“But,” said I to the Prince Primate, “what judgment was pronounced by the Officiality of Paris?”—"The only proper one," replied the Prince.—"What then became of the declaration of Cardinal Fesch? was it false?"—"Not in his opinion," said the Prince. “He had acted upon the Italian doctrine, by which Cardinals assume the right of marrying without witnesses, which however is not recognised in France, where a marriage is thereby rendered null.”
It appears, however, that Josephine required this declaration only for her own satisfaction, and that she never made any other use of it.
Josephine would willingly have seen Maria Louisa. She frequently spoke of her with great interest, as well as of the young King of Rome. Maria Louisa, on her part, behaved wonderfully well to Eugène and Hortense; but she manifested the utmost dislike and even jealousy of Josephine. “I wished one day to take her to Malmaison,” said the Emperor; “but she burst into tears when I made the proposal. She said she did not object to my visiting Josephine, only she did not wish to know it. But whenever she suspected my intention of going to Malmaison, there was no stratagem which she did not employ for the sake of annoying me. She never left me; and, as these visits seemed to vex her exceedingly, I did violence to my own feelings and scarcely ever went to Malmaison. Still, however, when I did happen to go, I was sure to encounter a flood of tears and a multitude of contrivances of every kind. Josephine always kept in view the example of the wife of Henry IV., who, as she observed, lived in Paris, visited the Court, and attended the coronation after her divorce. But she remarked that her own situation was still preferable, for she already had children of her own, and could not hope to have more.”
Josephine possessed a perfect knowledge of all the different shades of the Emperor’s character, and she evinced the most exquisite tact in turning this knowledge to the best account. “For example,” said the Emperor, “she never solicited any favour for Eugène, or thanked me for any that I conferred on him. She never even shewed any additional complaisance or assiduity, at the moment when the greatest honours were lavished on him. Her grand aim was to prove that all this was my affair, and not hers, and that it tended to my advantage. Doubtless she entertained the idea that one day or other I should adopt Eugène as my successor.”