Once more the Empress breathed freely; Napoleon was safe, and he was victorious. Now his letters were longer, gayer, tenderer than they had been for many months. He rejoiced in the reports she sent him from Plombières of her gaining strength. “I am glad the waters are doing you so much good,” he wrote; and again, “I hear that you are stout, rosy, and looking very well.” He made no objection to the plans she suggested for herself. Stay at Plombières if she wished, why not; and when she is ready in August, go to Paris. If her letters are long in coming, he chides her. “I have received no letters from you for several days. The pleasures at Malmaison, the beautiful hot-houses and gardens, make you forget me. That’s the way it goes, they say.” As the time approached for his return—the negotiations at Schönbrunn which followed the war lasted into October—he began to show something like eagerness. Every day he sent a brief note of his coming return. “I’ll let you know twenty-four hours before my arrival.” “I shall make a fête of our reunion. I am waiting for the moment impatiently.” True, there was nothing of the lover in these daily bulletins (it was hardly to be expected when we remember that, during most of the campaign of 1809, Mme. de Walewski was living in a palace in Vienna, where Napoleon saw her constantly); but there was confidence, affection, interest; no sign at all of an approaching separation; and yet Napoleon undoubtedly left Schönbrunn in October persuaded that the divorce was a necessity and resolved to tell Josephine of his decision as soon as he arrived in France. CHAPTER VIII NAPOLEON RETURNS TO FRANCE—JOSEPHINE’S UNHAPPINESS—NAPOLEON’S VIEW OF A DIVORCE—THE WAY IN WHICH THE DIVORCE WAS EFFECTED Unhappily for the Empress, her reunion with Napoleon was marred by a delay which irritated the Emperor no little. Josephine was at St. Cloud when she received a note, about October 24th or 25th, from Napoleon, saying he would be at Fontainebleau on the 26th or 27th, and that she had better go there with her suite. A later courier set the evening of the 27th as the time of his arrival. What was Josephine’s terror on having a messenger ride rapidly in from Fontainebleau on the afternoon of the 26th, saying the Emperor had arrived that morning and there had been no one but the concierge to meet him! It could not be denied that such a reception was a poor one for a conquering Emperor who now for the first time in six months set foot in his kingdom. Josephine feared, with reason, that Napoleon would be irritated, and now of all times when she needed so much to please him!