Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/340

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
324
Napoleon.


preparations for his great campaigning—in the midst of the discussions with the scientific men whom he had brought with him—Napoleon, says Bourrienne, "passionately devoted to France, anxious for his own glory, though his heart was so full, there was still a large place kept for Josephine, of whom he almost always spoke to me in our familiar conversation."

But Josephine still was tepid, and was terribly indiscreet. In the correspondence of Napoleon with his brothers we see the anxiety gradually turning into certainty, and despair is transformed into rage and repulsion. To his brother Joseph he writes from Cairo: "Look after my wife; see her sometimes. I beg Louis to give her good advice." In the same letter he says: "I send a handsome shawl to Julia; she is a good woman, make her happy." Soon after, however, there is a very different note in the letters, and in a letter to Josephine there occurs this phrase—the epitaph on his lost confidence in his wife's fidelity: "I have many domestic sorrows, for the veil is entirely lifted." The latter part of this phrase was omitted in the earlier memoirs of Josephine; it has since been restored. In this same letter there is another passage which speaks a sorrow as profound as even these first words:

"Your affection is very dear to me. Were I to lose that, and to see you betray me, I should turn misanthrope; it alone saves me. One is in