The birth of Leon gives him a prominent place in the history of the political divorce, though so far as Napoleon was concerned or affected by it, there is strong evidence to show that he really thought it was a way out, and had he been left to his own inclinations, the probability is that there would have been no second marriage so long as Josephine lived.  From 1807 to 1809 his brain was racked to pieces with the inevitable shadow he struggled to evade.  He could not bring himself to sever the tie that bound them together in strong attachment for nearly fifteen years.  He invented every conceivable device to try and find a more congenial solution than divorce.

For two years the Emperor lived in an atmosphere of intolerable anguish which distracted him.  The nearer he approached the dreaded theme, the more fascinating his wife appeared to him, and the more tenaciously he clung to the deep impressions that had been made by that youthful passion that swayed his very being in other days.  She had frequently recaptured him from the subtle blandishments of an agency that was ever on his track, and then his devotion became more rapturous than ever.  Fouche was frequently rebuked with stern severity for his pertinacious advocacy of the separation.  At another time we hear of him falling into Josephine’s arms, shedding copious tears, and, choking with grief, he sobs out, “My poor Josephine!  I can never leave you,” “I still love you,” and so forth.

Those who pretend to see in these outbursts of devotion nothing but artifice, cannot have informed themselves of the true character of this extraordinary man.  In truth, his was a sacrifice of affection forced upon him for the benefit of the State.  That is the conclusion the writer has come to after much research.  Even after he was persuaded that he would have to submit, the recollections of the glory they had shared together, and of their happy days, and the grief and suffering the parting would cause, filled him with remorse and pity, and then would come a period of wavering which exasperated his family and the upholders of the stability of the Empire.  At last he saw clearly that it was an imperative duty that must be fulfilled.

The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the amiable Marie Walewska, who was living close to Schoenbrunn, was about to give birth to a child which he knew to be his, and it is not improbable that this double assurance that he might reasonably expect to have an heir if he married again brought him to the definite decision to go on with the divorce; and the Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to form an alliance by offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.