pinches of snuff, disputed eagerly. The child was the eldest son of Hortense, and the distributor of snuff was Napoleon, who had earned the name of "Uncle Bibiche" by the pleasure that he took in setting the boy on the back of one of the gazelles and walking him about, to the intense joy of the child, who was carefully held on by his uncle. The child, it appears, was charming, and, moreover, possessed a great admiration for his uncle. When he passed in front of the grenadiers in the Tuileries gardens, the boy would call out: "Long live grandpapa, the soldier!" "It used to be," says Mademoiselle Avrillon, "a real holiday for the Emperor when Queen Hortense came to see her mother, bringing her two children. Napoleon would take them in his arms, caress them, often tease them, and burst into laughter, as if he had been their own age, when, according to his custom, he had smeared their faces with cream or jam."
Finally, there were plenty of things to show that ordinarily he was kind and considerate to Josephine. Napoleon himself said: "If I found no pleasures in my home life, I should be too miserable." "Once the quarrels of the first years were over," says Thibaudeau, "it was on the whole a happy household."
"The Emperor," says Mademoiselle Avrillon, "was, in reality, one of the best husbands I have ever known. When the Empress was poorly, he passed near her every hour that he could spare from his
