THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

“I win the battles, Josephine wins me the hearts.” These words of Napoleon are the most beautiful epitaph of the Empress Josephine, the much-loved, the much-regretted, and the much-slandered one. Even while Napoleon won battles, while with lofty pride he placed his foot on the neck of the conquered, took away from princes their crowns, and from nations their liberty—while Europe trembling bowed before him, and despite her admiration cursed him—while hatred heaved up the hearts of all nations against him—even then none could refuse admiration to the tender, lovely woman who, with the gracious smile of goodness, walked at his side; none could refuse love to the wife of the conqueror, whose countenance of brass received light and lustre from the beautiful eyes of Josephine, as Memnon’s statue from the rays of the sun.

She was not beautiful according to those high and exalted rules of beauty which we admire in the statues of the gods of old, but her whole being was surrounded with such a charm, goodness, and grace, that the rules of beauty were forgotten. Josephine’s beauty was believed in, and the heart was ravished by the spell of such a gracious, womanly apparition. Goethe’s words, which the Princess Eleonore utters in reference to Antonio, were not applicable to Josephine:

“All the gods have with one consent brought gifts to his cradle, but, alas! the Graces have remained absent, and where the gifts of these lovely ones fail, though much was given and much received, yet on such a bosom is no resting-place.”

No, the Graces were not absent from the cradle of Josephine; they, more than all the other gods, had brought their gifts to Josephine. They had encircled her with the girdle of gracefulness, they had imparted to her look, to her smile, to her figure, attraction and charm, and given her that beauty which is greater and more enduring than that of youth, namely loveliness, that only real beauty. Josephine possessed the beauty of grace, and this quality remained when youth, happiness, and grandeur, had deserted her. This beauty of grace struck the Emperor Alexander as he came to Malmaison to salute the dethroned empress. He had entered Paris in triumph, and laid his foot on the neck of him whom he once had called his friend, yet before the divorced wife of the dethroned emperor the czar, full of admiration and respect, bowed his head and made her homage as to a queen; for, though she was dethroned, on her head shone the crown in imperishable beauty and glory, the crown of loveliness, of faithfulness, and of womanhood.

She was not witty in the special sense of a so-called “witty woman.” She composed no verses, she wrote no philosophical dissertations, she painted not, she was no politician, she was no practising artist, but she possessed the deep and fine intuition of all that which is beautiful and noble: she was the protectress of the arts and sciences. She knew that disciples were not wanting to the arts, but that often a Maecenas is needed. She left it to her cousin, the Countess Fanny Beauharnais, to be called an artist; hers was a loftier destiny, and she fulfilled that destiny through her whole life—she was a Maecenas, the protectress of the arts and sciences.

As Hamlet says of his father, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again;” thus Josephine’s fame consists not that she was a princess, an empress anointed by the hands of the pope himself, but that she was a noble and true wife, loving yet more than she was loved, entirely given up in unswerving loyalty to him who rejected her; languishing for very sorrow on account of his misfortune, and dying for very grief as vanished away the star of his happiness. Thousands in her place, rejected, forgotten, cast away, as she was—thousands would have rejoiced in the righteousness of the fate which struck and threw in the dust the man who, for earthly grandeur, had abandoned the beloved one and disowned her love. Josephine wept over him, lamented over his calamities, and had but a wish to be allowed to share them with him. Josephine died broken-hearted—the misfortunes of her beloved, who no more loved her, the misfortunes of Napoleon, broke her heart.

She was a woman, “take her for all in all”—a noble, a beautiful woman, a loving woman, and such as belongs to no peculiar class, to no peculiar nation, to no peculiar special history; she belongs to the world, to humanity, to universal history. In the presence of such an apparition all national hatred is silent, all differences of political opinion are silent. Like a great, powerful drama drawn from the universal history of man and represented before our eyes, so her life passes before us; and surprised, wondering, we gaze on, indifferent whether the heroine of such a tragedy be Creole, French, or to what nation she may owe her birth. She belongs to the world, to history, and if we Germans have no love for the Emperor Napoleon, the tyrant of the world, the Caesar of brass who bowed the people down into the dust, and trod under foot their rights and liberties—if we Germans have no love for the conqueror Napoleon, because he won so many battles from us, yet this does not debar us from loving Josephine, who during her lifetime won hearts to Napoleon, and whose beautiful death for love’s sake filled with tears the eyes of those whose lips knew but words of hatred and cursing against the emperor.

To write the life of Josephine does not mean to write the life of a Frenchwoman, the life of the wife of the man who brought over Germany so much adversity, shame, and suffering, but it means to write a woman’s life which, as a fated tragedy or like a mighty picture, rises before our vision. It is to unfold a portion of the world’s history before our eyes—and the world’s history is there for our common instruction and progress, for our enlightenment and encouragement.

I am not afraid, therefore, of being accused of lacking patriotism, because I have undertaken to write the life of a woman who is not a German, who was the wife of Germany’s greatest enemy and oppressor. It is, indeed, a portion of the universal drama which is unfolded in the life of this woman, and amid so much blood, so much dishonor, so many tears, so much humiliation, so much pride, arrogance, and treachery, of this renowned period of the world’s history, shines forth the figure of Josephine as the bright star of womanhood, of love, of faithfulness—stars need no birthright, no nationality, they belong to all lands and nations.

CHAPTER II. THE YOUNG MAID.

On the 23d of July, 1763, to the Chevalier Tascher de la Pagerie, ex-lieutenant of the royal troops, a resident of the insignificant spot of the Trois Islets, on the island of Martinique, was borne by his young, rich, and beautiful wife, a first child.

The loving parents, the relatives and friends had longed for this child, but now that it was come, they bade it welcome without joy, and even over the brow of the young father hung the shadow of a cloud as he received the intelligence of the birth of his child. For it was a girl, and not the wished-for boy who was to be the inheritor of the valuable family-plantation, and the inheritor also of the ancient and respectable name of Tascher de la Pagerie.

It was, however, useless to murmur against fate. What was irrevocable had to be accepted, and welcome made to the daughter, who, instead of the expected heir, would now lay claim to the rights of primogeniture. As an inheritance reserved for him who had not come, the daughter received the name which had been destined to the son. For two hundred years the name of Joseph had been given to the eldest son of the family of Tascher de la Pagerie, but now that there was none to whom the Chevalier, Ex-lieutenant Joseph de la Pagerie could leave his name as a legacy, the family had to be satisfied to give the name to his daughter, and consequently she received at baptism the name of Joseph Marie Rosa.

There was, however, one being who gladly and willingly forgave the fault of her birth, and who consecrated to the daughter the same love she would have offered to the son. This being was the mother of the little Joseph Marie Rosa.

“Contrary to all our wishes,” writes she to her husband’s sister, the beautiful Madame Renaudin, in Paris—“contrary to all our wishes, God has given me a daughter. My joy is not therefore diminished, for I look upon my child as a new bond which binds me still closer to your brother, my dear husband, and to you. Why should I have such a poor and meagre opinion of the female sex, that a daughter should not be welcomed by me? I am acquainted with many persons of our sex who concentrate in themselves as many good qualities as one would only with difficulty find in the other sex. Maternal love already blinds me and fosters in me the hope that my daughter may be like them, and if even I cannot enjoy this satisfaction, yet I am thankful to my child that by means of her existence I am gathering so much happiness.”

Indeed, extraordinary joy, since the birth of the child, reigned in the house of M. Tascher de la Pagerie; joy reigned all over Martinique, for the long war between France and England was ended, and a few months before the birth of little Joseph Marie Rosa, the peace which secured to France the possession of her maritime colonies had been signed. Martinique, so often attacked, bombarded, besieged by English ships—Martinique was again the unconditional property of France, and on the birthday of the little Marie Joseph Rosa the French fleet entered into the harbor of Port Royal, landed a French garrison for the island, and brought a new governor in the person of the Marquis de Fenelon, the nephew of the famous Bishop de Fenelon.

Joyously and quietly passed away the first years of the life of the little Joseph, or little Josephine, as her kind parents called her. Only once, in the third year of her life, was Josephine’s infancy troubled by a fright. A terrible hurricane, such as is known to exist only in the Antilles, broke over Martinique. The historians of that period know not how to depict the awful and calamitous events of this hurricane, which, at the same time, seemed to shake the whole earth with its convulsions. In Naples, in Sicily, in the Molucca Islands, volcanoes broke out in fearful eruptions; for three days the earth trembled in Constantinople. But it was over Martinique that the hurricane raged in the most appalling manner. In less than four hours the howling northwest’ wind, accompanied by forked lightning, rolling thunder, heavy water-spouts, and tremendous earth-tremblings, had hurled down into fragments all the houses of the town, all the sugar-plantations, and all the negro cabins. Here and there the earth opened, flames darted out and spread round about a horrible vapor of sulphur, which suffocated human beings. Trees were uprooted, and the sugar and coffee plantations destroyed. The sea roared and upheaved, sprang from its bounds, and shivered as mere glass-work barks and even some of the larger ships lying in the harbor of Port Royal. Five hundred men perished, and a much larger number were severely wounded. Distress and poverty were the result of this astounding convulsion of nature.

The estate of M. Tascher de la Pagerie was made desolate. His residence, his sugar-plantations, were but a heap of ruins and rubbish, and as a gift of Providence he looked upon the one refuge left him in his sugar-refinery, which was miraculously spared by the hurricane. There M. Tascher saved himself, with Josephine and her younger sister, and there his wife bore him a third child. But Heaven even now did not fulfil the long-cherished wishes of the parents, for it was to a daughter that Madame de la Pagerie gave birth. The parents were, however, weary with murmuring against fate, which accomplished not their wish; and so to prove to fate that this daughter was welcome, they named the child born amid the horrors of this terrific hurricane, Desiree, the Desired.

Peaceful, happy years followed;—peaceful and happy, in the midst of the family, passed on the years of Josephine’s infancy. She had every thing which could be procured. Beloved by her parents, by her two sisters, worshipped by her servants and slaves, she lived amid a beautiful, splendid, and sublime nature, in the very midst of wealth and affluence. Her father, casting away all ambition, was satisfied to cultivate his wide and immense domains, and to remain among his one hundred and fifty slaves as master and ruler, to whom unconditional and cheerful obedience was rendered. Her mother sought and wished for no other happiness than the peaceful quietude of the household joys. Her husband, her children, her home, constituted the world where she breathed, in which alone centred her thoughts, her wishes, and her hopes. To mould her daughters into good housekeepers and wives, and if possible to secure for them in due time, by means of a brilliant and advantageous marriage, a happy future—this was the only ambition of this gentle and virtuous woman.

Above all things, it was necessary to procure to the daughters an education suited to the claims of high social position, and which would fit her daughters to act on the world’s stage the part which their birth, their wealth, and beauty, reserved for them. The tender mother consented to part with her darling, with her eldest daughter; and Josephine, not yet twelve years old, was brought, for completing her education, to the convent of our Lady de la Providence in Port Royal. There she learned all which in the Antilles was considered necessary for the education of a lady of rank; there she obtained that light, superficial, rudimentary instruction, which was then thought sufficient for a woman; there she was taught to write her mother tongue with a certain fluency and without too many blunders; there she was instructed in the use of the needle, to execute artistic pieces of embroidery; there she learned something in arithmetic and in music; yea, so as to give to the wealthy daughter of M. Tascher de la Pagerie a full and complete education, the pious sisters of the convent consented that twice a week a dancing-master should come to the convent to give to Josephine lessons in dancing, the favorite amusement of the Creoles. [Footnote: “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” par Joseph Aubenas. vol. i., p. 36.]

These dancing-lessons completed the education of Josephine, and, barely fifteen years old, she returned to her parents and sisters as an accomplished young lady, to perform the honors of the house alongside of her mother, to learn from her to preside with grace and ease over a large mansion, and above all things to be a good mistress, a benefactress, and a protectress to her slaves. Under her mother’s guidance, Josephine visited the negro cabins to minister unto the sick, to bring comfort and nourishment to the old and to the weak, to pray with the dying, to take under her loving guardianship the new-born babes of the negro women, to instruct in the catechism the grown-up children, to excite them to industry, to encourage them through kindness and friendliness, to protect them, and to be a mediator when for some offence they were condemned to severe punishment.

It was a wonderfully peaceful and beautiful life that of the young Josephine, amid a bountiful nature, in that soft, sunny clime which clothed her whole being with that tender, pleasing grace, that lovely quietude, that yielding complacency, and at the same time with that fiery, passionate nature of the Creoles. Ordinarily dressed only with the “gaule,” a wide, loose garment of white muslin, falling loosely about the waist, where no belt gathered its folds, the beautiful head wrapped up in the many-colored madras, which around the temples was folded up into graceful knots holding together her chestnut-brown hair—in this dress Josephine would swing for hours in her hammock made of homespun silk and ornamented with borders of feathers from the variegated iridescent birds of Cayenne.

Round about her were her young female slaves, watching with their brilliant dark eyes their young mistress, ever ready to read every wish upon that dreamy, smiling countenance, and by their swarthy tinge heightening the soft, tender whiteness of her own complexion.

Then, wearied with the stillness and with her dreams, Josephine would spring up from the hammock, dart into the house with all the lightness of the gazelle to enliven the family with her own joyousness, her merry pleasantry, and accompanied by her guitar to sing unto them with her lovely youthful voice the songs of the Creoles. As the glowing sun was at its setting, away she hastened with her slaves into the garden, directed their labors, and with her own hands tended her own cherished flowers, which commingled together in admirable admixture from all climes under the genial skies of the Antilles. In the evening, the family was gathered together in the light of the moon, which imparted to the nights the brightness of day and streamed upon them her soft blue rays, upon the fragrant terrace, in front of the house, where the faithful slaves carefully watched the little group close one to another and guarded their masters from the approaches of poisonous serpents, that insidious progeny of the night.

On Sundays after Josephine had religiously and faithfully listened to an early mass, she gladly attended in the evening the “barraboula” of the negroes, dancing their African dances in the glare of torches and to the monotonous sound of the tam-tam.

On festivals, she assisted her mother to put all things in order, and to preside at the great banquets given to relatives and friends, who afterward were visited in their turn, and then the slaves carried their masters in hammocks, or else, what was far more acceptable, the young maidens mounted small Spanish horses, full of courage and daring, and whose firm, quick step made a ride to Porto Rico simply a rushing gallop.

Amidst this dreamy, sunny, joyous existence of the young maiden gleamed one day, as a lightning-flash, a prophetic ray of Josephine’s future greatness.

This happened one afternoon as she was walking alone and thoughtful through the plantation. A group of negresses, in the centre of which was an old and unknown woman, attracted her attention. Josephine approached. It was an old negro woman from a neighboring plantation, and she was telling the fortune of the young negro women of M. Tascher de la Pagerie. No sooner did the old woman cast her eyes on Josephine than she seemed to shrink into one mass, whilst an expression of horror and wonder stole over her face. She vehemently seized the hand of the young maiden, examined it carefully, and then lifted up her large, astonished eyes with a searching expression to the face of Josephine.

“You must see something very wonderful in my face and in my hand?” inquired Josephine, laughing.

“Yes, something very wonderful,” repeated the negro woman, still intently staring at her.

“Is it a good or a bad fortune which awaits me?”

The old prophetess slowly shook her head.

“Who can tell,” said she, gravely, “what is a good or a bad fortune for human beings? In your hand I see evil, but in your face happiness—great, lofty happiness.”

“Well,” cried out Josephine, laughing, “you are cautious, and your oracle is not very clear.”

The old woman lifted up her eyes to heaven with a strange expression.

“I dare not,” said she, “express myself more clearly.”

“Speak on, whatever the result!” exclaimed Josephine, whose curiosity was excited by the very diffidence of the fortune-teller. “Say what you see in my future life. I wish it, I order you to do so.”

“Well, if you order it, I must obey,” said she, with solemnity. “Listen, then. I read in your countenance that you are called to high destinies. You will soon be married. But your marriage will not be a happy one. You will soon be a young widow, and then—”

“Well, and then?” asked Josephine, passionately, as the old woman hesitated and remained silent.

“Well, and then you will be Queen of France—more than a queen!” shouted the prophetess, with a loud voice. “You will live glorious, brilliant days, but at the last misfortune will come and carry you to your grave in a day of rebellion.”

Afraid of the pictures which her prophetic vision had contemplated in the future, the old hag forced her way through the circle of negro women around, and rushed away through the field as fast as her feet could bear her on.

Josephine, laughing, turned to her astonished women, who had followed with their eyes the flight of the prophetess, but who now directed their dark eyes with an expression of awe and bewilderment to their young mistress, of whom the fortune-teller had said she would one day be Queen of France. Josephine endeavored to overthrow the faith of her swarthy servants in the fortune-teller, and, by pointing to the ridiculous prophecy in reference to herself, and which predicted an impossible future, she tried to prove to them what a folly it was to rely on the words of those who made a profession of foretelling the future.

But against her will the prophetic words of the old woman echoed in the heart of the young maiden. She could not return home to her family and talk, laugh, and dance, as she had been accustomed to do with her sisters. Followed by her slaves, she went into her garden and sank in a hammock, hung amid the gigantic leaves of a palm-tree, and, while the negro girls danced and sang round her, the young maid was dreaming about the future, and her beating heart asked if it were not possible that the prophecy of the negro woman might one day be realized.

She, the daughter of M. Tascher de la Pagerie—she a future “Queen of France! More than a queen!” Oh, it was mere folly to think on such things, and to busy herself with the ludicrous prophecies of the old woman.

And Josephine laughed at her own credulity, and the slaves sang and danced, and against her will the thoughts of the young maiden returned to the prophecy again and again.

What the old fortune-teller had said, was it so very ridiculous, so impossible? Could not that prophecy become a reality? Was it, then, the first time that a daughter of the Island of Martinique had been exalted to grandeur and lofty honors?

Josephine asked these questions to herself, as dreaming and thoughtful she swung in the hammock and gazed toward the horizon upon the sea, which, in its blue depths and brilliancy, hung there as if heaven had lowered itself down to earth. That sea was a pathway to France, and already once before had its waves wafted a daughter of the Island of Martinique to a throne.

Thus ran the thoughts of Josephine. She thought of Franchise d’Aubigne, and of her wondrous story. A poor wanderer, fleeing from France to search for happiness beyond the seas in a foreign land, M. d’Aubigne had landed in Martinique with his young wife. There Franchise was born, there passed away the first years of her life. Once, when a child of three years old, she was bitten by a venomous serpent, and her life was saved only through the devotion of her black nurse, who sucked alike poison and death from the wound. Another time, as she was on a voyage with her parents, the vessel was in danger of being captured by a corsair; and a third time a powerful whirlwind carried into the waves of the sea the little Francoise, who was walking on the shore, but a large black dog, her companion and favorite, sprang after her, seized her dress with its teeth, and carried the child back to the shore, where sobbing for joy her mother received her.

Fate had reserved great things for Francoise, and with all manner of horrors it submitted the child to probation to make of it a strong and noble woman.

A severer blow came when her father, losing in gambling all the property which he had gathered in Martinique, died suddenly, leaving his family in poverty and want. Another blow more severe still came when on her return to France, whither her mother was going with her, she lost this last prop of her youth and childhood. Madame d’Aubigne died, and her body was committed to the waves; and, as a destitute orphan, Francoise d’Aubigne touched the soil of France.

