My conscience approved what I had done, for no sordid motive and nothing but the love of my country had prompted me; but now, as I walked round behind Napoleon, I felt humiliated and ashamed, like a prisoner led behind the car of his captor.
And soon there was something else to make me ashamed, and that was the conduct of him whose servant I had become.

His manners were outrageous.
As he had himself said, it was his nature to be always first, and this being so he resented those courtesies and gallantries by which men are accustomed to disguise from women the fact that they are the weaker sex.
The Emperor, unlike Louis XIV., felt that even a temporary and conventional attitude of humility towards a woman was too great a condescension from his own absolute supremacy.

Chivalry was among those conditions of society which he refused to accept.
To the soldiers he was amiable enough, with a nod and a joke for each of them.

To his sisters also he said a few words, though rather in the tone of a drill sergeant to a pair of recruits.

It was only when the Empress had joined him that his ill-humour came to a head.
'I wish you would not wear those wisps of pink about your head, Josephine,' said he, pettishly.