"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."

Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and
looked wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme.
Coutades say:

"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"

Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,
her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,
forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that
moment no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the
princess wore her hair low enough to cover them.

This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a
very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit
of drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this
statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its
interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she
afterward styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of
Bonaparte."

Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;
but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was
Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she
got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of
all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye
flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took
to her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.

It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her
intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and
of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of
these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When
some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:

"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"

And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and
marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations
with propriety!

To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either
Caroline or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million
francs when she became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was
continually checking her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall
came and Napoleon was sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one
of all his relatives to visit him and spend her t