And what became of the poor orphan of the Creole of Martinique?

She became the wife of a king, and nearly a queen! For Francoise d’Aubigne, the widow of Scarron, the governess of the children of Louis XIV, had caused the mother of these children, the beautiful Madame de Montespan, to be cast away, and she became the friend, the beloved, the secret spouse of the king: and the lofty Louis, who could say of himself, “L’etat c’est moi” he, with all the power of his will, with all his authority, was the humble vassal of Franchise d’Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon!

This was the first princess whom Martinique had given to the world!

Was it not possible that the prophecies of the old negro woman could be realized? could not once more a daughter of the Island of Martinique be exalted into a princess?

“You will be Queen of France!” the negress had said.

No, it was mere folly to believe in such a ridiculous prophecy. The throne of France was now occupied. Alongside of her consort, the good, the well-beloved Louis XVI, the young and beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the mighty Empress Maria Theresa, sat on the throne. She was young, she was beloved throughout France, and she had already, to the great delight of her husband and of his people, borne an heir to the throne of France.

The throne of the lilies stood then on firm and sure foundations, and the prophecies of the old negress belonged only to the kingdom of fables. [Footnote: This prophecy, nearly as related above, was told by the Empress Josephine herself to her maids of honor in the castle of Navarra.—See “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine, la Ville, la Cour et les Salons de Paris sous l’Empire, par Madame Georgette Ducrest.”]

CHAPTER III. THE BETROTHAL.

Six months had barely elapsed since Josephine’s return from the convent when the family Tascher de la Pagerie received from their relatives in Paris letters which were to be of the greatest importance for the whole family.

The beautiful Madame de Renaudin, sister of M. Tascher de la Pagerie, had settled in Paris after having rid herself of an unhappy marriage with a man, coarse and addicted to gambling, and after having, through a legal separation, reobtained her freedom. She lived there in the closest, intimacy with the Marquis de Beauharnais, who, for many years, at an earlier period, had resided as governor on the Island of Martinique, and there had bound himself to the whole family of Tascher de la Pagerie by the ties of a cordial friendship. His wife, during her residence in Martinique, had been the most tender friend of Madame de Renaudin, and when the marchioness bore a second son to her husband, Madame de Renaudin had stood as godmother, and promised to love and protect the child of her friend as if she were his mother.

Chance brought on the opportunity of accomplishing this promise and of fulfilling the oath made to God before the altar. The Marchioness de Beauharnais returned to France in the year 1763 with her husband and her two sons, but died there a short time after; and Madame de Renaudin, true to her oath, hastened to replace the natural guardian, the mother.

Perhaps she had but followed the dictates of her heart, perhaps against her will a sentiment of joy had passed over her at the death of the poor marchioness, for, by this death, one at least of the two obstacles intervening between Madame de Renaudin and the Marquis de Beauharnais had been removed. Both married, both of the Catholic religion, death alone could make their hands free, and confer upon them the right of joining hands together for all their days.

They loved one another, they had ceased long ago to make a secret of it; they avowed it to each other and to their dependants, for their brave, loyal, and noble hearts would not stoop to falsehood and deception, and they had the courage to acknowledge what their sentiments were.

Death had then made free the hand of the Marquis de Beauharnais, but life held yet in bondage the hand of the Baroness de Renaudin.

As long as her husband lived, she could not, though legally divorced from him, conscientiously think of a second marriage.

But she possessed the courage and the loyalty of true love; she had seen and experienced enough of the world to despise its judgments, and with cheerful determination do what in her conscience she held to be good and right.

Before God’s altar she had promised to the deceased Marchioness de Beauharnais to be a mother to her son; she loved the child and she loved the father of this child, and, as she was now free, as she had no duties which might restrain her footsteps, she followed the voice of her heart and braved public opinion.

She had purchased not far from Paris, at Noisy-le-Grand, a country residence, and there passed the summer with the Marquis de Beauharnais, with his two sons and their tutor.

The marquis owned a superb hotel in Paris, in Thevenot Street, and there, during winter, he resided with his two sons and the Baroness de Renaudin, the mother, the guardian of his two orphan sons, the friend, the confidante, the companion of his quiet life, entirely devoted to study, to the arts, to the sciences, and to household pleasures.

Thus the years passed away; the two sons of the Marquis de Beauharnais had grown up under the care of their maternal friend: they had been through their collegiate course, had been one year students at Heidelberg, had returned, had been through the drill of soldier and officer, a mere form which custom then imposed on young men of high birth; and the younger son Alexander, the godchild of the Baroness de Renaudin, had scarcely passed his sixteenth year when he received his commission as sub-lieutenant.

A year afterward his elder brother married one of his cousins, the Countess Claude Beauharnais, and the sight of this youthful happy love excited envy in the heart of the young lieutenant of seventeen years, and awoke in him a longing for a similar blessedness. Freely and without reserve he communicated his wishes to his father, begged of him to choose him a wife, and promised to take readily and cheerfully as such her whom his father or his sponsor, his second mother, would select for him.

A few months later reached Martinique the letters which, as already said, were to be of the utmost importance to the family of M. Tascher de la Pagerie.

The first of these letters was from the Marquis de Beauharnais, and addressed to the parents of Josephine, but with a considerate and delicate tact the marquis had not written the letter with his own hand, but had dictated it to his son Alexander, so as to prove to the family of his friend De la Pagerie that the son was in perfect unison of sentiment with the father, and that the latter only expressed what the son desired and approved.

“I cannot express,” wrote the marquis, “how much satisfaction I have in being at this moment able to give you a proof of the inclination and friendship which I always have had for you. As you will perceive, this satisfaction is not merely on the surface.

“My two sons,” continues he, “are now enjoying an annual income of forty thousand livres. It is in your power to give me your daughter to enjoy this income with my son, the chevalier. The esteem and affection he feels for Madame de Renaudin makes him passionately desire to be united with her niece. I can assure you that I am only gratifying his wishes when I pray you to give me for him your second daughter, whose age corresponds at best with his. I sincerely wish that your eldest daughter were a few years younger, for then she would certainly have had the preference, the more so that she is described to me under the most advantageous colors. But I confess my son, who is but seventeen and a half years old, thinks that a young lady of fifteen is too near him in age. This is one of those cases in which reasonable and reflecting parents will accommodate themselves to circumstances.”

M. de Beauharnais adds that his son possesses all the qualities necessary to make a woman happy. At the same time he declares that, as regards his future daughter-in-law, he has no claims to a dowry, for his son already possesses an income of forty thousand livres from his mother’s legacy, and that after his father’s death he will inherit besides an annual income of twenty-five thousand livres. He then entreats M. de la Pagerie, as soon as practicable, to send his daughter to France, and, if possible, to bring her himself. The marquis then addresses himself directly to the wife of M. de la Pagerie, and repeats to her in nearly the same words his proposal, and endeavors also to excuse to her the choice of the second daughter.

“The most flattering things have been told me,” writes he, “of your eldest daughter, but my son finds her, with her fifteen years, too old for him. My son is worthy of becoming your son-in-law; Nature has gifted him with good and fine parts, and his income is sufficiently large to share it with a wife qualified to render him happy. Such a one I trust to find in your second daughter; may she resemble you, madame, and I can no longer doubt of my son’s happiness! I feel extremely happy to see my long-cherished wishes satisfied! I can not express to you how great will be my joy to see riveted forever, by means of this union of our two families, the inclination and the friendship which have already so long chained us together. I trust that Mademoiselle de la Pagerie will not refuse her consent. Allow me to embrace her and already to greet her as my own beloved daughter.” [Footnote: Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 78.]

To this letter was addressed a note from Madame de Renaudin to her brother and to her sister-in-law. She openly acknowledges that she it was who desired this union, and who had brought the matter to its present stage, and she endeavors to meet the objection that it would appear strange for a young lady to undertake a long journey in search of a future husband, whilst it would be more expedient that the bridegroom should make the journey to his bride, to receive her at the hands of her parents, and bring her with him to a new home. But this bride of thirteen years must first be trained for her future destiny; she is not to be in the house of her future father-in-law, but in the house of Madame de Renaudin, her aunt, and she is there to receive the completion of her education and that higher culture which her parents, even with all the necessary means, could not give her in Martinique.

“We are of opinion,” she writes, “that the young people must see one another and please each other, before we bring this matter to a close, for they are both too dear to us to desire to coerce them against their inclination. Your daughter will find in me a true and kind mother, and I am sure that she will find the happiness of her future life in the contemplated union, for the chevalier is well qualified to make a wife happy. All that I can say of him exhausts by no means the praise he deserves. He has a pleasant countenance, an excellent figure, wit, genius, knowledge, and, what is more than this, all the noble qualities of heart and soul are united in him, and he must consequently be loved by all who know him.”

Meanwhile, before these letters reached Martinique, chance had already otherwise decided the fate of Mary, the second daughter of M. de la Pagerie. With one sentence it had destroyed all the family schemes. After three days of confinement to a bed of sickness, Mary had died of a violent fever, and when the letter, in which the Marquis de Beauharnais asked for her hand, reached her father, she had been buried three months.

M. Tascher de la Pagerie hastened to announce her death to the Marquis and to Madame de Renaudin; and to prove to them how much he also had at heart a union of the two families, he offered to his son, the chevalier, the hand of his third daughter, the little twelve-year-old Desiree. Undoubtedly it would have been more gratifying to him if the choice of the marquis had fallen upon his eldest daughter, and he makes this known very clearly in his answer to Madame de Renaudin.

“My eldest daughter,” writes he, “Josephine, who is lately returned from the convent, and who has often desired me to take her to France, will, believe me, be somewhat sensitive at the preference given to her younger sisters. Josephine has a beautiful head, beautiful eyes and arms, and also a wonderful talent for music. During her stay in the convent I procured her a guitar-teacher; she has made the best of the instruction received, and she has a glorious voice. It is a pity she has not the opportunity of completing her education in France; and were I to have my wish, I would bring her to you instead of my other two daughters.”

Meanwhile the Marquis de Beauharnais, as well as his son, found that the youngest daughter of M. de la Pagerie was too young for their impatient desire to bring to a favorable issue these important family concerns, and that the eldest of the daughters ought to have the preference. The son of the marquis especially pronounced himself decidedly in favor of Josephine, and father and son, as well as Madame de Renaudin, turned imploringly to M. Tascher de la Pagerie, praying that he would bring them his eldest daughter.

Now, for the first time, when the choice of the Beauharnais family had irrevocably fallen upon Josephine, now for the first time was this proposed marriage made known to her, and her consent asked.

Josephine, whose young heart was like a blank sheet of paper, whereon love had as yet written no name, Josephine rejoiced at the prospect of accomplishing the secret wish of her maiden heart, to go to Paris—Paris, the burning desire of all Creoles—Paris, after all the narratives and descriptions, which had been made to Josephine, rose before the soul of the young maiden as a golden morning dream, a charming fairy world; and full of gratitude she already loved her future husband, to whom she owed the happiness of becoming acquainted with the city of wonders and pleasures.

She therefore acquiesced without regret at being separated from her parents and from her sister, from the home of all her sweet reminiscences of youth, and joyously, in August of the year 1779, she embarked on board the vessel which was to take her with her father to France.

In the middle of October they both, after a stormy passage, touched the soil of France and announced to their relatives their safe arrival. Alexandre de Beauharnais, full of impatient longings to see his unknown young bride, hastened to Brest to bid her and her father welcome, and to accompany them to Paris.

The first meeting of the young couple decided their future. Josephine, smiling and blushing, avowed to her father that she was willing and ready to marry M. Alexandre Beanharnais; and, the very first day of his meeting with Josephine, Alexandre wrote to his father that he was enchanted with the choice made, and that he felt strongly convinced that, at the side of so charming, sweet, and lovely a being, he would lead a happy and sunny life.

The love of the children had crowned all the schemes of the parents, and on the 13th of December, 1779, the marriage of the young couple took place. On the 13th of December, Mademoiselle Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie became the Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais.

CHAPTER IV. THE YOUNG BONAPARTE.

In the same year, 1779, in which Josephine de la Pagerie for the first time left Martinique for Prance, a vessel which had sailed from Corsica brought to France a boy who, not only as regards Josephine’s life, but also as regards all Europe, yea, the whole world, was to be of the highest importance, and who, with the iron step of fatality, was to walk through Europe to subvert thrones and raise up new ones; to tread nations in the dust, and to lift up others from the dust; to break tyranny’s chains in which people languished, so as to impose upon them his own chains.

This boy was Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of the advocate Charles de Bonaparte.

From Ajaccio, the principal town of Corsica, came the ship which brought to France the boy, his father, and his two elder brothers. In Ajaccio the family of the Bonapartes had been settled for more than a century. There also Napoleon had passed the first years of his life, in the family circle with his parents, and in joyous amusements with his five brothers and sisters.

His father, Charles de Bonaparte, belonged to one of the noble families of Corsica, and was one of the most influential men on the island. His mother, Letitia Ramolina, was well known throughout the island for her beauty, and the only woman who could have been her rival, for she was her equal in beauty, youth, and grace, was her dearest friend, the beautiful Panonia de Comnene, afterward the mother of the Duchess d’Abrantes.

The beautiful Letitia Ramolina was married to Charles de Bonaparte the same year that her friend Panonia de Comnene became the wife of M. de Permont, a high French official in Ajaccio. Corsica was then the undisputed property of the kingdom of France, and, however proud the Corsicans were of their island, yet they were satisfied to be called subjects of France, and to have their beautiful island considered as a province of France.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the fifth child of his parents, the favorite of his beautiful mother Letitia, who was the life of the household, the ruler of the family. She governed the house, she educated the children; she knew, with the genuine ability of a housekeeper, of a mother, how to spend with careful frugality the moderate income of her husband; how to economize, and yet how to give to each what was needed. As to the father, in the hours of leisure which business, political debates, and amusements allowed him to give to his home and family, his children were an agreeable recreation, an interesting pastime; and when the children, carried away by the sparkling fire of youth, shouted or cried too loud, the father endeavored to palliate their misdemeanor, and obtain their pardon from their mother. Then Letitia’s eyes were fastened with a flaming glance upon her husband, and, imperatively bidding him leave the children, she would say: “Let them alone. Their education concerns you not. I am the one to keep the eyes upon them.”

She trained them up with the severity of a father and with the tenderness of a mother. Inexorable against every vice of heart and character, she was lenient and indulgent toward petty offences which sprang up from the inconsiderateness and spiritedness of youth. Every tendency to vulgar sentiments, to mean envy or selfishness, she strove to uproot by galling indignation; but every thing which was great and lofty, all sentiments of honor, of courage, of large-heartedness, of generosity, of kindness, she nursed and cherished in the hearts of her children. It was a glorious sight to contemplate this young mother when with her beautiful, rosy countenance glowing with enthusiasm and blessedness, she stood among her children, and in fiery, expressive manner spoke to the listening group of the great and brave of old, of the deeds of a Caesar, of a Hannibal; when she spoke of Brutus, who, though he loved Caesar, yet, greater than Caesar, and a more exalted Roman in his love for the republic, sacrificed his love to the fatherland; or when she, with that burning glow which all Corsicans, the women as well as the men, cherish for their home and for the historical greatness of their dear island, told them of the bravery and self-denial even unto death with which the Corsicans for centuries had fought for the freedom of their island; how, faithful to the ancient sacred law of blood, they never let the misdeed pass unpunished; they never feared the foe, however powerful he might be, but revenged on him the evil which he had committed against sister or brother, father or mother.

And when Letitia thus spoke to her children in the beautiful and harmonious language of her country, the eyes of the little Napoleon were all aflame, his childish countenance suddenly assumed a grave expression, and on the little body of the child was seen a man’s head, glowing with power, energy, and pride.

These narratives of his mother, these enthusiastic stories of heroes of the past, which the boy, with loud-beating heart, with countenance blanched by mental excitement, gathered from the beautiful lips of his mother, were the highest pleasure of the little Napoleon, and often in future years has the emperor amid his glory thought of those days never to be forgotten, when the child’s heart and soul hung on his mother’s lips, and listened to her wondrous stories of heroes.

These narratives of Letitia, this enthusiasm which her glowing language awoke in the heart of the child, this whole education which Letitia gave to her children, became the corner-stone of their future. As a sower, Letitia scattered the seed from which hero and warrior were to spring forth, and the grain which fell into the heart of her little Napoleon found a good soil, and grew and prospered, and became a laurel-tree, which adorned the whole family of the Bonapartes with the blooming crown of immortality.

Great men are ever much more the sons of their mother than of the father, while seldom have great men seen their own greatness survive in their sons. This is a wonderful secret of Nature, which perhaps cannot be explained, but which cannot be denied.

Goethe was the true son of his talented and noble mother, but he could leave as a legacy to his son only the fame of a name, and not his genius. Henry IV., the son of a noble, spiritual and large-hearted Jeanne de Navarre, could not leave to France, which worshipped and loved her king, could not leave to his people, a successor who resembled him, and who would inherit his sharp-sightedness, his prudence, his courage, and his greatness of soul. His son and successor was Louis XIII., a king whose misfortune it was ever to be overruled, ever to be humbled, ever to stand in the shade of two superior natures, which excited his envy, but which he was never competent to overcome; ever overshadowed by the past glories which his father’s fame threw upon him, overshadowed by the ruler and mentor of his choice, his minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu, who darkened his whole sad existence.

Napoleon was the son of his mother, the large-hearted and high-minded Letitia Ramolina. But how distant was the son of the hero, who, from a poor second lieutenant, had forced his way to the throne of France! how distant the poor little Duke de Reichstadt from his great father! Even over the life of this son of an eminent father weighed a shadow—the shadow of his father’s greatness. Under this shadow which the column of Vendome cast from Paris to the imperial city of Vienna, which the steep rock of St. Helena cast even upon the castle of Schonbrunn, under this shadow died the Duke de Reichstadt, the unfortunate son of his eminent father.

The little Napoleon was always a shy, reserved, quiet boy. For hours long he could hide in some obscure corner of the house or of the garden, and sit there with head bent low and eyes closed, half asleep and half dreaming; but when he opened his eyes, what a life in those looks! What animation, what exuberance in his whole being, when awaking from his childish dreams he mixed again with his brothers, sisters, and friends!

Letitia’s words and example had penetrated the soul of the child with the highest emotions of honor and human dignity, and the little boy of seven years exhibited oftentimes the sentiments of honor, pride, and obstinacy of a man. Every bodily correction to which he was submitted made him turn pale and tremble, not from pain but for shame, filled him with indignation, and was apt to bring on sickness. In Corsica still prevailed the custom of severe discipline for children, and in all the classes of the school the rod was applied as a means of punishment and reformation. To beat one’s wife was considered in Corsica, as everywhere else, an unpardonable brutality; but parents as well as teachers whipped children to mould them into noble, refined, honorable men.

The little Napoleon would not adapt himself to the blessings of this education, and the mere threats of the rod-switching deprived the child of his senses and threw him into convulsions. But though the little Napoleon was gloomy, monosyllabic, and quiet, yet was he from early childhood the favorite of all who knew him, and he already wielded over brothers, sisters, and companions, a wonderful influence.

