Napleon shrugged. ‘I have done the man an injustice. I will not compound it with murder. So you must divorce him. I will see that the procedure is as swift as possible.Then I will move you into quarters next to mine, and settle an allowance on you.You will live well enough, Pauline.’

‘And when you tire of me? What then? I shall be alone, with no family, no honour.What do you imagine will become of me?’

‘Pauline, how could I grow tired of you?’ Napoleon reached over to her back again and continued his caresses where he had left off, running the tips of his fingers over her buttocks and letting them slide down into the cleavage. She shut her eyes and moaned, pushing back against his touch. He leaned over her, easing her auburn tresses aside so that he could kiss the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, yes . . . Like that.’

He eased Pauline on to her back and entered her gently.

‘My love,’ she muttered. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course,’ Napoleon said. ‘Now that’s enough talk. More than enough. We can talk later. Much later.’

Pauline’s divorce was rushed through with what would have seemed indecent haste back in Paris, but the world of the army was less demanding in its values and barely noticed the legal formality. Except for Eugène, who served on Napoleon’s staff and for a while regarded his stepfather with frosty disdain every time they had occasion to confer. Much as he liked the young man, Napoleon felt no compulsion to try to hide his relationship with Pauline. Not after suffering the hurt and humiliation he had endured at the hands of Eugène’s mother.

Pauline continued to affect her taste for military clothing and wore the uniform of a general when she accompanied Napoleon on his tours of the province. Lieutenant Fourès accepted the situation with good grace, as a man must when he has lost out to an officer of such lofty rank with the status of a national hero. He quietly returned to his regiment where his fellow officers and his men regarded him with shaming pity until he could take it no longer. One morning he took a horse and rode into the desert, and neither man nor horse was ever seen again.

In the new year the resistance to the French occupiers increased in both scale and ferocity, despite the measures that Napoleon had taken to win over the fellahin as well as their religious and political leaders in the towns and cities.

‘Nothing we do makes a difference,’ Napoleon complained bitterly to his staff at one of his weekly briefings. ‘Now they attack us almost every day.’

Berthier coughed. ‘With respect, sir, the peasants are not involved in the resistance. It’s mostly what’s left of the Mameluke forces and the Bedouin, raiding from the desert.’