complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille:
"You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it
over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to
the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a
grateful acknowledgment."

Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position,
and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose
his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very
one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself.

Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could
she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a
diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to
command admiration.

"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said
Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.

Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any
such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the
first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him
not to make himself king[12]."

[Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.]

But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell
her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.

One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at breakfast,
and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered without having
been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her husband, who sat with his
back turned toward her, and had not yet noticed her. Lightly throwing
her arm around his neck, and letting herself sink upon his breast, and
then stroking his pale cheeks and glossy brown hair, with an expression
of unutterable love and tenderness, she said:

"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked brother
Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."

Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he said.
"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La
Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful
stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now, don't bother me
about them any more!"

Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he
nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate
personal friends on the subject of his assuming the