When a boy of four years old, Letitia sent him to a sort of play-school, where boys and girls amused themselves together and learned the ABC. The young Napoleon was soon the soul of the little company. The boys obeyed him, and submitted to his will; the girls trembled before him, and yet with a smile they pressed toward him merely to be near him and to have a place at his side. And the four-year child already practised a tender chivalry. One of his little school-companions had made an impression on his heart; he honored her with special favors, sat at her side during the lessons, and when they left school to return home, the little Napoleon never missed, with complete gravity of countenance, to offer his arm to his favorite of five years of age and to accompany her to her home. But the sight of this gallant, with his diminutive, compact, and broad figure, over which the large head, with its earnestness of expression, seemed so incongruous, and which moved on with so much gravity, while the socks fell from the naked calves over the heels—all this excited the merriment of the other children; and when, arm-in-arm with his little schoolmate, he thus moved on, the other urchins in great glee shouted after him: “Napoleone di mezza calzetta dall’ amore a Giacominetta!” (“Napoleon in socks is the lover of the little Giacominetta!”)

The boy endured these taunts with the stoic composure of a philosopher, but never after did he offer his arm to the little Giacominetta, and never afterward did his socks hang down over his heels.

When from this “mixed school” he passed into a boys’ school, the little Napoleon distinguished himself above all the other boys by his ambition, his deep jealousy, his perseverance at learning and studying, and he soon became the favorite of the Abbe Recco, [Footnote: Napoleon, in his testament, written at St. Helena, willed a fixed sum of money to this Professor Recco, in gratitude for the instruction given him in his youth.] who taught at the royal college of Ajaccio as professor. A few times every week the worthy professor would gather his pupils in a large hall, to read them lectures upon ancient history, and especially upon the history of Rome; and, in order to give to this hall a worthy and significant ornament, he had it adorned on either side with two large and costly banners, one of which had the initials S. P. Q. E., and represented the standard of ancient Rome; facing it and on the opposite side of the hall was the standard of Carthage.

Under the shadows of these standards were ranged the seats for the scholars, and in the vacant centre of the large hall was the professor’s chair, from which the Abbe Recco dictated to his pupils the history of the heroic deeds of ancient Rome.

The elder children sat under the larger standard, under the standard of Rome, and the junior boys immediately opposite, under the standard of Carthage; and as Napoleon Bonaparte was the youngest scholar of the institution, he sat near the Carthaginian standard, whilst his brother Joseph, his senior by five years, had his seat facing him on the Roman side. Though at the commencement of the lectures Napoleon’s delight had been great, and though he had listened with enthusiasm to the history of the struggles, and to the martial achievements of the ancient Romans, the little Napoleon soon manifested an unmistaken repugnance to attend these lectures. He would turn pale, as with his brother he entered the hall, and with head bowed low, and dark, angry countenance, took his seat. A few days afterward he declared to his brother Joseph, his lips drawn in by anguish, that he would no more attend the lectures.

“And why not?” asked Joseph, astonished. “Do you take no interest in the Roman history? Can you not follow the lecture?”

The little Napoleon darted upon his brother a look of inexpressible contempt. “I would be a simpleton if the history of heroes did not interest me,” said he, “and I understand everything the good Professor Recco says—I understand it so well that I often know beforehand what his warriors and heroes will do.”

“Well, then, since you have such a lively interest in the history of the Romans, why will you no more follow the lectures?”

“No, I will not, I cannot,” murmured Napoleon, sadly.

“Tell me, at least, the reason, Napoleon,” said his brother.

The boy looked straight before him, for a long time hesitating and undecided; then he threw up his head in a very decided manner, and gazed on his brother with flaming eyes.

“Yes,” cried he, passionately, “I will tell you! I can no longer endure the shame to sit down under the standard of the conquered and humiliated Carthaginians. I do not deserve to be so disgraced.”

“But, Napoleon,” said Joseph, laughing, “why trouble yourself about the standard of the old Carthaginians? One is just as well under it as under the Roman standard.”

“Is it, then, the same to you under which standard you sit? Do you not consider it as a great honor to sit under the standard of the victorious Romans?”

“I look upon the one as being without honor, and upon the other as being without shame,” said Joseph, smiling.

“If it is so,” cried out the little Napoleon, throwing himself on his brother’s neck, “if it is for you no great sacrifice, then, I implore you to save me, to make me happy, for you can do it! Let us change seats; give me your place under the standard of Rome, and take my place instead.”

Joseph declared himself ready to do so, and when the two brothers came next time to the lecture, Napoleon, with uplifted head and triumphant countenance, took his seat under the standard of victorious Rome.

But soon the expression of joy faded away from his face, and his features were overcast, and with a restless, sad look, he repeatedly turned himself toward his brother Joseph, who sat facing him under the standard of the conquered race.

Silent and sad he went home with Joseph, and when his mother questioned him about the cause of his sorrow, he confessed, with tears in his eyes, that he was a heartless egotist, that he had been unjust and cruel toward Joseph, that he had cheated his brother of his place of honor and had seated himself in it.

It required the most earnest assurances of Joseph that he placed no value whatever on the seat; it required all the persuasiveness and authority of Letitia to appease the boy, and to prevail upon him to resume the conquered seat. [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p.40.]

As the course of instruction which the boys had received in Ajaccio was not sufficient for the times, and for the capacities of his sons, their father passed over to France with Joseph and Napoleon, to take advantage of the favorable resources for a more complete education.

Napoleon saw the time of departure approach with an apparently indifferent mind, only his face was somewhat paler, he was still more monosyllabic and more reserved than before; and his eyes, full of an indescribable expression of tenderness and admiration, followed all the movements of his mother, as if to print deeply in his soul the beloved image, so as to take it with him beyond the seas, in all its freshness and beauty.

He wept not as he bade her farewell; not a word of sorrow or regret did he speak, but he embraced his mother with impassioned fondness, he kissed her hands, her forehead, her large black eyes, he sank down before her and kissed her feet, then sprang up, and, after casting upon her whole figure a deep, glowing look, he rushed away to embark at once, without waiting for brother or father, who were yet bidding a touching farewell to relatives and friends.

Letitia gazed after her Napoleon with glowing and wide-open eyes; she wept not, she complained not, but she pressed her two hands on her heart as if to keep it from breaking asunder, from bleeding to death; then she called all her children around her, and, folding them up in her arms, exclaimed: “Join your hands and pray with me that our little Napoleon may return home to us a noble and great man.”

As soon as they had prosperously landed in France, the father placed his two sons in the college of Autun, and then travelled farther on to Paris, there to obtain, through the influence of his patrons and friends, a place for his daughter Marianne (afterward Elise) in St. Cyr, an institution for the daughters of noblemen, and also a place for Napoleon in the military school of Brienne. His efforts were crowned with success; and whilst Joseph remained at college in Autun, Napoleon had to part with him and go to Brienne.

When the brothers bade farewell one to another, Joseph wept bitterly, and his sighs and tears choked the tender words of farewell which his quivering lips would have uttered.

Napoleon was quiet, and as his eye moistened with a tear, he endeavored to hide it, and turned aside ashamed of himself and nearly indignant, for he did not wish the Abbe Simon, one of the professors of the college, who was present at the parting of the brothers, to see his unmanly tenderness.

But the Abbe Simon had seen that tear, and when Napoleon was gone he said to Joseph: “Napoleon has shed but one tear, but that tear proves his deep sorrow as much as all your tears.” [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p.26.]

Taciturn and quiet as he had been in Ajaccio, the little Napoleon was equally so at the military school of Brienne, where he remained from his eleventh to his sixteenth year. His character had always something sombre and hidden; his eye seemed turned more inwardly than outwardly; and his fellowship with his books seemed to procure him a more pleasant recreation than the company of his schoolmates, whose childish joys and pleasures he despised or pretended to do so, because his limited pecuniary resources did not allow him to share with them pleasures of an expensive nature.

But, though still and reserved, he always was friendly and courteous to his comrades, grateful for every mark of friendship and kindness, and always ready to protect the young and feeble against the overbearing and the strong, censuring with grave authority every injustice, and with Spartan harshness throwing his contempt into the very face of him who, according to his standard, had offended against honor, the lofty spirit and the dignity of a freeman.

It could not fail that soon Napoleon should win over his schoolmates a marked moral influence; that they would listen to him as if he were their superior; that they should feel something akin to fear in presence of the flashing eyes of this little boy of barely fourteen years, whose pale, expressive countenance, when illumined with anger, almost seemed to them more terrible than that of the irritated face of the teacher, and whom they therefore more willingly and more unconditionally obeyed than the principal of the establishment.

One day the latter had forbidden the scholars to go to the fair in a neighboring locality, because they had lately been guilty of excesses on a similar occasion; and, so as to be sure that the scholars would not trespass against his orders, the principal had the outside gate in the front yard locked.

This last circumstance kindled Napoleon’s anger; he considered it as an insult that the scholars should be treated as prisoners.

“Had we been ordered in the name of the law to remain here,” cried he, “then honor itself would have claimed from us to remain, for law commands obedience to our superiors. But since we are treated as slaves, who are by main force compelled to submission, then honor claims from us to prove to our oppressors that we are free beings, and that we desire to remain such. We are treated as prisoners of war, kept under lock and bolt, but no one has demanded our word of honor that we will make no effort to escape this subjection. Whosoever has a brave heart and a soul full of honor’s love, let him follow me!”

All the youngsters followed him without hesitation. More submissive to this pale, small boy of fourteen years, than to the severe, strong, and exalted principal, none dared oppose him as he stood in the garden, facing a remote place in the wall, and giving orders to undermine it, so as to make an outlet. All obeyed the given orders, all were animated with burning zeal, with cheerful alacrity; and after an hour of earnest labor the work was done, and the passage under the wall completed.

The scholars wanted to rush with jubilant cries through the opening, and gain their freedom outside of the wall, but Napoleon held them back.

“I will go first,” said he. “I have been your leader throughout this expedition, now I will be the first to pass out, that upon me may fall the punishment when we are discovered.”

The young men fell back silently and respectfully, while, proud and stately as a field-marshal who gives the signal for the battle, Napoleon passed through their ranks, to be the first from the crowd to go through the newly-made passage.

It could not fail that the daring of these “prisoners of war” should be discovered, that the principal should be the very same day informed that the young men had, notwithstanding his strict orders, notwithstanding the closed gate, made a way for themselves, and had visited the prohibited fair, while the principal believed them to be in the garden.

A strict inquiry took place the next morning. With threatening tones, the principal ordered the young men to name him who had guided them to so unheard-of a deed, who had misled them into disobedience and insubordination. But all were still; none wished to be a traitor, not even when the principal promised to all full pardon, full impunity, if they would but name the instigator of their guilty action.

But as no one spoke, as no one would name him, Napoleon gave himself up as the culpable one.

“I alone am guilty,” cried he, proudly. “I alone deserve punishment. These have done only what I commanded them—they have but followed my orders, nothing more. The guilt and the punishment are mine alone.”

The principal, glad to know the guilty one, kept his promise, and, forgiving the rest, decided to punish only the one who acknowledged himself to have been the leader.

Napoleon was, therefore, sentenced to the severest and most degrading punishment known in the institution—to the so-called “monk’s penalty.” That is to say, the future young soldier, in the coarse woollen garment of a mendicant friar, was on his knees, to devour his meal from an earthen vessel in the middle of the dining-room, while all the other boys were seated at the table.

A deathly pallor overspread the face of the boy when he heard this sentence. He had been for many days imprisoned in a cell with bread and water, and he had without a murmur submitted to this correction, endured already on a former occasion, but this degrading punishment broke his courage.

Stunned, as it were, and barely conscious, he allowed the costume of the punishment to be put on, but when he had been led into the dining-room, where all the scholars were gathered for the noonday meal, when he was forced upon his knees, he sank down to the ground with a heavy sigh, and was seized with violent convulsions.

The rector himself, moved with deepest sympathy for the wounded spirit of the boy, hastened to raise up Napoleon. At the same moment rushed into the hall one of the teachers of the institution, M. Patrault, who had just been informed of the execution which was about to be carried out on Napoleon. With tears in his eyes, he hastened to Napoleon, and with trembling hands tore from his shoulders the detestable garment, and broke out at the same time in loud complaints that his best scholar, his first mathematician, was to be dishonored and treated in an unworthy manner.

Napoleon, however, was not always the reserved, grave boy who took no part in the recreations and pleasures of the rest of his young schoolmates. Whenever these amusements were of a more serious, of a higher nature, Napoleon gladly and willingly took a part in them. Now and then in the institution, on festivals, theatrical representations took place, and on these occasions the citizens of Brienne were allowed to be present.

But to maintain respectable order, every one who desired to be present at the representation had to procure a card of admission signed by the principal. On the day of the exhibition, at the different doors of the institution, were posted guards who received the admission cards, and whose strict orders were to let no one pass in without them. These posts, which were filled by the scholars, were under the supervision of superior and inferior officers, and were confided only to the most distinguished and most praiseworthy students.

One day, Voltaire’s tragedy, “The Death of Caesar,” was exhibited. Napoleon had the post of honor of a first lieutenant for this festivity, and with grave earnestness he filled the duties of his office.

Suddenly at the entrance of the garden arose a loud noise and vehement recriminations of threatening and abusive voices.

It was Margaret Haute, the porter’s wife, who wanted to come in, though she had no card of admission. She was well known to all the students, for at the gate of the institution she had a little stall of fruits, eggs, milk, and cakes, and all the boys purchased from her every day, and liked to jest and joke with the pleasant and obliging woman.

Margaret Haute had therefore considered it of no importance to procure a card of admission, which thing she considered to be superfluous for such an important and well-known personage as herself. The greater was her astonishment and anger when admission was refused, and she therefore began to clamor loudly, hoping by this means to attract some of the scholars, who would recognize her and procure her admittance. Meanwhile the post guardian dared not act without superior orders, and the inferior officer hastened to communicate the important event to the first lieutenant, Napoleon de Bonaparte, and receive his decision.

Napoleon, who ordinarily was kind to the fruit-vender, and gladly jested with the humorous and coarse woman, listened to the report of the lieutenant with furrowed brow and dark countenance, and with severe dignity gave his orders: “Remove that woman, who takes upon herself to introduce licentiousness into the camp.” [Footnote: Afterward, when First Consul, Napoleon sent for this woman and her husband to come to Paris, and he gave them the lucrative position of porter at the castle of Malmaison, which charge they retained unto their death.]

CHAPTER V. THE UNHAPPY MARRIAGE.

While the boy Napoleon de Bonaparte pursued his studies as a student in Brienne, she, who was one day to share his greatness and his fame, had already appeared on the world’s stage as the wife of another. Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie was already received in the highest society of Paris as the Viscountess de Beauharnais.

Every thing seemed to promise to the young couple a happy, secure future, free from care. They were both young, wealthy, of good family, and though the parents had planned this marriage and joined together the hands of the young couple, yet it was their good fortune that love should tie and strengthen the bond which mere expediency had formed.

Yes, they loved one another, these young married people of sixteen and eighteen. How could it have been otherwise, when they both met each other with the candid and honest desire to make one another happy; when each of them had been so well adapted to the other that their brilliant, good, and beautiful qualities were so prominent that their eyes were blinded to the possibility of imperfections and vices which perchance remained in the obscure background of their virtue and of their amiableness?

Josephine had entered upon her marriage with a pure maiden heart, and soon this heart glowed with enthusiasm for her young husband, who in reality was well qualified to excite enthusiasm in a young maid and instil into her a passionate attachment. Alexandre de Beauharnais was one of the most brilliant and most beloved personages at the court of Versailles. His face had all the beauty of regularity; his figure, marked by a lofty, even if somewhat heavy form, was tall, well knit, and of wonderful elasticity and energy; his manners were noble and prepossessing, fine and natural. Even in a court so distinguished as that of Versailles for many remarkable chevaliers, the Viscount de Beauharnais was considered as one of the most lovely and most gifted: even the young Queen Marie Antoinette honored him with special distinction. She had called him the most beautiful dancer of Versailles, and consequently it was very natural that up to the time of his marriage he should be invited to every court-ball, and there should each time enjoy the pleasure of being requested to dance with the queen.

This flattering distinction of the Queen Marie Antoinette had naturally made the young viscount the mark of attention of all these beautiful, young, and coquettish ladies of Versailles. They used to say of him, that in the dancing-room he was a zephyr, fluttering from flower to flower, but at the head of his regiment he was a Bayard, dreaming only of war and carnage.

It was, therefore, quite natural that so brilliant and so preferred a cavalier, a young man of so many varied accomplishments, a being so impassioned, so gallant, should soon become the object of the most tender and passionate fondness from a young wife, who in her quiet native land had seen none to compare with him, and who became for her the ideal of beauty, chivalry, elegance, and whom, in her devoted and admiring love, she used to call her own Achilles.

Josephine loved her husband; she loved him with all the devotedness and fire of a creole; she loved him and breathed but for him, and to be with him seemed to her life’s golden, blessed dream. Added to all this, came the joys and raptures of a Parisian life—these new, unknown, diversified pleasures of society, these manifold distractions and entertainments of the great city. Josephine abandoned herself to all this with the joy and wantonness of an innocent, unsuspicious being. With all these glorious things round about her, she felt as if surrounded by a sea of blessedness and pleasure, and she plunged into it with the quiet daring of innocency, which foresees not what breakers and abysses this sea encloses under the shining surface.

But these breakers were there, and against them was the happiness of Josephine’s love soon to be dashed to pieces.

She loved her young husband with her whole heart, with all her soul. But he, the young, the flattered Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, he also loved his young wife, whom the wish and will of his superiors had placed at his side.

He had not chosen her because he loved her, but only because he had thought it expedient and advisable to become married, and because the unknown Mademoiselle de la Pagerie had been offered to him as “a good settlement.” Perhaps, also, he had contracted this marriage to get rid all at once of those manifold ties, intrigues, and attachments which his open, unrestrained life of youth had woven around him, for his marriage with the young creole had put an end to many love-intrigues which perchance threatened to be inconvenient and burdensome.

At first charmed by her foreign, unaccustomed appearance, transported by her ingenuous grace, her sweet, lovely amiableness and freshness, he had fully decided to love his young wife, and, with all the triumphant pride of a lover, he had led Josephine into society, into the saloons.

But his eye was not blinded by the ravishment of a real and true love, and in the drawing-room he saw what, in the solitude of the residence of Noisy, where the young couple had retired for a few weeks after their marriage, he might never have missed—he saw that Josephine possessed not the lofty elegance and the exquisite manners of the ladies of the Parisian saloons. She always was a charming, artless, graceful young woman, but she lacked the striking advantages of a real drawing-room lady; she lacked that perfect self-possession, that pliancy of refinement, that sparkling wit, and that penetration, which then characterized the ladies of the higher Parisian society, and which the young viscount had but lately so fondly and passionately admired in the beautiful and celebrated Baroness de B.

The viscount saw all these deficiencies of his young wife’s social education, and this darkened his brow and brought on his cheek the flush of shame. He was cruel enough to reproach Josephine, in somewhat harsh and imperious tones, of her lack of higher culture, and thus the first matrimonial difference clouded the skies of marriage happiness, which the young unsuspecting wife had believed would ever be bright with sunshine.

