I have devoured the book at a sitting, and it has given me, as do stimulants generally, mental or otherwise, a villainous headache. With the sad fate of the peerless Josephine fresh in my mind, I read with an impatient pshaw! the burning billet-doux, addressed to her by the man who could coolly thrust her aside for his mad ambition. Hear what he once said:
"Death alone can break the union, which love, sentiment, and sympathy have formed. A thousand and a thousand kisses."
"I hope very soon to be in your arms; I love you most passionately (_à la fureur_)."
"I hope in a little time to fold you in my arms, and cover you with kisses burning as the equator."
Also, this consistent lover begs from her whom he afterward deserted,
"Love without bounds, and _fidelity without limit_."
Well, I turned over the pages, and read with moistened eyes, for the hundredth time, the wretched state farce enacted at the divorce; and with fresh admiration perused the magnanimous and memorable reply of the queenly Josephine, to the brilliant but cold, intellectual but selfish, imperious yet fascinating Napoleon. Ah! then I would have led away his victim, spite of herself, out of sight, sound, and hearing of this cold, cruel man, who, when it suited his whim, caprice, or convenience; who, when weary of the tame, spiritless Maria Louise, returned secretly to the intoxicating presence of the bewitching Josephine; whom, though repudiating, he yet controlled, down to the lowest menial in her household, down to the color of their jackets and hose; quite safe, in always appending, with gracious condescension, permission "to please herself," to one whose greatest pleasure, he well knew, was to kiss his imperial shoe-tie.
My love and pity for her merge (momentarily) into contempt, when she abjectly begs for the crumbs of his favor, that fall from happier favorites; for (to quote the touching words of her who would have shared his exile had not death prevented, when the woman for whom she had been cast aside, by a retributive justice, deserted him in his extremity) "he could forget me _when he was happy_!" Ay, it was when pleasure palled, when friends proved false, when the star of his destiny paled, when he _needed_ the noble Josephine, that he sought her.