Perhaps Josephine, in these hours of happiness, when as empress, wife, and mother, she enjoyed the purest and most sacred pleasure, forgot the sad forebodings and fears of her soul.  Perhaps she now believed that, since Napoleon had adopted her Eugene as his son, and had given to this son a wife of royal extraction, Fate would be propitious to her; that the emperor would be satisfied with the son of his choice, and that the future scions of the royal princess would be the heirs of his throne.

But one word of Napoleon frightened her out of this ephemeral security into which happiness had lulled her.

Josephine wept as she bade farewell to her son; she was comfortless when with his young wife Eugene left for Italy.  She complained to Napoleon, in justification of her tears, that she should seldom see her son, that now he was lost to his mother’s heart.

The emperor, who at first had endeavored to comfort her felt at last wounded by her sorrow.

“You weep, Josephine,” said he, hastily, “but you have no reasonable motives to do so; you weep simply because you are separated from your son.  If already the absence of your children causes you so much sorrow, think then what I must endure!  The tenderness which you feel for your children makes me cruelly experience how unhappy it is for me to have none.” [Footnote:  Avrillon, “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 202.]

Josephine trembled, and her tears ceased flowing in the presence of the emperor, but only to fall more abundantly as soon as he had left her.  Now she wept no longer at her separation from her son; her tears were still more bitter and painful—­she grieved over the coming future; she wept because those voices which happiness for a moment had deafened, now spoke more loudly—­more fearfully and menacingly shouted:  “Napoleon will reject you!  He will choose for himself a wife of royal birth, who will give an heir to his throne and his empire.”

CHAPTER XLII.

Divorce.

It was at last decided!  The storm which had so long and so fearfully rolled over Josephine’s head was to burst, and with one single flash destroy her earthly happiness, her love, her future!

The peace of Vienna had been ratified on the 13th of October, 1809.  Napoleon passed the three long months of peace negotiations in Vienna and in Schonbrunn, while Josephine, solitary and full of sad misgivings, lived quietly in the retreat of Malmaison.

Now that peace was signed, Napoleon returned to France with fresh laurels and new crowns of victory.  But not, as usual after so long an absence, did he greet Josephine with the tenderness and joy of a home-returning husband.  He approached her with clouded brow; with a proud, cold demeanor; with the mien of a ruling master, before whom all must bow, even his wife, even his own heart.

At Fontainebleau, whither the emperor in a few, short, commanding words—­in a letter of three lines—­had invited the empress, did the first interview of Josephine and Napoleon take place.  She hastened to meet her husband with a cheerful face and beaming eyes.  He, however, received her coldly, and endeavored to hide his feelings of uneasiness and shame under a repulsive, domineering manner.