—­[When Bourrienne complains of not knowing what passed between Lucien and Napoleon, we can turn to Lucien’s account of Bourrienne, apparently about this very time.  “After a stormy interview with Napoleon,” says Lucien, “I at once went into the cabinet where Bourrienne was working, and found that unbearable busybody of a secretary, whose star had already paled more than once, which made him more prying than ever, quite upset by the time the First Consul had taken to come out of his bath.  He must, or at least might, have heard some noise, for enough had been made.  Seeing that he wanted to know the cause from me, I took up a newspaper to avoid being bored by his conversation” (Iung’s Lucien, tome ii. p.156)]—­

Such was the nature of one of the conversations I had with Madame Bonaparte on a subject to which she often recurred.  It may not perhaps be uninteresting to endeavour to compare with this what Napoleon said at St. Helena, speaking of his first wife.  According to the Memorial Napoleon there stated that when Josephine was at last constrained to renounce all hope of having a child, she often let fall allusions to a great political fraud, and at length openly proposed it to him.  I make no doubt Bonaparte made use of words to this effect, but I do not believe the assertion.  I recollect one day that Bonaparte, on entering our cabinet, where I was already seated, exclaimed in a transport of joy impossible for me to describe, “Well, Bourrienne, my wife is at last enceinte!” I sincerely congratulated him, more, I own, out of courtesy than from any hope of seeing him made a father by Josephine, for I well remembered that Corvisart, who had given medicines to Madame Bonaparte, had nevertheless assured me that he expected no result from them.  Medicine was really the only political fraud to which Josephine had recourse; and in her situation what other woman would not have done as much?  Here, then, the husband and the wife are in contradiction, which is nothing uncommon.  But on which side is truth?  I have no hesitation in referring it to Josephine.  There is indeed an immense difference between the statements of a women—­trusting her fears and her hopes to the sole confidant of her family secrets, and the tardy declaration of a man who, after seeing the vast edifice of his ambition leveled with the dust, is only anxious, in his compulsory retreat, to preserve intact and spotless the other great edifice of his glory.  Bonaparte should have recollected that Caesar did not like the idea of his wife being even suspected.

CHAPTER XII.

1802.