Josephine had played her part in the drama with surprising shrewdness and marked devotion to her husband’s cause.  He was rewarded by being made First Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic and the leader of society.  They quickly availed themselves of the distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to the Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she occupied the bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the apartments formerly inhabited by Louis, which were immediately above.  They gathered round them men of merit representing science, art, literature, law, politics, military notables, and fashion.  They set up, in fact, a little Court, but lived a quiet, unostentatious life, so far as it was diplomatic and permissive.

It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and grandeur began, excelling and putting into the shade every other Court in Europe.  Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted and encouraged it more from policy than taste.  In fact, when in a whimsical mood, he often said it bored him.  That is not to say that he did not adapt himself to what he believed was a necessity.  An Oriental potentate could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than he.  Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without himself.  To his intimate friends he was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with a vividness and pathos that brought tears to the eyes of every one who heard it.

The wilful and false conception of Napoleon’s character that existed amongst thousands of those who were contemporary with him, and the persistent efforts to defame him, even now, by a section of the world’s community, are extraordinary, when so many convincing proofs are available which show him to have been the reverse of what they say he was.  As brother, son, husband, father, or friend, his love, devotion, and loyalty were matchless.  He was never once known to upbraid Josephine after the condonement of her infidelities.  He paid her colossal debts, not without protest, but rather than make her unhappy he excused her extravagance and overlooked the capricious, peevish way in which she gave her domestic confidences concerning himself to her friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so forgiving was he of faults which were so glaring to others, that he frequently caressed when he should have chastised.