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Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era

by L. Mühlbach · English · Gutenberg #12019 · 577,511 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era

Author: L. Mühlbach

Translator: Mrs. Chapman Coleman


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #12019]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN HORTENSE: A LIFE PICTURE OF THE NAPOLEONIC ERA ***

QUEEN HORTENSE

A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era

BY

L. MÜHLBACH

AUTHOR OF PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES, JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,
MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY

CHAPMAN COLEMAN

1910




CONTENTS.


BOOK I.

_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._

CHAPTER

   I.--Days of Childhood.
  II.--The Prophecy.
 III.--Consequences of the Revolution.
  IV.--General Bonaparte.
   V.--The Marriage.
  VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.
 VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.
VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from Egypt.


BOOK II.

_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND._

CHAPTER

   I.--A First Love.
  II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.
 III--Consul and King.
  IV.--The Calumny.
   V.--King or Emperor.
  VI.--Napoleon's Heir.
 VII.--Premonitions.
VIII.--The Divorce.
  IX.--The King of Holland.
   X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.
  XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of Violets.
 XII.--The Days of Misfortune.
XIII.--The Allies in Paris.
 XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and Louise de Cochelet.
  XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor Alexander.
 XVI.--The New Uncles.
XVII.--Death of the Empress Josephine.


BOOK III.

_THE RESTORATION._

CHAPTER

   I.--The Return of the Bourbons.
  II.--The Bourbons and the Bonapartes.
 III.--Madame de Staël.
  IV.--Madame de Staël's Return to Paris.
   V.--Madame de Staël's Visit to Queen Hortense.
  VI.--The Old and New Era.
 VII.--King Louis XVIII.
VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of St. Leu.
  IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his Wife.
   X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.
  XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and Napoleon's Arrival.
 XII.--The Hundred Days.
XIII.--Napoleon's Last Adieu.


BOOK IV.

_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU._

CHAPTER

   I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of St. Leu.
  II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.
 III.--The Revolution of 1830.
  IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense.
   V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.
  VI.--The Flight from Italy.
 VII.--The Pilgrimage.
VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu.
  IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from Paris.
   X.--Pilgrimage through France.
  XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
 XII.--The Pilgrim.
XIII.--Conclusion.




ILLUSTRATIONS.

General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the Sections, _Frontispiece_.

View of the Tuileries.

Portrait of Queen Hortense.

Portrait of Madame de Staël.



QUEEN HORTENSE.

BOOK I.

_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._



CHAPTER I.

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says our
great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss purchased
with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.

And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy? Now,
let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have tasted
felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable
and eternal!"

Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an
emperor to endure.

In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and
with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was
not spared.

A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was
this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended
from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of
life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us
as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen
of Flowers.

The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's beautiful
daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she
was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the
daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued
to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared
to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his
"_Fleurs Animées_." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of the
Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a
half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris. Farther in
the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of
the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot,
but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial
mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the
train of a comet; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the
golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a
full-blooming branch of the crown imperial.

It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming picture of
Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant that sweeps by
us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the
life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her
destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had
seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems
remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.

When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none
the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her poems are
sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of
impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds
of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally
melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, "_Va
t'en, Guerrier_," which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at
Napoleon's request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of
France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same warlike
harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant
destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time
everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had
returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the _Invalides_ hummed it
under their breath, while they whispered secretly to each other of the
glory of _La Belle France_, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now
gone forever.

To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and mounts
in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vendôme. The bronze
visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous
billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the
queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews
of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems,
and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for
France has won so holy a significance--holy because it is the
master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should
revere--the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "_Va t'en,
Guerrier_," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the
queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some
brave soldier.

She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable queen--but she
ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to
woman--the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on
the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken
heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged
lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned
kings and queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs,
banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
those to whom _they_ had been clement, a little spot of earth, where,
far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in
quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty
sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy tale,
which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to men and
nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were
eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.

Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the
mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the contrary, to
teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the
dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these
wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the
broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her
bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but,
even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to
relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a
constant charity; and when she died she could, like the Empress
Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept much, but never have I made
others weep."

Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who, against
the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de
la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love
alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy
issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and
jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the
wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil
bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not
merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and
cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine
was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all
those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her
husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered
in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived,
then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter
grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention
and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet _blasée_ and
hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and
the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part
to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she
required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should
not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose
the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and both
became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love
they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their
children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a
son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy.
Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness; and often
when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the
presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress
from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and
mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive
attachment.

But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment
arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in
her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had
sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and
little Hortense, quite disheartened by the absence of her brother, had
no longer the means or the courage to allay the quarrels that raged
between her parents, but would escape in terror and dismay, when they
broke out, to some lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a
misfortune, the extent of which her poor little childish heart could not
yet estimate.

In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young viscountess
received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame
Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors
of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was
no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and
insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her
with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her
daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the
last few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
dazzling youth.

Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a hint from
destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and resolved to end them
forever, she took her little daughter, Hortense, then scarcely four
years old, and with her sailed away from France, to seek beyond the
ocean and in her mother's arms the new happiness of undisturbed
tranquillity.

But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The mutterings
and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A
subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands; a dull
thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change
into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that would dash to atoms,
and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and fiery cinder-showers, the
happiness and peace of all humanity. And, finally, this terrific crater
did, indeed, open and hurl destruction and death on all sides, over the
whole world, uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations,
and silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
echoes of its awful voice!

This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most fearful
explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole world shook
and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious masses from beneath
overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse the order of things and
place the lowest where the highest had been. Even away in Martinique
this social earthquake was felt, which had already, in France, flung out
the bloody guillotine from its relentless crater. This guillotine had
become the altar of the so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon
this altar the intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new
idol those who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by
whose death they now believed that they could purchase freedom
for evermore.

"_Egalité! fraternité! liberté!_" Such was the battle-cry of this
howling, murdering populace. Such were the three words which burned in
blood-red letters of fire above the guillotine, and their mocking emblem
was the glittering axe, that flashed down, to sever from their bodies
the heads of the aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion
represented in those three words, they would not recognize as brethren
and equals, or admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this
battle-cry of the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as
Martinique, where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience
to the point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They, at
last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their masters, and
the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of the whites served
as the bridal torches to their espousal of liberty.

The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes in which
these firebrands fell.

One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames,
which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror,
she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the
couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped her in the
bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst,
with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting
crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of
mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready
to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the
small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young
woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with
one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the
deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and
child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put
out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.

The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her
child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed
up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this moment all her
thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it was only when she
had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free
from all danger--only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a
mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and
frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering
night-clothes, without any other covering to her beautiful neck and
bosom than her superb, luxuriant hair, which fell around her and partly
hid them, like a thick black veil, stood the young Viscountess
Josephine de Beauharnais, in the midst of a group of gazing men!

However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so soon as
her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine eagerly requested
to be taken back to land, in order that she might fly to her mother's
assistance.

But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to give the
young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins who were
burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells could be
distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast, so far as the
eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea, though, of flame and
smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in long tongues of fire far
against the sky. It was a terrible, an appalling spectacle; and
Josephine fled from it to the bedside of her little sleeping daughter.
Then, kneeling there by the couch of her child, she uplifted to heaven
her face, down which the tears were streaming, and implored God to spare
her mother.

But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and farther
away from this blazing coast.

Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's burning home,
which gradually grew less to her sight, then glimmered only like a tiny
star on the distant horizon, and finally vanished altogether. With that
last ray her childhood and past life had sunk forever in the sea, and a
new world and a new life opened for both mother and child. The past was,
like the ships of Cortez, burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light
far away over into her future, and as Josephine stood there with her
little Hortense in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island
where her early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:

"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all France will
be at your feet. You will be greater there than a queen."



CHAPTER II.

THE PROPHECY.

It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with her little
daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her residence in a
small dwelling. There she soon received the intelligence of the rescue
of her mother, and of the re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In
France, however, the revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the
banner of the Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody
shadow over Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in
the evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at every
door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in every family.
In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all her earlier griefs,
all the insults and humiliations to which she had been subjected by her
husband; the old love revived in her breast, and, as it might well be
that on the morrow death would come knocking at her own door, she wished
to devote the present moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a
reunion with her son.

But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The viscount had
felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an injury, too great an
insult, to be now willing to consent to a reconciliation with his wife.
Sympathizing friends arranged a meeting between them, without, however,
previously informing the viscount of their design. His anger was
therefore great when, on entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in
response to that gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had
so obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in silvery
tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was now powerless
to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his heart, and when the
child, with a winning smile, entreated him to kiss her mamma as he had
kissed her; when he saw the beautiful countenance of Josephine wet with
tears; when he heard his father's voice saying, "My son, reconcile
yourself with my daughter! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not
call her so if she were unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son,
Eugene, gazing at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother's
shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he
stepped forward to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful
greeting of love, Josephine sank on his bosom.

Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united in a
closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to have spent
their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear and cloudless.
But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the black shadow of the
revolution.

Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the new
legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position, in order
to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue. With the rank
of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the North, accompanied
by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread premonition told her that
she would never see the general again, and this premonition did not
deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and insurrection not only raged among
the people of Paris, but also in the army. The aristocrats, who were
given over to the guillotine in Paris, were also regarded with distrust
and hatred in the army, and Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry
on the battle-field of Soissons, had been promoted to the position of
commanding general, was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of
France and of the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to
Paris, and thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
victims of the revolution lay in confinement.

The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached Josephine,
and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf. She mentally
vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her children, or to die
with him. She courageously confronted all dangers, all suspicions, and
was happy when she found him in his prison, where she visited him,
whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.

But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of an
aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.

Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only left
their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all help,
avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two children were
threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger, for the estate of
their parents had been confiscated, and, in the same hour in which
Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances and doors of their
dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left to find a sheltering
roof for themselves. But yet they were not entirely helpless, not quite
friendless, for a friend of Josephine, a Madame Ho1stein, had the
courage to come to the rescue, and take the children into her
own family.

But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in order to
avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who, coming from the
scum of the people, were now the rulers of France. An imprudent word, a
look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon, and render up to the
guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this courageous friend of the two
children. It was in itself a capital crime that she had taken the
children of the accused into her house, and it was therefore necessary
to adopt every means of conciliating the authorities. It was thought
necessary that Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend
the festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was never
required to take an active part in these celebrations. She was not
considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the people; she had
not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a viscount, of an
imprisoned _ci-devant._ Eugene had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and
the son of the viscount was now often seen walking through the streets
in a blouse, carrying a board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.

While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary security,
the future of their parents was growing darker and darker, and not only
the life of the general, but also that of his wife, was now seriously
endangered. Josephine had been removed from the prison of St. Pelagie to
that of the Carmelites, and this brought her a step nearer the scaffold.
But she did not tremble for herself, she thought only of her children
and her husband; she wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she
bribed her jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts
to place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just been
conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited for
further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he already
free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he were free, he
would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead,
his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the
condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.
Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.

