As the life of Napoleon will always be associated with the names of three small islands: Corsica, Elba, and Saint Helena; so that of Joséphine will ever be connected with Martinique. There is little of interest in the capital city, Fort-de-France, apart from the Savane, the large green public square, and there the visitor will be attracted mainly by the beautiful marble statue of the Empress. “Sea-winds have bitten it; tropical rains have streaked it; some microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite hollow of the throat. And yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are gazing at a living presence. Perhaps the profile is less artistically real—statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel; but when you look straight up into the sweet Creole face, you can believe she lives: all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there. She is standing just in front of the Savane, robed in the fashion of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Over the violet space of summer sea, through the vast splendor of azure light, she is looking back to the place of her birth, back to the beautiful drowsy Trois-Îlets—and always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive smile—unutterably touching.”

The statue so lovingly described by Hearn may be said to bear about the same relation to the real woman that the Joséphine of romance bears to the Joséphine of history. Since her death a hundred and ten years ago, the legend of Joséphine has passed through three phases. Under the Restoration, it was Joséphine the protector of the Émigrés that all good Royalists were called on to lament. The key-note was struck by the Archbishop of Tours in his funeral oration: “How many unfortunates, condemned, by their fidelity to the august family of the Bourbons, to live in exile from their fatherland, are beholden to her persistent and touching intercession for their restoration to their families, and to the country which saw their birth?”

Under the Second Empire, the writers who wished to curry favor with the new Emperor devoted special attention to Joséphine, and one would almost be led to believe that he occupied the throne by right of descent from his grandmother the Empress Joséphine, rather than as heir to his uncle the Emperor Napoleon. “Joséphine was painted as the sorrowful martyr to necessities of State. She was the fondly loving wife repudiated after fourteen years of faithful wedlock.”

Under the Third Republic, the admirers of the Great Emperor, less fettered in their views, have gone as far in the other direction: they deny to Joséphine any attachment to Napoleon except that of self-interest, and blame him only for not repudiating her sooner.

As usual, the truth of History lies between these two extremes.

It will always be a moot point how a woman possessed of so little intellect, and endowed with no surpassing physical beauty, managed to gain, and retain for fourteen years, the love of a man six years her junior, and that man Napoleon!

First, with regard to her beauty: We have innumerable portraits of Joséphine, for she loved to be painted, and sat to all the celebrated artists of her day: David, Gérard, Gros, Isabey, Prud’hon and many others. None of these portraits gives the idea of a beautiful woman.

The written descriptions of her appearance are even more unflattering. It is impossible to forget the picture of the faded Creole, past her prime, endeavoring to hide the ravages of time by an extravagant use of powder and rouge; the closed lips which concealed her bad teeth; all the artifices to supply the deficiencies of nature. But on the other hand we have the admissions even of unfriendly observers that her eyes were beautiful, her smile always charming, her figure slender, supple, well-proportioned, needing no corset to support it; always clothed in the most perfect taste. To complete the picture we have the graceful movements of her elegant, indolent body, for in the words of Napoleon, “she was graceful even in going to bed”; and the harmony of her soft, caressing voice, which could soothe and put the Emperor to sleep even when most harassed by the cares of State.

All the memoirs of her time are agreed in stating that Joséphine had but little intellect, but they are almost equally in accord in admitting that she supplied the deficiency by her marvellous savoir faire. Her education had been only rudimentary, and she never increased her knowledge by reading. There was an excellent library at Malmaison, and there was always a reader on her staff, chosen more for her beauty than for any other qualification, but no one ever heard of Joséphine opening a book except to read Napoleon to sleep.

Joséphine was a great collector, and the château of Malmaison was a regular museum of valuable paintings, choice statuary, and rare objets d’art. But there is nothing to show that she prized her collection except for the value it represented in money. It was only another exhibition of her mania for spending. It must be admitted, however, that Joséphine loved her flowers and her plants, and her hothouses and gardens were the finest in Europe.

