beautiful Josephine away from him. He had builded an Empire for an
opera bouffe people, and he was resolved to maintain it at any cost.

In March, 1810, Bonaparte, having in his anxiety to spare the
feelings of the divorced Josephine, wooed Marie-Louise by proxy in
the person of Marshal Berthier, met his new fiancee at Soissons.

"It is three months since we lost our beloved Josephine," he said to
Fouche, with tears in his voice, "but the wound is beginning to heal.
We fear we shall never love again, but for the sake of the Empire we
will now begin to take notice once more. We will meet our bride-
elect at Soissons, and escort her to Paris ourself."

This was done, and on the 2nd of April, 1810, Marie-Louise became
Empress of France. Josephine, meanwhile, had retired to Malmaison
with alimony of 3,000,000 francs.

Fouche was delighted; Paris was provided with conversation enough for
a year in any event, and Bonaparte found it possible to relax a
little in his efforts to inspire interest. His main anxiety in the
ensuing year was as to his family affairs. His brothers did not turn
out so highly successful as professional kings as he had hoped, and
it became necessary to depose Louis the King of Holland and place him
under arrest. Joseph, too, desired to resign the Spanish throne,
which he had found to be far from comfortable, and there was much
else to restore Bonaparte's early proneness to irritability; nor was
his lot rendered any more happy by Marie-Louise's expressed
determination not to go to tea with Josephine at Malmaison on Sunday
nights, as the Emperor wished her to do.