He raised his head and pulled over a fresh sheet of paper. He opened an inkwell, dipped his pen and wrote the opening words of a new letter, words that he had written a hundred times before, but which still gave him a small thrill when he saw them in his own hand on the page.

Dear Josephine.

He still marvelled that she had consented to be his wife, and the familiar longing to lie in her arms once again fired the passion in his veins. He readied his pen, wanting to burst into the flow of impassioned words that poured from him in a torrent whenever he wrote to Josephine. But tonight the words did not come. His mind was too weary and too occupied with the demands made upon him as commander of the Army of Italy. Napoleon sat for a moment, pen poised, wanting to unburden himself of all the concerns that weighed down on him. The Directory’s criminal neglect of his soldiers; uniforms in tatters, boots worn to shreds and bellies frequently empty, and the men were still owed several months’ pay. Then there was the need to close with the Austrian army and destroy them, but Napoleon was constantly frustrated by the enemy’s refusal to stand and fight. And Napoleon still had to deal with the prospect of dividing his army with Kellermann. If Barras and the other Directors stood by their decision then Napoleon would be removed from the public’s gaze. The Army of Italy would certainly lose the initiative in the war against Austria as the two generals struggled to co-ordinate their separate, weaker forces against an enemy who already outnumbered them even before a wave of fresh troops was added to its strength. He desperately wanted to confide all this to Josephine, and yet he dared not. All of his soldier’s troubles would surely seem arcane and dull to someone who moved in the most exclusive circles in Paris. He feared she would find him boring.The only words which he felt confident of pleasing her with were words of love.

Josephine.

She was truly the first woman he had loved. To be sure, there had been women before her.Those who had satisfied his physical yearnings, or had been objects for his youthful veneration when, like all young men, he had desperately needed to practise his love, and be loved in turn by someone whose affection was not bound to him by family ties.With Josephine he had learned to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh without shame or embarrassment. So it had been easy to surrender to the flood of feelings: passion, loneliness, hope, anticipation and sometimes even jealousy when he received a rare letter from her in which she expressed even the slightest affection for another man. And from such feelings the words formed readily, written down as fast as his pen could manage, raw and intense.