love, with the expansions and the illusions of a very young man. The continual delays that she interposed before her departure were torture to him, and he occasionally gave way to fits of jealousy, and to a kind of superstition, which was strong in his nature. One day the glass of Josephine's portrait, which he always wore about him, broke, and he turned dreadfully pale. 'Marmont,' he exclaimed, 'either my wife is ill or unfaithful.'"
XVII.
FRIVOLOUS JOSEPHINE.
Josephine, meantime, is not much touched by these outbursts. Josephine may or may not have been the abandoned woman Barras declares, but her letters about her curious lover—so wan, awkward, abrupt, so devoid of drawing-room graces—give a curious picture of the conflicting emotions of her mind. Here is the first paragraph of one of them:
"You have seen General Bonaparte at my house. Well, it is he who is good enough to act as stepfather to the orphans of Alexandre de Beauharnais, as husband to his widow! Do you love him? you ask me. No. . . . I do not. Then you dislike him? No; but my state is one of tepidity towards him that is displeasing to me."
It is clearly evident from this that when Josephine married, it was not from love. The next
