—­[In speaking of the unexpected arrival of Bonaparte and of the meeting between him and Josephine, Madame Junot says:  “On the 10th October Josephine set off to meet her husband, but without knowing exactly what road he would take.  She thought it likely he would come by way of Burgundy, and therefore Louis and she set off for Lyons.

“Madame Bonaparte was a prey to great and well-founded aspersions.  Whether she was guilty or only imprudent, she was strongly accused by the Bonaparte family, who were desirous that Napoleon should obtain a divorce, The elder M. de Caulaincourt stated to us his apprehensions on this point; but whenever the subject was introduced my mother changed the conversation, because, knowing as she did the sentiments of the Bonaparte family, she could not reply without either committing them or having recourse to falsehood.  She knew, moreover, the truth of many circumstances which M. de Caulaincourt seemed to doubt, and which her situation with respect to Bonaparte prevented her from communicating to him.

“Madame Bonaparte committed a great fault in neglecting at this juncture to conciliate her mother-in-law, who might have protected her again those who sought her ruin and effected it nine years later; for the divorce in 1809 was brought about by the joint efforts of all the members of the Bonaparte family, aided by some of Napoleon’s most confidential servants, whom Josephine, either as Madame Bonaparte or as Empress, had done nothing to make her friends.

“Bonaparte, on his arrival in Paris, found his house deserted:  but his mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law, and, in short, every member of his family, except Louis, who had attended Madame Bonaparte to Lyons, came to him immediately.  The impression made upon him by the solitude of his home and its desertion by its mistress was profound and terrible, and nine years afterwards, when the ties between him and Josephine were severed for ever, he showed that it was not effaced.  From not finding her with his family he inferred that she felt herself unworthy of their presence, and feared to meet the man she had wronged.  He considered her journey to Lyons as a mere pretence.

“M. de Bourrienne says that for some days after Josephine’s return Bonaparte treated her with extreme coldness.  As he was an eyewitness, why does he not state the whole truth, and say that on her return Bonaparte refused to see her and did not see her?  It was to the earnest entreaties of her children that she owed the recovery, not of her husband’s love, for that had long ceased, but of that tenderness acquired by habit, and that intimate intercourse which made her still retain the rank of consort to the greatest man of his age.  Bonaparte was at this period much attached to Eugene Beauharnais, who, to do him justice, was a charming youth.  He knew less of Hortense; but her youth and sweetness of temper,