Читать книгу The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte - Charles Downer Hazen, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - Страница 217

After Marmont's betrayal Napoleon attempts suicide, and when he believes death imminent sends a last message to Josephine by Caulaincourt, "You will tell Josephine that my thoughts were of her before life departed."

It was on Monday, May 23rd, that Josephine's illness commenced, after receiving at dinner the King of Prussia and his sons (one afterwards Wilhelm der Greise, first Emperor of Germany). Whether the sore throat which killed her was a quinsy or diphtheria93 is difficult to prove, but the latter seems the more probable. Corvisart, who was himself ill and unable to attend, told Napoleon that she died of grief and worry. Before leaving for the Waterloo campaign Napoleon visited Malmaison, and there, as Lord Rosebery reminds us, allowed his only oblique reproach to Marie Louise to escape him: "Poor Josephine. Her death, of which the news took me by surprise at Elba, was one of the most acute griefs of that fatal year, 1814. She had her failings, of course; but she, at any rate, would never have abandoned me."