“To-day, alone with thoughts, works, men, and their destructive schemes, I have not received from you a single note that I can press to my heart.”

“Headquarters are broken up; I leave in one hour.  I have this night received expresses from Paris; there was nothing for you but the enclosed letter, which will afford you some pleasure.”

“Think on me; live for me; be often with your beloved, and believe that there is for him but one sorrow; that he shrinks only from this—­to be no more loved by his Josephine.  A thousand right sweet kisses, right tender, right exclusive kisses.”

“Bonaparte.”

Three days after he tells her that he is now in the midst of war operations; that hostilities have begun again, and that he hopes in a few days to advance upon Trieste.  But this occupied his mind less than his solicitude for Josephine.  After a short paragraph on his military affairs, he continues: 

“No letter from you yet; I am really anxious; but I am assured that you are well, and that you have made an excursion on the Como Lake.  Every day I wait impatiently for the courier who is to bring me news from you; you know how precious this is to me.  I live no longer when away from you; the joy of my life is to be near my sweet Josephine.  Think of me; write often, very often; this is the only remedy for separation; it is cruel, but I trust it will soon be over.”

“Bonaparte.”

Meanwhile this separation was to last longer than Bonaparte had imagined.  War held him entangled in its web so fast, that he had not time even to write to Josephine.  In the next two letters he could only tell her, in a few lines, what had happened at the theatre of war; that he had again defeated Wurmser, and had surrounded him, and that he hopes to take Mantua.  Even for his constant complaint about Josephine’s slothfullness in writing, he finds no room in these short letters.  In the next letter, however, it appears the more violently.  He has no time to give her, as was his usual practice, any account of the war.  He begins at once with the main object, which is—­“Josephine has not written:” 

“Verona, 1st day of Complementaires in Year V,” “(September 17, 1796).

“I write to you often, my beloved one, but you write seldom to me.  You are wicked and hateful, very hateful—­as hateful as you are inconstant.  It is indeed faithlessness to deceive a wretched man, a tender lover!  Must he lose his rights because he is away, burdened with hardship and labor?  Without his Josephine, without the certainty of her love, what is there on earth for him?  What would he do here?

“We had yesterday a very bloody affair; the enemy has lost many men, and is well beaten.  We have taken his advanced works before Mantua.

“Farewell, adored Josephine!  One of these nights the doors will open with a loud crash:  as a jealous man, I am in your arms!

“A thousand dear kisses! 
Bonaparte.”