When his letters calling her to him became more and more imperative, she could no longer ignore them.  But she could, at least, invent an excellent excuse for her tarrying.  She wrote to tell him that she was expecting to become a mother.  This at least would put a stop to his importunity.  And it did.  Napoleon was full of delight—­and self-reproach at the joyful news.  “Forgive me, my beloved,” he wrote.  “How can I ever atone?  You were ill and I accused you of lingering in Paris.  My love robs me of my reason, and I shall never regain it....  A child, sweet as its mother, is soon to lie in your arms.  Oh! that I could be with you, even if only for one day!”

To his brother Joseph he writes in a similar strain:  “The thought of her illness drives me mad.  I long to see her, to hold her in my arms.  I love her so madly, I cannot live without her.  If she were to die, I should have absolutely nothing left to live for.”

When, however, he learns that Madame’s illness is not sufficient to interfere with her Paris gaieties, a different mood seizes him.  Jealousy and anger take the place of anxious sympathy.  He insists that she shall join him—­threatens to resign his command if she refuses.  Josephine no longer dares to keep up her deception.  She must obey.  And thus, in a flood of angry tears, we see her starting on her long journey to Italy, in company with her dog, her maid, and a brilliant escort of officers.  Arrived at Milan, she was welcomed by Napoleon with open arms; but “after two days of rapture and caresses,” he was face to face with the great crisis of Castiglione.  His army was in imminent danger of annihilation; his own fate and fortune trembled in the balance.  Nothing short of a miracle could save him; and on the third day of his new honeymoon he was back again in the field at grips with fate.

But even at this supreme crisis he found time to write daily letters to the dear one who was awaiting the issue in Milan, begging her to share his life.  “Your tears,” he writes, “drive me to distraction; they set my blood on fire.  Come to me here, that at least we may be able to say before we die we had so many days of happiness.”  Thus he pleads in letter after letter until Josephine, for very shame, is forced to yield, and to return to her husband, who, as Masson tells us, “was all day at her feet as before some divinity.”

Such days of bliss were, however, few and far between for the man who was now in the throes of a Titanic struggle, on the issue of which his fortunes and those of France hung.  But when duty took him into danger where his lady could not follow, she found ample solace.  Monsieur Charles, Leclerc’s adjutant, was all the cavalier she needed—­an Adonis for beauty, a Hercules for strength, the handsomest soldier in Napoleon’s army, a past-master in all the arts of love-making.  There was no dull moment for Josephine with such a squire at her elbow to pour flatteries into her ears and to entertain her with his clever tongue.