him,
taken the wrong road, and missed throwing herself into his arms as was
her intention. He asks excitedly, "Is she ill?" and the significant
wink of her enemies threw him into paroxysms of grief. His friend
Collot calls and reminds him that the hope of the nation is centred on
him. His wrath is proof that he is still in love, and Collot fears
that the magical effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness.
"Never," shouts the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot.
Rather than abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on
the fire."

But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew himself, and
we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the fire," but given
again to the erring Josephine, who was travelling back post-haste from
Lyons. She arrived broken in spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon,
obviously not quite sure of his determination to refuse her
admittance, had bolted the door, and was stamping about the room with
a glare in his piercing eye as though he were planning an onslaught
that was to be furiously contested. Josephine arrives, knocks at the
door, implores him to open it, and addresses him as "Mon ami, _mon bon
ami_." There is no response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps
and beats her head against the door, and piteously pleads for the
opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then
her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he
loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their
distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their
stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and
appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever
been, and to receive their mother back to his affections.

It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so
sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is
tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when
Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions
for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared
from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped in a
drowsy joy.

Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and skilful in the art
and use of hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was
never more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a
different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that