Even when flushed with the surrender of Piedmont after a fortnight's brilliant fighting, in which he had won half a dozen battles and reaped twenty-one standards, he would have bartered all his laurels for a sight of the woman he loved so passionately. But while he was thus yearning for her in distant Italy, Madame was much too happy in her beloved Paris to lend an ear to his pleadings. As wife of the great Napoleon she was a veritable Queen, fawned on and flattered by all the great ones in the capital. Hers was the place of honour at every fête and banquet; the banners her husband had captured were presented to her amid a tumult of acclamation; when she entered a theatre the entire house rose to greet her with cheers. She was thus in no mood to leave her Queendom for the arms of her husband, whose unattractive person and clumsy ardour only repelled her. When his letters calling her to him became more and more imperative, she could no longer ignore them. But she could, at least, invent an excellent excuse for her tarrying. She wrote to tell him that she was expecting to become a mother. This at least would put a stop to his importunity. And it did. Napoleon was full of delight--and self-reproach at the joyful news. "Forgive me, my beloved," he wrote. "How can I ever atone? You were ill and I accused you of lingering in Paris. My love robs me of my reason, and I shall never regain it.... A child, sweet as its mother, is soon to lie in your arms. Oh! that I could be with you, even if only for one day!" To his brother Joseph he writes in a similar strain: "The thought of her illness drives me mad. I long to see her, to hold her in my arms. I love her so madly, I cannot live without her. If she were to die, I should have absolutely nothing left to live for." When, however, he learns that Madame's illness is not sufficient to interfere with her Paris gaieties, a different mood seizes him. Jealousy and anger take the place of anxious sympathy. He insists that she shall join him--threatens to resign his command if she refuses. Josephine no longer dares to keep up her deception. She must obey. And thus, in a flood of angry tears, we see her starting on her long journey to Italy, in company with her dog, her maid, and a brilliant escort of officers. Arrived at Milan, she was welcomed by Napoleon with open arms; but "after two days of rapture and caresses," he was face to face with the great crisis of Castiglione. His army was in imminent danger of annihilation; his own fate and fortune trembled in the balance. Nothing short of a miracle could save him; and on the third day of his new honeymoon he was back again in the field at grips with fate.