CHAPTER TWENTY -ONEAs he sped back from Schonbrunn to Fontainebleau in the last week of
October 1809, Napoleon realized that the moment he had long dreaded
was at hand: he would have to divorce Josephine. Marie Walewska's
pregnancy changed everything, but her reward fo r proving that the
Emperor could indeed sire children was to be cast into obscurity. She
returned to Poland to her complaisant husband Count Walewski, and
when her son Alexandre was born in 1810 he took the count's name.
Napoleon was never so duplicitous as when reacting to the pregnancy.
'The infant of Wagram will one day be King of Poland,' he announced
bombastically, even as he wrote to Czar Alexander to allow him a free
hand in Marie's country - in return fo r the marriage he confidently
expected with Alexander's sister, the Grand Duchess Anne.
It was a characteristic of Napoleon's never to accept full responsibility
fo r drastic action, whether it was d'Enghien's murder or the Pope's
incarceration. He therefore allowed the record of his official correspond
ence to evince continuing devotion to Josephine while his actions argued
otherwise. He wrongfooted her by summoning her to Fontainebleau
when he knew he would be there before her, so that he could react with
cold surprise when she arrived there on the evening of 26 October. Next
Josephine discovered that the door between her apartment and the
Emperor's had been sealed up. For three weeks she never managed to get
a minute alone with him, for he insisted on inviting members of his
family to all his meals. Every evening the vindictive Pauline held parties
fo r her brother and threw Italian beauties at him, while pointedly not
inviting Josephine. Projecting the guilt he felt about the intended divorce
on to her, and therefore holding her in some sense to blame fo r the
awkward position he was in, he declined to tell her what was on his mind
but reacted to her presence with cold rage. He spent all his spare time
hunting - an activity Josephine was known to detest - and visited his
murderous fantasies on the dumb beasts; on one occasion he and his
fellow Nimrods slaughtered eighty wild boar in a Roman-style arena.
Seemingly unable to bear the emotion that would surely follow once he