The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis XVIII.) had written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with emotion, and, with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had conjured her husband to, at least, give the brother of the beheaded king a mild and considerate answer. Yes, she had even ventured to beseech Bonaparte to comply with the request that Louis had made, and give him back the throne of his ancestors. But Bonaparte had laughed at this suggestion, as he would at some childish joke; for it had never entered into his head that any one could seriously ask him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot of a throne, which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom France had banished forever, should ascend. Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and Egypt--would not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing precious time. _We_ can secure the glory of France; I say _we_, because I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot complete it without me." But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but "I," and to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille: "You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a grateful acknowledgment." Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position, and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself. Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to command admiration. "You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion. Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him not to make himself king[12]." [Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.] But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.