If Josephine had any idea that her divorce was going to separate her from Paris and the society of her friends, she immediately found out her mistake. The day after her arrival at Malmaison, in spite of a heavy shower, the road from Paris was one long line of carriages of persons hastening to the chateau to pay her their respects. Those persons who did stay away because uncertain whether the Emperor was sincere in his declaration that Josephine was to keep her rank as Empress had to submit to severe reproofs. “Have you been to see the Empress Josephine?” he began to ask, after a day or two, and if the courtier said no, the Emperor frowned and said, “You must go, sir!” And as a result everybody did go, and continued to go. Indeed, later in the winter, when Josephine came to the Elysée for a short time, her house was a veritable court. But Josephine had received a blow which wealth, rank, and friends could not cure. The man who once had wearied her by his passion and who had had to beg and threaten to persuade her to pass a week with him in Italy, had in turn become the object of as passionate affection as she was capable of feeling. She had for years now regarded his slightest wish. In devoting herself to Napoleon in order to save her position she had learned to love him. Her pain now was the greater because she could not believe that Napoleon meant it when he said that he still should love and protect her and that he should honor her for her sacrifice as never before. She seemed to feel that, after she had said good-by to him at the Tuileries, she would never see him again. She gave way utterly to her grief, weeping night and day. Napoleon kept his word, however. Two days after her arrival at Malmaison he came to see her and frequently in the days that followed, up to the time of his marriage with Marie Louise, at the end of March, he made her little visits. They were always formal, in the presence of attendants, but they did much to persuade the Empress that Napoleon intended to keep his promises to her. After every visit however, came paroxysms of weeping. Napoleon kept himself informed of Josephine’s state, and wrote her frequent notes, chiding her for this weakness, assuring her of his love, and begging her to have courage. “I found you weaker than you should have been,” he wrote one day. “You have shown some courage; you must find a way of keeping it up. You must not give up to melancholy, you must try to be contented, and above all, take care of your health, which is so precious to me. If you love me, you ought to try to be strong and happy. You must not doubt my constant and tender friendship. You misunderstand entirely my feelings if you suppose that I can be happy when you are not happy, and above all, when you are not contented.”