When news came to Josephine that her husband had landed at Fréjus, and would shortly be with her, she was in a state bordering on panic. She shrank from facing his anger; from the revelation of debts and unwifely conduct which was inevitable. Her all was at stake and the game was more than half lost. In her desperation she took her courage in both hands and set forth, as fast as horses could take her, to meet Napoleon, that she might at least have the first word with him; but as ill-luck would have it, he travelled by a different route and she missed him. On her return to Paris she found the door of Napoleon's room barred against her. "After repeated knocking in vain," says M. Masson, "she sank on her knees sobbing aloud. Still the door remained closed. For a whole day the scene was prolonged, without any sign from within. Worn out at last, Josephine was about to retire in despair, when her maid fetched her children. Eugène and Hortense, kneeling beside their mother, mingled their supplications with hers. At last the door was opened; speechless, tears streaming down his cheeks, his face convulsed with the struggle that had rent his heart, Bonaparte appeared, holding out his arms to his wife." Such was the meeting of the unfaithful Josephine and the husband who had vowed that he would no longer call her wife. The reconciliation was complete; for Napoleon was no man of half-measures. He frankly forgave the weeping woman all her sins against him; and with generous hand removed the mountain of debt her extravagance had heaped up--debts amounting to more than two million francs, one million two hundred thousand of which she owed to tradespeople alone. But Napoleon's passion for his wife, of whose beauty few traces now remained, was dead. His loyalty only remained; and this, in turn, was to be swept away by the tide of his ambition. A few years later Josephine was crowned Empress by her husband, and consecrated by the Pope, after a priest had given the sanction of the Church to her incomplete nuptials. She had now reached the dazzling zenith of her career. At the Tuileries, at St Cloud, and at Malmaison, she held her splendid Courts as Empress. She had the most magnificent crown jewels in the world; and at Malmaison she spent her happiest hours in spreading her gems out on the table before her, and feasting her eyes on their many-hued fires. Her wardrobes were full of the daintiest and costliest gowns of which, we are told, more than two hundred were summer-dresses of percale and of muslin, costing from one thousand to two thousand francs each.