This touching letter, from which we have only quoted a few lines, was probably not received by Bonaparte until after his return to France. And Napoleon returning to Paris found Josephine absent, for she had started to meet him in wild impatience to welcome him; but missing him on the road, he arrived home first and found his house deserted: but his mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law, and in short every member of his family, except Louis, who had attended Madame Bonaparte to Lyons, came to him immediately, and insinuated the basest scandals about his devoted wife, who was only absent because she had flown to meet him. But the impression made upon him by his deserted home and the false accusations of his family were profound and terrible; and nine years afterwards, when the tie between himself and Josephine was broken, he showed that he had not forgotten that time. From not finding his wife with his family, he inferred that she felt herself unworthy of his presence and feared to meet the man she had wronged; and he considered her journey to Lyons a mere pretence,—so cruelly had these evil slanderers blackened her lovely and devoted character. After the reconciliation which followed, Bonaparte seemed for a time to have forgotten these evil lies; but his family were intensely chagrined. Madame Pauline Le Clerc was most vexed at the pardon which Napoleon had granted his wife. Bonaparte’s mother was also very ill-pleased, for she had never liked Josephine. Madame Bacchiocchi gave free vent to her ill-humor and disdain, and Bonaparte’s brothers were at open war with Josephine. No wonder that with such a host of evil-minded, envious relations, poor Josephine was most terribly maligned! Bonaparte’s brothers, desirous of obtaining entire dominion over Napoleon, strenuously endeavored to lessen the influence which Josephine possessed over him. Napoleon would probably have adhered to his first idea of adopting Eugène de Beauharnais as his successor, had it not been for his own family, all eager for wealth and honors, all jealous of any favors shown to Josephine or her children, all of them constantly urging a divorce. “Divorce her at once,” Joseph Bonaparte exclaimed; “you are not married to her. The woman may die, and it will then be said you have poisoned her,—that you found it to your interest to do so.” Napoleon was staggered at these monstrous suggestions. His countenance became of a deathlike paleness as these terrible insinuations fell upon his ear. After a moment or two of silence he murmured:— “You have forced on me an idea which would never have occurred to me, and with it the possibility of a divorce.” Thus was the evil working, which should end in the cruel blow to Josephine and the downfall of Napoleon. Years elapsed before Napoleon was induced to act upon these suggestions, but the tempters had begun their diabolical work.