In bad weather and on rainy days the whole company gathered in the large drawing-room, and found amusement in playing the various games of cards, in which Bonaparte not only took much interest, but in which he so eagerly played, that he often had recourse to apparent bungling, so as to command success.  Adjoining the drawing-room, where conversation and amusements took place, was a room where the company sang and practised music, to the delight of Bonaparte, who often, when one of his favorite tunes was played, would chime in vigorously with the melody, nowise disturbed by the fact that he never could catch the right tune, and that he broke out every time into distressing discordance!

But all songs and music subsided, all plays were interrupted, when Bonaparte, excited perhaps by the approaching twilight, or by some awakened memory, began to relate one of those tragic, fearful stories which no one could tell so well as he.  Then, with arms folded behind his back, he slowly paced the drawing-room, and with sinister looks, tragic manner, and sepulchral voice, he would begin the solemn introduction of his narrative: 

“When death strikes, at a distance, a person whom we love,” said he, one evening, with a voice tremulous with horror, “a certain foreboding nearly always makes us anticipate the event, and the person, touched by the hand of death, appears to us at the moment we lose him on earth.”

“How very sad and mournful that sounds!” sighed Josephine, as she placed both her arms on Bonaparte’s shoulder, as if she would hold him, and chain him to earth, that he might not vanish away with every ghost-like form.

Bonaparte turned to her with a genial smile, and shook his head at her, so as to assure her of his existence and his love.  Then he began his story with all the earnestness and tragic power of an improvisator of ancient Rome.  He told how once Louis XIV., in the great gallery of Versailles, received the bulletin of the battle of Friedlingen, and how, unfolding it, he read to the assembled court the names of the slain and of the wounded.  Quietness reigned in the splendidly-illumined gallery; and the courtiers in their embroidered coats, who, ordinarily, were so full of merriment and so high-spirited, had, all at once, become thoughtful.  They gathered in a circle around the monarch, from whose lips slowly, like falling tears, fell one by one the names of the killed.  Here and there the cheeks of their relatives turned pale.  Suddenly the Count de Beaugre saw appear, at the farther end of the gallery, stately and ghost-like, the blood-stained figure of his son, who, with eyes wide open, stared at his father, and saluted him with a slight motion of the head, and then glided away through the door.  “My son is dead!” cried Count de Beaugre—­and, at the very same moment, the king uttered his name as one of the slain!” [Footnote:  Bourrienne, “Memoires,” vol. iii., p. 225.]

“Ah! may I never see such a ghost-like figure,” murmured Josephine, drawing closer to her husband.  “Bonaparte, promise me that you will never go to war again; that you will keep peace with all the world, so that I may have no cause of alarm!”