Pauline had now reached dizzy heights, undreamed of in the days, only ten short years earlier, when she was coquetting in home-made finery with the young tradesmen of Marseilles.  She was a Princess, bearing the greatest name in all Italy; and to this dignity her gratified brother added that of Princess of Gustalla.  All the world-famous Borghese jewels were hers to deck her beauty with—­a small Golconda of priceless gems; there was gold galore to satisfy her most extravagant whims; and she was still young—­only twenty-five—­and in the very zenith of her loveliness.

Picture, then, the pride with which, one early day of her new bridehood, she drove to the Palace of St Cloud in the gorgeous Borghese State carriage, behind six horses, and with an escort of torch-bearers, to pay a formal call on her sister-in-law, Josephine, Empress-to-be.  She had decked herself in a wonderful creation of green velvet; she was ablaze from head to foot with the Borghese diamonds.  Such a dazzling vision could not fail to fill Josephine with envy—­Josephine, who had hitherto treated her with such haughty patronage.

As she sailed into the salon in all her Queen of Sheba splendour, it was to be greeted by her sister-in-law in a modest dress of muslin, without a solitary gem to relieve its simplicity; and—­horror!—­to find that the room had been re-decorated in blue by the artful Josephine—­a colour absolutely fatal to her green magnificence!  It was thus a very disgusted Princess who made her early exit from the palace between a double line of bowing flunkeys, masking her anger behind an affectation of ultra-Royal dignity.

Still, Pauline was now a grande dame indeed, who could really afford to patronise even Napoleon’s wife.  Her Court was more splendid than that of Josephine.  She had lovers by the score—­from Blanguini, who composed his most exquisite songs to sing for her ears alone, to Forbin, her artist Chamberlain, whose brushes she inspired in a hundred paintings of her lovely self in as many unconventional guises.  Her caskets of jewels were matched by the most wonderful collection of dresses in France, the richest and daintiest confections, from pearl embroidered ball-gowns which cost twenty thousand francs to the mauve and silver in which she went a-hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau.  At Petit Trianon and in the Faubourg St Honore, she had palaces that were dreams of beauty and luxury.  The only thorn in her bed of roses was, in fact, her husband, the Prince, the very sight of whom was sufficient to spoil a day for her.

When, at Napoleon’s bidding, she accompanied Borghese to his Governorship beyond the Alps, she took in her train seven wagon-loads of finery.  At Turin she held the Court of a Queen, to which the Prince was only admitted on sufferance.  Royal visits, dinners, dances, receptions followed one another in dazzling succession; behind her chair, at dinner or reception, always stood two gigantic negroes, crowned with ostrich plumes.  She was now “sister of the Emperor,” and all the world should know it!