The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose
seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the
Marquise de Créqui, the intellectual lady who has often been called the
last marquise of the _ancien régime_, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbé Téxier, who, when the
revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will
you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was
yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his
master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter
full of water and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than
seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.

To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this
day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of
her husband.

In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison
now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an assignat of
fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that
his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as
"dove," and had made all other preparations. A table stood in the middle
of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water,
around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as
near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to
see the better. The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought
from her bed in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and
behind her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their aristocratic
manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly observant of
etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the honor of the
_tabouret_ in the Tuileries, were here accorded the same precedence, and
all possible consideration shown them.

On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her large, dark
eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression, stood the unhappy
Josephine, and, at some distance behind the ladies, the jailer with
his wife.

Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and cried in a
loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"

The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
decanter.

"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look into the
prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"

"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot lies a
young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man, writing on a sheet
of paper that lies on a large book."

"Can you read?"

"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the paper."

"The one who sleeps?"

"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing something on
the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair; now he opens a
little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it; they are assignats,
he counts them and then puts them back in the pocket-book. Now he rises
and walks softly, softly."

"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest noise as
yet, have you?"

"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."

"What do you see now?"

"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be weeping."

"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"

"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in the
pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."

"Of what color is this coat?"

"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk and
covered with shining buttons."

"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed, child."

He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The little
girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her parents, who
led her from the hall.

"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta, addressing
Josephine.

"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing for
death[1]."

[Footnote 1: This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
Créqui, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol. vi.,
p. 238.]

Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received a
package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La Force,
named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General Beauharnais
and had found the package and the letter, addressed to the duchess, in
his pocket on the morning of the execution of the general.

In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver to
Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last adieus to
wife and children.

This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could bequeath
to his Josephine and her unhappy children!

Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and his
last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of blood
gushing from her mouth.

Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her the most
tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a physician should
be called.

"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the best
physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will restore
to him his wife."

This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered from
her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of Terror. This was
the herald of certain death, and she courageously prepared for the
grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children she must leave behind.

A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as there was
no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss which themselves
had digged.

The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty thousands
of the already condemned victims of the revolution.

Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to liberty, and
could now hasten to her children, but she came back to them as a poor
widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible republic" were on hers
and her children's property as well as on that of all other aristocrats.



CHAPTER III.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.

France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an end, and a
milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre over the poor
land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death. It was no longer a
capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to be better dressed than
the _sans-culottes_, to wear no Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the
emigrants. The guillotine, which had ruled over Paris during two years
of blood and tears, now rested from its horrid work, and allowed the
Parisians to think of something else besides making their wills and
preparing for death.

Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were disposed to
make the most of this release from the fear of immediate death, and to
enjoy themselves to the utmost while they could.

They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once more; so
long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently longed for
amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris, who had been
dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the reins had been
torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins again, and reconquer
the position from which the storm-wind of the revolution had
hurled them.

Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five directors who
now swayed the destinies of France; Madame Récamier, the friend of all
the eminent and distinguished men of that period; and Madame de Staël,
the daughter of Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose
government had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris
its drawing-rooms, its reunions, its _fêtes_, its fashions, and its
luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the Church had
not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief in a Supreme
Being was already re-established. Robespierre had already been bold
enough to cause the inscription, "There is a Supreme Being," to be
placed over the altars of the churches that had been converted into
"Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who
had first acknowledged its existence, was soon to experience in himself
that such was the case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by
them with desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the
head of the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell
a prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
existence. While engaged in the Hôtel de Ville in signing
death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the guillotine,
he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards, who had stormed
the gates and penetrated into the building, and the attempt to blow out
his brains with his pistol miscarried. Bleeding, his jaw shattered by
the bullet, he was dragged before Fouquier-Tainville to receive his
sentence, and to be conducted thence to the scaffold. In order that the
proceeding should be attended with all formalities, he was, however,
first conducted to the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety
was then sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the scaffold,
the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged. Like a bundle of
rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large table that stood in the
middle of the room. But yesterday Robespierre had been enthroned at this
table as almighty ruler over the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen;
but yesterday he had here issued his decrees and signed the
death-sentences, that lay on the table, unexecuted. These papers were
now the only salve the ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in
his face, from which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed
by himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate _sans-culotte_, with which to
bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat there in the
midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding, groaning, and
complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched arms, pointing to
this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was right. There is a
Supreme Being!"

This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was dead;
Théroigne de Méricourt was no longer the Goddess of Reason, and
Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of Liberty and Virtue. Women had
given up representing divinities, and desired to be themselves again,
and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms of the capital, by means of their
intellect and grace, the throne which had gone down in the revolution.

Madame Tallien, Madame Récamier, and Madame de Staël, reorganized
society, and all were anxious to obtain admission to their parlors. To
be sure, these entertainments and reunions still wore a sufficiently
strange and fantastic appearance. Fashion, which had so long been
compelled to give way to the _carmagnole_ and red cap, endeavored to
avenge its long banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in
doing so assumed a political, reactionary aspect. _Coiffures à la
Jacobine_ were now supplanted by _coiffures à la victime_ and _au
repentir_. In order to exhibit one's taste for the fine arts, the
draperies of the statues of Greece and ancient Rome were now worn.
Grecian _fêtes_ were given, at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly
honored, and Roman feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled
those of Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now taken
up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the new French
society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud to wear the
generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic, Madame Tallien chose
the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and the gold-embroidered purple
robes, and the golden tiara in her black, shining hair, gave to the
charming and beautiful daughter of the republic the magnificence of an
empress. She had also drawn around her a splendid court. All eagerly
pressed forward to pay their respects to and obtain the good will of the
mighty wife of the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of
attraction to all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or
aspired to such. While in the parlors of Madame Récamier, who, despite
the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the good
time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often sanguinary
_bon mots_ at the expense of the republic uttered--while in Madame de
Staël's parlors art and science had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and
court lived for the present, and basked in the splendor with which she
knew how to invest the palace of the dictators of France.

In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been living,
with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad memories. A day
came, however, when she was compelled to tear herself from this last
consolation of the unhappy, the brooding over the sorrows and losses of
the past, or see her children become the victims of misery and want. The
time had come when she must leave her retirement, and step, as a
petitioner, before those who had the power to grant, as a favor, that
which was hers by right, and restore to her, at least in part, her
sequestered estate. Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was
still Madame de Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might
assist her in her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father.
Madame Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being called
on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished position at the
court of King Louis. She therefore received her with great amiability,
and endeavored to make the charming and beautiful viscountess her
friend. But Josephine found that estates were more easily lost than
recovered. The republic, one and indivisible, was always ready to take,
but not to give; and, even with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien
freely exerted in her behalf, it was some time before Josephine
succeeded in recovering her estate. In the mean time, she really
suffered want, and she and her children were compelled to bear the
hardships and mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true
friends still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with food
and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was characteristic
of this period that no one felt humiliated by accepting benefits of this
kind from his friends. Those who had lost all had not done so through
their own fault; and those who had saved their property out of the
general wreck could not attribute their fortune to their own merit or
wisdom, but merely to chance. They therefore considered it a sacred
duty to divide with those who had been less fortunate; and the latter
would point with pride to the poverty which proved that they had been
true to themselves and principle, and accept what friendship offered.
This was the result of a kind of community of property, to which the
revolution had given birth. Those who had possessions considered it
their duty to divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded
this division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.

Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends without
blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de Montmorin to
provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and she and Hortense
could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to dine with her twice a
week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were assembled, on certain days, a
number of friends, who had been robbed of their fortunes by the storms
of the revolution. Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor,
gave these dinners to her friends, but each guest was expected to bring
with him his own white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered
one of the greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a
law had been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain
amount of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that no
more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and that
amount cost the purchaser dearly[2]. Josephine, however, had not even
the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An exception to this
rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and Hortense; and at
Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always provided white bread for
them, and for them alone of all her guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was
soon, however, to be freed from this want. One day when she had been
invited by Madame Tallien to dinner, and had walked to the palace with
Hortense, Tallien informed her that the government had favorably
considered her petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the
widow of a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with
his blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed from her
furniture and other personal property, and that the republic had
remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury for her relief,
until the sequestration of her landed estates should be annulled, which
he expected would soon take place.

[Footnote 2: Mémoires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
i., p. 80.]

Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She pressed her
daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in tears: "We shall
at last be happy! My children shall no longer suffer want!" This time
the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy, the first in long years.

Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her children an
education suitable to their rank; she could now once more assume the
position in society to which her beauty, youth, amiability, and name
entitled her. She no longer came to Madame Tallien's parlor as a
suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all were eager to do homage to
the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to the beautiful and charming
viscountess. But Josephine preferred the quiet bliss of home-life in the
circle of her children to the brilliant life of society; she gradually
withdrew from the noisy circles of the outer world, in order that she
might, in peaceful retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the
hearts and minds of her promising children.

Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal security
no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had left his
master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was preparing
himself for military service under the instruction of excellent
teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers of
comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France filled him
with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his teacher of the
deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling eyes and glowing
countenance: "I too will become a gallant general, some day!"

Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who was
scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an elder and
younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature had given
Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to this beauty
grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's
intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to
care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition
usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an
insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence,
not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls
usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with
the adornment of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath
the yoke of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to
amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if
not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the
brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the
school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a
womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet her noble and chaste
features still wore the impress of childhood, and in her large blue eyes
reposed a whole heaven of innocence and peace. When she sat with her
harp at the window in the evening twilight, the last rays of the setting
sun gilding her sweet countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her
beautiful blond hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter portray.
In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and melodies which
Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with the silvery tones of
her voice, in words composed by herself, half-childish prayer, half
rhapsody of love, and revealing the most secret thoughts of the fair
young being who stood on the threshold of womanhood, bidding adieu to
childhood with a blissful smile, and dreaming of the future.



CHAPTER IV.

GENERAL BUONAPARTE.

While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long and
stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and repose,
the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to time in fits of
fury, and tranquillity continued far from being permanently restored.
The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution, still exercised their
pestilential influence over the populace of Paris, and stirred the rude
masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms of discontent and disorder.

But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild masses in
his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down into the dust
with the flashing master-glance of his resistless eye.

That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine years of
age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero crowned with
laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of victory. As
commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of valor at the
recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to the rank of
general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the republic.
Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the young general of
five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the government, being
still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished to remove him from
Paris, and send him to La Vendée as a brigadier-general. Buonaparte
declined this mission, because he preferred remaining in the artillery
service, and, for that reason, the government of the republic relieved
him of his duties and put him on half-pay.

So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the brilliant
star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and shed the fulness
of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which
whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of
military glory, had already announced the rising of his star.

