At last, after one year of debates, of careful considerations and investigations, of receiving evidence, and of hearing witnesses, the Parliament pronounced its decision.

Josephine was declared absolutely innocent of the crimes brought against her, and was entirely acquitted of the accusation of unfaithfulness.  The Parliament pronounced the solemn decree:  The accusation directed against the Viscountess de Beauharnais was simply a malicious calumny.  The innocency of the accused wife was evident, and consequently the Viscount de Beauharnais was bound to receive again his wife into his house.  However, the viscountess was permitted and allowed not to share the same residence with her husband, and to separate herself from him.  In this case the viscount was condemned to pay to his wife an annual pension of ten thousand francs, and to leave with her mother his daughter Eugenie Hortense, while he, the father, should provide for the education of the son.

Exonerated from the disgraceful imputation of faithlessness, Josephine was again free to leave the convent and return to the life of the world.  It was her husband’s family which now prepared for the poor young woman the most beautiful and most touching triumph.  The father of her, accuser, the Marquis de Beauharnais, as well as his elder son and wife, the Duke and Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, and the Baroness Fanny de Beauharnais, came in their state carriages to the abbey to receive Josephine and lead her back to Paris.  They had been joined by a great number of the most respectable and most noble ladies of the Parisian aristocracy, all in their state carriages, and in the splendor of their armorial trappings and liveries, as if it were to accompany a queen returning home.

Josephine shed tears of blessed joy when quitting her small, sombre rooms in the abbey.  She entered into the reception-room to bid farewell to the prioress, and there met all these friends and relatives, who saluted her with looks of deepest tenderness and sympathy, and embraced her in their arms as one found again, as one long desired.  This hour of triumph indemnified her for the sorrows and sufferings of the unhappy year which the poor wife of scarcely twenty years of age, and fleeing from calumny and hatred, liar! sighed away in the desolate and lonesome convent.  She was free, she was justified; the disgrace was removed from her head; she was again authorized to be the mother of her children; she saw herself surrounded by loving parents, by true friends, and yet in her heart there was a sting.  Notwithstanding his cruelty, his harshness, though he had abandoned and despised her, her heart could not be forced into hating the husband for whom she had so much wept and suffered.  Her tears had impressed his image yet deeper in her heart.  He was the husband of her first love, the father of her children; how could Josephine have hated him, how could her heart, so soft and true, cherish animosity against him?