The famous letters
Here are some paragraphs of the famous letters Napoleon sent to his newly wed bride from the Italy campaign:
"I have felt sad ever since leaving you," he wrote her on July 17, 1796. "All my happiness is in being near you. I keep remembering, over and over, your kisses, your tears, your charming jealousy; and the beauties of the incomparable Joséphine constantly light a bright and burning flame in my heart and in my desire.... A few days ago, I thought that I loved you: but, since seeing you, I have felt that I love you a thousand times more still!.... Ah! I beg you, let me see a few of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less kind above all." "I have not had a letter from you for two days.... Why, you wicked, ugly, tyrannical, pretty little monster! You laugh at my menaces, at my silliness. Ah! if only I could lock you up in my heart ... I would keep you imprisoned there."
Your letters are as cold as if you were fifty," he told her on October 17, "they look like a fifteen year old marriage. One sees there friendship and the other feelings of that winter of life. What, Joséphine! That is very cruel, very wicked, very treacherous of you! What more can you do to make me thoroughly miserable? Stop loving me? But you've already done that. Start hating me? Well, I wish you would, everything is humiliating except hatred; but Indifference, with its steady pulse, its unwavering eye, its monotonous pace! ... A thousand, thousand kisses as loving as my heart."
I don't love you at all any more; on the contrary, I hate you. You are wicked, clumsy, stupid and plain. You never write me, you don't love your husband."