So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed quiet,
retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted friends only,
who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted circumstances. For
Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited means in the tempests of
the revolution, and all that he possessed consisted of the laurels he
had won on the battle-field, and his half pay as a brigadier-general.
But, like the Viscountess de Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends
who deemed it an honor to receive him as a guest at their table, and
also, like Josephine, he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him
to the dinners that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He
often dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that time
still his host, favored of the gods. The young general, instead of, like
his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought only his ration, which
was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned to his brother Louis, who
was very fond of it, while Madame Bourrienne took care that he should
invariably find his supply of white, bread at his plate. She had managed
to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
the scaffold.

Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"

He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
and the famous 13th Vendémiaire, 1795, again summoned the famous general
away from his meditations to stern practical activity. It was on that
day, the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5th), that there came the outburst of
the storm, the subterranean rumblings of which had been so long
perceptible. The sections of Paris rose against the National Convention
which had given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two
thirds of the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
accept the new constitution only when it provided that the legislative
body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The Convention, thus
assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was resolved to stand its
ground, and called upon the representatives who commanded the armed
forces, to defend the republic of their creation. Barras was appointed
the first general commanding the Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the
second. It was not long before a ferocious conflict broke out in the
streets between the army and the insurgent sections. At that time the
populace were not always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear
up the pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the Church of
St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but they were
driven from them also; the struggle in the streets recommenced, and
streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.

After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras declared to
the triumphant National Convention that the victory over the insurgents
was chiefly due to the comprehensive and gallant conduct of General
Bonaparte.

The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon the
latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of the
Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on the day of
peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from obscurity; his name had
risen above the horizon!

He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the whispering
voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant song of his
future career. He was now already conscious that he had a shining goal
before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet assign a title, that
flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale, and which he swore to make
reality at last.

One day, there came to the headquarters of the young general-in-chief a
young man who very pressingly asked to see him. Bonaparte had him
admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous, fiery glance, the
noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at once prepossessed him in
the young man's favor, and he forthwith questioned him in gentle,
friendly tones, concerning the object of his visit.

"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais, and I
have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was denounced before
the Committee of Public Safety as a _suspect_, and given over to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, who had him murdered, three days before the fall
of Robespierre."

"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.

"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I come now
to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have the kindness to
bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to induce them to give
me back my father's sword. I will faithfully use it in fighting the
enemies of my country and defending the cause of the republic."

These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to the
stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of his eyes
grew softer.

"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and this
filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of General
Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"

With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the necessary
commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the adjutant returned,
bringing with him the sword of General Beauharnais.

Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed with strong
emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession of his father--to
his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred emotion started into
his eyes.

Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white hand,
which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as soft, as
delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess, rested lightly on
Eugene's shoulder.

"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all hearts to
him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you or
your family."

Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement. "Good
general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will pray
for you."

This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly nod, he
desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to call upon him
soon again.

This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the commencement of the
acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and Josephine. The sword of the
guillotined General Beauharnais placed an imperial crown upon the head
of his widow, and adorned the brows of his son and his daughter with
royal diadems.



CHAPTER V.

THE MARRIAGE.

A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene, Josephine
met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant _soirées_ given by Barras, the
first general-in-chief. She asked Barras to introduce her to the young
general, and then, in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of
all prudery, yet none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand
to Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.

The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and beautiful
woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to manhood. Her
enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a sea of warmth and
passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while the gentle,
love-enticing smile that played around her mouth revealed the tender
feminine gentleness and amiability of her disposition. Bonaparte had
never mastered the art of flattering women in the light, frivolous style
of the fashionable coxcomb; and when he attempted it his compliments
were frequently of so unusual and startling a character that they might
just as well contain an affront as a tribute of eulogy.

"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was emperor,
to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red hair
you have!"

"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time that a
man ever told me so."

And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a very
handsome blond[3].

[Footnote 3: The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to
Tours, because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen
of Spain.]

To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once said: "Ah,
good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to another: "What
beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress that is! Who could
have put it up for you in such ridiculous style?"

Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women with
words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language that his
eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very hour,
conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy at the
thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young hero had
awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to livelier
palpitations.

From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and, ere long,
Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing confession of his
love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her hand. In vain her
powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored to dissuade her from
marrying this young, penniless general; in vain did they remind her that
he might be killed in the very next battle, and that she might thus
again be left a reduced widow. Josephine shook her handsome curls with
a peculiar smile. Perhaps she was thinking of the prophecy of the
negress at Martinique; perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of
Bonaparte's eye, and on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the
very man to bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved
him ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he was.
Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous impatience to
make their modest little preparations for their new housekeeping
establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to complete his dream of
happiness; he possessed neither house nor carriage, and Josephine, too,
was without an equipage.

Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on foot
through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their
felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a
scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications
were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not
obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting
into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the
promenades, he smiling proudly when the passers-by broke out in
spontaneous exclamations of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy
and exultant as she overheard the whispered admiration and respect with
which the multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with
the general through the throng.

One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to Ragideau,
the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had been the
business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long time, and
Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her own disposal, a
sum of money belonging to her that had been deposited with him.
Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while Josephine went into the
adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's office.

"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.

The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do well,
and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I am
satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."

"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with the proud
and happy look of a person really in love. "My future husband is General
Bonaparte!"

The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm. "How?"
said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this little
General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has already
deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and throw him back
into insignificance?"

Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."

"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you are wrong
in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are committing a
folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who has nothing but his
hat and his sword."

"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then, turning
the conversation, she began to speak of the practical matters that had
brought her thither.

When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine returned
to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He came, smiling,
to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the notary, who was with
her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the latter shrank back in
consternation. Josephine also remarked that Bonaparte's countenance was
paler that day than usual, and that he was less communicative and less
disposed to chat with her; but she had already learned that it was not
advisable to question him as to the cause of his different moods. So,
she kept silent on that score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon
drove away the clouds that had obscured the general's brow.

The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of March,
1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense, Josephine's
children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien, Calmelet, and Leclerq.
The marriage-contract contained, along with the absolutely requisite
facts of the case, a very pleasant piece of flattery for Josephine,
since, in order to establish an equality of ages between the two
parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a year older, and Josephine four
years younger, than they really were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract
states, born on the 5th of February, 1768 but on the 15th of August,
1769; and Josephine not, as the document represents, on the 23d of July,
1767, but on the 23d of June, 1763[4].

[Footnote 4: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 350.]

Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in queenly
fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his appointment to
the command of the Italian army, which Barras and Tallien had granted to
her, at her own request.

But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of activity,
there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few happy weeks with
his lovely wife and his new family, in the small residence in the Rue
Chautereine, which he had purchased a short time before his marriage,
and which Josephine had fitted up with that elevated and refined good
taste that had always distinguished her.

One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He had his
house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There was now only
a carriage to be procured in order to make the general the "happiest
of men."

But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the farther they
advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the possession of a small
house in Paris. He now wanted an establishment in the country also.

"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the Yonne," he
wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living on his property
near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will buy it. Then I will
retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not want any of the national
domains[5]."

[Footnote 5: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 103.]

As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the victorious
General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses, which was a
present to the general of the French Republic from the Emperor of
Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years later, he would have
him for a son-in-law.

These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of Arcola,
Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte brought back
with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only gift which the
general had not refused to accept.

It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently hitched to
a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look attached to the
gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the first consul made his
solemn entry into the Tuileries.



CHAPTER VI.

BONAPARTE IN ITALY.

Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few weeks in
which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone in Paris,
doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not only from her
husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied his young step-father
to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to Madame Campan's
boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette,
had, at that time, opened an establishment for the education of young
ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest and most eminent families of
newly-republicanized France liked to send their daughters to it, so that
they might learn from the former court-lady the refined style and
manners of old royalist times.

Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and there, in the
society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of Bonaparte, and afterward
Queen of Naples--and the young Countess Stephanie Beauharnais, her
cousin, passed a few happy years of work, of varied study, and of
youthful maiden-dreams.

Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm,
to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of
languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more
in the mastering the so-called _bon ton_ and that aristocratic _savoir
vivre_ of which Madame Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus
receiving instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in
painting from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and
was playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating in the
balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show off the
talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in a word,
Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments of a
distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful all these
little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time, would one day be to
her, and how good a thing it was that she had learned to play parts at
Madame Campan's, and to appear in society as a great lady.

Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and exulting
triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending, brighter and
brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the name of Bonaparte was
echoing in louder and louder volume through the world, and filling all
Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear and trembling, as the sea
becomes agitated when the sun begins to rise. Victory after victory came
joyfully heralded from Italy, as ancient states fell beneath the iron
tread of the victor, and new ones sprang into being. The splendid old
Republic of Venice, once the terror of the whole world, the victorious
Queen of the Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell
in fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the slender
monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained to the
shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in Candia,
Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the old
commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state, the
Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the French
Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin, laid his
peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted away, another
Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given Venice the
greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to the front at the
head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom Bonaparte had said that
he was "a man."

"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how seldom one
meets _men_ in the world! In Italy there are eighteen millions of
inhabitants, but I have found only two _men_ among them all--Dandolo and
Melzi[6]."

[Footnote 6: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 139.]

But, while Bonaparte was despairing of _men_, in the very midst of his
victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned love for his wife,
to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and most ardent letters, the
answers to which he awaited with the most impatient longing.

Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual and
singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only on
the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was more
considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned _all_ the
communications he received to the flames, _unread_, and--while the fire
on his hearth was consuming the paper on which, perchance, was written
the despairing appeal of a mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a
disconsolate wife, beseeching pity for her husband; or the application
of an ambitious statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with
a sardonic smile, and say, "There's _my_ correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached him,
indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary, Bourrienne,
much time and labor, for, when they finally went to work on them, time
and circumstances had already disposed of four fifths of them, and thus
only one fifth required answers--a result that made Bonaparte laugh
heartily, and filled him with justifiable pride in what he termed his
"happy idea."

Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to wait ere
they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his heart bounding
with delight, and invariably answered them, in such impassioned, glowing
language as only his warm southern temperament could suggest, and
contrasted with which even Josephine's missives seemed a little cool and
passionless.

Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting letters
from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with him; and
hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the general summoned
his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his call with rapture, and
hastened to Italy to join him. Now came proud days of triumph and
gratified affection. All Italy hailed Bonaparte as the conquering hero;
all Italy did homage to the woman who bore his name, and whose
incomparable fascination and amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won
all hearts. Her life now resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal
pageant; a dazzling fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights"
that had become reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine,
sparkling with stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.



CHAPTER VII.

VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.

Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte made his
proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the front courtyard
of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the _Corps Législatif_, was
erected a vast amphitheatre, in which sat all the high authorities of
France; in the centre of the amphitheatre stood the altar of the
country, surmounted by three gigantic statues, representing Freedom,
Equality, and Peace. As Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the
dense crowd that occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their
feet with uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the
windows of the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who
waved welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An officer of
the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity, had clambered
up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the palace, then
undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the ground almost at
Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost simultaneously from a
thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale and shrank back,
shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a moment before had
exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these living flowers, now stood
there bare, with empty, gaping casements. A perceptible thrill ran
through the ranks of the _Corps Législatif_, and here and there the
whisper passed that this fall of an officer portended the early
overthrow of the Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like
the unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies at
the feet of General Bonaparte.

