Josephine played upon his purblindness where she was concerned in most scandalous ways.  She had no money sense, and combined with this defect she had no moral sense in money matters.  Her debts were chronic, and periodically so enlarged that she adopted the most monstrous methods to reduce them before the balances were put before Napoleon by herself, or an inkling conveyed to him by a wily creditor; but these subterfuges only added to her spending resources.  It is said that she actually did not shrink from receiving a thousand francs per day from Fouche as the price of information given him of what was going on in the Tuileries, and also that she received half a million francs from Flachats, the predatory army contractors.

It is unthinkable that Napoleon, whose rigid uprightness in matters of money has never been disputed, could have known that his wife was involved in such shocking financial dealings, or he would have taken salutary measures to put a definite end to them.  He knew that he was surrounded by men who were inveterate thieves, and when their defalcations were brought to his knowledge, they were either cashiered or made to disgorge.  Bourrienne, Talleyrand, and Fouche, for instance.  But there is no evidence to show that he ever suspected Josephine at any time, and let us hope that the Fouche-Flachats transactions were either exaggerated or mere invention, though it is hard to believe that there was no truth in the accusation.

Napoleon was no sooner made Consul than there began to be hints and innuendoes of an heir, and as Josephine knew that she could not bear him one, she was thrown into fits of despondency lest he should be driven by designing persons in and outside his family to listen to a scheme of divorce and remarriage.  The alternative was to nominate one of his brothers as his heir.  Joseph and Lucien were impossible, so he fixed his mind on Louis.  But the plot to assassinate him on the way to the opera, together with the Duc d’Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru affair, brought the change from Life Consul to Emperor more quickly.  The marriage of Louis to Hortense eased Josephine’s mind.  She had in view the fact that an heir might be born to them, and the possibility of the inheritance going to him.  In due course Napoleon Charles was born, and an attempt made by Napoleon to carry his idea out.  Louis was at first in favour of it, but Joseph and Lucien had envious conceptions of what the brothers’ rights were.  Louis became impressed with their views, and ultimately decided against Napoleon’s wishes.  The Senate passed a resolution in favour of “direct natural, legitimate, and adoptive descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the direct, natural, legitimate descendants of Joseph and Louis.”  The plebiscite supported the resolution of the Senate, and Joseph and Louis had the mortification of seeing that to them the succession was barred.