Josephine, however, loved her young husband too fondly not to cheerfully comply with all his wishes, not to strive to replace what he reproached her to be lacking.

On a sudden she left the brilliant, enchanting Paris, which had entranced her with its many joys and its many distractions, and, as her husband had to be for some time at Blois with his regiment, she went to Noisy, to her aunt’s residence, so as to labor at her higher mental culture, at the side of the lovely and intellectual Madame de Renaudin.

Josephine had hitherto, as a simple, sentimental young lady, played the guitar, and chirped with it, in her fresh but uncultivated voice, her sweet songs of love. She gave up the guitar, the favorite instrument of the creoles, and exchanged it for the harp, for which attainment as well as for the art of singing she procured the best and ablest masters. Even a dancing-master had to come to Noisy to give to the young viscountess that perfection of art which would enable her, without fear, to dance at a ball alongside of the Viscount de Beauharnais, “the beautiful dancer of Versailles.” With her aunt she read the works of the writers and poets who were then praised and loved, and with wonderful predilection she also studied botany, to which science she ever clung during her life, and which threw on her existence gleams of joy when the sun of her happiness had long set.

Josephine, who out of pure love for her husband learned and studied zealously, communicated to the viscount, in her letters, every advancement she made in her studies; and she was proud and happy when he applauded her efforts, and when in his letters he praised her assiduity and her progress.

But evidently these letters of the viscount contained nothing of that love and ardor which the young fiery creole longed for from her husband; they were not the utterances of a young, anxious lover, of an enthusiastic, worshipping husband; but they were addressed to Josephine with the quiet, cool benignity of a considerate friend, of a mentor, of a tutor who knows full well how much above his pupil soars his own mind, and with what supreme deference this pupil must look up to him.

“I am delighted,” wrote he once—“delighted at your zeal to acquire knowledge and culture; this zeal, which we must ever cherish, is ever the source of purest enjoyments, and possesses the glorious advantage, when we follow its dictates, of never producing any grief. If you persevere in the resolution you have taken, if you continue to labor with unabated zeal at your personal improvement, be assured that the knowledge you will have acquired will exalt you highly above all others; and whereas science and modesty will be combined in you, you will succeed in becoming an accomplished woman. The talents which you cultivate have their pleasant side, and if you devote to them a portion of the day, you will unite the agreeable to the useful.” [Footnote: “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 110.]

This is what Alexandre de Beauharnais wanted. His wife, through her knowledge, was to be highly exalted above all others. She was to study the sciences, and become what is now called a learned woman, but what was then termed a philosophical woman.

The ambition of the ardent viscount required that his young wife should be the rival of his learned, verse-writing aunt, the Baroness Fanny de Beauharnais; that Josephine, if not the most beautiful and most intellectual woman of Paris, should be the most accomplished.

But these extravagant expectations did not, unfortunately, coincide entirely with the tastes and mental tendencies of Josephine. No one was less qualified than she to be a philosophical woman, and to make the sciences a serious study. It was far from her ambition to desire to shine by her knowledge; and the learned and scientific Baroness de Beauharnais only excited fear and antagonism on account of her stiff and pretentious pedantry, which seemed to Josephine to have but little in harmony with a woman’s being.

Josephine loved the sciences and the arts, but she did not wish to convert herself into their devoted priestess. She wished merely to adorn herself with their blossoms, to take delight in their fragrance, and to rejoice in their beauty. With instinctive sentiment she did not wish to have the grace and youthful freshness of her womanly appearance marred by knowledge; her heart longed not for the ambition of being called a learned woman; she only wished to be a beloved wife.

But the viscount, instead of recognizing and cherishing the tender and sacred treasures which reposed in the heart of his young wife, ridiculed her for her sensitiveness; allowed himself, through displeasure at her uncultivated mind, to utter unreasonable reproaches, and to act harshly toward his wife; and her tears were not calculated to conciliate him or to gain his heart. He treated Josephine with a sort of contemptuous compassion, with a mocking superiority, and her young, deeply-wounded soul, intimidated and bleeding, shrank back into itself. Josephine became taciturn, embarrassed, and mute, in her husband’s presence; she preferred being silent, rather than by her conversation, which might not appear intellectual and piquant enough for the viscount, to annoy and irritate him.

Confidence and harmony had flown away from the household of the young couple. From his timid, silent wife, with tears in her eyes and a mute complaint on her trembling lips, the husband rushed away into the world, into society, to the boisterous joys of a garrison’s life, or else to the dangerous, intoxicating amusements which the refined world of the drawing-rooms offered him.

Scarcely after a two years’ marriage, the young bridegroom was again the zephyr of the drawing-room; and, breaking asunder the bonds with which the marriage and the household had bound him, he fluttered again from flower to flower, was once more the gallant cavalier of the belles, forgot duty and wife, to pay his attentions and bring his homage to the ladies of the court.

But this neglect which she now experienced from her husband, this evident preference for other women, suddenly awoke Josephine from her painful resignation, from her quiet melancholy. The young, patient, retreating wife was changed at once into an irritated lioness, and, amid the refinements of the French polish, with all its gilded accompaniments, uprose the glowing, impassioned, threatening creole.

Josephine, wounded both in her vanity and in her love—Josephine wished not and could not bear, as a passive, silent sufferer, the neglect of her husband; he had insulted her as a woman, and the wrath of a woman rose within her. She screened not her jealousy from her husband; she reproached him for preferring other women to his wife, for neglecting her for the sake of others, and she required that to her alone he should do homage, that to her alone he should consecrate love and allegiance. She wept, she complained, when she learned that, whilst she was left at home unnoticed, he had been here and there in the company of other women; she allowed herself to be so carried away by jealousy as to make violent reproaches against her husband.

But tears and reproaches are not in the least calculated to bring back to a wife the heart of a husband, and jealousy recalls not a husband’s love, when that love has unfolded his pinions and flown away. It only causes the poor butterfly to feel that marriage had tied its wings with a thread, and that it constantly recalls him away, with the severe admonitions of duty, from the beautiful flowers toward which he desires to fly.

The complaints and reproaches of Josephine, however much they proved her love, had precisely the contrary effect from what she expected. Through them she wanted to bring back her husband to her love, but she repelled him further still; he flew away from her complaints to the merry society of his friends, male and female, and left Josephine alone at Noisy to weep over her wretchedness.

Notwithstanding all this, they were both to be again reunited one to another in a new bond of love and happiness. On the 3d of September, 1781, Josephine presented to her husband a son, the heir of his name, and for whom the father had already so long craved. Alexandre came to Noisy to be present at the birth of his child, and with true, sincere affection he embraced son and mother, and swore everlasting love and fidelity to both.

But circumstances were stronger than the will of this young man of twenty-two years. The monotonous life of Noisy, the quietude which prevailed in the house on account of the young mother, could not long retain captive the fiery young man. He endured this life of solitude, of watching at the bedside, of listening to the child’s cries, for a whole week, and then was drawn away with irresistible attraction to Paris; the father’s tenderness could no longer restrain the glowing ardor, the impassioned longings for distraction in the young man; and the viscount left Noisy to lead once more in Paris or with his garrison the free, unrestrained dissipations of his earlier days.

Josephine was comfortless. She had hoped the son would retain the father, but he left her alone, alone with the child, and with all the torments of her jealousy.

It is true, he came back now and then to see his son, his little Eugene, and also to make amends to the young, sick, and suffering mother, by a few days’ presence, for the many days of absence.

But Josephine, irritated, jealous, too young, too inexperienced to reflect, Josephine committed the fault of receiving her husband every time he came, with reproaches and complaints, and of meeting him with violent scenes of jealousy and of offended dignity. The viscount himself, so young, so impassioned, had not the patience to go with calm indifference through the purgatory of such scenes. His proud heart rebelled against the chains with which marriage would bind him; he was angry with this woman who dared reproach him; he was the more vexed that his conscience told him she was unjust toward him, that he was the innocent one. He returned her complaints with deriding scorn; he allowed himself to be carried away by her reproaches to the manifestation of violent anger; and the tempest of matrimonial discord raged through this house, which at first seemed to have been built for a temple of peace and happiness.

The parents of the young couple saw with deep, heartfelt concern the gap deepening between them both, and which every day widened more and more, and as their warnings and wishes now remained fruitless, they resolved to try if a long absence might not heal the wounds which they both had inflicted upon their own hearts. At the request of his father and of Madame de Renaudin, the viscount undertook a long journey to Italy, from which he returned only after nearly nine months’ absence.

What the relatives had hoped from this journey seemed to be realized. The viscount returned home to his Josephine with a penitent, tender heart; and Josephine, enchanted with his tenderness, with the pliant loveliness of his whole being—Josephine, with a smile of blessedness and with happy dreams of the future, rested once more on the bosom of the man whom, even in her angry moods, she had never ceased to love.

But after a few months passed in happiness and harmony, the viscount was once more obliged to separate himself from his wife, to meet his regiment, which was now in Verdun. Absence soon broke the slender threads which had bound together the hearts of husband and wife. Alexandre abandoned himself to his tendencies to dissipation, and Josephine to her jealousy. During the frequent visits which the viscount paid to his wife in Noisy, he was received with tears and reproaches, which always ended in violent scenes of anger and bitterness.

Such an existence, full of ever-recurring storms and ceaseless discord, weighed heavily on the hearts of both husband and wife, and made them long for an issue from this Labyrinth of an unhappy marriage. Yet neither of them dreamed of a separation; not only their son, the little Eugene, kept them from such thoughts, but also the new hopes which Josephine carried in her bosom would have made such thoughts appear criminal. It was necessary to endeavor to bear life as well as one could, and not allow one’s self to be too much lacerated by its thorns, even if there was no further hope of gathering its roses.

Alexandre de Beauharnais, even if he lacked the skill of being a faithful, devoted husband, was a noble and goodnatured man, whose generous heart wanted to punish himself alone for the error of this marriage, which weighed so heavily on husband and wife; and, in order to procure peace to both, he resolved to become an exile, to tear away pitilessly the attractive ties which society, friends, and women, had woven around him. If he could not be a good husband, he might at least be a good soldier; and, whereas his heart could not adopt the resolution of devoting itself with exclusive affection to his wife, he resolved to devote himself entirely to that love to which he had never been disloyal, the love of fame. His ambitious nature longed for honors and distinction; his restless, youthful courage craved for action and battle-fields; and, as no opportunity offered itself on land, Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to search on the seas for what was denied him on land.

The Marquis de Bouille, governor of Martinique, had just arrived in France, to propose to the government a new expedition against the British colonies in the Antilles. Already this fearless and enterprising man, since he had been in Martinique, with the forces at his disposal, with the help of the young creoles, and supported by the squadrons which lay in Port Royal, had conquered Dominique, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Christophe, Mievres, and Montserrat, and now he contemplated an attack upon the rich and important island of Jamaica, whose conquest he trusted would force the English into peace.

Alexandre de Beauharnais wanted nothing more attractive than to join this important and daring enterprise of the Marquis de Bouille. With recommendations from his uncle, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the viscount hastened to the Marquis de Bouille, begged of him instantly the privilege of serving under him, and offered his services as adjutant.

The marquis received with kindness a young man so earnestly recommended, and gave him the hope of fulfilling his wishes. These hopes were not, however, realized; and the viscount, no longer able to endure the burden of uncertainty and of domestic discord, decided to leave France on his own responsibility, to sail for Martinique, and there to enlist as a simple volunteer, under the orders of the governor.

In September, 1782, he left Noisy for Brest, there to embark for Martinique. At the hour of departure the love, which for so long had been hidden under the dark cloud of jealousy and discord, awoke in all its glow and energy in the hearts of the young couple. With streaming eyes Josephine embraced her husband, and in the most touching tones entreated him to remain with her, entreated him not to tear the father away from the son, who already recognized him and stretched his little hands toward him, nor from the child yet unborn in her bosom. Carried away by so much intensity of affection, by such a fond, all-pardoning love, Alexandre was deeply moved; he regretted the past, and the decision he had taken to leave his wife and his family. All the sweet emotions of peace, of home, of paternal bliss, of married life, overcame him in this hour of farewell with, resistless power, and in Josephine’s arms he wept bitter tears of repentance, of love, of farewell.

But these tears, no more than his wife’s regrets, could make him waver in his determination.

The word of separation had been spoken, and it had to be fulfilled. Amid the anguish of parting, he felt for himself the necessity of breaking, by means of a long absence, with the evil practices of the past, and to make amends for the sad errors of his youth.

He left his home to win in a distant land the happiness which he had in vain sought at the side of his wife, of his son, and of his family. Before the ship upon which he was to embark for his journey weighed anchor, he took a last farewell of his family in a letter addressed to Madame de Renaudin.

“I have,” said he, “received the letter which tells of your good wishes for the future, and I have read with the deepest interest the assurances of your attachment. These assurances would still have been more flattering to me, could they have convinced me that my actual course has your approbation, and that you estimate rightly my determination, and the sacrifice I am making. However, I have on my side conscience, which applauds me for preferring, to the real, actual joys of a quiet and pleasurable existence, the prospect, even if a remote one, of preferment, which may secure me a distinguished position and a distinction which may be of advantage to my children. The greater have been my sacrifices, the more commendable it is to have made them; and if chance only favors my determination, then the laurels I will win shall make ample amends for all troubles and hardships, and shall change all my anguish into joy!—Be kind enough, I pray you, to embrace for me, my father, my wife, and Eugene!” [Forward: “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i, p. 133.]

It is evident that Alexandre de Beauharnais had gone to Martinique to win fame and to fight for laurels. But chance favored not his resolves. He had no sooner landed in Martinique, than the news spread that negotiations had begun between England and France. M. de Bouille received strict orders to make no attack on Jamaica; and a few weeks after, on the 20th of January, 1783, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles. A few months later, peace was concluded, and all the conquests made by the Marquis de Bouille were returned to England.

Alexandre de Beauharnais had then come in vain to Martinique. No fame was to be won—no laurels could be gathered there.

Unfortunately, however, the viscount found another occupation for his restless heart, for the vague cravings of his affections. He made the acquaintance there with a young creole, who had been a widow for the last six months, and who had returned to Martinique from France to pass there her year’s mourning. But her heart had no mourning for her deceased husband; it longed for Paris, it craved for the world and its joys. She was yet, though a few years older than the viscount, a young woman; she was beautiful—of that wondrous, enticing beauty peculiar to the creoles; she was an accomplished mistress in the difficult art of pleasing, and she formed the design of gaining the heart of the impulsive Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais. This design was not undertaken because he seemed worthy of love, but because she wanted to revenge herself on the family of Tascher de la Pagerie, which family had been for a long time at enmity with her own, and had given free and open expression against the too easy manners and light behavior of the beautiful widow. She wanted to take vengeance for these insults by seducing from M. de la Pagerie his own son-in-law, and by enjoying the triumph of having charmed away the husband from his daughter.

The proverb says, “What woman will, woman can!” and what the beautiful Madame de Gisard wanted was not so very hard to achieve. All she wished was to hold complete sway over the heart of a young man who felt heavily burdened with the fetters of marriage; who, now that the schemes of ambition had failed, reproached his young wife that she was the cause of his misfortune; that for her sake he had exiled himself from home, and sentenced himself to the dulness and loneliness of a village-life in Martinique. The society of the beautiful Madame de Gisard brought at least novelty and distraction to this loneliness; she gave occupation to the heart weary with connubial storms; she excited his fancy and his desires.

Madame de Gisard knew how to use all these advantages; she wanted to triumph over the family of De la Pagerie, she wanted to return to Paris in the company of a young, handsome, and distinguished lover.

It was not enough to win the love of the viscount; she had to drive him into the resolution of separating from his wife, of accusing her of unfaithfulness and guilt, so as to have the right of casting her away, in order that she herself might openly occupy her place. Madame de Gisard had the requisite talent to carry out her plans, and to acquire full control over the otherwise rebellious and proud heart of the young man. She first began to lead him into open rupture with his father and mother-in-law. Through respect for them, the viscount had avoided appearing in public with Madame de Gisard, and betraying the intimacy which existed between them. Madame de Gisard ridiculed his bashfulness and submissive spirit; she considered this servility to the head of the family as absurd, and she drove the viscount by means of scorn and sarcasm to open revolt.

Then, after separating him from his wife’s family, she attacked the wife herself. With all the cunning and smoothness of a seducing demon, she encompassed the young man’s heart, and filled it with mistrust against Josephine. She accused the forsaken one with levity and unfaithfulness; she filled his heart with jealousy and rancor; she used all the means of perfidy and calumny of which a woman is capable, and in which she finds a refuge when her object is to ruin, and she succeeded completely.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was now entirely hers; he was gathering against Josephine anger and vengeance; and even when he received the news that, on the 13th of April, 1783, his young wife had given birth to a daughter at Noisy, his soul was not moved by soft emotions, by milder sentiments of reconciliation.

Madame de Gisard had taught him that henceforth he need no more be on the defensive in reference to the reproaches of Josephine, but that he now must be the aggressor; that, to justify his own guiltiness, he must accuse his wife of guilt. She had offered herself as the price of his reconquered freedom; and the viscount, overcome with love, anger, and jealousy, was anxious to become worthy of this price.

He left Martinique and returned to Noisy, not to embrace and bless his daughter Eugenie Hortense, but to bow down the mother’s head with the curse of shame. He accused, without listening to any justification, and, with all the vehemence of misguided passion, he asked for an immediate separation, an immediate divorce. Vain were the expostulations, the prayers of his father and of Madame de Renaudin. Vain were the tears, the assurances of innocence from Josephine. The tears of an injured woman, the prayers of his sorrowing relatives, were impotent against the whisperings and the seducing smiles of the beautiful Madame de Gisard, who had secretly accompanied him to France, and who had now over him an unconditional sway.

The viscount brought before Parliament a complaint for separation from his wife, and based it upon the most improbable and most shameless accusations.

Josephine, who, for two years in loneliness and abandonment, had awaited the return of her husband; Josephine, who had always hoped, through the voice of her children, to recall her husband to herself, saw herself suddenly threatened with a new, unexpected tempest. Two years of suffering were finally to be rewarded by a scandalous process, which exposed her person to the idle and malicious tongues of the Parisians.

She had, however, to submit to fate; she had to bow her head to the storm, and trust for her justification to the mercy of God and to the justice of the Parliament. During the time of the process she withdrew, according to custom, into a convent, and for nearly one year hid herself with her shame and her anguish in the abbey of Pantemont, in the street Grenelle, St. Germain. However, she was not alone; her aunt, Madame de Renaudin, accompanied her, and every day came the Marquis de Beauharnais, her husband’s father, bringing her the children, who, during the time of the unfortunate process, were to remain at Noisy, under the guardianship of their grandfather and of a worthy governess. The members of her husband’s family rivalled each other in their manifestations of affection to a woman so much injured and so incriminated, and openly before the world they declared themselves against the viscount, who, blinded by passion and entirely in the chains of this ensnaring woman, was justifying the innocency of his wife by his own indiscreet demeanor—by the public exhibition of his passion for Madame de Gisard, and thus caused the accusations launched against Josephine to recoil upon his own head.

