--I
understand your need--but I do not understand that vanity----"
"Oh, what a kind and perfect wife you are!" cried he. "I am an old
lunatic, I do not deserve to have such a wife!"
"I am simply the Josephine of my Napoleon," she replied, with a touch
of melancholy.
"Josephine was not to compare with you!" said he. "Come; I will play a
game of whist with my brother and the children. I must try my hand at
the business of a family man; I must get Hortense a husband, and bury
the libertine."
His frankness so greatly touched poor Adeline, that she said:
"The creature has no taste to prefer any man in the world to my
Hector. Oh, I would not give you up for all the gold on earth. How can
any woman throw you over who is so happy as to be loved by you?"
The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife's fanaticism confirmed
her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were a woman's
strongest weapons.
But in this she was mistaken. The noblest sentiments, carried to an
excess, can produce mischief as great as do the worst vices. Bonaparte
was made Emperor for having fired on the people, at a stone's throw
from the spot where Louis XVI. lost his throne and his head because he
would not allow a certain Monsieur Sauce to be hurt.
On the following morning, Hortense, who had slept with the seal under
her pillow, so as to have it close to her all night, dressed very
early, and sent to beg her father to join her in the garden as soon as
he should be down.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124