Elba she followed him there and never ceased to urge him to return to the
mainland to regain his throne.
Pauline had written to Madame Mere in the spring: 'We must not
leave the Emperor alone. It is now that he is unhappy that we must show
our attachment to him.' So Letizia came too and sat with Pauline playing
cards with her son, while the Emperor cheated shamelessly. Yet another
faithful woman was Marie Walewska, who brought her son to Elba for a
secret visit of a few days. Napoleon's attitude to Marie was always
curious; he was fo rever blowing hot and cold as if he genuinely could not
decide what his feelings fo r her really were. Caulaincourt related that in
1812 , on the sledge to Warsaw, the Emperor toyed with the idea of
diverting to spend a night with Marie at Walewice castle and was
dissuaded only when Caulaincourt pointed out he would almost certainly
be captured by Cossacks. Unfortunately for Marie, the Elba visit
coincided with the down cycle of his feelings for her. Although he met
and spoke to her, he did not take her to his bed. He kept her waiting all
night and did not send for her, then, when she had gone, expressed bitter
regret.
One alleged motive in his turning away Marie Walewska was the desire
not to give Marie-Louise any excuse not to come to him in Elba. It may
have been so, but the evidence shows Napoleon on Elba turning away in
his thoughts from his second wife and back to Josephine. Even before he
left Fontainebleau there are signs that he blamed Marie-Louise (unfairly)
for the debacle that had left him without wife and child, for he wrote to
Josephine: 'They have betrayed me. Yes, all of them except our dear
Eugene, so worthy of you and me ... Adieu, my dear Josephine. Resign
yourself as I am doing and never forget one who has never forgotten and
will never forget you. P.S. I expect to hear from you when I reach Elba. I
am far from being in good health.'
Josephine's financial position was assured by Talleyrand and the new
government, and she was even visited at Malmaison by Czar Alexander,
who showed her every courtesy. Yet she refused to be an apostate where
her ex-husband was involved. The verbatim comments jotted down by
her attendants in 1814 all point in the same direction. Typical is the
following: 'Sometimes I feel so melancholy that I could die of despair; I
cannot be reconciled to Bonaparte's fate.' In the last week of May she
caught a chill while out driving with the Czar, caught pneumonia and
died on 29 May. Allegedly her last words were: 'Bonaparte ... Elba ...
the King of Rome.' Napoleon first learned of her death from a newspaper
and was so shocked that he stayed in his room for two days. His final
judgement on her was written as if she were still alive: 'I have not passed
marcin
(Marcin)
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