“The ball which hit me did not wound me,” he replied, “it scarcely grazed Achilles’ heel. My health is very good. It is wrong for you to worry. Everything is going well.” Four days later, the Empress received a special courier from the Emperor, who announced to her the surrender of Vienna. Josephine was very happy. It argued well for a speedy end to the campaign. Her happiness was brief. The defeat at Essling, and the death of Marshall Lannes, filled her with foreboding. She, with many others of her day, looked on the career of the Emperor with superstitious awe. It was luck—a star. The charm broken, the star obscured, all would go. It is doubtful if Josephine, any more than hundreds of others who surrounded the Emperor, ever realized his stupendous genius or the gigantic efforts the man made to wrest victories from fate. It was the common story of one who spends himself in achievement, and in the end hears himself called a “lucky fellow”. After the defeat at Essling, Josephine discerned on every side the joy of Napoleon’s enemies, saw the alarm of his friends, heard in her own heart the knell of fate. To complete her misery, she feared she had offended the Emperor. Hortense, who had been at Strasburg for some time, was ordered by her physician to go to Baden for the waters. It was the Emperor’s order that no one of the royal family should change quarters without his consent. Hortense went to Baden without consulting him, taking with her the two young princes. The Emperor was irritated. “My daughter,” he wrote her less than a week after Essling, “I am dissatisfied to find that you have left France without my permission, and above all that you have taken my nephews away. Since you are at Baden, stay; but within an hour after you receive this letter, send my two nephews to Strasburg to the Empress. They must never leave France. It is the first time I have had any occasion to be dissatisfied with you, but you should never make any arrangements for my nephews without my consent. You must feel the bad effect that would have.” This letter was sent to Hortense through Josephine, who opened it, thinking to have news herself from Napoleon, about whom she was greatly concerned. It was a new cause of worry. Would he not blame her for Hortense’s act? At least the two children had already been sent back to her—that was one reason for congratulation; but she hastened to write to Hortense urging her to try and appease the Emperor. Her anxiety became so great that her health began to give way, and she, too, had to leave Strasburg, in June, for treatment at Plombières, in the Vosges.