"I would stay if
I could, but I can't, and, on the whole, it is just as well. If I
stayed I should marry you, and that would never do. You cannot
support me, nor I you. We cannot live on cherries, and as yet my
allowance is an ingrowing one--which is to say that it goes from me
to my parent, and not from my parent to me. Therefore, my only love,
farewell. Marry some one else. There are plenty of men who are fond
of cherries before breakfast, and there is no reason why one so
attractive as you should not find a lover."
The unhappy girl was silent for a moment. Then, with an ill-
suppressed sob, she bade him go.
"You are right, Napoleon," she said. "Go. Go where duty calls you,
and if you get tired of Lyons--"
"Yes?" he interrupted, eagerly.
"Try leopards!" she cried, rushing from his embrace into the house.
Bonaparte never forgave this exhibition of flippancy, though many
years after, when he learned that his former love, who had married,
as he had bade her do, and suffered, was face to face with
starvation, it is said, on the authority of one of his ex-valet's
memoirs, that he sent her a box of candied cherries from one of the
most expensive confectionery-shops of Paris.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49