few days, if you think fit to wait upon me, I shall be at leisure to hear you." Fresh horses were by this time attached to the carriages, and the cavalcade, which like a meteor had burst upon them, like a meteor disappeared. From Lyons, for some unexplained reason, Napoleon turned from the regular route to Paris and took a less frequented road. When Josephine arrived at Lyons, to her utter consternation she found that Napoleon had left the city, several hours before her arrival, and that they had passed each other by different roads. Her anguish was inexpressible. For many months she had not received a line from her idolized husband, all communication having been intercepted by the English cruisers. She knew that many, jealous of her power, had disseminated, far and wide, false reports respecting her conduct. She knew that these, her enemies, would surround Napoleon immediately upon his arrival, and take advantage of her absence to inflame his mind against her. Lyons is 245 miles from Paris. Josephine had passed over those weary leagues of hill and dale, pressing on without intermission, by day and by night, alighting not for refreshment or repose. Faint, exhausted, and her heart sinking within her with fearful apprehensions of the hopeless alienation of her husband, she received the dreadful tidings that she had missed him. There was no resource left her but to retrace her steps with the utmost possible celerity. Napoleon would, however, have been one or two days in Paris before Josephine could, by any possibility, re-enter the city. Probably in all France, there was not, at that time, a more unhappy woman than Josephine. Secret wretchedness was also gnawing at the heart of Napoleon. Who has yet fathomed the mystery of human love? Intensest love and intensest hate can, at the same moment, intertwine their fibres in inextricable blending. In nothing is the will so impotent as in guiding or checking the impulses of this omnipotent passion. Napoleon loved Josephine with that almost superhuman energy which characterized all the movements of his impetuous spirit. The stream did not fret and ripple over a shallow bed, but it was serene in its unfathomable depths. The world contained but two objects for Napoleon, glory and Josephine; glory first, and then, closely following, the more substantial idol.