One day a handsome boy came to him, craving permission to retain the sword his father had won, a favour which the General, pleased by the boy’s frankness and manliness, granted.  The next day the young rebel’s mother presented herself to thank him with gracious words for his kindness to her son—­a creature of another world than his, with a beauty, grace and refinement which were a new revelation to his bourgeois eyes.

The fair vision haunted him; the music of her voice lingered in his ears.  He must see her again.  And, before another day had passed, we find the pale-faced, grim Corsican, with the burning eyes, sitting awkwardly on a horse-hair chair of Madame’s dining-room in her small house in the Rue Chantereine, nervously awaiting the entry of the Vicomtesse who had already played such havoc with his peace of mind.  And when at last she made her appearance, few would have recognised in the man, who made his shy, awkward bow, the famous General with whose name the whole of France was ringing.

It was little wonder, perhaps, that the little Corsican’s heart went pit-a-pat, or that his knees trembled under him, for the lady whose smile and the touch of whose hand sent a thrill through him, was indeed, to quote his own words, “beautiful as a dream.”  From the chestnut hair which rippled over her small, proudly poised head to the arch of her tiny, dainty feet, “made for homage and for kisses,” she was, “all glorious without.”  There was witchery in every part of her—­in the rich colour that mantled in her cheeks; the sweet brown eyes that looked out between long-fringed eyelids; the small, delicate nose; “the nostrils quivering at the least emotion”; the exquisite lines of the tall, supple figure, instinct with grace in every moment; and, above all, in the seductive music of a voice, every note of which was a caress.

Sixteen years earlier, Josephine had come from Martinique to Paris as bride of the Vicomte de Beauharnais, with whom she had led a more or less unhappy life, until the guillotine of the Revolution left her a widow, with two children and an empty purse.  But even this crowning calamity was powerless to crush the sunny-hearted Creole, who merely laughed at the load of debts which piled themselves up around her.  A little of the wreckage of her husband’s fortune had been rescued for her by influential friends; but this had disappeared long before Napoleon crossed her path.  And at last the light-hearted widow realised that if she had a card left to play, she must play it quickly.

Here then was her opportunity.  The little General was obviously a slave at her feet; he was already a great man, destined to be still greater; and if he was bourgeois to his coarse finger-tips, he could at least serve as a stepping-stone to raise her from poverty and obscurity.