At last, after one year of debates, of careful considerations and investigations, of receiving evidence, and of hearing witnesses, the Parliament pronounced its decision.

Josephine was declared absolutely innocent of the crimes brought against her, and was entirely acquitted of the accusation of unfaithfulness. The Parliament pronounced the solemn decree: The accusation directed against the Viscountess de Beauharnais was simply a malicious calumny. The innocency of the accused wife was evident, and consequently the Viscount de Beauharnais was bound to receive again his wife into his house. However, the viscountess was permitted and allowed not to share the same residence with her husband, and to separate herself from him. In this case the viscount was condemned to pay to his wife an annual pension of ten thousand francs, and to leave with her mother his daughter Eugenie Hortense, while he, the father, should provide for the education of the son.

Exonerated from the disgraceful imputation of faithlessness, Josephine was again free to leave the convent and return to the life of the world. It was her husband’s family which now prepared for the poor young woman the most beautiful and most touching triumph. The father of her, accuser, the Marquis de Beauharnais, as well as his elder son and wife, the Duke and Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, and the Baroness Fanny de Beauharnais, came in their state carriages to the abbey to receive Josephine and lead her back to Paris. They had been joined by a great number of the most respectable and most noble ladies of the Parisian aristocracy, all in their state carriages, and in the splendor of their armorial trappings and liveries, as if it were to accompany a queen returning home.

Josephine shed tears of blessed joy when quitting her small, sombre rooms in the abbey. She entered into the reception-room to bid farewell to the prioress, and there met all these friends and relatives, who saluted her with looks of deepest tenderness and sympathy, and embraced her in their arms as one found again, as one long desired. This hour of triumph indemnified her for the sorrows and sufferings of the unhappy year which the poor wife of scarcely twenty years of age, and fleeing from calumny and hatred, liar! sighed away in the desolate and lonesome convent. She was free, she was justified; the disgrace was removed from her head; she was again authorized to be the mother of her children; she saw herself surrounded by loving parents, by true friends, and yet in her heart there was a sting. Notwithstanding his cruelty, his harshness, though he had abandoned and despised her, her heart could not be forced into hating the husband for whom she had so much wept and suffered. Her tears had impressed his image yet deeper in her heart. He was the husband of her first love, the father of her children; how could Josephine have hated him, how could her heart, so soft and true, cherish animosity against him?

At the side of her husband’s father, and holding her daughter in her arms, Josephine entered Paris. Behind them came a long train of brilliant equipages, of relatives and friends. The passers-by stopped to see the brilliant procession move before them, and to ask what it meant. Some had recognized the viscountess, and they told to others of the sufferings and of the acquittal of the poor young woman; and the people, easily affected and sympathizing, rejoiced in the decision of the Parliament, and with shouts and applause followed the carriage of the young wife.

The marquis, her father-in-law, turned smilingly to Josephine.

“Do you see, my daughter,” said he, “what a triumph you enjoy, and how much you are beloved and recognized?”

Josephine bent down toward the little Hortense and kissed her.

“Ah,” said she, in a low voice, “we are returning home, but the father of my children will not bid us welcome. For a pressure of his hand, for a kind word from him, I would gladly give the lofty triumph of this hour.”

No, Alexandre de Beauharnais did not bid welcome to Josephine in his father’s house, which they had occupied together. Ashamed and irritated, he had sped away from Paris, and returned to his regiment at Verdun.

On the arm of the Marquis de Beauharnais, Josephine traversed the apartments in which she had lived with her husband, and which she now saw again as a widow, whom not death but life had separated from her husband. Her father-in-law saw the tears standing in her eyes, and, with the refined sympathy of a sensitive mind, he understood the painful thoughts which agitated the soul of the young wife.

He fondly folded her in his arms, and laid his blessing hand on the head of the little Hortense.

“I have lost my son Alexandre,” said he, “but I have found in his stead a daughter. Yes, Josephine, you are and will remain my daughter, and to you and to your children I will be a true father. My son has parted from us, but we remain together in harmony and love, and as long as I live my daughter Josephine will never want a protector.”

CHAPTER VI. TRIANON AND MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Whilst the Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais, the empress of the future, was living in enforced widowhood, the life of Marie Antoinette, the queen of the present, resembled a serene, golden, sunny dream; her countenance, beaming with youth, beauty, and grace, had never yet been darkened with a cloud; her large blue eyes had not yet been dimmed with tears.

In Fontainebleau, whither Josephine had retired with her father-in-law, who through unfortunate events had lost the greatest part of his fortune—in Fontainebleau lived the future Empress of France in sad monotony; in Versailles, in Trianon, lived the present Queen of France in the dazzling splendor of her glory, of her youth, and of her beauty. In Trianon—this first gift of love from the king to his wife—the Queen of France dreamed life away in a pleasant idyl, in a joyous pastoral amusement; there, she tried to forget that she was queen, that is to say, that she was the slave of etiquette; there she tried to indemnify herself for the tediousness, the emptiness, the heartlessness of the great festivals in the Tuileries and in Versailles.

In Trianon, Marie Antoinette desired to be the domestic wife, the pleasant, youthful woman, as in the Tuileries and at Versailles she was the proud and lofty queen. Marie Antoinette felt her days obscured by the splendors of royalty; the crown weighed heavily on her beautiful head, which seemed made for a crown of myrtle and roses; life’s earnestness had not yet cast its breath on those rosy cheeks and robbed of youth’s charm the smile on those crimson lips.

And why should not Marie Antoinette have smiled and been joyous? Every thing shone round about her; every thing seemed to promise an enduring harvest of felicity, for the surface of France was calm and bright, and the queen’s vision had not yet been made keen enough by experience to penetrate below this shining surface and see the precipices already hidden underneath.

These precipices were yet covered with flowers, and the skies floating above them seemed yet cloudless. The French people appeared to retain yet for the royal family that enthusiastic devotedness which they had manifested for centuries; they fondly proclaimed to the queen, whenever she appeared, their affection, their admiration; they were not weary with the expressions of their rapture and their worship, and Marie Antoinette was not weary of listening to these jubilant manifestations with which she was received in the theatre, on the streets, in the gardens of the Tuileries, on the terraces of Versailles; she was not weary of returning thanks with a friendly nod or with a gracious smile.

All the Parisians seemed still to be, as once, at the arrival of the Dauphin, they had been called by the Baron de Vesenval, “the queen’s lovers,” and also to rival one another in manifesting their allegiance.

Even the fish-women of Paris shared the general enthusiasm; and when, in 1781, the queen had given to her husband a son, and to his people a future monarch, the ladies of “the Halls” were amongst the most enthusiastic friends of the queen. They even came to Versailles to congratulate the royal couple on the dauphin’s birth, to salute the young dauphin as the heir to the crown of France, and to sing under the window of the king some songs, one of which so pleased the king that oftentimes afterward, in his quiet and happy hours, he used to sing a verse of it with a smile on his lip. This Terse, which even Marie Antoinette sang, ran thus:

“Ne craignez pas, cher papa,
D’ voir augmenter vot’ famille,
Le bon Dieu z’y pourvoira:
Faits-en taut qu’ Versailles en fourmille;
Yeut-il cent Bourbons cheu nos
Ya du pain, du laurier pour tous.”

[Footnote: Madaine ile Carapan, “Histoire de Marie Antoinette,” vol. i., p. 218.]

In Trianon, Marie Antoinette passed her happiest hours and days; there, the queen changed herself into a shepherdess; there, vanished from her the empty splendors of purple and ermine, of etiquette and ceremonial; there, she enjoyed life in its purity, in its innocency, in its naturalness; such was the ideal Marie Antoinette wished to realize in Trianon.

A simple dress of white muslin, a light kerchief of gauze, a straw hat with a gayly-colored ribbon, such was the attire of the queen and of the princesses whom Marie Antoinette invited. For the only etiquette which prevailed at Trianon was this: that no one from the court, even princes or princesses, should come to Trianon without having received an invitation from the queen to that effect. Even the king submitted to this ceremonial, and had expressly promised his consort never to come to Trianon without an invitation, and, so as to please the queen, no sooner did she announce her intention of retiring to her country-residence, than he was always the first who hastened to obtain the favor of an invitation.

In Trianon, Louis ceased to be king as well as Marie Antoinette ceased to be queen. There Louis XVI. was but the farmer of the lady of the castle; the Count d’Artois was the miller, and the learned Count de Provence, the schoolmaster. For each of them had been erected in the gardens of Trianon a separate house suited to their respective avocations.

The farmer Louis had his farm-house built in Swiss style, with a balcony of finely-carved wood at the gable-end, and with stalls attached to the house, and where bellowed the stately red cows of Switzerland; behind the house was a small garden in which the variegated convolvulus and the daisy shed their fragrance.

The Count d’Artois had, near the stream which flowed through the park, his miller’s house, with an enormous wheel, made of wooden spokes joined together, and which moved lustily in the water, and adorned the clear brook with wavelets of foam.

The Count de Provence had, under the shadow of a mulberry-tree, his house, with a large school-room in it; and oftentimes the whole court-society were converted into scholars of both sexes, who took their seats on the benches of the school-room, whilst the Count de Provence, in a long coat with lead buttons and with an immense rod in his hand, ascended the cathedra and delivered to his school-children a humorous and piquant lecture, all sparkling with wit.

The princesses also had in this “grove of Paradise,” as Marie Antoinette called the woods of Trianon, their cottages, where they milked cows, made butter, and searched for eggs in the hens’ nests. In the midst of all these cottages and Swiss houses stood the cottage of the farming Marie Antoinette; it was the finest and the most beautiful one of all, adorned with vases full of fragrant blossoms and surrounded by flowering plants and by cozy bowers of verdure. This cottage was the highest delight of the queen’s life, the enchanting toy of her happiness. Even the little castle of Trianon, however simple and modest, seemed too splendid for the taste of the pastoral queen. For in Trianon one was always reminded that the lady of this castle was a queen; there, servants were in livery; there, officials and names and titles were to be found, even when etiquette was forbidden entrance into the halls of the little castle of Trianon. Marie Antoinette was no more queen there, it is true, but she was the lady of the palace to whom the highest respect was shown, and who therefore had been constrained expressly and strictly to order that at her entrance into the drawing-rooms the ladies would not interrupt the piece begun on the piano, nor stand up if seated at their embroidery, and that the gentlemen would keep on undisturbed their billiard-party or their game at trictrac.

But in her cottage all rank disappeared; there, was no distinction; there, ceased the glory of name and title, and no sooner was the castle abandoned for the cottages than each named the other with some Arcadic, pastoral appellation, and each busied himself with his rural avocations. How lustily the laughter, how merrily the song sounded from these cottages amid these bowers and groves; how the countenance of the farming-lady was lighted up with happiness and joy; with what delight rested upon her the eye of the farmer Louis, who in his blue blouse, with a straw hat on his head, with a rosy, fleshy, good-natured face, was exactly fitted for his part, and who found it no difficult task to hide under the farmer’s garment the purple of the king!

How often was Marie Antoinette seen in her simple white dress, her glowing countenance shaded by a straw hat, bounding through the garden as light as a gazelle, and going from the barn to the milk-room, followed by the company she had invited to drink of her milk and eat of her fresh eggs! How often, when the farmer Louis had secreted himself in a grove for the sake of reading, how often was he discovered there by the queen, torn away from his book and drawn to a dejeuner on the grass! When that was over, and Louis had gone back to his book, Marie Antoinette hastened to her cows to see them milked, or she went into the rocking-boat to fish, or else reposed on the lawn, busy as a peasant, with her spindle.

But this quiet occupation detained not long the lively, spirited farming-lady; with a loud voice, she called to her maids or companions from the cottages, and then began those merry, unrestrained amusements which the queen had introduced into society, and which since then have been introduced not only into the drawing-rooms of the upper classes, but also into the more austere circles of the wealthy burghers.

Then the queen with her court played at blindman’s bluff, at pampam, or at a game invented by the Duke de Chartres, the future Duke Philippe d’Orleans, Egalite, and which game was called “descamper,” a sort of hide-and-seek amusement, in which the ladies hid themselves in the shady bushes and groves, to be there discovered by the gentlemen, and then to endeavor by flight to save themselves, for if once caught and seized they had to purchase their liberty with a kiss.

When evening came all left the cottages for the little castle, and the pastoral recreations gave way to the higher enjoyments of refined society. Marie Antoinette was not in the castle of Trianon queen again, but she was not either the simple lady of the farm, she was the lady of the castle, and—the first amateur in the theatrical company which twice a week exhibited their pieces in the theatre of Trianon.

These theatrical performances were quite as much the queen’s delight as her pastoral occupations in her farm cottages, and Marie Antoinette was unwearied in learning and studying her parts. She had chosen for teachers two pensioned actors, Caillot and Dazincourt, who had to come every day to Trianon to teach to the noble group of actors the small operas, vaudevilles, and dramas, which had been chosen for representation, and in which the queen naturally always played the part of first amateur, while the princesses, the wives of the Counts de Provence and Artois, the two Countesses de Polignac, undertook the other parts, even those of gentlemen, when the two brothers of the king, the only male members of this theatrical company, could not assume all the gentlemen’s parts.

At first the audience at these representations was very limited. Only the king, the princes and the princesses of the royal household, not engaged in the performance, constituted the audience; but afterward it was found that to encourage the actors a little, a larger audience was needed; then the boxes were filled with the governesses of the princesses, the queen’s waiting-women, whose sisters and daughters with a few other select ladies had been invited.

It was natural that those who had been thus preferred, and who enjoyed the privilege of seeing the Queen of France, the princes and princesses, appear as actors, should be full of admiration and applause at the talents displayed by the royal troupe; and as they alone formed the select audience, whose presence had for object to animate the artistes, they had also assumed the duty to excite and to vitalise the zeal and the fire of the players by their enthusiasm and by their liberal praises.

This applause of a grateful public blinded the royal actors as to their real merits, and excited in them the ambition to exhibit their artistic talents before a larger audience and to be admired. Consequently, the queen granted to the officers of the lifeguard and to the masters of the king’s stalls and to their brothers, admittance into the theatre; the gentlemen and ladies of the court had seats in the gilt boxes; a larger number of ladies were invited, and soon from all sides came requests for tickets of admission to the theatrical performances in the Trianon.

The same privileges which had been allowed to a few could not be, and it was not desirable that they should be, granted to all; those who were purposely refused revenged themselves of this refusal by an unsparing criticism on the performers and by bitter sarcasm at the Queen of France, who so far forgot her dignity as to play comedies before her subjects, and who played her part not always in such a manner as to give to a sharp criticism no reason for blame.

The queen possessed, it is true, the desire, but not the ability, to be an actress or a songstress. When she played the part of a comedian, no one felt tempted to laugh; but contrariwise it might often happen that, when her part was tragical, impressive and touching even to tears, the faces of her auditors brightened with involuntary laughter.

Once even it happened that a person from the audience, when the queen had not yet left the stage, cried aloud, and perhaps with the intention of being heard by her: “One must confess that royal acting is bad acting!”

Though she understood the words, yet the smile on her lips vanished not away; and as the Countess Diana de Polignac wished to persuade her to allow the impertinent one who had spoken these words, to be sought out and punished, the queen, shrugging her shoulders answered: “My friend, I say as Madame de Maintenon: ‘I am upon the stage, and must therefore be willing to be applauded or hissed.’”

Yes, she had to endure the applause or the hissing. Unfortunately, the number of those who hissed grew every day. The queen had provoked public expression since she bade it defiance. On the day she banished etiquette from its watchful duty at the apartments of the Queen of France, the public expression with its train of slanders and maliciousness entered in through the open portals. The queen was blamed for her theatricals as well as for her simple, unadorned toilet, yet she was imitated in these two things, as even before the costly and luxurious toilet, the high head-gears of the queen, and also blindman’s buff and descamper, had been imitated. Every woman now wanted such a simple negligee, such a headdress, such a feather as Marie Antoinette. As once before, Madame Bertin, the celebrated milliner of the queen, had been circumvented to furnish a pattern of the queen’s coiffure, so now all the ladies rushed upon her in flocks to procure the small caps, fichus, and mantelets, after the queen’s model. The robes with long trains, the court-dresses of heavy silk, jewels and gold ornaments, were on a sudden despised; every thing which could add brilliancy and dignity to the toilet was banished, the greatest simplicity and nonchalance were now the fashion; every lady strove, if possible, to resemble a shepherdess of Watteau, and it was soon impossible to distinguish a duchess from an actress.

Not only the ladies but also the gentlemen were carried away by this flood of novelty. They gave up the boots with red heels, the embroidered garments, as already before they had given up laces, bandelets, gold fringes, and diamond buttons on the hats; they put on simple coats of cloth as the burgher and the man of the people wore; they abandoned their equipages, with their brilliant armorial trappings and the golden liveries, and found satisfaction in promenading the streets, with cane in hand, and with boots instead of buckled shoes.

It is true these street promenadings of the nobility were not oftentimes without inconvenience and molestation. As without the insignia of their rank and position they mixed with the society of the streets, entered into taverns and cafes, the people took them for what they seemed to be, for their equals, and instead of respectfully making way for them, the people claimed as much attention from them as they themselves were willing to give. Often enough disputes and scuffles took place between the disguised nobleman and the man of the people, the laborer, or the commissionnaire, and at such experiments of hand to hand the victory was not to the nobleman, but to the fist of the man, of the people.

The novelty of such scenes excited the fastidious aristocracy; it became a sort of passion to mix with the people, to frequent the cabarets, to strike some bargain at trade, to be the hero of a fist-fight, even if it ended by the stout workmen throwing down the aristocrats who had despised them. To be thrown down was no more considered by the nobility as a disgrace, and they applauded these affrays as once they had applauded duelling.

The aristocracy mixed with the people, adopted their manners and usages, even much of their mode of thinking, of their democratic opinions, and, by divesting themselves of their external dignity, of their halo, the nobility threw down the barrier of separation which stood between them and the democracy; that respect and esteem which the man of the people had hitherto maintained toward the nobleman vanished away.

The principle of equality, which was to have such fatal consequences for France, arose from the folly of the aristocracy; and Marie Antoinette was the one who, with her taste for simplicity, with her opposition to etiquette and ceremony, had called this principle into life.

Not only was the queen imitated in her simplicity, she was also imitated in her love of comedy. These theatrical amusements of the queen were a subject of reproach, and yet these private recreations of Marie Antoinette were the fashion of the day. The taste for theatrical representations made its way into all classes of society; soon there was no nobleman, no banker, not even a respectable, well-to-do merchant, who had not in his house a small theatre, and who, with his family and friends, endeavored not to emulate on his own narrow stage the manners of the celebrated actors.

Before these days, a nobleman would have considered himself insulted and dishonored if he had been supposed to have become a comedian, or even to have assumed a comedian’s garb, were it but in the home-circle. The queen by her example had now destroyed this prepossession, and it was now so much bon ton to act a comedy that even men of gravity, even the first magistrate of Paris, could so much forget the dignity of position as to commit to memory and even to act some of the parts of a buffoon. [Footnote: Montjoie, “Histoire de Marie Antoinette, Reine de France.”]

