Clever little scene. I would imagine Nappy is not the one of whom Josephine speaks, and now I sense Napolean, with what will surely become his customary military flair, will strike where least expected, using deception and misdirection, and achieve his eventual object. Of course, even Napolean got surprised now and then...
The piece begins nice and quiet, nothing much happening, very much like Napolean himself at that point. And then it all changes, like the first light of dawn preceding a sunrise. The progression of the piece is thus simple, but effective. Napolean goes from being listless and at odd ends, to being focused and energised. And he has found out that one crucial piece of information - her name.
What follows now is a rather more in depth critique, that I hope you do not mind.
Where I would nitpick a little with this piece is the repetition of certain words - in particular the "woman/women", and to a lesser degree "lady/ladies". Let me demonstrate, I will quote the whole third paragraph and embolden where woman/women occurs:
Probing the room silently for any sign of the woman, whose name was still a mystery to Napoleone, he felt a pang of loneliness. However, a sense of glee soon spilled into Napoleone’s veins, for he spotted his amore among a group of women. Approaching the gaggle of Parisian women, all of them far above his class, Napoleone began to sweat. Daring not to intrude upon the ladies, yet desiring to know the name of the woman who had captured his attention, he stood near the group. Trying to seem occupied with some trivial task, the young man eavesdropped upon the women.
That's the same word used five times in, what is accordingt to a Word wordcount, 102 words. That is alot. This sort of reptitiveness is a literary equivalent of being hit over the head repeatedly by a large stick. Sometimes it gets where you want, but most often the resulting 'headache' becomes more noticeable than whatever point you are trying to make.
You will note that I also underlined the word "amour", and this is because here you used a substitute word where you might have also written 'woman' - and the result is a far stronger phrase. It is the sort of thing I would advise you to try and do more often. However, you could also edit out at least one instance here, because the repeated word-use is not really necessary for meaning. To try and demonstrate what I mean I will now re-write that segment a little, and I hope that will show what I am trying to say.
Probing the room silently for any sign of her, whose name was still a mystery to Napoleone, he felt a pang of loneliness. However, a sense of glee soon spilled into Napoleone’s veins, for he spotted his amore among a group of women,[...] all of them far above his class. As he approached them Napoleone began to sweat. Daring not to intrude upon the ladies, yet desiring to know the name of the one who had captured his attention, he stood near the group. Trying to seem occupied with some trivial task, the young man eavesdropped[...]
Partly what I have done here is use pronouns. That is possible because in the second paragraph you clearly established who 'her' is, and likewise who 'the one' is. The other reason I prefer these words (along with amour) compared to 'woman' is that they better illustrate Napolean's feelings for her. At one part I simply shifted one phrase from one sentence to another, and avoided one use entirely, where I put the [...], and simply dropped the final usage entirely. This sort of editing helps give the writing a sharper feel, and also helps it read more smoothly.
I hope the above is helpful. As I said, it is a good scene, and please don't feel discouraged by my rather pedestrian nitpick.
