r
portraits to whoever wished for one, relations, 'femmes de chambre',
even to tradesmen. They never ceased bringing her diamonds, jewels,
shawls, materials for dresses, and trinkets of all kinds; she bought
everything without ever asking the price; and generally forgot what
she had purchased. . . All the morning she had on a shawl which
she draped on her shoulders with a grace I have seen in no one else.
Bonaparte, who thought her shawls covered her too much, tore them
off, and sometimes threw them into the fire; then she sent for
another (Remusat, tome ii. pp. 343-345). After the divorce her
income, large as it was, was insufficient, but the Emperor was more
compassionate then, and when sending the Comte Mollien to settle her
affairs gave him strict orders "not to make her weep" (Meneval,
tome iii. p.237)]--

The amiable Josephine had not less ambition in little thins than her
husband had in great. She felt pleasure in acquiring and not in
possessing. Who would suppose it? She grew tired of the beauty of the
park of Malmaison, and was always asking me to take her out on the high
road, either in the direction of Nanterre, or on that of Marly, in the
midst of the dust occasioned by the passing of carriages. The noise of
the high road appeared to her preferable to the calm silence of the
beautiful avenues of the park, and in this respect Hortense had the same
taste as her mother. This whimsical fancy astonished Bonaparte, and he
was sometimes vexed at it. My intercourse with Josephine was delightful;
for I never saw a woman who so constantly entered society with such an
equable disposition, or with so much of the spirit of kindness, which is
the first principle of amiability. She was so obligingly attentive as to
cause a pretty suite of apartments to be prepared at Malmaison for me and
my family.

She pressed me earnestly, and with all her known grace, to accept it; but
almost as much a captive at Paris as a prisoner of state, I wished to
have to myself in the country the moments of liberty I was permitted to
enjoy. Yet what was this liberty? I had bought a little house at Ruel,
which I kept during two years and a half. When I saw my friends there,
it had to be at midnight, of at five o'clock in the morning; and the
First Consul would often send for me in the night when couriers arrived.
It was for this sort of liberty I refused Josephine's kind offer.
Bonaparte came once to see m