No one ever declared that Napoleon Bonaparte was a gentleman animated by trained self-respect and consideration for others. Many thought his accesses of feverish sensitiveness, which now began to be noted, were due to a hysterical temperament: in society he often sat in forbidding silence; sometimes he wept tears which the world would consider unmanly, and appeared to be temporarily disordered in his mind. But he had much rude good nature and considerable wholesome sensibility. He worked regularly from twelve to fifteen hours a day, evolving schemes which paralyzed his secretaries by their magnitude. The hours which such a man of affairs spent in the companionship of women were not marked by that quick appreciation and attention which gratify the great lady. No one has suffered more at the hands of women than Bonaparte. Mme. Junot and Mme. de Rémusat forgot nothing which would place his rude passions in glaring contrast with their own chastity, or even with the polished laxity of that notoriously immoral society which scorned old-fashioned restraints. The long struggle for recognition and attention which that "femme incomprise," Mme. de Staël, waged with Bonaparte ended in her defeat, and she then turned against her antagonist the weapon of her clever pen.
It is certain that with all his genius the great statesman and the great general failed to understand the power of woman. His youth gave him no due share in the society of those mothers, sweethearts, and female friends who, in the routine of daily life, by instinct, training, and ability, mold every generation as it rises to its place. The years of nonage were absorbed in political intrigue, and those of early manhood in tasks not laid upon most men until middle life. Amid the storms of the Revolution was formed a general without experience in those social forces of peace which finally overpower all others. His married life began in passion and ambition; the relation was checked in its normal development by ensuing hurricanes of alternating jealousy and physical attraction. The social power of his wife was great, but superficial; and while she powerfully supported her husband's ambitions, and often captivated his senses, she failed in creating any companionship with him in noble enterprise. The innate coarseness of a giant was, therefore, never diminished, and the society of those who turned pleasing and pleasure into a fine art, who regarded entertainment as the chief concern of life, was generally irksome to a man who looked upon many over-ready women as instruments for gratifying physical passion; to a general who saw in all women the possible mothers of soldiers; to a "scientific" politician who looked on the family and on children as inert factors in a mathematical problem; to a wilful dictator ignorant of the unalterable supremacy of woman in her own sphere. But even Mme. de Rémusat admits that there were times and places when serious women with earnest notions of duty received at his hands the most gracious and considerate treatment. In the main, Napoleon's nature was so dominated by his gigantic schemes that he was impervious to the feminine fascinations by which men are so often ruled. He would tolerate neither Egerias nor Hypatias, neither Cleopatras nor Messalinas, although the times might easily have furnished him with examples of each type.