When people as little scrupulous as Josephine herself reproved her, it can be imagined what the effect would be on the Bonaparte family, most of whom were now established in or near Paris. They had never cared for Josephine, and never had had much to do with her. Lucien and Joseph were the only members of the family who had seen her before her marriage to Napoleon, and to all of them the marriage came as a shock, Bonaparte not having announced it even to his mother. They looked upon her as an interloper—one who might deprive them of some of the rewards of Bonaparte’s genius: these rewards the entire family seem to have felt from the first belonged to them and to them alone. No one of them had had, until this winter, much opportunity to study Josephine. They were irritated to find her so evidently a woman of higher rank than themselves; they were disgusted at her extravagance and indiscretion. Josephine, on her side, took little trouble to win them. After all, they were only Corsicans, and not amusing like Napoleon. No doubt, she felt a little towards them as Alexander de Beauharnais had felt towards her when she first arrived in Paris—an untrained little islander, the province speaking in every gesture. To Josephine’s credit, let it be said, she never was guilty of trying to undermine the place of his family in her husband’s affections; she never opposed their advancement; she always, to the best of her ability, aided Napoleon in any plans he had for them. It is much more than can be said of the Bonapartes’ attitude towards the Beauharnais. Shocking to the Bonapartes as were Josephine’s flirtations, they looked on her extravagance with even more horror. To Madame Bonaparte, especially, it was an unforgivable sin; and, in fact, extravagance could scarcely have gone farther. Bonaparte was not rich. Indeed he prided himself on having returned from Italy poor. But he had left a fair income in his brother Joseph’s hands—a part of which was to go to Josephine. She, in utter disregard of the amount of this income, lived in luxury, entertaining royally, and buying prodigally everything that pleased her fancy. To meet her pressing demands, she borrowed right and left. Finally, in the summer of 1799, she purchased Malmaison, a country seat at which she and Napoleon had looked before he left for Egypt. The purchasing price was about $50,000, and she had to borrow $3,000 for the advance payment. She went immediately to the place, running in debt for repairs and furnishings.