Now he swears to root out this detestable race of seducers and blondins who have beguiled from him the heart of his Josephine.  Full of passion and jealousy, he believes in the calumnies which Junot, with all the cruel inconsiderateness of a trusty friend, has whispered to him, and at once Josephine is guilty!  She has had a love-correspondence with Charles Botot, the blond private secretary of Barras, for Charles Botot comes sometimes to Malmaison, and has often been seen near Josephine and her daughter Hortense in her loge!  But by degrees comes reflection, and a fortnight after he believes that malice alone can have invented these calumnies.  This noble conviction, however, was soon to be shaken by the enemy, for Josephine had enemies quite near Bonaparte, who longed to draw away from her a husband’s heart and to drive him into a divorce.

First of all there were the whole family of Bonaparte, who had seen with unwillingness Napoleon’s marriage, for he was thereby much less under their influence, and they had wished that he would at all events have married Desiree Clary, the sister of Joseph’s wife, and thus have been more closely united to the family.

But, while he was in Egypt, another powerful enemy had been added to these.  This was a young and beautiful woman, Madame Foures, the beloved of the ardent general.

While Bonaparte, with all the madness of jealousy at a mere groundless calumny, which had come across the sea distorted and magnified, wished to be divorced from Josephine; while he complained of woman’s faithlessness, frivolity, and inconstancy; while he cursed all women as coquettes, he himself was guilty of faithlessness.  Forgetting his vows and his protestations of love for his wife, he had abandoned himself to a new affection without any regard to public opinion, and even made no secret of his intrigues.

Unfortunate Josephine!  The fears she had anticipated and dreaded before accepting Bonaparte’s proffered hand were too soon to be realized.  His heart began to grow cold while her love increased every day with deeper intensity; he had perchance already read in her amiable countenance the first signs of age, and he thought it might well be allowed to the young general not to maintain so strict a fealty to that faithfulness which he claimed from her.

But Bonaparte still loved Josephine, although he was unfaithful to her.  Surely this new love might well bear the guilt of the credulousness with which he judged Josephine, and the word of separation might thus easily come upon his lips, because the newly-loved one, amid the vows of her affection, might have whispered it in his ear.

Madame Foures had an immense advantage over Josephine; she was barely twenty years old, was bewitchingly beautiful, was a coquette, and—­she was there in Bonaparte’s immediate presence, while the Mediterranean separated him from Josephine.