as' (see Iung's Bonaparte, tome iii. p. 116).]--

--["Neither of his wives had ever anything to complain of from
Napoleon's personal manners" (Metternich, vol. 1 p. 279).]--

--[Madame de Remusat, who, to paraphrase Thiers' saying on
Bourrienne himself, is a trustworthy witness, for if she received
benefits from Napoleon they did not weigh on her, says, "However,
Napoleon had some affection for his first wife; and, in fact, if he
has at any time been touched, no doubt it has been only for her and
by her" (tome i. p. 113). "Bonaparte was young when he first knew
Madame de Beauharnais. In the circle where he met her she had a
great superiority by the name she bore and by the extreme elegance
of her manners. . . . In marrying Madame de Beauharnais,
Bonaparte believed he was allying himself to a very grand lady; thus
this was one more conquest" (p. 114). But in speaking of
Josephine's complaints to Napoleon of his love affairs, Madame de
Remusat says, "Her husband sometimes answered by violences, the
excesses of which I do not dare to detail, until the moment when,
his new fancy having suddenly passed, he felt his tenderness for his
wife again renewed. Then he was touched by her sufferings, replaced
his insults by caresses which were hardly more measured than his
violences and, as she was gentle and untenacious, she fell back into
her feeling of security" (p. 206).]--

--[Miot de Melito, who was a follower of Joseph Bonaparte, says, "No
woman has united go much kindness to so much natural grace, or has
done more good with more pleasure than she did. She honoured me
with her friendship, and the remembrance of the benevolence she has
shown me, to the last moment of her too short existence, will never
be effaced from my heart" (tome i. pp.101-2).]--

--[Meneval, the successor of Bourrienne is his place of secretary to
Napoleon, and who remained attached to the Emperor until the end,
says of Josephine (tome i. p. 227), "Josephine was irresistibly
attractive. Her beauty was not regular, but she had 'La grace, plus
belle encore que la beaute', according to the good La Fontaine. She
had the soft abandonment, the supple and elegant movements, and the
graceful carelessness of the creoles.--(The reader must remember
that the term 'Creole' does not imply any taint of black blood, but
only that the person, of European family,