every species of tender coquetry. Much of all this is to be found in the following little extract from one of Napoleon's letters:
"An officer brings me a carpet from you. It is rather short and narrow, but I thank you none the less for it."
Meantime Napoleon keeps protesting that there is only one woman in the world for him. "All these Polish women are French, but to me there is but one woman in the world." "In the deserts of Poland one thinks little of beauties," he writes in another letter. Following this description of Poland was the announcement—not altogether consistent—that the noblesse of the province had given a ball in his honour: "Very beautiful women, very rich, dressed in Paris fashion." This, at least, was a tolerable and an inhabited "desert."
XXIII.
MADAME WALEWSKA.
Poor Josephine's apprehensions turned out to be well founded. Napoleon met in Warsaw the only woman who ever made a real impression upon him since the days when his fiery young fancy so glowed with love for Josephine. And it was here, also, that Napoleon met the only woman, except Josephine, who showed any desire to be faithful to him in disaster as in the days of his glory. Napoleon first saw Madame Walewska at that
