By then, the knowledge of Napoleon's infidelities had been causing Josephine to have bouts of weeping and, half-mad with jealousy, she invaded the room where her husband and la Duchatel were disporting themselves. Furiously declaring that he was not as other men, and above petty marital conventions, he had driven Josephine from the room.
Yet he continued to regard her with great affection. He still frequently slept with her and, when he was worried, it was she who read him to sleep. During the Prussian campaign he had missed her dreadfully and frequently wrote to her in the warmest terms, urging her, for his sake, to face the rigours of the northern winter and join him.
But soon after his arrival in Warsaw the- tune of his letters to Josephine had altered; the gist of them being that the climate would prove too severe for her, so she must remain in Paris.
The reason for this sudden change of heart was known to all who were in frequent attendance on him. On January ist, when on his way to Warsaw, his coach had been surrounded by an excited crowd, cheering this legendary paladin who, rumour said, was about to restore Poland to her ancient glory. At an inn at which the coach had pulled up, two ladies had begged Duroc, Napoleon's A.D.C.-in-Chief and Marshal of his Camps and Palaces, to permit them to pay homage to the hero. Duroc had courteously agreed, and one of the ladies was the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, eighteen-year-old Countess Walewska.
Napoleon, much taken with her, instantly recognised her again when she appeared at a grand ball given in his honour a few nights after he had established himself in the ancient Palace of the Polish Kings. But, from shyness, the young girl had asked to be excused when he invited her to dance. No doubt this had made him more eager to pursue her, which for some days he did, with growing annoyance at her ignoring his letters and refusing him a rendezvous.
The fact was that Marie Walewska was, although married to a seventy-year-old nobleman, chaste, of a retiring disposition and deeply religious. The thought of taking a lover was abhorrent to her and, although normally Napoleon never took 'No' for an answer, in this case help had to be called in.
Prince Poniatowski, the head of the movement for Polish liberation, pointed out to her how valuable she could be to her country's cause by becoming the all-powerful Emperor's mistress. Moved to tears as she was by this appeal to her known patriotism, she still refused to succumb.
The affair became the talk of the town; men and women, friends and relations all joined in to badger poor little Marie into giving way for the good of the cause. Driven half out of her wits, she at last agreed to allow Duroc to escort her to Napoleon's apartments. Duroc, who was one of Roger's closest friends, told him afterwards that, although the couple had been closeted together for three hours, Marie had been in tears the whole time and left the room as chaste as she had entered it.
Utterly exasperated, Napoleon played his last card and sent his brilliant Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, to talk to her. That elegant aristocrat, a bishop under the ancient regime. a Liberal leader during the first Revolution, an exile during the Terror, after Napoleon one of the two most powerful men in France for the past eight years, and not long since created by his master Prince de Benevento, was not only as subtle as a serpent in negotiating treaties, but also a past-master in the art of seducing women. Where all others had failed, he had persuaded Marie that the gods had blessed her above all other women by enabling her to serve her country and, at the same time, endowing her with the love of the most powerful man on earth.
Napoleon was invariably kind and courteous to women, and extravagantly generous to his mistresses. His gentleness and charm soon won Marie's heart. Their happy association lasted for many years. She was one of the few women that he ever truly loved and, in due course, she gave him a son.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord, a grandson of the Princess dc Chalais, debarred from succeeding his father as Marquis because an ill-cared-for broken ankle, causing him to be lame for life, had disqualified him for the Army, had played a key role in Roger's life.
At the age of nineteen, Roger had been knocked out and carried unconscious into Talleyrand's house. During his subsequent ravings, Talleyrand had learned that his guest was not, as he purported to be, a Frenchman born in Strasbourg who, on his mother's death, had been brought up by her sister in England; but was in fact the son of Lady Marie Brook and a British Admiral. He had kept Roger's secret and, for many years, believed that, as was quite common in those days, Roger was a foreigner who had decided to make his career in another country and was completely loyal to it.
At last Talleyrand had found out that Roger was still loyal to the country of his birth and that, ever since 1789, owing to the high connections he had made in France, he had acted as a master spy for Britain's Prime Minister. But on two counts Talleyrand had refrained from having him arrested. Firstly, it was Roger who during the Terror had procured for him the papers that had enabled him to escape from France. Secondly, from the very beginning of his diplomatic career, Talleyrand's secret aim had been to bring Britain and France together; his conviction being that there could be no lasting peace in Europe until her two most powerful nations permanently buried the hatchet.
Talleyrand was unique among his contemporaries: an aristocrat by birth and breeding, he still dressed in silks and went to receptions with his hair powdered, yet he had succeeded in dominating the horde of strong-willed, self-made men who had emerged from the Revolution. Cynical, venal, immoral, he pursued his unruffled way through court and camp, although he detested having to follow Napoleon on his campaigns—on the way to Warsaw his coach had become stuck for a whole night in the snow. When in Paris he lived in the utmost luxury and, to meet his colossal expenditure, he exacted huge bribes from the foreign ambassadors; but only to listen to their desires, not necessarily to further them, and that had been customary with Ministers of Foreign Affairs in every country in Europe for centuries. That he was immoral he would never have denied; the lovely women with whom, at one time or another, he had been to bed were legion. But he was a man of great vision, whose steadfast ambition was to bring lasting peace and prosperity to France.
Most men holding such views and serving a master to whom war was the breath of life, would long since have thrown in their hands. But not Talleyrand. Again and again, calm, imperturbable, even showing apparent willingness, he had bowed before the storm and negotiated treaties made against his advice; yet always with the hope that if he remained at his post a time would come when he could stabilise the position of France within her own natural frontiers and bring the other nations of Europe to look on her as a friend.
As early as October 1805 Talleyrand had sent from Strasbourg a well-reasoned paper to the Emperor. His argument was that the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire could do only harm to Europe. By remaining strong it could act both as a counterpoise to Prussia, and keep the barbarous hordes of Russia in check. After Napoleon had entered Vienna in triumph, Talleyrand had adhered to his policy, begging the Emperor to let the defeated Austrians off lightly and enter into an alliance with them; thus evading the danger that Hungary might break away and go over to the Czar.
Talleyrand's despatch had reached the Emperor just after Austerlitz, in which battle he had administered the coup de grace to Austria and also routed a Russian army. Elated by his double victory he had brushed aside the wise counsel of his Foreign Minister and imposed a brutally harsh fine on the Emperor Francis, taking from him his Venetian and Dalmatian territories, and other big areas of land, to reward the German Princes who had sent contingents of troops to fight beside the French.