My father ascended a staircase, went along a passage, opened a little door, pushed back a screen, and he and Dermoncourt, who still followed him closely, found themselves in Bonaparte's bedroom.
He was in bed with Joséphine, and, the weather being exceedingly hot, they were covered merely by a sheet, which showed the outline of their bodies.
Joséphine was weeping, and Bonaparte was trying to wipe her tears away with one hand, while with the other he laughingly played a military tattoo on the portion of her body which was turned towards the recess between bed and wall.
"Ah! Dumas," he said, as he caught sight of my father; "your arrival is opportune; you must help me to make this silly little woman listen to reason. Ought she to wish to come to Egypt with us? Now, would you take your wife there?"
"Upon my word, certainly not," my father replied. "She would be in my way dreadfully."
"Now, then! you see what I said; and you know that Dumas is not a bad husband, he loves his wife and his daughters. Listen: I may return in six months, or we may be over there several years."
At that Joséphine's tears flowed faster than ever.
"If we stay there some years, the fleet will have to return to fetch some twenty thousand men from the Italian coasts. Return to Paris, tell Madame Dumas, and both of you shall return to us with that convoy. Will that suit you, Dumas?"
"Perfectly," replied my father.
"When there, my dear Joséphine, Dumas, who has only daughters, and I who have not even those, will each of us do our best to produce a boy: if we have a boy, he and his wife shall be its godparents; if he has a boy, you and I will be its godparents. There now, that is a promise; stop crying, and let us talk business."