It was also soon considered to be highly fashionable to set one’s self against the prejudice which had been hitherto fostered against actors; and, whereas the queen took lessons in singing from Garat, the opera-singer, and even sang duets with her, she threw down the wall of partition which had hitherto separated the artistes of the stage from good society.

Unfortunate queen, who, with the best qualities of the heart, was preparing her own ruin; who understood not that the freedom and license which she herself granted, would soon throw on the roof of the Tuileries the firebrand which reduced to dust and ashes the throne of the Bourbons!—unfortunate queen, who in her modesty would so gladly forget her exaltation and her majesty, and who thereby taught her subjects to make light of majesty and to despise the throne!

She saw not yet the abyss opening under her feet; the flowers of Trianon hid it from her view! She heard not the distant mutterings of the public mind, which, like the raging wave of the storm, swelled up nearer and nearer the throne to crush it one day under the howling thunders of the unshackled elements of the unloosed rage of the people!

The skies, arching over the fragrant blossoms of the charming Trianon, and over the cottages of the farming queen, were yet serene and cloudless, and the voice of public opinion was yet drowned in the joyous laughter which echoed from the cottages of Trianon, or in the sweet harmonies which waved in the concert-hall, when the queen, with Garat, or with the Baron de Vaudreuil, the most welcome favorite of the ladies, and the most accomplished courtier of his day, sang her duets.

Repose and peace prevailed yet in Trianon, and the loyal subjects of the King of France made their pilgrimages to Trianon, there to admire the idyls of the queen and to watch for the favorable opportunity of espying the queen, Marie Antoinette, in her rustic costume, with a basket of eggs on her arm, or the spindle in hand, and to be greeted by her with a salutation, a friendly word. For Marie Antoinette in Trianon was only the lady of the mansion, or the farming-lady—so much so, that she had allowed the very last duties of etiquette, which separated the subject from the queen, to be abandoned, that even when with her gay company she was in Trianon, the gates of the park and of the castle were not closed to visitors, but were opened to any one who had secured from the keeper a card of admission; the benefit arising from these cards was applied by order of the queen to the relief of the poor of Versailles. It is true, one condition of small importance was attached, “by order of the queen,” to the obtaining of such a card. It was necessary to belong to the nobility, or to the higher magistracy, so as to be entitled to purchase a card of admission into the Trianon, and this sole insignificant condition contained the germ of much evil and of bitter hatred. The merchant, the spicier, was conscious of a bitter insult in this order, which banished him from Trianon, which made it impossible for him to satisfy his curiosity, and to see the queen as a shepherdess, and the king as a farmer. This order only whetted more and more the hatred and the contempt for the preferred classes, for the aristocrats, and turned the most important class of the population, the burgesses, into enemies of the queen. For it was the queen who had given this order which kept away from Trianon the tradesmen; it was the queen alone who ruled in Trianon: and, to vent vengeance on the queen’s order, she was blamed for assuming a right belonging only to the King of France. Only he, the king, was entitled to give laws to France, only he could set on the very front of the law this seal: “DE PAR LE ROI.”

And now the queen wanted to assume this privilege. In the castles of pleasure presented by the king to the queen, in Trianon as well as in St. Cloud, was seen at the entrance of the gardens a tablet, containing the regulations under which admission was granted to the public, and these two tablets began with the formula, “DE PAR LA HEINE!” This unfortunate expression excited the ill-will and the anger of all France; every one felt himself injured, every one was satisfied to see therein an attack on the integrity of the monarchy, on the sovereignty of the king.

“It is no more the king alone who enacts laws,” they said, “but the queen also assumes this right; she makes use of the formalities of the state, she issues laws without the approbation of the Parliament. The queen wants to place our king aside and despoil us of our rights, so as to take the king’s place!”

And these complaints, these reproaches became so vehement, so loud, that their echoes resounded in the chambers of the king, so that even one of the ministers could make observations to the king on that subject, and say: “It is certainly immoral and impolitic for a queen of France to own castles for her own private use” [Footnote: Campan, “Memoires,” vol. i., p. 274.]

The good Louis therefore ventured to speak to his consort on this subject, and to ask of her to remove this expression which gave so much offence, and which had so violently excited the public sentiment.

But the pure heart of Marie Antoinette rebelled against such a supposition; her pride was stirred up that she, a queen, the daughter of the Caesars, should make concession to public opinion; that she should submit to this imaginary and invisible power, which dared despise her as a queen, which she recognized not and would not recognize!

This power, the public opinion, stood yet behind Marie Antoinette as an invisible, an unobserved phantom, which soon was to be transformed into a cruel monster, whose giant hand would pitilessly crush the happiness and the peace of the queen.

The prayers and expostulations of the king were in vain. Marie Antoinette would not bow to the public sentiment; she would not depart from her regulations, she would not strike off her “De par la reine” for the sake of “De par le peuple”

“My name is there in its right place,” said she, with a countenance beaming with resolution and pride; “these gardens and castles are my property, and I can very well issue orders in them, without interfering with state rights.”

And the “De par la reine” remained on the regulation-tablets in Trianon as well as in St. Cloud; and the people, who, through birth or through official position, were not entitled to enter Trianon, came thither at least to read the tablets of rules at the gate of entrance, and to fill up their hearts with scorn and contempt, and to utter loud curses against this presumptuous and daring “De par la reine.”

And this woman, whose pride and imperiousness kept away and scorned away the burgesses from the gates of Trianon, came to Trianon there to rest from the unbending majesty of her sovereignty, and she herself used to say to her ladies, with her own enchanting smile, “To forget that she was queen.”

The numberless fairy-tales related about the enchanted castle of the queen had found their way to Fontainebleau, and had been re-echoed in the quiet, lonely house where lived the Marquis de Beauharnais and his family. The marquis, always extremely attentive to procure for his beloved daughter-in-law some distraction and some recreation, proposed to Josephine to visit this Trianon, which furnished so much material for admiration and slander, and to make thither with a few friends a pleasure excursion.

Josephine gladly accepted the invitation; she longed for diversion and society. Her young, glowing heart had been healed and strengthened after the deep wound which the ever-beloved husband had inflicted; she had submitted to her fate; she was a divorced woman, but Parliament had by its judgment kept her honor free from every shadow; public opinion had pronounced itself in her favor; the love of her parents, of the father of him who had so shamefully accused her, so cruelly deserted her, endeavored to make compensation for what she had lost. Josephine could not trouble, with her sorrows, with her sad longings of soul, those who so much busied themselves in cheering her up. She had, therefore, so mastered herself as to appear content, as to dry here tears; and her youth, the freshness and elasticity of her mind, had come to the help of her efforts. She had at first smiled through effort, she soon did it from the force of youthful pleasure; she had at first repressed her tears by the power of her will, soon her tears were dried up and her eyes irradiated again the fire of youth and hope, of the hope once more to win her husband’s heart, to return her two graceful and beloved children to their father, whom their youth needed, for whom every evening she raised to the God of love the prayers which their mother with low, trembling voice and tears in her eyes made them say after her.

Josephine, then, in company with her aunt Madame de Renaudin and with her father-in-law the Marquis de Beauharnais, undertook this pleasure-excursion to Trianon. The sight of these glorious parks, these gardens so artistically laid out, charmed her and filled her with the sweet reminiscences of the loved home, of the beautiful gardens in Martinique, which she herself with her slaves had cultivated, in which she had planted those beautiful flowers whose liveliness of color and whose fragrance of blossom were here in hot-houses so much praised. The love of plants and flowers had ever remained fresh amid the storms and sorrows which in the last years had passed over her heart, and oftentimes she had sought in the study of botany forgetfulness and refreshment. With a vivacity and a joyfulness such as had not been seen in her for a long time, Josephine wandered about this beautiful park, these hot-houses and gardens, and, transported with joy and admiration, she exclaimed: “Oh, how happy must the queen be to call this paradise her own!”

The sound of approaching voices interrupted her in her observations and in her admiration, which, perchance, was not entirely free from envy. Through the foliage of the trees was seen a large company approaching the queen’s farm-house, before which stood Josephine with her escort. At the curve of the path near the grove where Josephine stood, appeared a woman. A white muslin dress, not expanded by the stiff, ceremonious hoop-petticoat, but falling down in ample folds, wrapped up her tall, noble figure, a small lace kerchief covered the beautiful neck, and in part the splendid shoulders. The deep-blond unpowdered hair hung in heavy, curly locks on either side of the rosy cheeks; the head was covered with a large, round straw hat, adorned with long, streaming silk ribbons; on the arm, partly covered with a black knit glove, hung an ornamented woven basket, which was completely filled with eggs.

“The queen!” murmured Josephine, trembling within herself, and, frightened at this unexpected meeting, she wanted to withdraw behind the grove, in the hope of being unnoticed by the farmer’s wife passing by.

But Marie Antoinette had already seen her, and on her beautiful, smiling countenance was not for a moment expressed either surprise or concern at this unexpected meeting with uninvited strangers. She was so accustomed to see curiosity-seekers in her lovely Trianon, and to meet them, disturbed not in the least her unaffected serenity. A moment only she stood still, to allow her followers, the Duchesses de Polignac, the Princess de Lamballe, and the two Counts de Coigny, to draw near; then lightly and smilingly she walked toward the house near which Josephine bewildered and blushing stood, whilst the marquis bowed profoundly and reverentially.

The queen, who was about to pass by and enter into the house, stood still. Her large dark-blue eye was for a moment fixed with questioning expression upon Josephine, then a smile illumined her beautiful countenance. She had recognized the Viscountess de Beauharnais, though she had seen her only twice. Although, through her husband’s rank and station, Josephine was entitled to appear at court, yet she had always, with all the retreating anxiety of inexperienced youth, endeavored to evade the solemnity of an official presentation. The young, lively, unaffected Creole had cherished an invincible horror for the stiff court-etiquette, for the ceremonial court-dress of gold brocade, with the court-mantle strictly embroidered after the established pattern, and which terminated in a long, heavy train, for the majestic head-gear of feathers, flowers, laces, and veils, all towering up nearly a yard high, and, above all things, for those rules and laws which regulated and fixed every word, every step, every movement, at a solemn presentation at court.

Marie Antoinette had had compassion on the timidity of the young Creole, and to spare her the solemnity of a rigid presentation had twice received at a private audience the young Viscountess de Beauharnais, and had then received also her homage. [Footnote: Le Normand, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 97.]

The youthful, charming appearance of Josephine, her peculiar and at the same time ingenuous and graceful attitude, had not been without impression on the queen; and with the most sympathizing interest, she had heard of the sad disturbances which had clouded the matrimonial happiness of the young Creole.

No longer, as before, had Marie Antoinette requested the Viscount de Beauharnais, the beautiful dancer of Versailles, to dance with her; and when Parliament had given its sentence, and openly and solemnly had proclaimed the innocency of Josephine, the accused wife, the queen also had loudly expressed her satisfaction at this judgment, and the Viscount de Beauharnais was no more invited to the court festivities.

About to enter into the house, the queen had recognized the young viscountess, and with a friendly movement of the head she beckoned her to approach, welcomed the marquis, whom her short-sightedness had not at once recognized, to her beloved Trianon, and she requested them both to visit her little kingdom as often as they would wish, and to examine every thing attentively.

In the goodness and generosity of her heart, the queen gladly desired to make amends to the young, timid woman, who, embarrassed and blushing, stood before her, for the sufferings she had endured, for the disgrace under which she had had to bow her head; she wanted to give the accused innocent one a reparation of honor such as Parliament and public sentiment had already done.

She was consequently all goodness, all condescension, all confidence; she spoke to Josephine, not as a queen to her favored subjects, but as a young woman to a young woman, as to her equal. With sympathetic friendliness she made inquiries concerning the welfare of the viscountess and her family; she invited her to come often to Trianon, and, with a flattering allusion to the vast knowledge of the viscountess in botany, she asked her if she was satisfied with the arrangements of garden and hot-houses.

Josephine, with the sensitiveness and fine tact natural to her, felt that the trivial flattery of a courtier would but be a wretched and inappropriate return for so much goodness and loving-kindness; she felt that frankness and truth were the thanks due to the queen’s large-heartedness.

She therefore answered the queen’s questions with impartial sincerity, and, encouraged by the kindness of the queen, she openly and clearly gave her opinion concerning the arrangement of the hot-houses, and drew the attention of the queen to some precious and choice plants which she had noticed in the hot-houses.

Marie Antoinette listened to her with lively interest, and at parting extended to her in a friendly manner her beautiful hand.

“Come soon again, viscountess,” said she, with that beautiful smile which ever won her true hearts; “you are worthy to enjoy the beauty of my beloved Trianon, for you have eyes and sense for the beautiful. Examine everything closely, and when we see one another again, tell me what you have observed and what has pleased you. It will ever be a pleasure to see you.” [Footnote: The very words of the queen.—See Le Normand, “Histoire,” &c., vol. i., p. 135.]

But Josephine was no more to see the beautiful queen, so worthy of compassion; and these kind words which Marie Antoinette had spoken to her were the last which Josephine was ever to hear from her lips.

A few days after this visit to Trianon, Josephine received from her parents in Martinique letters which had for their object to persuade her with the tenderness of love, with all the reasons of wisdom, to return to her home, to the house of her parents, to withdraw with bold resolution from all the inconveniences and humiliations of her precarious and dangerous situation, and, instead of living in humble solitude as a divorced, despised woman, sooner to come to Martinique, and there in her parents’ home be again the beloved and welcomed daughter.

Josephine hesitated still. She could not come to the resolution of abandoning the hope of a reunion with Alexandre de Beauharnais; she dreamt yet of the happiness of seeing the beloved wanderer return to his wife, to his children.

But her aunt and her father-in-law knew better than she that there was no prospect of such an event; they knew that the viscount was still the impassioned lover of the beautiful Madame de Gisard; that she held him too tightly in her web to look for a possibility of his returning to his legitimate affection.

If any thing could rouse him from this love-spell, and bring him back to duty and reason, it would be that sudden, unexpected departure; it would be the conviction which would necessarily be impressed upon him, that Josephine desired to be forever separated from him; that she was conscious of being divorced from him forever, and that, in the pride of her insulted womanhood, she wished to withdraw herself and her daughter from his approaches, and from the scandal which his passion for Madame de Gisard was giving.

Such were the reasons with which her relatives, even the grandfather of her two children, sought to persuade her to a voyage to Martinique—bitter though the anguish would be for them to be deprived of the presence of the gentle, lovely young woman, whose youthful freshness and grace had like sunshine cheered the lonely house in Fontainebleau; to see also part from them the little Hortense, whose joyous voice of childhood had now and then recalled the faithless son to the father’s house, and which was still a bond which united Josephine with her husband and with his family.

Josephine had to give way before these arguments, however much her heart bled. She had long felt how much of impropriety and of danger there was in the situation of a young woman divorced from her husband, and how much more dignified and expedient it would be for her to return to her father’s home and to the bosom of her family. She therefore took a decided resolution; she tore herself away from her relatives, from her beloved son, whom she could not take with her, for he belonged to the father. With a stream of painful tears she bade farewell to the love of youth, to the joys of youth, from which naught remained but the wounds of a despised heart, and the children who gazed at her with the beloved eyes of their father.

In the month of July of the year 1788, Josephine, with her little five-year-old daughter Hortense, left Fontainebleau, went to Havre, whence she embarked for Martinique.

CHAPTER VII. LIEUTENANT NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

While the Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais was, during long years of resignation, enduring all the anguish, humiliations, and agonies of an unhappy marriage, the first pain and sorrow had also clouded the days of the young Corsican boy who, in the same year as Josephine, had embarked from his native land for France.

In the beginning of the year 1785, Napoleon Bonaparte had lost his father. In Montpellier, whither he had come for the cure of his diseased breast, he died, away from home, from his Letitia and his children. Only his eldest son Joseph stood near his dying couch, and, moreover, a fortunate accident had brought to pass that the poor, lonely sufferer should meet there a friendly home, where he was received with the most considerate affection. Letitia’s companion of youth, the beautiful Panonia Comnene, now Madame de Permont, resided in Montpellier with her husband, who was settled there, and with all the faithfulness and friendship of a Corsican, she nursed the sick husband of her Letitia.

But neither the skill of the renowned physicians of Montpellier, nor the tender care of friends, nor the tears of the son, could keep alive the unfortunate Charles de Bonaparte. For three days long he struggled with death; for three days long his youth, his manhood’s powers, resisted the mighty foe, which already held him in its chains; then he had to submit to the conqueror. Exhausted with death’s pallor, Charles de Bonaparte sank back on his couch, and as Death threw his dark shadows on his face bathed in cold perspiration, Charles de Bonaparte, with stammering tongue, in the last paroxysms of fancy, exclaimed: “It is in vain! Nothing can save me! Even Napoleon’s sword, which one day is to triumph over all Europe, even that sword cannot frighten away the dragon of death which crouches on my breast!” [Footnote: See “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 29.]

Wonderful vision of a dying man! The dimmed eye of the dying father saw his son Napoleon’s sword, “which one day was to triumph over all Europe;” as he prophesied its power, he sighed at the same time over the impotency which holds all mankind in its bands, and leaves even the hero as a powerless child in the hands of fate. The sword which was to be a yoke to all Europe could not terrify from the breast of his father the dragon of death!

Napoleon received the news of his father’s decease whilst at the military school of Paris, where he had been placed for the last six months, to the joy and satisfaction of his teachers as well as to that of his schoolmates in Brienne. For the reserved, taciturn, proud boy, who, rugged and blunt, stood aloof from his comrades, who even dared speak rude and bitter words against his teachers and against the whole military institution at Brienne, was oftentimes an inconvenience and a burden as well to teachers as to schoolmates; and all felt relieved, as from a depressing weight, when they no more feared the naming eyes of the boy who observed every thing, who criticised every thing, and passed judgment upon every thing.

But if he was not loved, it was impossible to refuse esteem to his capacity, to his desire for learning; and the testimony which Monsieur de Heralio, the principal of the institution of Brienne, sent with the young Napoleon to Paris, was a tribute of respect and an acknowledgment of merit. He portrayed him “as having an extremely capacious head, especially skilled in mathematics, and of great powers and talents.” As to his character, one of the professors of the institution had in the testimonial written the remark: “A Corsican by birth and character. He will do great things, if circumstances are favorable.”

But circumstances did not appear favorable, but contrariwise seemed to bo roused in enmity against the poor Corsican boy. He had been scarcely half a year in Paris when he lost his father, and this grief, of which not a murmur escaped, which he kept within, devouring his heart, as every thing else which affected him, made his existence still more reserved, still more retired, and isolated him more and more. Moreover, death had not only taken away the father, but also the support which Napoleon received from him. The means of the Bonaparte family were very meagre, and barely sufficed to the support of Signora Letitia and her seven children. Napoleon could not and dared not require or accept any help from his mother, on whom and on his brother Joseph it became incumbent to educate and support the young family. He had to be satisfied to live upon the bounty which the royal treasury furnished to the young men at the military school.

