“My life is a perpetual nightmare. A black presentiment makes breathing difficult. I am no longer alive; I have lost more than life, more than happiness, more than peace; I am almost without hope. I am sending you a courier. He will stay only four hours in Paris, and then will bring me your answer. Write to me ten pages; that is the only thing that can console me in the least. You are ill; you love me; I have distressed you; you are with child; and I do not see you.... I have treated you so ill that I do not know how to set myself right in your eyes. I have been blaming you for staying in Paris, and you have been ill there. Forgive me, my dear; the love with which you have filled me has robbed me of my reason, and I shall never recover it. It is a malady from which there is no recovery. My forebodings are so gloomy that all I ask is to see you, to hold you in my arms for two hours, and that we may die together. Who is taking care of you? I suppose that you have sent for Hortense; I love the dear child a thousand times better since I think that she may console you a little. As for me, I am without consolation, rest, and hope until I see again the messenger whom I am sending to you, and until you explain to me in a long letter just what is the matter with you, and how serious it is. If there were any danger, I warn you that I should start at once for Paris.... You! you!—and the rest of the world will not exist for me any more than if it had been annihilated. I care for honor because you care for it; for victory, because it brings you pleasure; otherwise, I should abandon everything to throw myself at your feet.” After this letter Josephine consented to go to Italy, but she left Paris weeping as if going to her execution. Once at Milan, where she held almost a court, she recovered her gaiety, and the two were very happy for a time. But it did not last. Napoleon, obliged to be on the march, would implore Josephine to come to him here and there, and once she narrowly escaped with her life when trying to get away from the army. Wherever she was installed she had a circle of adorers about her, and as a result she neglected writing to her husband. Reproaches and entreaties filled his letters. He begged her for only a line, and he implored her that she be less cold. “Your letters are as cold as fifty years of age; one would think they had been written after we had been married fifteen years. They are full of the friendliness and feelings of life’s winter,... What more can you do to distress me? Stop loving me? That you have already done. Hate me? Well, I wish you would; everything degrades me except hatred; but indifference, with a calm pulse, fixed eyes, monotonous walk!... A thousand kisses, tender, like my heart.”