he took Josephine aside and suggested she should agree to a divorce in the
interests of France and the dynasty. Josephine faced Fouche down by
getting him to admit that the suggestion did not come directly from the
Emperor himself, then reported the interview to her husband. Napoleon
brushed it aside as an excess of zeal on Fouche's part, then asked his wife
'purely for the sake of argument' what would be her reaction to such a
proposal. Josephine knew the card to play and said she was afraid that if
she left him, all his good luck would go too. The superstitious Bonaparte
was affected by the argument and let the matter drop.
A more intelligent woman than Josephine might have realized that
Fouche would not have dared be so 'impertinent' had he not had the tacit
support of his master. Although the immediate tearful sequel to the
blundering intervention of the chief of police was a pledge of eternal
devotion by the Emperor, the shrewdest observers concluded that it was
only a matter of time before the Empress was jettisoned. Count Clemens
Metternich, the new Austrian ambassador, reported to Vienna that
Napoleon behaved in a cold and distant manner towards Josephine, but
the truth was more complex. The Emperor infuriated his closest advisers
by his constant dithering over a divorce, but in reality he was torn: he saw
the urgent political case for a dynastic marriage and the begetting of heirs
but was sentimentally attached to Josephine and genuinely believed she
did bring him luck. When he was away from her, he could contemplate
divorce with equanimity, but when in her company became strangely
indecisive. Though no longer sexually besotted, he was excessively fond
of her, and his later assessment of her to Bertrand is shot through with
ambivalence: 'I truly loved her, although I didn't respect her. She was a
liar, and an utter spendthrift, but she had a certain something which was
irresistible. She was a woman to her very fingertips.'
It seems clear that marital relations between the two had all but ceased,
apart from a fe w instances of sentimental dalliance. Instead Napoleon
regaled her with details of his mistresses and described what they were
like in bed, even asking her advice at times on whether he should
continue a certain liaison. Josephine learned to ignore affairs like the brief
one at Fontainebleau between the Emperor and the comtesse de Barral in
September r8o7. She could afford to connive at his infidelity, fo r she
knew that far the greater danger came fr om the search fo r a suitable
dynastic bride for her husband - a quest in which she knew Talleyrand,
her old ally Fouche and the Murats were actively engaged.
By so acting Talleyrand unwittingly shored up Josephine's position,
for she dreaded Caroline Murat's machinations more than any others.
The crazed ambition of the Murat couple knew no bounds, and the
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