That Joséphine was prodigal in her expenditures of money cannot be denied, but altogether too much has been made of her debts by Monsieur Masson and other recent biographers. The matter has already been quite fully covered in these pages, and it is not necessary to go into it further here. Napoleon’s wrath at the discovery of her debts, and the terror of Joséphine during these “scenes,” were both largely assumed. It has even been said that “Napoleon liked her to be in debt because it made her utterly dependent on him”! It must be remembered, however, that, as Napoleon once stated: “It is fortunate that the French are to be ruled through their vanity.” All of the display and the etiquette of the Imperial Court were irksome to Napoleon, with his simple tastes, but he endured them because it was part of his policy. For the same reason he expected Joséphine to spend lavishly the handsome allowance he gave her, although with his love of order he did not wish her to exceed her income. It was all a part of his general policy of fostering the industries of the country, which has made France what it is to-day, the leader in the manufacture of articles of luxury and display in every line.

The secret of Joséphine’s attraction for Napoleon appears to have been that rare quality which, for lack of a better term, we may call personal magnetism. She was one of those exceptional characters who seem to possess the natural gift of attracting others while themselves giving little or nothing in return. But to win all hearts as she did, Joséphine at bottom must have possessed a large fund of human sympathy. All agree in speaking of her affability; she was “gentle and kind, affable and indulgent to all, without respect to persons.”

The Joséphine of legend is emphatically “la bonne Joséphine.” She could never refuse a request: she was always giving lavishly, indiscriminately. It was also impossible for her to treasure up grievances against any one—even the Bonapartes who did so much to injure her. With Napoleon’s mistresses, she displayed the same lack of resentment. She received Madame Walewska at Malmaison, and lavished affection upon her child. She made Madame Gazzani one of her chosen attendants after her divorce.

Joséphine has frequently been accused of loving no one but herself, but her letters to her children show that she was a very affectionate and demonstrative mother, and she was certainly a doting grandmother. It seems hardly possible that she was insincere, or that, as one writer puts it, “Joséphine’s affections were a vigorous expression of her self-love.”

No one can question the fact of Napoleon’s love for Joséphine, which lasted as long as he lived; and certainly after his return from Egypt she was to him a model wife. She anticipated his every wish; she never kept him waiting; she was always ready to accompany him on his journeys; she went cheerfully through the most arduous social duties; and exerted herself to conciliate all whom he wished to win to his interests. From Napoleon she extorted the admiring exclamation: “I win battles; Joséphine wins hearts!”

In fact Joséphine was an enjôleuse: to win, to seduce, by cajoleries, by caresses, by soft words—in short, to please, was the principal aim of her existence. Even where she had no end to gain, where no self-interest was involved, she strove to please simply because it gave her pleasure. It was to please that she embellished her home; that she spent a fortune on jewels and toilettes; that she wore herself out with visits, receptions, and journeys; that she triumphed over her headaches, neglected her colds, and went to her death. This explains all: this is the true key to her character.

This also is the explanation of her falsehoods, for by the testimony of all her contemporaries, friends and foes alike, Joséphine was one of the greatest liars who ever lived. If she has succeeded in imposing on history, it is largely due to the fact that she imposed on Napoleon, which in itself is no small feat! He was convinced that she loved only him; he represents her as the model wife—attentive, affectionate, and devoted; he thinks she is extravagant, but how elegant and how graceful she is! how beautifully she dresses! how she excels in everything she does! For him she is the perfect woman!

By a supreme falsehood, and this one posthumous, she leaves with her attendants the impression, and with Napoleon the conviction, that she dies of love for him, overwhelmed by the disasters of France and the Empire, in despair because she could not share his fate at Elba, and mollify by her loving tenderness the rigors of his exile.

On the day after his return from Elba, in March 1815, he said to Corvisart at the Tuileries: “You let my poor Joséphine die!”

