er. Josephine, though
forewarned, was still unable to realize the fact. She behaved well;
her own long career of intrigue, license, and extravagance forbade
recriminations, and besides, she was to enjoy the title and state of
an empress for life. Still, as women under the Directory loved, she
loved her husband, and there had been much tenderness between them,
neither taking very seriously the infidelities of the other. To the
end, even after the moderate beauty and great physical charm of her
middle age were transformed into the faded colors and form of old age
(for she was old at forty-five), and when the arts of the toilet could
no longer conceal the ravages of time and license, there still
continued to exist between the Empress and her second husband a mutual
good will and a feeling of comradeship engendered by the memories of
adventure, risk, plots, and gains encountered side by side through
a married life of thirteen years. She had little intellect and not
much character, but she had much feminine sweetness and many soft,
winning ways. Her only weapon, therefore, in the hour of defeat was
tears, and those she shed abundantly. When the paroxysms of grief were
over, the Emperor made a display of tenderness, and the Empress
manifested a gentle and affecting courage.

On December fifteenth, 1809, before the grand council held in the
Tuileries, the divorce was pronounced, and the next day it was
confirmed by decree of the senate. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison to
drag out her remaining years in empty state, for the support of which
she had a grant of two million francs a year. To the hour of her
death, five years later, she asserted her love for Napoleon, and in
general she displayed great anxiety for his welfare and success.
Posterity has always felt a certain tenderness for the unfortunate
woman who was raised so high and then cast down so suddenly. She was
not virtuous, she was not strong, she was not even very beautiful. Her
wrong-doing was like the naughtiness of household pets, impulsive but
not malicious, deceitful but without rancor, determined but quickly
deprecated. For this reason her misfortune has veiled her weakness and
softened the harshness of men's judgment.

Almost a month before the formal divorce Caulaincourt had received
instructions to address the Czar on the question of marriage between
his sister Anne, now sixteen years of age, and the Emperor of the
French. The ambassador was to make no forma