have no objection to make; still, it is a matter deserving some thought.' At the time of the siege of Toulon, 'theeing and thouing' had taken the place of you, from the soldier to the general and from the general to the soldier. Hence it was that I had acquired the habit of 'theeing and thouing' Bonaparte. I said to Bonaparte as familiarly as heretofore: 'Is it seriously meant, what thou hast just told me? I have just thought over thy idea of marriage, and it seems less ridiculous to me than at first sight.' 'In the first place, Madame Beauharnais is rich,' answered Bonaparte with vehemence. He had been deceived by the lady's external luxury, ignorant of the fact that the unfortunate creature depended for her existence on loans contracted in Paris on the imaginary credit of property in Martinique, which she was far from possessing, since her mother still lived; and, as the latter troubled herself very little about her daughter, whose dissoluteness she was acquainted with, she contented herself with sending her a meagre allowance, which she had of late cut down and even suspended remitting, owing to a series of poor harvests. The widow Beauharnais lived at Fontainebleau in a state bordering on misery. The greater part of the year she quartered herself on Madame Doué, a Creole like herself, without whose relief she would have lacked the first necessaries. She would come to Paris by the public stage-
