what could I add to the remarks I made upon his receiving the letters of Louis XVIII., when I fearlessly represented to him that heing without children he would have no one to whom to bequeath the throne—­that, doubtless, from the opinion which he entertained of his brothers, he could not desire to erect it for them?” Here Josephine again interrupted me by exclaiming, “My kind friend, when you spoke of children did he say anything to you?  Did he talk of a divorce?”—­“Not a word, Madame, I assure you.”—­“If they do not urge him to it, I do not believe he will resolve to do such a thing.  You know how he likes Eugene, and Eugene behaves so well to him.  How different is Lucien.  It is that wretch Lucien, to whom Bonaparte listens too much, and of whom, however, he always speaks ill to me.”—­“I do not know, Madame, what Lucien says to his brother except when he chooses to tell me, because Lucien always avoids having a witness of his interviews with your husband, but I can assure you that for two years I have not heard the word ‘divorce’ from the General’s mouth.”—­“I always reckon on you, my dear Bourrienne; to turn him away from it; as you did at that time.”—­“I do not believe he is thinking of it, but if it recurs to him, consider, Madame, that it will be now from very different motives:  He is now entirely given up to the interests of his policy and his ambition, which dominate every other feeling in him.  There will not now be any question of scandal, or of a trial before a court, but of an act of authority which complaisant laws will justify and which the Church perhaps will sanction.”—­“That’s true.  You are right.  Good God! how unhappy I am.”

—­[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