But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of Arcola
new _fêtes_ every day; and when these _fêtes_ were over, and Bonaparte,
fatigued with the speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be
on his way returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who
beset his path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of the
hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.

A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on himself.
Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation of his own
inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him with a sort of
reverential exultation.

Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment of these
glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely overwhelmed and
disturbed, could have held aloof from these ovations of the people of
Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the heart of his wife with pride
and joy. While in the theatre, he shrank back, abashed, behind his
wife's chair when the audience, learning his presence, filled their
noisy plaudits and clamored to have a glimpse at him, Josephine would
thank the crowd on his behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling
with tears for this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a
natural and appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero.
But Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as though it
would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their cries of "_Vive
Bonaparte!_" while Josephine turned her face toward him, glowing with
delight, and called out, exultingly--"See, how they love you, these good
people of Paris!" he replied, with an almost melancholy expression
"Bah! The crowd would be just as numerous and noisy if they were
conducting me to the scaffold!"

However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided, and his
life resumed its more tranquil course.

Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest and calm
enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated) dwelling in the
Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city authorities had changed to
_Rue de la Victoire_, in honor of the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo.
He could, after so many battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while
in the arms of love and happiness.

Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories. He
felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of his
conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the notes of
the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and to other paths
of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but could not completely
satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning of death.

"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he. "They retain
the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one celebrity blots out
another in this great Babylon; if I show myself much oftener to the
public, they will cease to look at me, and if I do not soon undertake
something new, they will forget me."

And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented, that filled
all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of France with an army
to conquer, for the French Republic, that ancient land of Egypt, on
whose pyramids the green moss of long-forgotten ages was flourishing.

Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris; but she
needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to sustain this
separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to her might be just
as likely to last six years as six months. And what could afford better
consolation to a heart so tender as Josephine's than the presence of her
beloved daughter? She had willingly given up her son to her husband, and
he had accompanied the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and
her she would not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
boarding-school.

Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who had come
to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after two years'
stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all the charms of
innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.

Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had retained
the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a white sheet
of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name.
She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her
young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his
commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she
reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to
find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times the hero, the
lord and master, the father to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she
dared not love him; she could only look up to and honor him from
a distance.

Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of a child, upon
the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to her, and from which
she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling piece of good fortune
without having any accurate idea in what it was to consist. She still
loved all mankind, and believed in their truth and rectitude. No thorn
had yet wounded her heart; no disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed
to pieces, had yet left its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of
transparent whiteness. The expression of her large blue eyes was still
radiant and undimmed, and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it
almost made her mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the
last echo of some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too
well knew that it would soon be hushed.

But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling their
melodies; the world still lay before her like an early morning dream,
and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.

Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of Plombières. But there
it was that Hortense came near experiencing the greatest sorrow of her
life, in nearly losing her mother.

She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room of the
house they occupied at Plombières. The doors facing the balcony were
open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was sitting by the window
painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she had gathered with her own
hands on the hills of Plombières. Josephine found the atmosphere of the
room too close, and invited some ladies to step out with her upon the
balcony. A moment afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed
by piercing shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate
fright to the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her
mother and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings
had given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would have
sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held back with
the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared the young girl,
and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded heaven of her youth.
Her mother escaped with no other injury than the fright, and a slight
wound on her arm, while one of the ladies had both legs broken.

Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of the
fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the
wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet "something more than
a queen."



CHAPTER VIII.

BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.

Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had adorned
his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the returning
conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first time, Hortense
was present at the festivities which the city of Paris dedicated to her
step-father; for the first time she saw the homage that men and women,
graybeards and children alike, paid to the hero of Italy and Egypt.
These festivities and this homage filled her heart with a tremor of
alarm, and yet, at the same time, with joyous exultation. In the midst
of these triumphs and these ovations which were thus offered to her
second father, the young girl recalled the prison in which her mother
had once languished, the scaffold upon which the head of her own father
had fallen; and frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered
uniform of her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the
time when Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice,
through the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.

These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune, preserved
to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her from entertaining
any overweening or domineering propensity in her day of prosperity, or
from seeming cast down and hopeless when adversity came. She never
lulled herself with the idea of good fortune that could not pass away,
but her remembrances kept her eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune
came, it did not take her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to
confront it.

Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days in full
draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom she was so
fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified love; and in the
name of her murdered father she thanked General Bonaparte with double
fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for having been the means of
procuring for her mother, who had suffered so deeply in her first wedded
life, so magnificent a glow of splendor and happiness in her
second marriage.

In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to dispel
this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution convulsed
all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two hostile camps,
burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On one side stood the
democratic republicans, who looked back with longing regret to the days
of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving, as they did, that tranquillity
and protracted peace must soon wrest the reins of power from their
grasp, and therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the
element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger,
and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the _sans-culottes_ and
the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of the
imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the
man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in
the bonds of servitude.

On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists and
poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew that the
days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic had brought not
merely human beings, but also the arts and sciences, to the scaffold.
With them, too, were arrayed the merchants and artisans, the bankers,
the business-men, the property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the
republic at least established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation,
in order to have confidence in its durability and substantial character,
and to commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success.
And at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.

The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was a
fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in which
little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were slaughtered.

The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory,
and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins
of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate,
rational republic of the year 1798. At its head were the three consuls,
Bonaparte, Cambacères, and Lebrun.

On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls entered the
Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept, as conquerors,
in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.

From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the forms of
etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic republic, had
slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of the Luxembourg and
the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and circumspectly, 'tis true,
in broad daylight. People were no longer required, in accordance with
the spirit of equality, to ignore all distinctions of condition and
culture, by the use of the words "citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the
name of brotherhood, to endure the close familiarities of every brawling
street ruffian; or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal
liberty and inclination be trampled under foot.

Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners again; and
the three consuls, who had taken possession of the Luxembourg, whispered
the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and greeted Josephine and her
daughter, who were installed in the apartments prepared for them in the
palace on the next day, with the title of "madame." Yet, only a year
earlier, the two words "monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in
Paris, and brought about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had
promulged the stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever
should use the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on
pretext whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable
of ever again serving in the army of the republic[7]."

[Footnote 7: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.]

Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry, along with
the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg, which had been
delivered from its democratic tyrants.

Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense was
"Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now required a
larger retinue of servants, and a more showy establishment. Indeed,
temerity could not yet go so far as to speak of the _court_ of Madame
Bonaparte and the _court ladies_ of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had
still to be content with the limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg,
but they were soon to be compensated for all this, and, if they still
had to call each other _monsieur_ and _madame_, they could, a few years
later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in the
Tuileries.

The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the joint
residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the ambition of
Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the other two men
who shared the supreme control of France with him. Too it was also for
the longings that now spoke with ever louder and stronger accents in
his breast, and pushed him farther and farther onward in this path of
splendor and renown which, at first, had seemed to him but as the magic
mirage of his dreams, but which now appeared as the glittering truth and
reality of his waking hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the
three consuls, but they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to
work to prepare the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It
would not do to oust the representatives of the people, who held their
sessions there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be
made to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed monster
of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was necessary, before
entering the Tuileries, to give the French people proof that men might
still be very good republicans, even although they might wish to be
housed in the bedchamber of a king.

Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to the
Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a residence worthy
of the representatives of the republic. So, the first move made was to
set up a handsome bust of the elder Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's,
which he had brought with him from Italy--in one of the galleries of the
Tuileries; and then David had to carve out some other statues of the
republican heroes of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A
number of democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the
13th Vendémiaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of the
death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans, arriving
just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army should wear the
badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were worn on the arm, and
sable streamers waved from the standards, in honor of the deceased
republican hero.

However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army had
sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered the
Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which towered
aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription of the
republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend "August 10,
1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France is overthrown and
will never rise again." It was between these two significant symbols
that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries. It was a very long and
imposing procession of carriages which moved that day toward the palace,
through the streets of the capital. They only lacked the outward pomp
and magnificence which rendered the latter _fêtes_ of the empire so
remarkable. With the exception of the splendid vehicle in which the
three consuls rode, and which was drawn by the six grays presented by
the Emperor of Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen.
France of the new day had not had the opportunity to build any
state-coaches, and those of old France had been too shamefully misused
to admit of their ever serving again; for it would be out of the
question to employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the vehicles
in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs to their
place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September days of the
year 1793.

The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at that
time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the streets and
slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down from the guillotine
and dyed the ground with the purple of the new system of
popular liberty.

The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which the
guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their original
savage propensities, and hence those who had been so fortunate as to
escape the murderous axe of the _sans-culottes_ had now to apprehend the
danger of falling a victim to the sharp teeth of these wild
blood-hounds; and as the ferocious brutes knew no difference between
aristocrats and republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it
became necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
So, the Champs Elysées were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were
driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed
down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three
thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they
continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen
among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At
length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to
representative Gasparin, who was shrewd enough to convert the removal of
the dead animals into a republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the
_ci-devants_ and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite
proper, therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.

Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the fugitive
and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their stables, and the
carcasses of the dogs were flung into these emblazoned and escutcheoned
vehicles of old France. Six grand coaches that had belonged to the king
opened the procession, and the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the
luckless quadrupeds could be seen behind the glittering glass panels
heaped together in wild disorder[8].

[Footnote 8: Mémoires of the Marchioness de Créqui, vol. viii, p. 10.]

After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and indivisible
republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be consistently used for
any human and less mournful occasion, and hence it was that the consular
procession to the Tuileries was so deficient in carriages, and that
public hacks on which the numbers were defaced had to be employed.

With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution was at an
end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory, yawning chasm which
had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and democrats; and of that sword
he made a bridge over which society might pass from one century to the
other, and from the republic to the empire.

As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the Diana
Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries, and was
with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed there, both
of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused in front of the
statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius
Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces;
but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply
raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon
Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with
blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts
of both the ladies bound within their bosoms:

"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there. And
whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and conventionists
have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how the savage Jacobins
and cohorts of _sans-culottes_ surrounded the palace and led away the
good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah! never mind, Josephine; have no
fear for the future! Let them but dare to come hither once more[9]!"

[Footnote 9: Bourrienne, vol. vi, p. 3.]

And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the statues of
Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry thunder through
the long gallery, and made the figures of the heroes of the dead
republic tremble on their pedestals.

Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus, as
though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar, challenge
all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one he aspired to
be, to mortal combat.

The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in the
Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and daughter of
General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered, had now found
another father, who was destined to avenge that murder on the
republic itself.

The revolution was over!



BOOK II.

_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND_.

CHAPTER I.

A FIRST LOVE.

With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution closed,
and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity followed. Josephine
and Hortense were the cynosure of all these festivals, for they were,
likewise, the animating centre whence the grace and beauty, the
attractive charm, and the intellectual significance of them all,
proceeded.

Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the court of
Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such enchanting
delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people already began
to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the powerful wife of the
First Consul of France. Now, also, _audiences_ were held, and Josephine
and Hortense already had a court retinue who approached them with the
same subserviency and humility as though they had been princesses of
the blood.

Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets of
Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and wherever
the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the wife and daughter
of the first consul with applauding shouts.

Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made their
appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons. There were
chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid dinners and
evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of foreign powers were
received in solemn audience; for, now, all the European states had
recognized the French Republic under the consulate, and, as Bonaparte
had concluded peace with England and Austria, these two great powers
also sent envoys to the court of the mighty consul.

Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed contentions of
the toilet, and _powder or no powder_ was one of the great questions of
etiquette in which Josephine gave the casting vote when she said that
"every one should dress as seemed best and most becoming to each, but
yet endeavor to let good taste pervade the selection."

For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less zest than
formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for some time she had
seemed to prefer being alone more than in previous years, and held
herself aloof in the quiet retirement of her own apartments, where the
melancholy, tender, and touching melodies which she drew from her harp
in those lonely hours seemed to hold her better converse than all the
gay and flattering remarks that she was accustomed to hear in her
mother's grand saloons.

Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she confide what
was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she venture to confess that
she was in love, and with all the innocent energy, all the warmth and
absolute devotion of a first attachment. How blissful were those hours
of reverie, of expectant peering into the future, which seemed to
promise the rising of another sun of happiness to her beaming gaze! For
this young girl's passion had the secret approbation of her mother and
her step-father, and both of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the
least degree, aware of the tender understanding that subsisted between
Hortense and General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young girl's
heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more serious meaning to
it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea of a union between
Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above all other things, to give
Duroc a more important and imposing status, and therefore sent him as
ambassador to St. Petersburg, to convey to the Emperor Alexander, who
had just ascended his father's throne, the congratulations and good
wishes of the First Consul of France.

The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to them
of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand, one last
tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of each other. But
they hoped in the future, and looked forward to Duroc's return, and to
the precious recompense that Bonaparte had significantly promised to his
friend. That recompense was the hand of Hortense Until then, they had to
content themselves with that sole and sweetest solace of all parted
lovers, the letters that they interchanged, and which Bourrienne,
Bonaparte's secretary, faithfully and discreetly transmitted.

"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his Mémoires, "I played a
game of billiards with Mademoiselle Hortense, who was an adept at it.
When I said, in a low tone to her, 'I have a letter,' the game would
cease at once, and she would hasten to her room, whither I followed her,
and took the letter to her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of
emotion and delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she
would go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her[10]."

[Footnote 10: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.]

Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent dreams
of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking
place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make
her young heart the plaything of domestic and political intrigue.

Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the beautiful
and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first consul, as in the
first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by separating Hortense
from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of the strongest supports
of her influence, and thus, by isolating Josephine, bring themselves
nearer to their brother. They well knew the affection which Bonaparte,
who was particularly fond of children, entertained for those of his
wife, and they also knew that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by
their entreaties or their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented
Josephine and Bonaparte from separating.

This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of Junot
had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from Egypt.

At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman, against
whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply because he
was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne implored him, at
least, to hear Josephine before condemning her, and to see whether she
could not clear herself, or he could not forgive her, he had replied:

"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I would tear
my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as Bonaparte spoke, his
voice trembling the while with rage, he clutched his breast with his
hand as though he would indeed rend it to pieces. This scene occurred in
the evening, but, when Bourrienne came into the office next morning,
Bonaparte stepped forward to meet him with a smile on his face, and a
little confused.

"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here! Don't
suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I reproached her
vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you have?--when she left
me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she descended the stairs with her
head drooping, I saw Eugene and Hortense, who went with her, sobbing
violently. I have not the heart to look unmoved on any one in tears.
Eugene had accompanied me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to
regard him as my adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young
man. Hortense is just coming out into the world of society, and every
one who knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the
sight of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims of
their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned round and,
along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the movement, and said
nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal man without having his
hours of weakness!"

"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted children
will reward you for it!"

"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
sacrifice that I have made for them[11]!"

[Footnote 11: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.]

This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for Josephine
had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had joyfully become
convinced that the accusations of his jealous brothers had been unjust.

Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move Hortense, since
they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that she, with her
gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense, her penetrating
and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young Mentor at the side
of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive, somewhat vain, and very
extravagant mother.

It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first removed;
and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because she interfered
with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers. Since they could not
become great and celebrated by their own merits, they desired to be so
through their illustrious brother; and, in order that they might become
kings, Bonaparte must, above all things, wear a crown. Josephine was
opposed to this project; she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers
that a usurpation of the crown must bring with it, and she had so little
ambition as to prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the
proud but perilous exaltation to a throne.

For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and Bonaparte must
choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there should course
legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be content to see a
crown upon the head of her consort.



CHAPTER II.

LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.

The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above all
things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of the
burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they sent to each
other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be transferred to the
Italian army with a higher command, and that Hortense should then be
given to him. They persuaded the unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was
easy to deceive in these minor matters and thus easy because he was
occupied with grand designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep
the proposed union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early
return to surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.

But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her hostile
brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her entire future,
was imperilled, should she not succeed in making friends and allies in
the family of Bonaparte itself. There was only one of Bonaparte's
brothers who was not hostile to her, but loved her as the wife of his
brother, to whom he was, at that time, still devoted with the most
enthusiastic and submissive tenderness.

This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious and
sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a man of
science than fit for the council-chamber and the drawing-room. His was
a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character, which, notwithstanding its
apparent gentleness, developed an inflexible determination and energy at
the right, decisive moment, and then could not be shaken by either
threats or entreaties. His external appearance was little calculated to
please, nay, was even somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of
others only in moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his
large blue eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.

Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained, undemonstrative,
and by no means showy natures which are too rarely understood, because,
in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the time and do not take the
pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a mother is in a position to
comprehend and love men of this stamp, because the confidential home
relations of long years have revealed to them the hidden bloom of these
sensitive plants which shrink back and close their leaves at every rude
contact of the world. But rarely, however, do they find a loving heart
outside, for, since their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no
one gives himself the trouble to discover them.

The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was the one
who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a point of support
in the Bonaparte family.

Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them, next to
her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole family of
brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither egotistical nor
ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly allowed them to have
their way, and only asked that they would also leave him undisturbed to
follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive inclinations. He was the
confidant of his young and beautiful sisters, who were always sure to
find in him a discreet counsellor, and never a betrayer. Finally, he was
the one of the whole circle of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the
sincerest and warmest inclination, because he could not help esteeming
him for his noble qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as
he was by his other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of
Jerome, Joseph, and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and
chagrin to Bonaparte.

"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand fresh
sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that I had
consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said Bonaparte,
one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between him and Jerome,
which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting another draft on the
private purse of the first consul.

Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared thankfully
content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him, unsolicited, and
there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on his account, or any
debts of his to pay.

This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how to
manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this was a
quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she could never
avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how much care and
anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often Bonaparte had
scolded her about them; how often she had promised to do differently,
and make no more purchases until she should be in a condition to pay
at once!

But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing eyes
and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she could not
escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point precisely was it
that the penitent sinner continually fell into fresh transgression--and
again ran into debt!

Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular as her
own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two young,
careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to each other,
and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly as they did
their purses.

So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a premonitory
distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have happened that she took
the mighty eagle that fluttered above her head for a bird of evil omen
whose warning cry she frequently fancied that she heard in the stillness
of the night.

The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more than a
queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new fortune-teller, Madame
Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to her, "You will wear a crown,
but only for a short time."

Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and too
healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be something
else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had no children,
yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and his brothers
repeated to him daily that this was for him a political necessity.

Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her hands for
help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her daughter to give
up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure the real happiness of
her mother.

Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at the
thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying an
unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had scarcely
noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked to sacrifice
her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a cold-blooded calculation,
an artificial family intrigue; and so, with all the enthusiasm of a
first love, she swore rather to perish than to forego her lover.

"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said Josephine.
"What he is, he is only through the friendship of Bonaparte. He has no
estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were Bonaparte to abandon him he
would fall back into nothingness and obscurity again."

Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and have no
other ambition than to be his wife."

"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to become
your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own sake alone?"

"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has told me
that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal fidelity and love to
me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to belong to each other."

Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.

"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is willing to
marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that Bonaparte would
then advance him the more rapidly?"

"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing with
honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far from all
selfish calculation."

"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine, irritated
by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm for her
own fortunes.

Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated, so
beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of death
had passed over it.

"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that Duroc loves
me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give him up, and marry
whom you will."

Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey," she
replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that he does
not love you, but the family alliance which you present."

Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc returns
to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see him again--she
should read consolation and love's assurance in his handsome manly face;
not that she needed this to confirm her confidence, for she believed in
him, and not the shadow of a doubt obscured her blissful greeting.

Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes of this
intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a supporting ally
in the family, _against_ the family itself; and for this reason Louis
must become the husband of Hortense.

Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved to
marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake his
resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and little
endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to show that
Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but wanted to make
an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte resolved, at least,
to put his friend to the test, and, if Josephine turned out to be right,
to marry Hortense to his own brother.

After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back into his
office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the writing-desk.

"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.

"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."

"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him Hortense--that
he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days, at
the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred thousand francs, and I
appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth military division. On the day
after his wedding he shall start with his wife for Toulon, and we shall
live apart. I will not have a son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to
see these matters brought to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether
Duroc accepts my propositions."

"I don't think that he will, general."

"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother Louis."

"Will she consent?"

"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."

Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told him, word
for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.

Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on with his
communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.

"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had got
through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful it
may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can remain in
Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his hat, without a
trace of excitement or concern, and departed.

That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full consent
to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.

On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that Duroc
had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished her,
through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously feigned
to love her.

Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a word of
complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely that a
thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to atoms her love,
her hopes, her future, and her happiness.

But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the evil that
had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to it. She had
been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now for her future, her
embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when _he_ had deceived her
--_he_, the only one whom she had loved?

The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling, into
Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready to fulfil
her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.

Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight. She
little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and of
despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present smiling
unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a worn-out
heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in order that
Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for him was dead,
but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her tears, and
conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too, enabled her to
declare that she was ready to accept the husband whom her mother might
present to her.

Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one of
Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question whether
she should attain her other aim through that son, and whether she should
find in him a support against the intrigues of the other brothers of the
first consul.



CHAPTER III.

CONSUL AND KING.

There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the young
couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802, Hortense was
married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but one of the first
consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the civil ceremony, and
had never given his own union with Josephine the sanction of the Church,
was less careless and unconcerned with regard to this youthful alliance,
which had, indeed, great need of the blessing of Heaven, in order to
prove a source of any good fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he
reasoned that the consciousness of the indissoluble character of their
union would lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render their
separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the Tuileries,
after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow the blessing of
God and of the Church upon the bride and bridegroom.

Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged by the
young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the ceremonies
were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new home, in the
same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which her mother had
occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful union with Bonaparte.

Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry into this
dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and happiness did
not shine in their faces, as had been the case with Bonaparte and
Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with tears, and the
countenance of her young husband was dark and gloomy. For, on his side,
he, too, felt no love for this young woman; and, as she never forgave
him for having accepted her hand, although he knew that she loved
another, he, in like manner, could never forgive her having consented to
be his wife, although he had not been the one to solicit it, and
although he had never told her that he loved her. Both had bowed to the
will of him who gave the law, not merely to all France, but also to his
own family, and who had already become the lord and master of the
republic. Both had married through obedience, not for love; and the
consciousness of this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between
these two otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the
consciousness of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love
one another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
were forbidden to seek elsewhere.

Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart, did
Hortense make her appearance at the _fêtes_ which were given in honor of
her marriage; and it was with a beclouded brow and averted face that
Louis Bonaparte received the customary congratulations. While every one
around them exhibited a cheerful and joyous bearing, while parties were
given in their honor, and people danced and sang, the young couple only,
of all present, were dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense,
and she turned her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not
read in it her deep and angry aversion.

But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus indissolubly
bound up with another, she had to try to live with that other. Hortense,
externally so gentle and yielding, so full of maiden coyness and
delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and resolute soul, and, in the
noble pride of her wounded heart, was unwilling to give any one the
right to pity her. Her soul wept, but she restrained her tears and still
tried to smile, were it only that Duroc might not perceive the traces
of her grief upon her sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her
heart, and she rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim
to happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted at
the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth, and so
she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a melancholy smile,
"I must manage to be happy, without happiness. Let me try!"

And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and again took
part in the festivities which now were filling the halls of St. Cloud,
Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were but the dying lay of
the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the cradle-song of
reviving monarchy.

For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose between a
seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already a republic but
in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed, but a new-born,
naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was wanting, that should
possess the determined courage to clothe it with ermine and purple, in
order to transform the helpless babe into a proud, triumphant man.

That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher courage
to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of monarchy, that lay
there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver there a little longer; but,
lest it should freeze altogether, he threw over it, for the time being,
the mantle of his "consulship for life." Beneath it, the babe could
slumber comfortably a few weeks longer, while waiting for its
purple robes.

Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for life. He
stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only upon himself
whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he
would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his
forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine
implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a
loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was
too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every
danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he
would also have to think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in
order to strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once, proposed
to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it with the presence
of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of royal dignity meant a
separation from her; and Josephine still loved him too well, and too
much with a young wife's love, to take so great a sacrifice upon her.

Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the Count de
Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had found an asylum
at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of France.

The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis XVIII.) had
written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with emotion, and,
with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had conjured her husband to,
at least, give the brother of the beheaded king a mild and considerate
answer. Yes, she had even ventured to beseech Bonaparte to comply with
the request that Louis had made, and give him back the throne of his
ancestors. But Bonaparte had laughed at this suggestion, as he would at
some childish joke; for it had never entered into his head that any one
could seriously ask him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot
of a throne, which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom
France had banished forever, should ascend.

Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at
Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and Egypt--would
not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing
precious time. _We_ can secure the glory of France; I say _we_, because
I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot complete it
without me."

But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but "I," and
to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille:
"You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it
over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to
the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a
grateful acknowledgment."

Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position,
and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose
his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very
one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself.

Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could
she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a
diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to
command admiration.

"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said
Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.

Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any
such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the
first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him
not to make himself king[12]."

[Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.]

But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell
her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.

One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at breakfast,
and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered without having
been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her husband, who sat with his
back turned toward her, and had not yet noticed her. Lightly throwing
her arm around his neck, and letting herself sink upon his breast, and
then stroking his pale cheeks and glossy brown hair, with an expression
of unutterable love and tenderness, she said:

"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked brother
Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."

Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he said.
"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La
Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful
stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now, don't bother me
about them any more!"

Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he
nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate
personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown. In the course
of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to him:

"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all Europe;
whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be only the
youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield precedence
to them."

Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that daring and
imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and decisive moments,
he responded:

"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive _all_ the kings
from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they will have to
recognize me as the oldest prince of all."



CHAPTER IV.

THE CALUMNY.

The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been followed by
such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated. She had made a
most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was, of all the first
consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself the least about
politics, and was the least likely to engage in any intrigue. Besides,
this alliance had materially diminished the affection which Louis had
always previously manifested for Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths
of his noble and upright heart, for having been so egotistic as to
sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he
blamed her, too, for having forced him into a marriage which love had
not concluded, and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine
had, at least, lost a friend in him.

The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually strange.
They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each other, and
reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had been driven into
this union against their own wishes. In this singular interchange of
confidence, they went so far as to commiserate each other, and to
condole with one another as friends, over the wretchedness they endured
in their married bondage.

They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that they
detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual compassion, that
out of that very compassion--that very hatred itself--love might
possibly spring into being.

Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife, busied with
the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to drive away the
clouds that obscured her brow; already, too, Hortense had come to regard
it as her holiest and sweetest duty to endeavor to compensate her
husband, by her kindly deportment toward him, and the delicate and
attentive respect that distinguished her bearing, for the unhappiness he
felt beside her; already had both, in fine, begun to console each other
with the reflection that the child which Hortense now bore beneath her
heart would, one day, be to them a compensation for their ill-starred
marriage and their lost freedom.

"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and when he
calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive me for being
his mother."

"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that you love
him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will pardon me for being
your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at least, for I will be the
father of your darling child."

Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and innocent
hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have overcome their
unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last from hatred. But the
world was pitiless to them; it had no compassion for their youth and
their sufferings; with cruel hands it dashed away this tender blossoming
of nascent affection, which was beginning to expand in their hearts.
Josephine had wedded Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure
in him an ally in the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and
now that daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense from
the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs by means
of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the effect of calumny.

They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had married
his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was attached to her
himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.

These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child whose birth
Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte than merely
through the fact that his step-daughter was his brother's wife.

This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those who
devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such
immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive
it therefore would be to him to find himself made the object of such
infamous slanders.

The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these evil
rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense away to a
distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus isolated, could also
be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte, being separated from his
guardian angel, would no longer hear her whispering:

"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory of the
greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not make
thyself a king!"

In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very lightly
whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard. Bonaparte's
enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a weapon of it with
which to assail him as a hero.

One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had always
been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the organ of Count
d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued to read, a dark
shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the paper in his clinched
fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then as suddenly again his
countenance cleared, and a proud smile flitted across it. He had his
master of ceremonies summoned to his presence, and bade him issue the
necessary invitations for a court ball to be given, on the evening of
the next day, at St. Cloud. He then went to Josephine to inform her in
person of the projected _fête_, and to say that he wished her to tell
Hortense, who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly
desired her to be present.

Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch on
which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining, busied
with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women prepare her
attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and seriously burdened by
this festive attire, which harmonized so little with her feelings, and
was so far from becoming to her figure, for she was only a few weeks
from her confinement; but with her gentle and yielding disposition she
did not venture, even in thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed
upon her by her step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the
appointed hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to
meet her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
at all, earnestly urged her to dance.

Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto Bonaparte
had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her condition; he had
frequently said that he thought there was nothing more indecent than for
a female to join in the dance under such circumstances, and now it was
he who asked her to do that very thing.

For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but Bonaparte
grew only the more pressing and vehement in his request.

"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with his
irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take the floor
only once, and that for but a single _contredance_."

And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with shame at
the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the gaze of all,
obeyed and joined the dances.

This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing flattery,
and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her advanced state of
pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure in the _contredance_, as
a peculiar trait of amiability!

Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very emphatic
piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at once to the
Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her how it was possible
that, so early as the very next morning, there could be verses published
in the newspapers concerning what had taken place at the ball on the
preceding evening.

Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came in, and
was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an evasive and
jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her mother, who was
leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart
oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but
had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too
full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble,
for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.

Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told
her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses
beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to
dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have
her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her
pregnancy published in the next day's paper.

Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for
all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of
the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and
Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her
participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read
in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis
Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some
weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious
statement.

Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had
not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this
shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to
take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of
exertion to restore her to consciousness.

A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so
passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope
of a better understanding between her and her husband.

Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart. In those
long, lonely days that she had passed during her confinement, she had
the time and opportunity to meditate on many things, and keenly to
estimate her whole present position and probable future. She had now
become a mother, without having a child; yet the resolute energy of a
mother remained to her. The youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl
had now become transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman,
that would no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would
meet them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend to
its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of resolution;
and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious fireside at home was
denied her, to at least make her house a pleasant gathering-point for
her friends--for men of scientific and artistic attainments, for poets
and singers, for painters and sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere
long, all Paris was talking about Madame Louis Bonaparte's
drawing-rooms, the agreeable and elegant entertainments that were given
there, and the concerts there arranged, in which the first singers of
the day executed pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited,
with his wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written.
Every one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which
the participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or abuse,
but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation; where, in
fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists, and enjoy the
newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.

Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had resigned
herself to accept the burden of existence, she would strive to render it
as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of its hateful and
repulsive features, but to turn away from them with a noble and
disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the frightful calumnies
which her mother had privately made known to her, nor had she deemed any
defence or proof of her innocence at all necessary. She felt that there
were certain accusations against which to even undertake defence is to
admit their possibility, and which, therefore, could only be combated by
silence. The slanders that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far
beneath her, that they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell
powerless at her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while
to thrust them.

But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this vile story,
and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors were still spread
abroad, and that his foes still bestirred themselves to keep him ever on
the alert, and, if possible, to dim the lustre of his gloriously-won
laurels by the shadow of an infamous crime.

"There are still rumors abroad of a _liaison_ between me and Hortense,"
said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even invented the most
repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At the time, I thought
that these calumnies were circulated among the public because the
latter go earnestly desired that I might have a child to inherit my
name. But it is still spoken of, is it not?"

"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did not
believe this calumny would be so long continued."

"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes flashing with
anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth there is in it. You
have heard and seen all; not the smallest circumstance could escape you.
You were her confidant in her love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to
clear me of this infamous reproach if you should some day write my
history. Posterity shall not associate my name with such infamy. I shall
depend on you, Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have
never believed in this abominable calumny?"

"No, never, general."

"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account, but for
the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy enough, as is
my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I love them both,
and because this very circumstance gives color to the reports which idle
chatterboxes have circulated regarding my relations to her. Therefore,
bear this in mind when you write of me hereafter."

"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but, unfortunately, I
can not compel the world to believe the truth."

Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the truth.
With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it has been
attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense, even down to
our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the elegant and considerate
language of the courteous diplomat, which is elsewhere always
characteristic of his writings.

