To prevent their being with each other alone, and to avoid this horrible solitude, dreaded alike by Napoleon and Josephine, the emperor sent the next day for all the princes and princesses of his family to come to Fontainebleau.  His sisters, no longer kept in control by the domineering will of the emperor, made Josephine feel their malice and enmity; they found pleasure in letting the empress see their own ascendency, their secure position, and in treating her with coldness and disrespect.  The emperor, instead of guarding Josephine against these humiliations, had the cruel courage to increase them; for, without reserve or modesty, and in the very presence of Josephine, he offered the most familiar and positive attentions to two ladies of his court—­ladies whom he honored with special favor. [Footnote:  Thiers, “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire,” vol. xi., p. 323.]

It was death-like agony which Josephine suffered in those days of Fontainebleau; it was a cruel martyrdom, which she, however, endured with all the gentleness of her nature, with the devotedness and uncomplaining anguish of true and genuine love.

Napoleon could not endure this.  The sight of this yet beloved pale face, with its sweet, angelic smile, lacerated his heart and tortured him with reproaches.  He wanted to have festivities and amusements, so as not to witness this quiet, devoted anguish, so as not to read every day in the sorrowful, red eyes of Josephine, the story of nights passed in tears.

The court returned to Paris, there to celebrate the new victorious peace with brilliant feasts.  Napoleon, so as to be delivered from the tearful companionship of Josephine, made the journey on horseback, and never once rode near her carriage.

In Paris had begun at once a series of festivities, at which German princes, the Kings of Saxony, of Bavaria, and of Wurtemberg, were present, to congratulate Napoleon on his victories in Germany.  The Empress Josephine, by virtue of her rank, had to appear at these receptions; she had, although in the deepest despondency, to wear a smile on her lip, to appear as empress at the side of the man who met her with coldness and estrangement, and whom she yet loved with the true love of a wife!  She had to see the courtiers, with the keen instinct of their race, desert her, leaving around her person an insulting void and vacancy.  Her heart was tortured with anguish and woe, and yet she could not uproot her love from it; she did not have the courage to speak the decisive word, and to desire the divorce which she knew hung over her, and which at any moment might agonize her heart!

Josephine did not possess the cowardice to commit suicide; she was ready to receive the fatal blow, but she could not plunge the dagger into her own heart.

Napoleon, unable to endure these tortures, longed to bring them to an end.  He secretly made all the necessary arrangements, and communicated to the first chancellor, Cambaceres, his irrevocable resolution to be divorced from the empress.  He, however, notified him that he wanted this act of separation to be accomplished in the most respectful and honorable form for Josephine, and he therefore, with Cambaceres, prepared and decided upon all the details of this public divorce.