to
hurl on our enemies to dispel the darkness into which your absence
has plunged me. Josephine, you wept when we parted: you wept! At
that thought all my being trembles. But be consoled! Wuermser shall
pay dearly for the tears which I have seen you shed."

What infatuation! to appease a woman's fancied grief, he will pile
high the plains of Mincio with corpses, recking not of the thousand
homes where bitter tears will flow. It is the apotheosis of
sentimental egotism and social callousness. And yet this brain, with
its moral vision hopelessly blurred, judged unerringly in its own
peculiar plane. What power it must have possessed, that, unexhausted
by the flames of love, it grasped infallibly the myriad problems of
war, scanning them the more clearly, perchance, in the white heat of
its own passion.

At last there came the time of fruition at Montebello: of fruition,
but not of ease or full contentment; for not only did an average of
eight despatches a day claim several hours, during which he jealously
guarded his solitude; but Josephine's behaviour served to damp his
ardour. As, during the time of absence, she had slighted his urgent
entreaties for a daily letter, so too, during the sojourn at
Montebello, she revealed the shallowness and frivolity of her being.
Fetes, balls, and receptions, provided they were enlivened by a light
crackle of compliments from an admiring circle, pleased her more than
the devotion of a genius. She had admitted, before marriage, that her
"Creole _nonchalance_" shrank wearily away from his keen and ardent
nature; and now, when torn away from the _salons_ of Paris, she seems
to have taken refuge in entertainments and lap-dogs.[82] Doubtless
even at this period Josephine evinced something of that warm feeling
which deepened with ripening years and lit up her later sorrows with a
mild radiance; but her recent association with Madame Tallien and that
giddy _cohue_ had accentuated her habits of feline complaisance to all
and sundry. Her facile fondnesses certainly welled forth far too
widely to carve out a single channel of love and mingle with the deep
torrent of Bonaparte's early passion. In time, therefore, his
affections strayed into many other courses; and it would seen that
even in the later part of this Italian epoch his conduct was
irregular. For this Josephine had herself mainly to thank. At last she
awakened to the real value and greatness of the love which her n