ment from the British
Archives which disproves the scandal. Napoleon was too much absorbed
in things that mattered to take notice of the stupid though virulent
stories that were constantly being concocted against him. When he was
appealed to by his friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he
merely shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this
rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It pleases
the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to be perturbed,
or to meddle with it."

It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the
side of morality. It is well enough known that the French Court during
the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic arrangements, the
one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that
_his_ Court should have the reputation of being clean. He took
infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private amorous
connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a
staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of libertinism is an
outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never
have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame
Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office
under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most
careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal
friends. As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the
general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so. Not
merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with
Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of
public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]

His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral
code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard
of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation
under which any of his priests were bound in the shade. So shocked
were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and
circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they
advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of
so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat. It was not
exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in
fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so
malevolent a pitch, the straightforward a