Then he sent for Horau, her regular physician, and demanded the fullest details of her death:

“What was the cause of her illness?”

“Anxiety ... chagrin....”

“You say that she was anxious, what was the cause of her chagrin?”

“What had taken place, Sire; the position of Your Majesty.”

“Ah! then, she spoke of me?”

“Often, very often.”

“Good woman, good Joséphine! She loved me truly, did she not?”

This conviction remained with Napoleon until the end of his life, and in speaking of Joséphine at Saint Helena, he exclaimed: “She was the best woman in France!”

Aside from her two châteaux of Malmaison and Prégny, and her fine collection of jewels, Joséphine left little of value at the time of her death. In the settlement of her estate, Eugène took Malmaison, and assumed the payment of her debts, while Hortense received Prégny and her jewels, the share of each of her children amounting to about two million francs when the estate was finally settled.

Of all the places closely associated with the life of Joséphine, only Malmaison remains to-day. During the lifetime of Eugène, a large part of the estate was cut up and sold in parcels. In June 1829, five years after his death, in the final settlement of his estate it was found necessary to sell the château. After passing through several hands, it was bought in 1861 by Napoleon the Third and made a museum of Napoleonic souvenirs. During the Franco-Prussian war it was pillaged by the Germans and damaged by fire. Finally it was purchased, early in the present century, by a Jewish millionaire, who had the generous thought of restoring it as nearly as possible to its former condition and presenting it to the State as a museum of relics of Napoleon and Joséphine.

Prégny, which was taken by Hortense, as her portion of the real estate, was sold by her in 1817 for about one hundred thousand francs. Nearly all of the furniture was removed by Hortense, but the buildings remain in the same condition as in the time of Joséphine.

Under the terms of the grant to the Empress, at her death Navarre passed to Eugène, and from him to his eldest son, Auguste. In 1834 this prince married the Queen of Portugal, but died at Lisbon less than four months later. He was succeeded as Duc de Navarre by his brother Maximilian, who married the Grande-Duchesse Marie of Russia, daughter of Czar Nicholas. On his death in 1852 the title was claimed by his son Prince Nicholas, but the French Government refused its assent, on the ground that, as a member of the imperial family of Russia, he could not swear fidelity to the Emperor of the French. It was thus that the grandson of Prince Eugène was deprived by his cousin Napoleon the Third of the duchy erected by Napoleon the First, and by virtue of a clause in the original grant which four successive Governments of France had neglected to invoke! But long before this date the estate of Navarre had been sold by the heirs of Eugène, with the permission of the Government, and the proceeds, over a million francs, invested in French bonds.

On the Sunday following the battle of Waterloo, the 25 June 1815, Napoleon left Paris for the last time, and went to Malmaison. Here, before departing for his final exile, he spent four days in wandering through the château and the park, as if in search of the beloved shade which in disappearing from his life seemed to have taken with it his happiness and his fortune.

Such, charming and exquisite, she lives in his memory, to soften his agony and soothe his exile, and such, after the lapse of a hundred years, she still appears in the eyes of posterity.

“In vain,” says Monsieur Masson, “in vain have we been compelled to tell the truth about her, to throw upon her life the light of History: the legend still prevails. Her memory will never suffer from what has been written—even from what has been proven.

“In the dispersal and quick disappearance of the things she loved, there remains only the name of a flower: the Souvenir de Malmaison, and thus her image, and the emblem of her life, will be one of these lovely roses, tender and fragile, bright and nacreous, which she loved and named.... When for a brief moment the rose has given us a vision of its grace, a petal loosens and falls, then another, and another, until finally it is like a fall of fragrant snow, projecting into the warm atmosphere hardly the repressed vibration of a sigh; but the fragrance of the withering petals long floats on the air, and perfumes the room.”

With this beautiful thought we take our leave of Napoleon’s charming “little Creole.”