e with an
expression of sadness, he said, "Bourrienne, you must, before I proceed
to Italy, do me a service. You sometimes visit my wife, and it is right;
it is fit you should. You have been too long one of the family not to
continue your friendship with her. Go to her.

--[This employment of Bourrienne to remonstrate with Josephine is a
complete answer to the charge sometimes made that Napoleon, while
scolding, really encouraged the foolish expenses of his wife, as
keeping her under his control. Josephine was incorrigible. "On the
very day of her death," says Madame de Remusat "she wished to put on
a very pretty dressing-gown because she thought the Emperor of
Russia would perhaps come to see her. She died all covered with
ribbons and rose-colored satin." "One would not, sure, be frightful
when one's dead!" As for Josephine's great fault--her failure to
give Napoleon an heir--he did not always wish for one. In 1802, on
his brother Jerome jokingly advising Josephine to give the Consul a
little Caesar. Napoleon broke out, "Yea, that he may end in the
same manner as that of Alexander? Believe me, Messieurs, that at
the present time it is better not to have children: I mean when one
is condemned to rule nations." The fate of the King of Rome shows
that the exclamation was only too true!]--

"Endeavour once more to make her sensible of her mad extravagance. Every
day I discover new instances of it, and it distresses me. When I speak
to her--on the subject I am vexed; I get angry--she weeps. I forgive
her, I pay her bills--she makes fair promises; but the same thing occurs
over and over again. If she had only borne me a child! It is the
torment of my life not to have a child. I plainly perceive that my power
will never be firmly established until I have one. If I die without an
heir, not one of my brothers is capable of supplying my place. All is
begun, but nothing is ended. God knows what will happen! Go and see
Josephine, and do not forget my injunctions.."

Then he resumed the gaiety which he had exhibited at intervals during our
conversation, far clouds driven by the wind do not traverse the horizon
with such rapidity as different ideas and sensations succeeded each other
m Napoleon's mind. He dismissed me with his usual nod of the head, and
seeing him in such good humour I said on departing, "well, Sire, you are
going to hear the old bell of Brienne. I have no doubt it w