Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/345

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Josephine.
329

of her prettiness—to be simply used and despised. There is much more respect to a woman in a jealousy that will not be appeased than in a reconciliation which has its roots in the senses and in contempt.

And now there comes the second epoch in the lives of Napoleon and Josephine. As married people go, they got on pretty well together. There are abundant proofs that Napoleon was in his way a fairly good family man. He certainly desired to be so considered himself.

"At home," he said to Roederer, "I am an affectionate man; I play with the children, talk to my wife, read novels to them."

And certainly there are proofs that he was very fond of children. We have seen already how intoxicated he was by the prospect of Josephine's being enceinte. Later on, his delight was keen when that poor infant was born with so tragic a destiny—so pitiful an end—the Duke of Reichstadt. Here are two very pretty pictures of Napoleon with the children of Queen Hortense, daughter of Josephine, wife of his brother Louis, the father of the Napoleon whom we knew in our days as Emperor of the French:

"Uncle Bibiche! Uncle Bibiche!" This exclamation came from a child of scarcely five years of age, running breathlessly in the park of Saint-Cloud after a man visible in the distance followed by a troop of gazelles, to whom he was distributing