cause of the
children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate
armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about
the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he
would snap out, sharply:

"How many children have you?"

If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look
pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had
none he would turn upon her sharply and say:

"Then go home and have some!"

Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,
because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him
through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young
soldier was fascinated by her--the more because she was older than he
and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the
world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of
the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne
by ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of
Austria.

She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the
greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held
him to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was
her failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry
the thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when
he showed signs of regret and said:

"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine!"

Marie Louise was of importance for a time--the short time when she
entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little
King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her
husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and
letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.

Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him
into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when
her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave
him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,
perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She
would gladly have followed him, also, t