"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that Bonaparte
entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a step-father should
entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense entertained for the first
consul a feeling of reverential fear. She always spoke to him
tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him with a petition. She was
in the habit of coming to me, and I then submitted her wishes; and only
when Bonaparte received them unfavorably did I mention the name of the
petitioner. 'The silly thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not
speak to me herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a father
would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness of her
actions in the most private relations of life, I declare that I have
never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that would tend to
convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider this calumny as
belonging to the category of those which malice so willingly circulates
about those persons whose career has been brilliant, and which credulity
and envy so willingly believe. I declare candidly that, if I entertained
the slightest doubt with regard to this horrible calumny, I would say
so. But Bonaparte is no more! Impartial history must not and shall not
give countenance to this reproach; she should not make of a father and
friend a libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted,
without, however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood! And
this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession of a
man, he can never be freed from it again?"



CHAPTER V.

KING OR EMPEROR.

Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at least,
only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said: "I entreat
you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not make himself king,
he made himself emperor. He did not take up the crown that had fallen
from the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for himself--a crown
which the French people and Senate had, however, offered him. The
revolution still stood a threatening spectre behind the French people;
its return was feared, and, since the discovery of the conspiracy of
Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru, the people anxiously asked themselves
what was to become of France if the conspirators should succeed in
murdering Bonaparte; and when the republic should again be sent adrift,
without a pilot, on the wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that
their institutions should be securely established and maintained, and
believed that this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a
monarchical form of government. The consulate for life must therefore be
changed into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One
can be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor, because
they flattered themselves that in so doing they should still be able to
preserve the republic.

On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so long and
carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th of May, the
Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in the name of the
people and army, to accept the imperial dignity, and exchange the Roman
chair of a consul for the French throne of an emperor.

Cambacérès, the late second consul of the republic, stood at the head of
the Senate, and upon him devolved the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the
wishes of the French people. Cambacérès--who, as a member of the
Convention, had voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that
royalty should be forever banished from French soil--this same
Cambacérès, was now the first to salute Bonaparte with "imperial
majesty," and with the little word, so full of significance, "sire." He
rewarded Cambacérès, for this by writing to him on the game day, and
appointing him high constable of the empire, as the first act of his
imperial rule. In this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte
signed himself merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican
style of writing. He addressed Cambacérès, as "citizen consul," and
followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time, his letter being
dated "the 20th Floréal, of the year 12."

The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new dignity, was
to invest the members of his family also with new dignities, and to
confer upon them the rank of Princes of France, with the title "imperial
highness." Moreover, he made his brother Joseph prince elector, and his
brother Louis connétable. On the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his
new dignity, to present the generals and staff officers to the emperor,
and then to conduct them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.

The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled. Josephine
was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of the splendor of
her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious heart, of the
prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told her, "You will wear
a crown, but only for a short time." She felt that this wondrous fortune
could not last long--that the new emperor would have to do as the kings
or old had done, and sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order
to appease the hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would,
therefore, sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his
fortune and dynasty.

It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and made her
shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore, with a feeling
of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new titles and honors
that Fate had showered upon her, as from an inexhaustible horn of
plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost with shame, she heard herself
addressed with the titles with which she had addressed the Queen of
France years before, in these same halls, when she came to the Tuileries
as Marquise de Beauharnais, to do homage to the beautiful Marie
Antoinette. She had died on the scaffold and now Josephine was the
"majesty" that sat enthroned in the Tuileries, her brilliant court
assembled around her, while in a retired nook of England the legitimate
King of France was leading a lonely and gloomy life.

Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as empress, she
still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate Bourbons, and esteemed it
her sacred duty to assist and advise those who, true to their principles
and duties, had followed the royal family, or had emigrated, in order
that they might, at least, not be compelled to do homage to the new
system. Her purse was always at the service of the emigrants; and, if
Josephine continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly
allowance, her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her
kindly, generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the
half of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her creditors,
she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of misfortune and
the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other purpose[13].

[Footnote 13: Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, par le Baron van Schelten,
vol. i., p. 145.]

Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the High
Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant court of
the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now a "Princess
of France," an "imperial highness," who must be approached with
reverence, who had her court and her maids of honor, and whose liberty
and personal inclinations, as was also the case with her mother, were
confined in the fetters of the strict etiquette which Napoleon required
to be observed at the new imperial court.

But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded by this
new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no additional
happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance Hortense's youth and
beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She would have been contented
to live in retirement, at the side of a beloved husband; her proud
position could not indemnify her for her lost woman's happiness.

But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to bear
misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered her a
recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a new
hope--she promised to become a mother again.

Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her daughter's
hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give birth to a son, the
gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be banished from the head of
the empress. With this son, the dynasty of the new imperial family would
be assured; this son could be the heir of the imperial crown, and
Napoleon could well adopt as his own the child who was at the same time
his nephew and his grandson.

Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would rather
content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of the emperor
and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to separate himself from
her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved his wife; he still
compared with all he thought good and beautiful, the woman who shed
around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and loveliness.

When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy and
thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These acclamations
and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of Josephine! How
proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a people[14]!"

[Footnote 14: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.]

But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said, upon
entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to _be_ in
the Tuileries; one must also _remain_ there"--he now said: "It is not
enough to have been made emperor by the French people; one must also
have received his consecration as emperor from the Pope of Rome."

And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world; not only
to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his will.

Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the Pope left
the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new emperor the
blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. This was a new
halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded triumph, which he
celebrated over France, over the whole world and its prejudices, and
over all the dynasties by the "grace of God." The Pope came to Paris to
crown the emperor. The German emperors had been compelled to make a
pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the papal benediction, and now the Pope
made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge
the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church. All
France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France
adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and
converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his
grandeur. Napoleon's journey with Josephine through France, undertaken
while they awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single,
continuous triumph. It was not only the people who received him with
shouts of joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her
_sanctus, sanctus_, and the priests received him at the doors of their
churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of France.
Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal exultation,
with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and solemn addresses
of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a transcendental nature.

"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his enthusiastic
address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and then He rested."
And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet won over by the
emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial court, whispered,
quite audibly: "God would have done better had He rested a
little sooner!"

Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder, in which
they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and that Pope
Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was now approaching
the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that had now arisen
victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was everywhere received
by the people and authorities with the greatest honor. The old royal
palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the emperor, been refurnished
with imperial magnificence, and, as a peculiarly delicate attention, the
Pope's bedchamber had been arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber
in the Quirinal at Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now
repaired to Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony
had, however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity with
this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the approach of
the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give himself the appearance
of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way. The equipages and the
imperial court had taken position in the forest of Nemours. Napoleon,
however, attired in hunting-dress, rode, with his suite, to the summit
of a little hill, which the Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope
at once ordered a halt, and the emperor also brought his suite to a
stand with a gesture of his hand. A brief interval of profound silence
followed. All felt that a great historical event was taking place, and
the eyes of all were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief
figures of this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in
his simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.

As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his carriage,
hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed his foot on
the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already touched the earth.
Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he must make up his mind to
step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin slippers, on the wet soil,
softened by a shower of rain, that had fallen on the previous day. The
emperor's hunting-boots were certainly much better adapted to this
meeting in the mud than the Pope's white satin slippers.

Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly; then,
through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the imperial
equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance, interrupted this
tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest accident that the emperor
stood on the right, and the Pope on the left side of the equipage, that
had now been brought to a stand again. The two doors of the carriage
were simultaneously thrown open by the lackeys; at the same time, the
Pope entered the carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right
side, both seating themselves side by side at the same time. This
settled the question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but
the emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.

The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of December,
1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris, but all
France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of people surged
to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the houses were filled
with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the bells were ringing in all
the churches, and joyous music, intermixed with the shouts of the
people, was heard in every direction. For a moment, however, these
shouts were changed into laughter, and that was when the papal
procession approached, headed by an ass led by the halter, in accordance
with an ancient custom of Rome. While the Pope, with the high
dignitaries of the Church, repaired to the cathedral to await there the
coming of the imperial couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial
insignia in the Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet
mantle, bordered with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and
arraying himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new
dignity. When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his
wife, who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the palace,
as he desired to see him at once.

A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring him from
his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little notary Ragideau
entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the imperial pair were
alone, awaiting him in their glittering attire.

His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon stepped
forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau," said he,
gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether General
Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his sword, or
whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for having married
me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment, and Josephine asked
the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte related how, while standing
in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain occasion, he had heard the notary
advising Josephine not to marry poor little Bonaparte; not to become the
wife of the general, who possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.

The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart like a
dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no complaint, and
made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his supreme triumph,
to-day the emperor remembered that moment of humiliation, and, arrayed
with the full insignia of the highest earthly dignity, he accorded
himself the triumph of reminding the little notary that he had once
advised Josephine not to marry him, because of his poverty.

The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the mighty
Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and his sword,
but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, to place
the golden imperial crown on his head.



CHAPTER VI.

NAPOLEON'S HEIR.

Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities of the
coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her in the
retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son; and in this
child the happy mother found consolation and a new hope.

Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had been
gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured her
mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus given a
first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no longer a
reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a separation, for
there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath the imperial throne
of France.

The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's wishes, and
to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not requested the Pope to
delay his departure for a few days, in order to baptize the child? The
Pope performed this sacred rite at St. Cloud, the emperor holding the
child, and Madame Letitia standing at his side as second witness.
Hortense now possessed an object upon which she could lavish the whole
wealth of love that had until now lain concealed in her heart. The
little Napoleon Charles was Hortense's first happy love; and she gave
way to this intoxicating feeling with the most intense delight.

Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the word; she
no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now bestow her
undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon, the
Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of Piedmont by
Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health, had not been
compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to remain in her
little house in Paris, which she could exchange when summer came for
her husband's new estate, the castle of Saint-Leu.

But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in this
charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The brother and
sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be permitted to lead a
life of retirement. They were rays of the sun that now dazzled the whole
world; they must fulfil their destiny, and contribute their light to the
ruling sun.

An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned from
Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see his son,
to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a brilliant destiny; the
Constable of France was to become a king. Delegates of the Republic of
Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived in Paris, and requested their
mighty neighbor, the Emperor Napoleon, to give them a king, who should
unite them with the glittering empire, through the ties of blood.
Napoleon intended to fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king,
in the person of his brother Louis.

But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and refused to
accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also in perfect
harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to strengthen his
resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was proposed to place on
their heads would be nothing more than a golden chain of dependence;
that the King of Holland could be nothing more than the vassal of
France; and their personal relations to each other added another
objection to this political consideration.

In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound them
together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and could
avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served to
separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary union. In
Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in Holland they would
live in entire dependence on each other, and hear continually the
rattling of the chain with which each had bound the other to the galley
of a union without love.

Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor to ward
off this new misfortune that was suspended over their heads, in the form
of a kingly crown.

But how could they resist successfully the iron will of Napoleon?
Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon directly on the
subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine already felt that her
wishes no longer exercised the power of earlier days over the emperor.
She therefore avoided interceding where she was not sure of being
successful.

At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother openly; but
Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and his gentle,
yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence of the deputation
of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed for a sceptre and
crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to accept the crown which
had been freely tendered him, and to be to his country a king who would
respect and protect its liberties, its laws, and its religion.

With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept this
crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.

