There is little doubt that if she had been faithful to Napoleon from the beginning of their married life, her future with him would have been different. The fatal disillusion he suffered in 1797 made the divorce possible for him. So long as Josephine was true, no other woman could have existed for him. Such is the strange exclusiveness in love, of a nature, brutal, sweet, and strong like Napoleon’s. It should never be forgotten, however, that when the poor little creole realized, that to keep her position she must be faithful, she never after gave offense, and that as the years went on her devotion to her husband became a cult. Nothing indeed in the history of women is more pathetic than the patience, the sweetness, with which Josephine performed all the exacting and uncongenial duties of her position as Empress. Although Josephine possessed none of those qualities which make a heroic soul, knew nothing of true self-denial, was a coward in danger, never lost sight of personal interest, was an abject time-server, few women have been loved more sincerely by those surrounding them. There was good reason for this. No word of malice ever crossed her lips, she took no joy in seeing an enemy suffer, she never intrigued, she never flagged in kindly service. If she was incapable of heroic deeds at least her days were filled with small courtesies, kind words, generous acts. A candid survey of her life destroys the heroine, but it leaves a woman who through a stormy life kept a kindly heart towards friend and enemy and who at last attained rectitude of conduct. And this is the most that can be said for her. It touches the woman Josephine only. As for the Empress Josephine, she is only a name. She held her throne by the accident of her marriage and never took it seriously. She never comprehended the ideas it stood for in the mind of the great tyrant who established it. The prosperity of the French people—the glory of French arms, the spread of just laws, the establishment of a stable system, all those notions for which Napoleon was struggling, meant nothing to her save as they affected the tenure of her own position. The one distinguished opportunity she had of serving the Napoleonic idea—the divorce—she accepted only when she realized that she could not escape it. That her graciousness and her kindly spirit smoothed Napoleon’s way in the difficult task of manufacturing a court and a nobility is unquestionable. But this was the service of a tactful woman of the world rendered to a husband, not of an Empress to her people. The French people indeed meant no more to her than her throne. They merely filled the background of the stage where she played her part. She was an Empress only in name, never in soul. Autographs of Napoleon from 1785–1816[3]