Presently, out of the chaos of social and political conditions, arose Napoleon Bonaparte. Yes, I know he appears unduly often in this series. But he appeared unduly often in the lives of a score of super-women—Madame Jumel, Elizabeth Paterson, Madamoiselle Georges, Countess Potocka, and the rest—and his name is more often seen in all history, written since 1790, than that of any other man. So be patient if he crops up oftener than the balance of power seems to call for.
Napoleon, first as dictator and then as emperor, ruled France. As a young man, he had been too poor and too busy to glance at any woman. Now in his days of power and—for him—leisure, he amply made up for such early defects. And presently his alternately pale and jet-black eyes fell upon Jeanne Recamier. Forthwith, he began to make right ardent love to her.
Napoleon, once and only once in all his strange career, had actually lost his level head through love and had been carried by it out of his cool, calculating self. That was when, as a lean, half-starved, hectic young officer of artillery, he had met Josephine Beauharnais.
She was a Creole widow, much older than he. Much slush has been written of her and her wrongs. History, from every source, tells another story.
Napoleon used to meet Josephine at the house of the director, Barras, where she held a somewhat equivocal position. Barras had begun to tire of her. Her teeth were bad; she was beginning to wrinkle and grow sallow; she was silly; she had absolutely nothing in common with the late Mrs. Cæsar.
To Napoleon, though, she was as a third-rate show to a country boy who had never before visited the theatre. She was divine. Barras saw; and he also saw a chance to rid himself of a burden and at the same time to attach to himself a growingly useful friend.
Barras persuaded Josephine to marry Napoleon—whom she did not even pretend to love—by saying that the young man had a great future. Then, as a wedding present, he gave Napoleon command of the ragged, mutinous Army of Italy.
Napoleon, after turning that army into such a fighting machine as the world had never before known, thrashed Italy and Austria and came home the hero and idol of the hour—to find, beyond all doubt or hope, that Josephine was unfaithful to him! He ordered her out of his house. She wept. Her family wept. Every one wept. Every one pleaded. Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and let her stay. But ever thereafter he treated her with mere friendly tolerance. His love for her was stone-dead. And he amused himself wherever amusement could be found. Also, when it suited his turn in after years he calmly divorced her.
"Lefebvre," said Napoleon, in Egypt, "what is Josephine doing at this moment?"
"Weeping for your return," promptly babbled the future Duke of Dantzig.