But these limited means were to the ambitious boy a source of humiliation and pain. The majority of his comrades consisted of young aristocrats, who, provided with ample means, led a gay, luxurious, dissipated life, had horses, servants, equipages, kept up one with another expensive dinner-parties and dejeuners, and seized every opportunity to organize a festivity or a pleasure-party. Every departure, every admission of a scholar, was celebrated with brilliant display; every birthday furnished the opportunity of a feast, and every holiday became the welcomed occasion for a pleasure excursion which the young men on horseback, and followed by their servants in livery, made in the vicinity of Paris.

Napoleon could take no part in all these feastings and dissipations; and as his proud heart could not acknowledge his poverty, he put on the mask of a stoic, who, with contemptuous disregard, cast away vain pleasures and amusements, and scorned those who with unrestrained zest abandoned themselves to them.

He had scarcely been half a year in the military school when he gave loud expression to his jealousy and envy; the young Napoleon, nearly sixteen years old, undertook boldly to censure in the very presence of the teachers the regulations of the institution. In a memorial which he had composed, and which he presented to the second director of the establishment, M. Berton, he gave utterance to his own views in the most energetic and daring manner, imposing upon the professors the duty of making a complete change in the institution; of limiting the number of servants, so that the military pupils might learn to wait upon themselves; of simplifying the noonday meal, so as to accustom them to moderation; of forbidding banquets, dejeuners, and pleasure-excursions, so that they might not become inured to a frivolous, extravagant mode of life.

This mask of a censuring stoic, which he put on in the presence of teachers and school-mates, he retained also with his few friends. Madame de Permont, a short time after the death of Napoleon’s father, came with her family to Paris, where her husband had obtained an important and lucrative office; her son Albert attended the military school and was soon the friend of Napoleon, as much as a friendship could be formed between the young, lively M. de Permont, the son of wealthy and distinguished parents, and the reserved, proud Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of a poor, lonely widow.

However, Napoleon this time acquiesced in the wishes of his true friend, and condescended to pass his holidays with Albert in the house of Madame de Permont, the friend of his mother; and oftentimes his whole countenance would brighten into a smile, when speaking with her of the distant home, of the mother, and of the family. But as many times also that countenance would darken when, gazing round, he tacitly compared this costly, tastefully decorated mansion with the poor and sparingly furnished house in which his noble and beautiful mother lived with her six orphans, and who in her household duties had to wait upon herself; when again he noticed with what solicitude and love Madame de Permont had her children educated by masters from the court, by governesses and by teachers at enormous salaries, whilst her friend Letitia had to content herself with the very deficient institutions of learning to be found in Corsica, because her means were not sufficient to bring to Paris, to the educational establishment of St. Cyr, her young daughters, like the parents of the beautiful Pauline.

The young Napoleon hated luxury, because he himself had not the means of procuring it; he spoke contemptuously of servants, for his position allowed him not to maintain them; he spoke against the expensive noonday meal, because he had to be content with less; he scorned the amusements of his school-mates, because, when they arranged their picnics and festivities, his purse allowed him not to take a part in them.

One day in the military school, as one of the teachers was to bid it farewell, the scholars organized a festivity, toward which each of them was to contribute a tolerably large sum. It was perhaps not all accident that precisely on that day M. de Permont, the father of Albert, came to the military school to visit his son, and Napoleon, his son’s friend.

He found all the scholars in joyous excitement and motion; his son Albert was, like the rest, intently busy with the preparations of the feast, which was to take place in the garden, and to end in a great display of fireworks. All faces beamed with delight, all eyes were illumined, and the whole park re-echoed with jubilant cries and joyous laughter.

But Napoleon Bonaparte was not among the gay company. M. de Permont found him in a remote, lonesome path. He was walking up and down with head bent low, his hands folded behind his back; as he saw M. de Permont, his face became paler and gloomier, and a look nearly scornful met the unwelcomed disturber.

“My young friend,” said M. de Permont, with a friendly smile, “I come to bring you the small sum which you need to enable you to take a part in the festivity. Here it is; take it, I pray you.”

But Napoleon, with a vehement movement of the hand, waved back the offered money, a burning redness for a moment covered his face, then his cheeks assumed that yellowish whiteness which in the child had always indicated a violent emotion.

“No,” cried he, vehemently, “no, I have nothing to do with this meaningless festivity. I thank you—I receive no alms.”

M. de Permont gazed with emotions of sympathizing sorrow in the pale face of the poor young man for whom poverty was preparing so many griefs, and in the generosity of his heart he had recourse to a falsehood.

“This is no alms I offer you, Napoleon,” said he, gently, “but this money belongs to you, it comes from your father. At his dying hour he confided to me a small sum of money, with the express charge to keep it for you and to give you a portion of it in pressing circumstances, when your personal honor required it. I therefore bring you to-day the fourth part of this sum, and retain the rest for another pressing occasion.”

With a penetrating, searching look. Napoleon gazed into the face of the speaker, and the slight motions of a sarcastic smile played for an instant around his thin, compressed lips.

“Well, then,” said he, after a pause, “since this money comes from my father, I can use it; but had you simply wished to lend it to me, I could not have received it. My mother has already too much responsibility and care; I cannot increase them by an outlay, especially when such an outlay is imposed upon me by the sheer folly of my schoolmates.” [Footnote: Napoleon’s words.—See “Memoires de la Duchesse d’Abrantes,” vol. i., p. 81.]

He then took the offered sum for which, as he thought, he was indebted to no man, and hastened to pay his contribution to the festivity. But, in respect to his principles, he took no part in the festivity, but declaimed all the louder, and in a more biting tone, against the criminal propensities for pleasure in the young men who, instead of turning their attention to their studies, lavished away their precious time in dissipation and frivolities.

These anxieties and humiliations of poverty Napoleon had doubly to endure, not only for himself, but also for his sister Marianne (who afterward called herself Elise). She had been, as already said, at her father’s intercession and application, received in the royal educational institute of St. Cyr, and there enjoyed the solid and brilliant education of the pupils of the king. But the spirit of luxury and the desire for pleasure had also penetrated into this institution, founded by the pious and high-minded Madame de Maintenon, and the young ladies of St. Cyr had among themselves picnics and festivals, as well as the young men of the military school.

Napoleon, whose means, as long as he was in Brienne, never allowed him to visit his beloved sister at St. Cyr, had now frequent opportunities of seeing her, for Madame de Permont, in her royal friendship to the Bonaparte family, took as lively an interest in the daughter as in the son of her friend Letitia, and often drove to St. Cyr to visit the young and beautiful Marianne.

A few days after the festival in the military school, a short vacation had followed, and Napoleon passed it with his friend Albert in the house of the family of Permont. To please young Napoleon, it was decided to go to St. Cyr, and the glowing cheeks and the lively manner with which Napoleon, during the journey, conversed with M. and Madame de Permont, proved what satisfaction he anticipated in meeting his sister.

But Marianne Bonaparte did not seem to share this satisfaction. With downcast countenance and sad mien she entered the reception-room and saluted M. and Madame Permont, and even her brother, with a gloomy, despairing look. As she was questioned about the cause of her sadness, she broke into tears, and threw herself with vehement emotion into the arms of Madame de Permont.

Vain were the prayers and expostulations of her mother’s friend to have her reveal the cause of her sadness. Marianne only shook her head in a negative manner, and ever a fresh flow of tears started from her eyes, but she remained silent.

Napoleon, who at first, pale and silent, had looked on this outbreak of sorrow, now excitedly approached his sister, and, laying his hand upon her arm, said in angry tones: “Since you cry, you must also confess the cause of your tears, or else we are afraid that you weep over some wrong of which you are guilty. But woe to you if it is so! I am here in the name of our father, and I will be without pity!” [Footnote: “Memoires de la Duehesse d’Abrantes.”]

Marianne trembled, and cast a timid, anxious look upon her young brother, whose voice had assumed such a peculiar, imperious expression—whose eyes shone with the expression of a proud, angry master.

“I am in no wise guilty, my brother,” murmured she, “and yet I am sad and unhappy.”

And blushing, trembling, with broken words, interrupted by tears and sighs, Marianne related that next day, a farewell festival was to take place in the institution in honor of one of the pupils about to leave. The whole class was taking a part in it, and each of the young ladies had already paid her contribution.

“But I only am not able,” exclaimed Marianne, with a loud burst of anguish, “I have but six francs; if I give them, nothing is left me, and my pension is not paid until six weeks. But even were I to give all I have, my miserable six francs would not be enough.”

Very unwillingly indeed had Napoleon, whilst Marianne thus spoke, put his hand into his pocket, as if to draw out the money which his sorrowing sister needed, but remembering his own poverty, his hand dropped at his side; a deep glow of anger overspread his cheeks, and wildly stamping down with the foot he turned away and walked to the window, perhaps to allow none to notice the nervous agitation of his countenance and his tears of vexation and shame.

But what Napoleon could not do, that did Madame de Permont. She gave to the weeping young girl the twelve francs she needed to take a part in the festivity, and Marianne, less proud and less disdainful than her brother, accepted gladly, without opposition and without the need of a falsehood, the little sum offered.

Napoleon allowed this to take place without contradiction, and hindered not his sister to receive from Madame de Permont the alms which he himself had so arrogantly refused.

But they had barely left the reception-room and entered the carriage, than his suffering heart burst into a sarcastic philippic against the contemptible administration of such royal establishments as St. Cyr and the military school.

M. de Permont, who had at first patiently and with a smile listened to these raving invectives, felt himself at last wounded by them; and the supercilious and presumptuous manner in which the young man of barely seventeen years spoke of the highest offices of the state, and of the king himself, excited his anger.

“Hush, Napoleon!” said he, reluctantly. “It does not beseem you, who are educated upon the king’s bounty, to speak thus.”

Napoleon shrank within himself as if he had been bitten by a serpent, and a deadly pallor overspread his cheeks.

“I am not the pupil of the king, but of the state!” exclaimed he, in a boisterous voice, trembling with passion.

“Ah, that is indeed a fine distinction which you have made there, Napoleon,” said M. de Permont, laughing. “It is all the same whether you are the pupil of the state or of the king; moreover, is not the king the state also? However it may be, it beseems you not to speak of your benefactor in such inappropriate terms.”

Napoleon concentrated all his efforts into self-control, and mastered himself into a grave, quiet countenance.

“I will be silent,” said he, with an appearance of composure; “I will no more say what might excite your displeasure. Only allow me to say, were I master here, had I to decide upon the regulations of these institutions, I would have them very different, and for the good of all.”

“Were I master here!” The pupil of the military school, for whom poverty was preparing so much humiliation, who had just now experienced a fresh humiliation through his sister in the reception-room of St. Cyr, was already thinking what he would do were he the ruler of France; and, strange enough, these words seemed natural to his lips, and no one thought of sneering or laughing at him when he thus spoke.

Meanwhile his harsh and repulsive behavior, his constant fault-finding and censoriousness were by no means conducive to the friendship and affection of those around him; he was a burden to all, he was an inconvenience to all; and the teachers as well as the pupils of the military school were all anxious to get rid of his presence.

As nothing else could be said to his reproach; as there was no denying his assiduity, his capacities, and progress, there was but one means of removing him from the institution—he had to be promoted. It was necessary to recognize the young pupil of the military school as competent to enter into the practical, active military service; it was necessary to make a lieutenant out of the pupil.

Scarcely had one year passed since Napoleon had been received into the military school of Paris, when he was nominated by the authorities of the school for a vacancy in the rank of lieutenant, and he was promoted to it in the artillery regiment of La Fere, then stationed at Valence.

In the year 1786 Napoleon left the military school to serve his country and his king as second lieutenant, and to take the oath of allegiance.

Radiant with happiness and joy, proud alike of his promotion and of his uniform, the young lieutenant went to the house of M. de Permont to show himself to his friends in his new dignity and in his new splendors, and, at their invitation, to pass a few days in their house before leaving for Valence.

But, alas! his appearance realized not the wished-for result. As he entered the saloon of Madame de Permont the whole family was gathered there, and at the sight of Napoleon the two daughters, girls of six and thirteen years, broke out into loud laughter. None are more alive than children to the impression of what is ridiculous, and there was indeed in the appearance of the young lieutenant something which well might excite the laughing propensities of the lively little maidens. The uniform appeared much too long and wide for the little meagre figure of Napoleon, and his slender legs vanished in boots of such height and breadth that he seemed more to swim than to walk with them.

These boots especially had excited the laughter of the little maidens; and at every step which Napoleon, embarrassed as he was by the terrible cannon-boots, made forward, the laughter only increased, so that the expostulations and reproaches of Madame de Permont could not procure silence.

Napoleon, who had entered the drawing-room with a face radiant with joy, felt wounded by the children’s joyousness at his own cost. To be the subject of scorn or sarcasm was then, as it was afterward, entirely unbearable to him, and when he himself also tried to jest he knew not how to receive the jests directed at him. After having saluted M. and Madame de Permont, Napoleon turned to the eldest daughter Cecilia, who, a few days before, had come from the boarding-school to remain a short time at home, and who, laughing, had placed herself right before monsieur the lieutenant.

“I find your laughter very silly and childish,” said he, eagerly.

The young maid, however, continued to laugh.

“M. Lieutenant,” said she, “since you carry such a mighty sword, you no doubt wish to carry it as a lady’s knight, and therefore you must consider it an honor when ladies jest with you.”

Napoleon gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.

“It is evident,” said he, scornfully, “that you are but a little school-girl.”

These sarcastic words wounded the vanity of the young maiden, and brought a glow of anger on her face.

“Well, yes,” cries she, angrily, “I am a school-girl, but you—you are nothing else than a puss in boots!”

A general laugh followed; even Madame de Permont, ordinarily so good and so considerate, could not suppress laughter. The witty words of the little school-girl were too keen and too applicable that she should be subjected to reproach.

Napoleon’s wrath was indescribable. His visage was overspread with a yellow-greenish pallor, his lips were contracted nervously, and already opened for a word of anger. But he suppressed that word with an effort; for though not yet familiar with all the forms and usages of society, his fine tact and the instinct of what was becoming told him that when the conversation ran into personalities the best plan was to be silent, and that he must not return personal remarks, since his opponent was one of the fair sex. He therefore remained silent, and so controlled himself as to join in the general laughter and to show himself heartily amused at the unfortunate nickname of the little Cecilia.

And that every one might be convinced how much he himself had been amused at this little scene, he brought, a few days afterward, to the youngest daughter of Madame de Permont, a charming little toy which he had had made purposely for her. This toy consisted of a small gilt and richly-ornamented carriage of papier-mache, before which leaped along a very lovely puss in boots.

To this present for the little Lolotte (afterward Duchess d’Abrantes), was added for Cecilia an elegant and interesting edition of the tales of “Puss in Boots,” and when Napoleon politely presented it to the young maid he begged her to receive kindly this small souvenir from him.

“That is too much,” said Madame de Permont, shaking her head. “The toy for Loulou would have been quite enough. But this present to Cecilia shows that you took her jest in earnest, and were hurt by it.”

Napoleon, however, affirmed that he had not taken the jest in earnest, that he had been no wise hurt by it; that he himself when he put on his uniform had to laugh at the nickname of “puss in boots” which dear Cecilia had given him.

He had, however, endeavored no more to deserve this nickname, and the unlucky boots were replaced by much smaller and closer-fitting ones.

A few days after this little incident the young second lieutenant left Paris and went to meet his regiment La Fere at Valence.

A life of labor and study, of hopes and dreams, now began for the young lieutenant. He gave himself up entirely to his military service, and pursued earnest, scientific studies in regard to it. Mathematics, the science of war, geometry, and finally politics, were the objects of his zeal; but alongside of these he read and studied earnestly the works of Voltaire, Corneille, Racine, Montaigne, the Abbe Raynal, and, above all, the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose passionate and enthusiastic disciple Napoleon Bonaparte was at that time. [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 33.]

Amid so many grave occupations of the mind it would seem that the heart with all its claims had to remain in the background. The smiling boy Cupid, with his gracious raillery and his smarting griefs, seemed to make no impression on that pale, grave, and taciturn artillery lieutenant, and not to dare shoot an arrow toward that bosom which had mailed itself in an impenetrable cuirass of misanthropy, stoicism, and learning.

But yet between the links of this coat-of-mail an arrow must have glided, for the young lieutenant suddenly became conscious that there in his bosom a heart did beat, and that it was going in the midst of his studies to interrupt his dreams of misanthropy. Yes, it had come to this, that he abandoned his study to pay his court to a young lady, that at her side he lost his gravity of mien, his gloomy taciturnity, and became joyous, talkative, and merry, as beseemed a young man of his age.

The young lady who exercised so powerful an influence upon the young Bonaparte was the daughter of the commanding officer at Valence, M. de Colombier. He loved her, but his lips were yet too timid to confess it, and of what need were words to these young people to understand one another and to know what the one felt for the other?

In the morning they took long walks through the beautiful park; they spoke one to another of their childhood, of their brothers and sisters, and when the young maid with tears in her eyes listened to the descriptions which Napoleon made to her of his country, of his father’s house, and, above all things, of his mother—when she with animation and enthusiasm declared that Letitia was a heroine greater than whom antiquity had never seen, then Napoleon would take her two hands in his and thank her with tremulous voice for the love which she consecrated to his noble mother.

If in the morning they had to separate, as an indemnification an evening walk in the light of the moon was agreed upon, and the young maid promised heroically to come without uncertainty, however imperative was her mother’s prohibition. And truly, when her mother was asleep, she glided down into the park, and Napoleon welcomed her with a happy smile, and arm in arm, happy as children, they wandered through the paths, laughing at their own shadows, which the light of the moon in wondrous distortion made to dance before them. They entered into a small bower, which stood in the shadow of trees, and there the young Napoleon had prepared for the young maid a very pleasing surprise. There on the table was a basket full of her favorite fruit—full of the sweetest, finest cherries. Louise thanked her young lover with a hand-pressure for the tender attention, but she declared that she would touch none of the cherries unless Napoleon enjoyed them with her, and to please his beloved he had to obey.

They sat down on the seat before the bower and enjoyed the golden light of the moon, the night air amid the lime-trees, the joy of being thus secretly together, and with infinite delight they ate of the sweet juicy cherries. But when the last cherry was eaten, the moon became darkened, a rude night breeze shook the trees, and made the young maid tremble with cold. She must not remain from home any longer, she must not expose herself to the dangerous night air; thus argued the considerate tenderness of the young lieutenant, and, kissing her hand, he bade farewell to Louise, and watched until the tender ethereal figure had vanished behind the little door which led from the park into the house. [Footnote: “Memorial de St. Helene,” p. 30.]

The sweet idyl of his first love had, however, come to a sudden and unexpected end. The young Second-Lieutenant Bonaparte was ordered to Lyons with his regiment, and the first innocent romance of his heart was ended.

But he never forgot the young maid, whom he then had so tenderly loved, and in the later days of his grandeur he remembered her, and when he learned that she had lost her husband, a M. de Bracieux, and lived in very depressing circumstances, he appointed her maid of honor to his sister Elise, and secured her a very handsome competency.

The dream of his first love had been dreamed away; and, perhaps to forget it, Napoleon again in Lyons gave himself up with deepest earnestness to study. The Academy of Sciences in Lyons had offered a prize for the answer to the question: “What are the sentiments and emotions which are to be instilled into men, so as to make them happy?”

