“Of woman came the beginning of sin, and through her therefore we all die,” said the ungallant author of Ecclesiasticus; and it is certain that Napoleon was extremely susceptible to feminine charms. Like a Roman emperor, he had but to cast a glance at a woman and she was at his feet. Yet probably his life was not very much less moral than was customary among the great at that time. When we remember his extraordinary personal charm, it is rather a matter for wonder that women seem to have had so little serious effect upon his life, and he seems to have taken comparatively little advantage of his opportunities. His first wife, Josephine Beauharnais, was a flighty Creole who pleased herself entirely; in the vulgar phrase, she “took her pleasure where she found it.” To this Napoleon appears to have been complaisant, but as she could not produce an heir to the dynasty which he wished to found, he divorced her, and married the Austrian princess Marie Louise, whose father he had defeated and humiliated as few sovereigns have ever been humiliated. She deserted him without a qualm when he was sent to Elba; when he was finally imprisoned at St. Helena there was no question of her following him, even if the British Government had had sufficient imagination to permit such a thing. Napoleon, who was fond of her, wanted her to go with him; but one could not expect a Government containing Castlereagh, Liverpool, and Bathurst, to show any sympathy to the fallen foe who had been a nightmare to Europe for twenty years. She would never consent to see Josephine. It is said that Napoleon’s _libido sexualis_ was violent, but rapidly quelled. In conversation at St. Helena he admitted having possessed seven mistresses; of them he said simply, “C’est beaucoup.” When he was sent to St. Helena his mother wrote and asked to be allowed to follow him; however great a man’s fall, his mother never deserts him, and asylum doctors find that long after the wife or sisters forget some demented and bestial creature, his mother loyally continues her visits till the grave closes over one or the other. But more remarkable is the fact that Pauline Bonaparte, who was always looked upon as a shameless hussy, would have followed him to St. Helena, only that she was ill in bed at the time. She was the beautiful sister who sat to Canova for the statue of Venus in the Villa Borghese. It was then thought most shocking for a lady of high degree to be sculptured as a nude Venus--perhaps it is now; I say, _perhaps_. There are few ladies of high degree so beautiful as Princess Pauline, as Canova shows her. A friend said to her about the statue, “Were you not uncomfortable, princess, sitting there without any clothes on?” “Uncomfortable,” said Princess Pauline, “why should I be uncomfortable? There was a stove in the room!” There are many other still less creditable stories told about her. It was poor beautiful Pauline who lost her husband of yellow