"What! you compared me a minute ago with Jove, and now you doubt already whether I could accomplish what Jove has done!" exclaimed Bonaparte, laughing. "Ah, flatterer, you see I have caught you in your own meshes. But would my Josephine believe, then, that I could transform myself into a golden rain for the purpose of winning a Danae, you arrant rogue?"
"Yes, general, but she always would take good care to be that Danae herself."
"Yes, indeed, you are right," replied Bonaparte, laughing even louder than before. "Josephine likes golden rains, and should they be ever so violent, she would not complain; for if they should immerse her up to the neck, in the course of a few hours she would have got rid of the whole valuable flood."
"Your wife is as liberal and generous as a princess, and that is the reason why she spends so much money. She scatters her charities with liberal hands."
"Yes, Josephine has a noble and magnanimous heart," exclaimed Napoleon, and his large blue eyes assumed a mild and tender expression. "She is a woman just as I like women--so gentle and good, so childlike and playful, so tender and affectionate, so passionate and odd! And at the same time so dignified and refined in her manners. Ah, you ought to have seen her at Milan receiving the princes and noblesse in her drawing-room. I assure you, my friend, the wife of little General Bonaparte looked and bore herself precisely like a queen holding a levee, and she was treated and honored as though she were one. Ah, you ought to have seen it!"
"I DID see it, general. I was at Milan before coming here."
"Ah, yes, that is true. I had forgotten it. You lucky fellow, you saw my wife more recently than I did myself. Josephine is beautiful, is she not? No young girl can boast of more freshness, more grace, innocence, and loveliness. Whenever I am with her, I feel as contented, as happy and tranquil as a man who, on a very warm day, is reposing in the shade of a splendid myrtle-tree, and whenever I am far from her--"
Bonaparte paused, and a slight blush stole over his face. The young lover of twenty-eight had triumphed for a moment over the stern, calculating general, and the general was ashamed of it.
"This is no time to think of such things," he said, almost indignantly. "Seal the letters now, and dispatch a messenger to Paris. Ah, Paris! Would to God I were again there in my little house in the Rue Chantereine, alone and happy with Josephine! But in order to get there, I must first make peace here--peace with Austria, with the Emperor of Germany. Ah, I am afraid Germany will not be much elated by this treaty of peace which her emperor is going to conclude, and by which she may lose some of her most splendid fortresses on the Rhine."
"And the Republic of Venice, general?"
"The Republic of Venice is about to disappear," exclaimed Bonaparte, frowning. "Venice has rendered herself unworthy of the name of a republic--she is about to disappear."
"General, the delegates of the republic were all day yesterday in your anteroom, vainly waiting for an audience."
"They will have to wait to-day likewise until I return from the conference which is to decide about war or peace. In either case, woe unto the Venetians! Tell them, Bourrienne, to wait until I return. And now, my carriage. I cannot let the Austrian plenipotentiaries wait any longer for my ultimatum."
