Soon there was no question of sending for the Empress, who would only have been in the way. Napoleon wrote to her, January 3: "I have received your letter. Your regret touches me, but we must submit to events. It is too long a journey from Mayence to Warsaw; we must wait till events permit my going to Berlin before I can write for you to come. Meanwhile, the enemy is withdrawing, defeated, but I have a good many things to settle here. I should advise your returning to Paris, where you are needed. Send back those ladies who have anything to do there; you will be better for getting rid of people who tire you. I am well; the weather is bad. I love you much." The Emperor, utterly taken up by his love for the Polish lady, was anxious that Josephine, instead of coming to him, should at once return promptly to France. "My dear," he wrote to her, January 7, "I am touched by all you say, but the cold season, the bad, unsafe roads prevent my giving my consent to your facing so many fatigues. Return to Paris for the winter. Go to the Tuileries, hold your receptions, and live as you do when I am there: that is my wish. Perhaps I shall join you there without delay; but you must give up the plan of travelling three hundred leagues at this season, through hostile countries, in the rear of the army. Be sure that it is more painful to me than to you to postpone for a few weeks the pleasure of seeing you; but this is commanded by events and the state of affairs. Good by, my dear, be happy and brave." The next day he wrote again on the same subject: "I have yours of the 27th, with those of Hortense and M. Napoleon enclosed. I have asked you to go back to Paris; the season is too bad, the roads too insecure and detestable, the distance too great for me to allow you to come so far to me when my affairs detain me. It would take you at least a month to get here. You. would be sick when you got here, and then, perhaps, you would have to start back; it would be madness. Your sojourn at Mayence is too dull. Paris calls for you; go there; that is my desire. I am more disappointed than you; but we must bow to circumstances." In a letter of January 11, he says; "I see very few people here." But he saw the Polish lady, and that was enough.