She had seemed a creature full of fire and of spirit as, with a flush which broke through the paint upon her cheeks, and with eyes which gleamed with the just anger of an outraged wife, she forced her way into her husband’s presence.  But she was a woman of change and impulse, full of little squirts of courage and corresponding reactions into cowardice.  She had hardly vanished from our sight when there was a harsh roar, like an angry beast, and next instant Josephine came flying into the room again, with the Emperor, inarticulate with passion, raving at her heels.  So frightened was she, that she began to run towards the fireplace, upon which Madame de Remusat, who had no wish to form a rearguard upon such an occasion, began running also, and the two of them, like a pair of startled hens, came rustling and fluttering back to the seats which they had left.  There they cowered whilst the Emperor, with a convulsed face and a torrent of camp-fire oaths, stamped and raged about the room.

‘You, Constant, you!’ he shouted; ’is this the way in which you serve me?  Have you no sense then—­no discretion?  Am I never to have any privacy?  Must I eternally submit to be spied upon by women?  Is everyone else to have liberty, and I only to have none?  As to you, Josephine, this finishes it all.  I had hesitations before, but now I have none.  This brings everything to an end between us.’

We would all, I am sure, have given a good deal to slip from the room—­at least, my own embarrassment far exceeded my interest—­but the Emperor from his lofty standpoint cared as little about our presence as if we had been so many articles of furniture.  In fact, it was one of this strange man’s peculiarities that it was just those delicate and personal scenes with which privacy is usually associated that he preferred to have in public, for he knew that his reproaches had an additional sting when they fell upon other ears besides those of his victim.  From his wife to his groom there was not one of those who were about him who did not live in dread of being held up to ridicule and infamy before a smiling crowd, whose amusement was only tempered by the reflection that each of them might be the next to endure the same exposure.

As to Josephine, she had taken refuge in a woman’s last resource, and was crying bitterly, with her graceful neck stooping towards her knees and her two hands over her face.  Madame de Remusat was weeping also, and in every pause of his hoarse scolding—­for his voice was very hoarse and raucous when he was angry—­there came the soft hissing and clicking of their sobs.  Sometimes his fierce taunts would bring some reply from the Empress, some gentle reproof to him for his gallantries, but each remonstrance only excited him to a fresh rush of vituperation.  In one of his outbursts he threw his snuff-box with a crash upon the floor as a spoiled child would hurl down its toys.

‘Morality!’ he cried, ’morality was not made for me, and I was not made for morality.  I am a man apart, and I accept nobody’s conditions.  I tell you always, Josephine, that these are the foolish phrases of mediocre people who wish to fetter the great.  They do not apply to me.  I will never consent to frame my conduct by the puerile arrangements of society.’