as burning as my heart and as pure as you.”  Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be disillusioned.  She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was in Paris.  He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must “know how dear they are to him.”  “I do not live,” he tells her, “when I am far from you.”  “My life’s happiness is in the society of my sweet Josephine.”  Again he writes, “A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul, as chaste as yourself!  I have just summoned the courier; he tells me that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had no commands.  Fie!  Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly little monster.  You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah! you well know that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put you in prison there!” This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life were a cruel humiliation to him.

She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency.  She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic.  She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue.  She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow.  It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted wife during the early years of her second marriage.

On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her many army officers, amongst whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon.  Josephine, at this period of her history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that it is not altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the distinction of making Hippolyte Charles her lover.  He was fascinating, witty, dressed with splendour, and was quite up to her standard of moral quality.  The friendship grew into intimacy, so that he became a frequent visitor to Josephine during Napoleon’s absence.

It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was assuming dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of Napoleon.  The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief’s wife was precipitately acquiring.  Wherever she is or goes, so long as Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts.  Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to attend the fetes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of Josephine brought about the climax.  Unquestionably her movements were being watched by members of the Bonaparte family.  They not unnaturally felt that the scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to ridicule.