The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the sweetness of Josephine’s character, but then he was not her husband, and it soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off after the birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker’s apprentice, Queen of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III.  Alexandre had gone to Martinique, and it was there the news of his daughter’s birth came to him.  He knew before leaving France that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his pleasure to her.  The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend, Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, that his “son was worthy of being his son-in-law, and that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble qualities.”  These virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable rapidity after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure on the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful to the poor “uneducated” little Creole girl who really thought she loved him.  From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre Beauharnais was an ill-conditioned cruel prig.  This excellent son with “fine and noble qualities” had not been long at Martinique before he associated himself with a lady of questionable virtue, who was much older than he.  This person’s dislike to Josephine caused her to pour into his willing ears and receptive mind scandalous stories of his childwife’s love intrigues before she left her native island.  This gave Alexandre a fine opportunity of writing a letter to her, disclaiming the paternity of Hortense, and accusing her of intrigues with “an officer in the Martinique regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship called the Caesar.”  He declares he knows the contents of her letters to her lovers, and “swears by the Heaven which enlightens him that the child is another’s, and that strange blood flows in its veins,” and “it shall never know his shame”; and so the virtuous Alexandre goes rambling on, until he comes to the slashing finish in the good old style that persons similarly situated adopt to those whom they have grievously injured.  He soars between elegant politeness and old-time aristocratic ferocity:  “Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you will receive from your desperate and unhappy husband.”  Then comes the inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit of murder.  He is to be in France soon if his health does not break down under the load she has cast upon him.  He warns her to be out of the house on his arrival, because, if she is not, “she will find in him a tyrant.”  The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp, a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover to his own unfaithfulness.

But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his coming back to Paris he kept his word.  Conjugal relations were not renewed.  His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of “the two, she is not the one to be most pitied.”