been guilty, toward Josephine, of a want of politeness, and, with all the tenderness and humility of a lover, he asks forgiveness. Her pardon and her constant tardiness in answering his letters, are to him more weighty matters than all the battles and victories of his restless camp-life, and therefore he begins at once with a complaint at his separation from her.