Yet--yet she had a world of
her own; and reading Napoleon's impassioned letters to his wife, written
with how great homage! in the flow of the tide washing to famous battle-
fields, an exultation of ambition inspired her, and the genius of her
distinguished ancestors set her heart beating hard. Presently, her face
alive with feeling, a furnace in her eyes, she repeated a paragraph from
Napoleon's letters to Josephine:
The enemy have lost, my dearest, eighteen thousand men, prisoners,
killed, and wounded. Wurmzer has nothing left but to throw himself
into Mantua. I hope soon to be in your arms. I love you to
distraction. All is well. Nothing is wanting to your husband's
happiness, save the love of Josephine.
She sprang to her feet. "And she, wife of a hero, was in common intrigue
with Hippolyte Charles at the time! She had a conqueror, a splendid
adventurer, and coming emperor, for a husband, and she loved him not.
I--I could have knelt to him--worshipped him. I"--With a little
hysterical, disdainful laugh, as of the soul at itself, she leaned upon
the window, looking into the village below, alternately smiling and
frowning at the thought of this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze.
"Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start," she
said. "Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful."
But again she laughed, as at an absurdity.
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