Then came complaints, some tenderly pleading, others passionately bitter, of her cruelly rare and meagre replies.

The sad truth, that Josephine cares much for his fame and little for him himself, that she delays coming to Italy, these and other afflicting details rend his heart.

At last she comes to Milan, after a passionate outburst of weeping--at leaving her beloved Paris.

In Italy she shows herself scarcely more than affectionate to her doting spouse.

Marlborough's letters to his peevish duchess during the Blenheim campaign are not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of the fierce scourge of the Austrians to his heartless fair.