“Well!—well!” and then Napoleon, much affected, drew close to M. Horan, and added, “You say that she was in grief; from what did that arise?”
“From passing events, sire, from your Majesty’s position last year.”
“Ah! she used to speak of me, then?”
“Often; very often.”
Here Napoleon drew his hand across his eyes, which were filled with tears. He then said:—
“Good woman! My excellent Josephine! She loved me truly, did she not? Ah! she was a Frenchwoman!”
“Oh yes, sire! she loved you, and she would have proved it, had it not been for dread of displeasing you; she had conceived an idea.”
“How? What would she have done?”
“She one day said that as empress of the French she would drive through Paris, with eight horses to her coach, and all her household in gala livery, to go and rejoin you at Fontainebleau, and never quit you more.”
“She would have done it! She was capable of doing it!” exclaimed Napoleon, with deep emotion and eyes full of tears; and then he asked the physician the most minute questions about the last hours of Josephine: the nature of her disease, the friends and attendants who were around her at the hour of her death, and the conduct of her two children Eugène and Hortense.