Bonaparte abandoned himself to this new love with all his passionate nature.  Not only did the whole army in Egypt know this, but his foes also became acquainted with it; and Sir Sidney Smith made use of this fact to attack his enemy in a way little known to the annals of warfare.  Bonaparte had removed from the Egyptian army Madame Foures’ injured husband, who held there the rank of a cavalry officer, by sending him with a message to the Directory.  But the vessel in which he had sailed for France was captured by the English, and Admiral Sidney Smith undertook, with all the careless, open manner of an Englishman, to make him fully acquainted with the relations existing between his wife and General Bonaparte.

He then gave to M. Foures, who was beside himself with anger and wrath, and who threatened bloody vengeance, his freedom, and exhibited his good-will toward him so far as to have him landed near Cairo, where Bonaparte then was with his beautiful mistress.

Enraged with jealousy, M. Foures rushed to his wife, to make to her the most violent demonstrations.  Perhaps too weak to part with an adored, beautiful wife, he simply ordered her to return with him to France.

But Madame Foures made resistance.  She called her mighty lover to her help; she claimed a separation; and the war-commissioner Duprat, who in the army was invested with the functions of a civil magistrate, pronounced, at the request of Madame Foures and at the order of Bonaparte, the decree of separation.

Madame Foures was free, but this did not satisfy the secret wishes of her heart.  The most important point was, that Bonaparte should be free also, that he also should desire to be divorced.  Josephine must be removed from him and thrust aside, so that the beautiful Pauline Foures might take her place.

No means, either of coquetry, tears, flatteries, or promises of enduring love, remained untried to induce Bonaparte to take the decisive step.  Sometimes Pauline would pout; sometimes her eyes shed the tears of repentance over her own faithlessness, and she vowed she would take refuge in a cloister if Bonaparte would not restore her to honor by exalting her to the position of being his wife; sometimes she sought by her cheerful humor, her genial abandonment, to bind him to her, to amuse him; and sometimes, when dressed as a general, on a fiery horse, and surrounded by a vast number of adjutants, she would ride up to him and win by her smiles and flatteries friends, who calumniated Josephine, and represented to him the necessity of a separation from his inconstant wife.

But, notwithstanding all the calumnies, and all the deceiving arts of his beloved, there existed in Bonaparte’s heart something which spoke in favor of the poor, slandered, and forgotten Josephine; and, amid the exciting pleasures of his new passion, he remembered with longing, sorrowful heart the charming, gracious woman whom he once had tenderly loved, and whom he still so loved that he could not sacrifice her to his beautiful mistress.  Still he persevered in showing to the latter the deepest, most tender, and undivided attention; and when the chances of war kept him away from her for a long time, when he went to Syria and left her in Cairo, Bonaparte wrote to her every day the most touching letters, which were forwarded by a special courier.