And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single and
sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and energy. The
people of Holland having chosen him to be their king, he was determined
to do honor to their choice; having been compelled to give up his own
country and nationality, he determined to belong to his new country with
his whole heart and being--to become a thorough Hollander, as he could
no longer remain a Frenchman.

This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an entirely
new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the emperor, was
now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man of action, who
had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to devote all the
powers of his being to its attainment. As King of Holland, he desired,
above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and to be able to contribute
to their welfare and happiness. He studied their language with untiring
diligence, and made himself acquainted with their manners and customs,
for the purpose of making them his own. He investigated the sources of
their wealth and of their wants, and sought to develop the former and
relieve the latter. He was restless in his efforts to provide for his
country, and to merit the love and confidence which his subjects
bestowed on him.

His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and glittering
position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had so unwillingly
accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together, at brilliant
entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new nobility of Holland, and
taught the stiff society of that country the fine, unconstrained tone,
and the vivacious intellectual conversation of Parisian society. It was
under Hortense's fostering hand that art and science first made their
way into the aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social
reunions a higher and nobler importance.

And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science, but also
the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the unhappy, whose
tears she dried, and whose misery she alleviated--and this royal pair,
though adored and blessed by their subjects, could not find within their
palaces the least reflection of the happiness they so well knew how to
confer upon others without its walls. Between these two beings, so
gentle and yielding to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist,
and not even the birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up
the chasm that separated them.

And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of destiny.
Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the presumptive heir to
his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so dearly that he often played
with him for hours on the terraces of St. Cloud, the child Josephine
worshipped, because its existence seemed to assure her own happiness,
the child that had awakened the first feeling of motherly bliss in
Hortense's bosom, the child that had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte
for the unenjoyable present with bright hopes for the future--the little
Napoleon Charles died in the year 1807, of the measles.

This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the imperial pair
of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled with tears when this
intelligence was brought him, and a cry of horror escaped
Josephine's lips.

"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is decided.
He will put me away."

But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she hastened
to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away from the
place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense returned with
the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had almost succumbed to
his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health in the baths of the
Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now stood desolate again; death
had banished life and joy from its halls; and, though the royal pair
were subsequently compelled to return to it, joy and happiness came back
with them no more.

King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his young
wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices, and excuse
his irritable disposition. They were totally different in their views,
desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their children, instead of
being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange them the more, for each
insisted on considering them his or her exclusive property, and in
having them educated according to his or her views and wishes.

But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and cares, in
the greater misery of her mother. A letter from Josephine, an agonized
appeal to her daughter for consolation, recalled Hortense to her
mother's side, and she left the Hague and hastened to Paris.



CHAPTER VII.

PREMONITIONS.

Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French clairvoyante, were
now about to be fulfilled. The crown which Josephine had reluctantly and
sorrowfully accepted, and which she had afterward worn with so much
grace and amiability, with such natural majesty and dignity, was about
to fall from her head. Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the
dreamed-of future had been realized, to put away from him the woman who
had loved him and chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his
hopes for the future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave
fidelity, had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation,
was now to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should be
done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to sacrifice
to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good angel;" and
he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the thought of her
tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating gaze.

But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from Vienna,
had caused the door that connected his room with that of his wife to be
locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers, who dared to address
her with less reverence, but with a touch of compassionate sympathy; she
heard it in the low whispering that ceased when she approached a group
of persons in her parlors; it was betrayed to her in the covert,
mysterious insinuations of the public press, which attached a deep and
comprehensive significance to the emperor's journey to Vienna.

She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too
weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act her part as
wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should not flow
outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her
sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.
But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and
show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.

How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were
shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
daughter's ear!

"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"

[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]

Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.

A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
now bowed, almost quailed.

"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
wife who can give the country an heir to the throne. Josephine has been
living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end. You,
Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more
than all else in the world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother
for this step? You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."

Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her eyes on
the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His glance again
quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of a pure, innocent
woman. Hortense had the courage to positively refuse the
emperors request.

"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then refuse my
request?"

"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears, "sire, I
have not the strength to stab my mother to the heart[16]."

[Footnote 16: Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.]

And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the emperor's
cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE DIVORCE.

Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through a third
person, the distressing tidings of his determination with regard to
herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come to Paris, and
on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of his wish. Eugene,
like his sister, received this intelligence in silent submissiveness,
but like his sister, he refused to impart to his mother, tidings that
must destroy her happiness forever.

The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the distressing
tidings in person.

It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress dined, as
usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering the room made
Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance that the fatal hour
had come. But she repressed the tears which were rushing to her eyes,
and looked entreatingly at her daughter, who sat on the opposite side of
the table, a deathly pallor on her countenance.

Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The sighs and
half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving breast were
quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled dismally, and drove
the rain violently against the window-panes; within, an ominous,
oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of Nature contrasted, and
yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely with this human silence.
Napoleon broke this silence but once, and that was when, in a harsh
voice, he asked the lackey, who stood behind him, what time it was. Then
all was still as before.

At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and coffee was
then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then set the cup down
with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it touched the table. With
an angry gesture he dismissed the attendants.

"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost inaudibly.

"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a profound
obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of tender
compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.

The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this being left
alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in which they sat
opposite each other! How strange the glance which the emperor fastened
on his wife!

She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that moved his
soul, but she also read in them that her hour was come!

As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and Josephine
shudderingly recoiled.

Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart, regarding her
with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.

"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you alone, do
I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in this world.
Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My dearest desires must
yield to the interests of France[17]."

[Footnote 17: The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
344.]

"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand angrily--"no,
speak no further. I understand you, and I expected this, but the blow is
not the less deadly."

She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of despair came
over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last broke forth. She
wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her heaving breast, and a loud
cry of anguish burst from her lips. She at last fainted away, and was
thus relieved from a consciousness of her sufferings.

When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and her
physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her trembling
arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her mother's heart,
sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew, feeling that he could be
of no further assistance. It had only been in his power to recall
Josephine to a consciousness of her misery; but for her misery itself he
had no medicine; he knew that her tears and her daughter's sympathy
could alone give relief.

Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came in to
inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her bedside, she
shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased to flow, and her
usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances of anger and offended
love at the emperor. But love soon conquered anger. She extended her
tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet smile, peculiar to woman,
trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle, touching voice, she said: "Was
I not right, my friend, when I shrank back in terror from the thought of
becoming an empress[18]?"

[Footnote 18: Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
342, _et seq_.]

Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these farewell
tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the emperor had
already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the hand of the
Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in Vienna. Nothing
now remained to be done but to remove Josephine from the throne, and
elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the vacant place!

The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He assembled
about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and princes, created
by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of the Tuileries, in the
presence of his court and the Senate, the emperor appeared; at his side
the empress, arrayed for the last time in all the insignia of the
dignity she was about to lay aside forever.

In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
words. The arch-chancellor, Cambacérès, then caused the appropriate
paragraph of the _Code Civile_ to be read, applied it to the case under
consideration, in a short, terse address, and pronounced the union of
the emperor and empress dissolved.

This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the law.
Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the court,
and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the graceful,
sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few other women.

As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward
emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his iron
countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then walked
through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on either side,
and greeted all with a last soft look, a last inclination of the head,
nothing could be heard but weeping, and even those who rejoiced over her
downfall, because they hoped much from the new empress and the new
dynasty, were now moved to tears by this silent and yet so eloquent
leave-taking.

The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his dearest
possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from Josephine.

On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison, her
future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and was now
to be the widow's seat, of her love.

Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who constituted this
court did not leave her. During the next few weeks the crowds of the
coming and going on the road from Paris to Malmaison presented the
appearance of a procession; the equipages of all the kings and princes
who were sojourning in Paris, and of all the nobles and dignitaries of
the new France, were to be seen there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain,
that still preserved its sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the
empress at Malmaison. And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and
humble, as well as by the rich and great. All wished to say to the
empress that they still loved and honored her, and that she was still
enthroned in their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at
an end.

The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that, with
Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future would avenge
her tears.



CHAPTER IX.

THE KING OF HOLLAND.

While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison, Hortense was
seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother lamented as a
misfortune, because she still loved her husband, would have conferred
happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved her husband. Once again in
harmony with her husband, Hortense entreated the emperor to permit them
to be divorced, and the king united his entreaties with those of
the queen.

But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear before the
people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage bond. For state
reasons he had separated from his wife, and for state reasons he could
not give his consent to the dissolution of the union of his brother and
step-daughter. They must, therefore, continue to drag the chain that
united them; and they did, but with angry hearts.

Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than ever;
while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to Napoleon's express
command, remained in Paris for some time. They were to attend the
festivities that were soon to take place at the imperial court in honor
of the marriage of the emperor with the Archduchess Marie Louise of
Austria. The daughter of the divorced empress, with the emperor's
sisters, had been selected to carry the train of the new empress on the
marriage-day. Napoleon wished to prove to France and to all Europe that
there was no other law in his family than his will, and that the
daughter of Josephine had never ceased to be his obedient daughter also.
Napoleon wished, moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that
she might have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court. Hortense
mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April, 1810, the day
of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she, together with his
sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She alone did this without
making any resistance, while it was only after the most violent
opposition to Napoleon's command that his sisters, Queen Caroline of
Naples, the Duchess Pauline of Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of
Tuscany, consented to undergo the humiliation of walking behind their
new sovereign as humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not
the only persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the
day of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration in the
chapel in the Tuileries.

The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and he
did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had not
appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red robes
thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's dress.

The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy forebodings;
and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in
honor of the imperial marriage, a short time afterward, the fearful fire
occurred that cost so many human lives and destroyed so much family
happiness, the people remembered with terror that other misfortune that
had occurred on the day of the entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and
called this fire an earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian"
would bring upon France and the emperor.

While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in honor of
the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering over her
husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his crown.

When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of Holland, he
had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new people, and to
devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too honest a man not to
keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was to make such
arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare and prosperity of
Holland seemed to require, without in the least considering whether
these laws were conducive to the interests of France or not. He would
not regard Holland as a province dependent upon France, of which he was
the governor, but as an independent land that had chosen him to be its
free and independent king. But Napoleon did not view the matter in the
same light; in his eyes it was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to
refuse to conform itself in every respect to the interests of its
powerful neighbor, France.

When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he had
charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same time to
remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of France." Louis
had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander; and when the
interests of France and Holland came into conflict, the king took the
side of his new country, and acted as a Hollander. He was of the opinion
that the welfare of Holland depended on its commerce and industry only,
and that it could only be great through its commercial importance; he
therefore reduced the army and navy, making merchantmen of the
men-of-war, and peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.

Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and angrily
reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole squadrons,
discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until Holland was
without power, both on land and water, as though warehouses and clerks
were the material elements of power." Napoleon reproached the king still
more bitterly, however, for having re-established commercial relations
with England, for having raised the blockade for Holland which France
had established against England, and for having permitted the American
ships, that had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor
quietly in those of Holland.

The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should conform
himself to his will and to the interests of France unconditionally; that
he should immediately break off all commercial relations between Holland
and England; that he should re-establish a fleet, of forty
ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and seven brigs

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