short a time.... With respect to Merry, he appears so reasonable and good a man that I should be sorry to lose him as long as there remains a possibility of reclaiming him to the exercise of his own dispositions. If his wife perseveres she must eat her soup at home, and we shall endeavor to draw him into society as if she did not exist.” Of all American hospitality none was so justly famous as that of Virginia. In this State there was probably not a white man, or even a negro slave, but would have resented the charge that he was capable of asking a stranger, a foreigner, a woman, under his roof, with the knowledge that he was about to inflict what the guest would feel as a humiliation. Still less would he have selected his guest’s only enemy, and urged him to be present for the purpose of witnessing the slight. Reasons of state sometimes gave occasion for such practices, but under the most favorable conditions the tactics were unsafe. Napoleon in the height of his power insulted queens, browbeat ambassadors, trampled on his ministers, and made his wife and servants tremble; but although these manners could at his slightest hint be imitated by a million soldiers, until Europe, from Cadiz to Moscow, cowered under his multiplied brutality, the insults and outrages recoiled upon him in the end. Jefferson could not afford to adopt Napoleonic habits. His soldiers were three thousand in number, and his own training had not been that of a successful general; he had seven frigates, and was eager to lay them up in a single dry-dock. Peace was his passion. To complicate this civil war in the little society of Washington, Jerome Bonaparte appeared there, and brought with him his young wife, Elizabeth Patterson, of Baltimore. Jerome married this beautiful girl against the remonstrances of Pichon; but after the marriage took place, not only Pichon, but also Yrujo and Jefferson, showed proper attention to the First Consul’s brother, who had selected for his wife a niece of the Secretary of the Navy, and of so influential a senator as General Smith. Yet nothing irritated Napoleon more than Jerome’s marriage. In some respects it was even more objectionable to him than that of Lucien, which gave rise to a family feud. Pichon suspected what would be the First Consul’s feelings, and wrote letter after letter to clear himself of blame. In doing so he could not but excite Napoleon’s anger against American society, and especially against the family of his new sister-in-law.