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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Have you read the dispatches which the Directory sent me yesterday through their spy, M. Botot?" asked the general, abruptly. "I have, general!" "They are unreasonable fools," exclaimed Bonaparte, angrily, "they want to direct our war from their comfortable sofas in the Luxembourg, and believe their ink-stained hands could hold the general's baton as well as the pen.
In this letter Charles Botot acknowledged his long-cherished affection for her daughter Hortense, and he claimed her hand in due form. "And you have doubtless accepted his offer?" asked Bonaparte, his face overcast again. "Since, unfortunately, you are married yourself, and he cannot be your husband, then of course he must marry the daughter, so as to be always near the mother.
"This is no invention to raise my hopes, only to be cast down again?" Josephine smiled. "I have daily taken notes of what Charles Botot brought me," said she, gently; "I always hoped to find a safe opportunity to send this diary to you in Egypt, that you might be informed of what the Directory thought, and what was the public opinion, so that you might take your measures accordingly.
"M. Botot could no longer, as he has hitherto been without, however, being conscious of it be my spy in the Directory; I could no longer learn from him what the Directory were undertaking against my Bonaparte, against the hero whom they envy and caluminate so much, nor in what new snares they wished to entangle him!
What had I to do with Botot, since he could not furnish me news of the intrigues of your enemies, nor afford me the chance of counteracting them? Charles Botot was nothing more to me than a mere lemon, which I squeezed for your sake; when there was nothing left in it I threw it away." "And is such the truth?" asked Bonaparte, eagerly.
This occurs in various other trades; for 'Botot water, and for 'Little-Virtue' ink. Names become commercial property in Paris, and have ended by constituting a sort of ensign of nobility. The present Marius, who takes pupils, has created, he says, the leading school of hair-dressing in the world.
He now believed that she had left Paris hurriedly for the sake of meeting him; and, as regarded the dangerous "blond," the private secretary of Barras, M. Charles Botot, Josephine smilingly handed to her husband a letter she had received from him a few days before.
But as long as Charles and Botot were present, I could not do so, for if you had ceased being jealous if, warned by myself, you had treated these two men kindly instead of showing your jealous distrust of them by a hostile and surly demeanor, they might have suspected my game and divined my intrigue, and I would have been unable to avail myself any longer of their services."
Bonaparte dropped his arm, and, evidently ashamed of himself, stepped back several paces. "Then you do not deny your intimate intercourse with Botot and Charles?" "I do not deny that both of them love me, that I know it, and that I have taken advantage of their love. Listen to me, general: I have taken advantage of their love.
People did not deceive me, then, when they told me that you received this spy Botot, whom Barras had sent after me, in order to watch me, every morning in your boudoir that you always sent your maid away as soon as he came, and that your interviews with him frequently lasted for hours?" "That is quite true; I do not deny it," said Josephine, proudly.
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