Josephine was pained at these limits set to her personal freedom—­at these claims of etiquette, which did not permit her friends to remain at her side, but strove to exalt above them the wife of the first consul.  Her sense of modesty ever accepted the pleasant, genial household affections as more agreeable and more precious than the burdensome representations, levees, and the tediousness of ceremonial receptions; her sense of modesty longed for the quiet and repose of retirement, and she was happy when, at the close of the court festivities, she could return to Malmaison, there to enjoy the coming of spring, the blossoming of summer, and the glorious beauty of autumn with its manifold colors.

In Malmaison were centered all her joys and pleasures.  There she could satisfy all the inclinations of her heart, all the fancies of her imagination, all the wants of her mind; there she could be the tender wife and mother, and the faithful friend; there she could receive, without the annoyance of etiquette, men of learning and art; there she could cultivate the soil and devote herself to botany, her favorite study, and to her flowers, the dearest and most faithful friends of her whole life.

Josephine sought for and found in Malmaison her earthly paradise; there she was happy, and the care and the secret anguish which in Paris wove around her heart its network, and every now and then whispered the nefarious words of divorce and separation, followed her not in the beautiful and friendly Malmaison; she left all this in Paris with the stiff Madame Etiquette, who once in the Tuileries had poisoned the existence of the Queen Marie Antoinette, and now sought to intrude herself upon the consulate as an ill-tempered sovereign.

But in Malmaison there was no etiquette, none of the dignified coldness of court-life.  There you were allowed to laugh, to jest, and to be happy.  In Malmaison the first consul laid aside his gravity; there his gloomy brow brightened, and he became again General Bonaparte, the lover of his Josephine, the confidential companion of his friends, the harmless individual, who seemed to have nothing to require from Heaven but the happiness of the passing hour, and who could laugh at a joke with the same guilelessuess as any other child of the people who never deemed it necessary to cultivate a close intimacy with the grave and gloomy Madame Politique.

It is true Malmaison was not Bonaparte’s sole country residence.  The city of Paris had presented him with the pleasure-castle of St. Cloud, the same which Louis XVI. gave to his wife, and where, to the very great annoyance of the proud Parisians, she had for the first time engraven on the regulation-tablets, at the entrance of the park, the fatal words—­“De par la Reine.”

Now this royal mansion of pleasure belonged to the first consul of the republic; it was his summer residence, but there he was still the consul, the first magistrate, and the representative of France; and he had there to give receptions, hold levees, receive the ministers, councillors of state, and the foreign ambassadors, and appear in all the pomp and circumstance of his position.