can never leave you;' folding her in his arms he declares that she shall not quit him; he abandons himself wholly to the sensation of the moment; she must undress at once, sleep by his side, and he weeps over her. 'Literally,' she says, 'he soaked the bed with his tears.'"
On the evening of December 15, 1809, Napoleon and his wife signed the deed annulling the marriage. "The Emperor," says Mollien, "was no less moved than she, and his tears were genuine."
XXV.
AFTER THE DIVORCE.
And it is in the few days after the divorce that for the first time in all that strangely busy career—every moment of which was devoted to work in some form or another—Napoleon for the first time lets sentiment get the better of him, and falls into the idle languor of regret and grief. He left the Tuileries on the very night of the divorce "as if he could not endure the solitude," and went "almost alone" to the Trianon. He spent three days there all by himself, refusing to see even his Ministers, the first and the last time in all his reign when business was suspended; and two or three days after the divorce he could not keep away from Josephine, and went to visit her at Malmaison, whither she had retired. She returned the call a few days later by coming to the Trianon; indeed, the position had that mixture of tragedy and comedy which one sees in those
