Of all the sacrifices which the Emperor
ever made to his ambition that of his wife was the one which cost him
the greatest struggle and the keenest regret.
Now as she sat before the fire in the same chair which had so recently
been occupied by the Emperor, I had an opportunity of studying this
person, whose strange fate had raised her from being the daughter of a
lieutenant of artillery to the first position among the women of Europe.
She was six years older than Napoleon, and on this occasion, when I saw
her first, she was in her forty-second year; but at a little distance or
in a discreet light, it was no courtier's flattery to say that she might
very well have passed for thirty. Her tall, elegant figure was girlish
in its supple slimness, and she had an easy and natural grace in every
movement, which she inherited with her tropical West Indian blood. Her
features were delicate, and I have heard that in her youth she was
strikingly beautiful; but, like most Creole women, she had become
_passee_ in early middle age. She had made a brave fight, however--with
art as her ally--against the attacks of time, and her success had been
such that when she sat aloof upon a dais or drove past in a procession,
she might still pass as a lovely woman.
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