Napoleon entered the lists for this prize, and, if his work did not receive the prize, it furnished the occasion for the Abbe Raynal, who had answered the question successfully, to become acquainted with the young author, and to encourage him to persevere in his literary pursuits, for which he had exhibited so much talent.

Napoleon then, with all the fire of his soul, began a new work, the history of the revolutions in Corsica; and, in order to make accurate researches in the archives of Ajaccio, he obtained leave of absence to go thither. In the year 1788, Napoleon returned to his native isle to his mother, to his brothers and sisters, all of whom he had not seen for nine years, and was welcomed by them with the tenderest affection.

But the joys of the family could draw away the young man but little from his studies and researches; and, however much he loved his mother, brothers and sisters, now much grown up, yet he preferred being alone with his elder brother Joseph, making long walks with him, and in solemn exchange of thoughts and sentiments, communicating to him his studies, his hopes, his dreams for the future.

To acquire distinction, fame, reputation with the actual world, and immortality with the future—such was the object on which all the wishes, all the hopes of Napoleon were concentrated; and in long hours of conversation with Joseph he spoke of the lofty glory to carve out an immortal name, to accomplish deeds before which admiring posterity would bow.

Did Napoleon then think of purchasing for himself an immortal name as writer, as historian? At least he studied very earnestly the archives of Ajaccio, and sent a preliminary essay of his history of the revolutions of Corsica to Raynal for examination. This renowned savant of his day warmly congratulated the young author on his work, and asked him to send a copy that he might show it to Mirabeau.

Napoleon complied with these wishes; and when, a few weeks after, he received a letter from Raynal, after reading it, he, with radiant eyes and a bright smile, handed it to his brother Joseph.

In this letter of Raynal were found these words: “Monsieur de Mirabeau has in this little essay found traits which announce a genius of the first rank. He entreats the young author to come to him in Paris.” [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 33.]

But the young author could not at once obey the call of the Count de Mirabeau. A sad family bereavement delayed him at the time in Corsica. The brother of his grandfather, the aged Archdeacon Lucian, the faithful counsellor and friend of Letitia and of her young family, was seized with a mortal disease; the gout, which for years had tormented him, was now to give him the fatal blow, and the whole family of the Bonapartes was called to the bedside of the old man to receive his parting words.

Weeping, they all stood around his couch; weeping, Letitia bent over the aged man, whose countenance was already signed with the hand of death. Around kneeled the younger children of Letitia, for their great-uncle had long been to them a kind father and protector; and on the other side of the couch, facing Letitia and her brother, the Abbe Fesch, stood Joseph and Napoleon, gazing with sad looks on their uncle.

His large, already obscured eyes wandered with a deep, searching glance upon all the members of the Bonaparte family, and then at last remained fixed with a wondrous brilliancy of expression on the pale, grave face of Napoleon.

At this moment, the Abbe Fesch, with a voice trembling with emotion and full of holy zeal, began to intone the prayers for the dead. But the old priest ordered him with a voice full of impatience to be silent.

“I have prayed long enough in my life,” said he; “I have now but a few moments to live, and I must give them to my family.”

The loud sobbings of Letitia and of her children interrupted him, and called forth a last genial smile upon the already stiffening features.

“Letitia,” said he, in a loud, friendly tone, “Letitia, cease to shed tears; I die happy, for I see you surrounded by all your children. My life is no longer necessary to the children of my dear Charles; I can therefore die. Joseph is at the head of the administration of the country, and he will know how to take care of what belongs to his family. You, Napoleon,” continued he, with a louder voice, “you will be a great and exalted man.” [Footnote: “Tu poi. Napoleon, serai unomone” such were the words of the dying man, assures us King Joseph in his memoirs; whilst Las Casas, in his memorial of St. Helena, makes Napoleon relate that his uncle had told him, “You, Napoleon, will be the head of the family.”]

His eyes turned on Napoleon, he sank back on the cushions, and his dying lips murmured yet once more, “Tu serai unomone!”

After the body of the worthy great-uncle had been laid in the grave, Napoleon left Corsica to return to France and to his regiment, for the time of his leave of absence had expired.

For the second time the lips of a dying man had prophesied him a great and brilliant future. His dying father had said that one day the sword of his son Napoleon would make all Europe bow under the yoke; his great-uncle had prophesied he would be a great and exalted personage.

To these prophecies of the dying is to be added Mirabeau’s judgment, which called Napoleon a genius of the first stamp.

But this great and glorious future was yet screened under dark clouds from the eyes of the young lieutenant of artillery, and the blood-dripping hand of the Revolution was first needed to tear away these clouds and to convert the king’s lieutenant of artillery into the Emperor of France!

CHAPTER VIII. A PAGE FROM HISTORY.

The dark clouds which hung yet over the future of Napoleon Bonaparte, the lieutenant of artillery, were gathering in heavier and heavier masses over all France, and already were overshadowing the throne of the lilies.

Marie Antoinette had already abandoned the paradise of innocency in Trianon, and when she came there now it was to weep in silence, to cast away the mask from her face, and under the garb of the proud, imperious, ambitious queen to exhibit the pallid, anxious countenance of the woman.

Alas! they were passed away, those days of festivity, those innocent joys of Trianon; the royal farmer’s wife had no more the heart to carry the spindle, to gather eggs from the hens’ nests, and to perform with her friends the joyous idyls of a pastoral life.

The queen had procured for herself a few years of freedom and license by banishing from Versailles and from the Tuileries the burdensome Madame Etiquette, who hitherto had watched over every step of a Queen of France, but in her place Madame Politique had entered into the palace, and Marie Antoinette could not drive her away as she had done with Madame Etiquette.

For Madame Politique came into the queen’s apartments, ushered in by a powerful and irresistible suite. The failure of the crops throughout the land, want, the cries of distress from a famishing people, the disordered finances of the state—such was the suite which accompanied Politique before the queen; pamphlets, pasquinades, sarcastic songs on Marie Antoinette, whom no more the people called their queen, but already the foreigner, L’Autrichienne—such were the gifts which Politique brought for the queen.

The beautiful and innocent days of Trianon were gone, no longer could Marie Antoinette forget that she was a queen! The burden of her lofty position pressed upon her always; and, if now and then she sought to adorn her head with roses, her crown pressed their thorns with deeper pain into her brow.

Unfortunate queen! Even the circle of friends she had gathered round her person only urged her on more and more into the circle which politics had traced around her. In her innocency and thoughtlessness of heart she imagined that, to a queen as to any other woman, it might be allowed to have about her friends and confidants, to enjoy the pleasures of society, and to amuse one another! But now she had to learn that a queen dare not have confidants, friends, or social circles!

Her friends, in whose disinterestedness she had trusted, approached her with demands, with prayers; they claimed power, influence, and distinctions; they all wanted to rule through the queen; they all wanted through her to impose laws to king and state; they wanted to name and to depose ministers; they wanted their friendship to be rewarded with embassies, ministerial offices, decorations, and titles.

And when Marie Antoinette refused compliance with their wishes, her beautiful friends, the Duchesses de Polignac, wept, and her friends, Messieurs Vesenval, Vaudreuil, Coigny, and Polignac, dared be angry and murmur at her.

But when Marie Antoinette consented—when she used her influence with the king, to satisfy the wishes of her friends, and to make ministers of her facon—then the queen’s enemies, with loud, mad-dog cry, lifted up the voice and complained and clamored that it was no more the king but the queen who reigned; that she was the one who precipitated the nation into wretchedness and want; that she gave millions to her friends, whilst the people were perishing with hunger; that she sent millions to her brother, the Emperor of Austria, whilst the country was only able to pay the interest of her enormous debt; that she, in unrestrained appetite and licentiousness, lived only for pleasure and festivities, whilst France was depressed under misery and want.

And the queen’s enemies were mightier, more numerous, and more loyal one to another than the queen’s friends, who were ever ready to pass into the camp of her foes as soon as Marie Antoinette gratified not their wishes and would not satisfy their political claims.

At the head of these enemies was the king’s brother, the Count de Provence, who never forgave the queen for being an Austrian princess; there were also the king’s aunts, who could never forgive her that the king loved her, that by means of this love to his wife they should lose the influence which these aunts, and especially Madame Adelaide, had before exercised over him; there was the Duke d’Orleans, who had to revenge himself for the disgust and dislike which Marie Antoinette publicly expressed against this vicious and wild prince; there was the Cardinal Prince de Rohan, whose criminal passion the queen had repelled with contemptuous disgust, and who had paid for this passion one million francs, with imprisonment, shame, and ridicule. For this passion for the queen had blinded the cardinal, and made him believe in the possibility of a return. In his blindness he had placed confidence in the whisperings and false promises of the insidious intriguer Madame de la Motte-Valois, who, in the queen’s name, asked from him a loan of a million for the purchase of a jewelled ornament which highly pleased the queen, and which she, notwithstanding her exhausted coffers, was resolved to possess.

Yes, love had blinded Cardinal de Rohan, and with blind eyes he had accepted as letters from the queen those which Madame de la Motte brought him; and he could not see that the person who gave him a rendezvous in the gardens of Versailles was not the queen, but only a common, vicious woman, who had been clothed in the queen’s garments.

The queen had been travestied into a wench, and the highest ecclesiastical dignitary of the land was the one who took this wench for his queen, was the one who, with a rendezvous, a kiss on the hand, and a rose, was rewarded for the million he had given to the jeweller for a necklace of diamonds!

It is true, the deception was discovered; it is true, it was Marie Antoinette herself who asked for a strict investigation, who with tears of anger required from her consort that this horrible intrigue which had been woven round her person should be investigated and judged publicly before the Parliament; that the Cardinal de Rohan should be punished for the criminal insult offered by him to the queen, since he thought her capable of granting him a rendezvous, of exchanging with him letters of tender passion, and of accepting gifts from him!

But the Parliament, which recognized the guilt of Madame de la Motte, which ordered her to be whipped, branded, and driven out of the country as an impostor and a thief, the Parliament declared the Cardinal de Rohan innocent; all punishments were removed from him, and he was re-established in all his dignities and rights. And the people, who in enormous masses had besieged the Parliament buildings, welcomed this decision of the judges with loud demonstrations and shouts of joy, and carried the cardinal in triumph through the streets, and honored and glorified him as a martyr and a saint.

This triumph of the cardinal was an affecting defeat to the queen; it was the first awful testimony, spoken loudly and openly, by the popular sentiment.

Hitherto her enemies had worked against her quietly, and in the darkness of night; but now, in open day, they dared launch against her their terrible accusations, and represent her imprudence as a crime, her errors as shameful and premeditated wickedness. No one believed in the queen’s innocency in this necklace transaction; and whereas Cardinal de Rohan had been made a martyr, whereas Parliament had declared him innocent, the queen consequently must be the guilty one, to whose cupidity the cardinal and the unfortunate Madame de la Motte and also the beautiful D’Olivia, who in this horrible farce had played the part of the queen, had been sacrificed.

The name, the character, the reputation of the queen, had been trodden down in the dust, and the Count de Provence, who himself composed sarcastic songs and pasquinades against his royal sister-in-law, and had copies of them circulated through the court, reflected not that in calumniating the queen and exposing her to the scorn and ridicule of the world he thereby shook the throne itself, and imperilled the awe and respect which the people should have had for the monarchy. And all the other mighty dignitaries and foes of Marie Antoinette did not calculate that in exciting the storm of calumny against the Queen of France, they also attacked the king and the aristocracy, and tore down the barrier which hitherto had stood between the people and the nobility.

Hitherto pamphlets and sarcastic songs only had been directed against the queen; but now, in the year 1787, all France was to re-echo a pamphlet launched against the nobility and the whole aristocracy.

This pamphlet was “The Wedding of Figaro,” by Beaumarchais. The habits of the aristocracy, of the higher classes, were in this drama castigated and thrown to the scorn, ridicule, and laughter of all France. Every thing which the people hitherto had held sacred, was laughed at in this drama; all the laws of manners, of rank, of morality, were scorned at, hissed at; and, under this hissing, appeared in full view and with fearful veracity the rotten and poisoned condition of the so-called upper classes of society.

It was in vain that the censor declared the publication illegal, and prohibited the representation of “The Wedding of Figaro.” The opposition took advantage of this measure, and since it could not be published, hundreds of copies were circulated; and, if it could not be represented, its reading was listened to. It soon became fashionable to attend at the readings of “Figaro’s Wedding” and to possess a copy of the drama. Even in the queen’s social circle, in the circle of the Polignacs, this dangerous drama was patronized, and even the queen was requested to use her influence upon the king for its representation.

This general clamor, this tempest of the public opinion, excited even the king’s curiosity; and as everybody attended the readings of Beaumarchais’ drama, the crowned heads had also to bow to the fashion. Madame de Campan had to read before the king and the queen this renowned “Wedding of Figaro,” so that the king might give his decision. The good-natured countenance of the king darkened more and more, and during Figaro’s monologue, in which the different institutions of the state are ridiculed, especially when, with words full of poison and scorn, the author alludes to state-prisons, the king rose angrily from his seat.

“It is a contemptible thing,” cried he, vehemently. “The Bastile must be destroyed before the representation of this piece would not appear as a dangerous inconsequence. This man ridicules every thing which in a state ought to be esteemed and respected.”

“This piece will not then be represented?” asked Marie Antoinette, at the close of the reading.

“No, certainly not!” exclaimed Louis, “you can be convinced of it; this piece will not be represented.”

But the clamor, the longings for this representation were more and more loudly expressed, and more and more pressing. It was in vain that the king by his decree forbade its already-announced representation in the theatre of the menus plaisirs. Beaumarchais cried aloud to the murmuring audience, who complained very loudly against this tyranny, against this oppression of the king, the consoling words: “Well, sirs, the king desires that my drama be not represented here, but I swear that it will be represented, perhaps even in the chancel of Notre Dame.”

It was soon apparent that Beaumarchais’ words and the wishes of the public opinion were stronger than the words and the wishes of the king and of his highest officers. The king himself felt it and acknowledged it soon; he shrugged his shoulders compassionately when the chancellor of the seal, adhering still to his opposition, would by no means consent to the performance of the drama.

“You will see,” said Louis, with his own soft, good-natured smile—“you will see that Beaumarchais’ credit is better than that of the great-seal bearer.” [Footnote: “Memoires de Madame de Campan,” vol. i., p. 279.]

The king’s prophecy was correct—Beaumarchais had more credit than the chancellor! His powerful patrons in high places, and all those who made opposition to the king and queen, and at their head the Count de Provence, banded together to have this piece publicly represented. The king’s consent was elicited from him by the assurance made public that Beaumarchais had stricken out of his drama all the offensive and captious parts, and that it was now a mere innocent and somewhat tedious piece.

The king gave his consent, and “The Wedding of Figaro” was represented at the Theatre Francais.

The effect of this drama on the public was a thing unheard of; so enthusiastic that Beaumarchais himself laughingly said: “There is something yet more foolhardy than my piece, and that is, its result”—that the renowned actress Sophie Arnold, in allusion to this, that the opponents of this drama had prophesied that it would fall through, exclaimed: “The piece will fall through to-day more than fifty times one after another!”

But even this prophecy of the actress did not reach the full result, and the sixtieth representation was as crowded as the first. All Paris wanted to see it, so as to hiss the government, the nobility, clergy, morality. There was a rush from the provinces to Paris for the sake of attending the representation of “Figaro’s Wedding;” and even those who hitherto had opposed the performance, pressed forward to see it.

One day Beaumarchais received a letter from the Duke de Villequier, asking of him as a favor to give up for that evening his trellised box in behalf of some ladies of the court, who desired to see “Figaro” without being seen.

Beaumarchais answered: “My lord duke, I have no respect for ladies who desire to see a performance which they consider improper, and who wish to see it under cover. I cannot stoop to such fancies. I have given my piece to the public to amuse and not to instruct them, not to procure to tamed wenches (begueules mitigees) the satisfaction of thinking well of the piece in a small trellised box, and then to say all manner of evil against it in public. The pleasure of vice and the honors of virtue, that is what the prudery of our age demands. My piece is not double-faced. It must be accepted or repelled. I salute you, my lord duke, and keep my box.” [Footnote: “Correspondance de Diderot et Grimm avec un Souverain.”]

All Paris chuckled over this letter, which was circulated in hundreds of copies, as the drama itself had circulated at first. Every one was convinced that it was the queen who wanted to attend the representation of “Figaro” in the trellised box; for it, was well known that the queen, angry at monsieur for having been present with all his suite at a representation in the box reserved for the court, had openly declared: “Could she come to the conclusion of seeing this drama, she would only see it through a small trellised box, and that without any ceremony.”

In laughing at the letter of Beaumarchais, the ridicule was directed against the queen, who had been refused in so shameful a manner. But Marie Antoinette did not wish to be laughed at. She still hoped to overcome her enemies, and to win the public sentiment. She requested an investigation, she insisted that the Duke de Villequier should openly acknowledge for whom among the ladies of the court he had asked for the box; that Beaumarchais should publicly confess that he had not dared suppose his words were directed against the queen.

The whole matter was brought to an end by an arbitrary decree. Beaumarchais was compelled publicly to acknowledge that his famous letter was directed neither to a duke nor to a peer, but to one of his friends, whose strange request he had thus answered in the first flush of anger. But it is evident no one believed in this explanation, and every one felt pleasure in referring to the queen the expression of “begueule mitigee.”

Paris, which for a whole winter had laughed at a theatrical piece, and was satiated with it, was now to assist at the first scene of a drama whose tragical power and force were to tear France asunder, and whose continuance was to be marked by blood and tears.

This important drama, whose opening followed closely Beaumarchais’ drama, exhibited its first scene at Versailles at the opening of the States-General on the 5th of May, 1789. All Paris, all France watched this event as the rise of a new sun, of a new era which was to break upon France and bring her happiness, salvation, and strength. A new, an unsuspected power entered with it upon the scene, the Tiers Etat; the third class was, at the opening of the States-General, solemnly recognized as a third power, alongside of the nobility and clergy. With the third class, the people and the yeomen entered into the king’s palace; one-half of the people were to make the laws instead of having to submit to them.

It was Marie Antoinette who had endeavored with all her influence on the king that the third class, hitherto barely recognized, barely tolerated, should appear in a two-fold stronger representation at the States-General; it was the queen also who had requested Necker’s recall. Unfortunate woman, who bowed both pride and will to the wishes of public opinion, who yet hoped to succeed in winning again the people’s love, since she endeavored to meet the wishes of the people!

But this love had turned away from her forever; and whatever Marie Antoinette might now do to exhibit her candid wishes, her devotedness was not trusted in by the people, who looked upon her as an enemy, no longer Queen of France, but simply an Austrian.

Even on this day of universal joy, on the day of the opening of the States-General, there was no desire to hide from the queen the hatred felt against her, but there was the resolve to show her that France, even in her hour of happiness, ceased not to make opposition to her.

The opening of the States-General was to be preceded in Versailles by divine service. In solemn procession the deputies arrived; and the people who had streamed from Paris and from the whole region round about, and who in compact masses filled the immense square in front of the palace, and the whole street leading to the Church of St. Louis, received the deputies with loud, unbroken shouts, and met the princes and the king with applause. But no sooner was the queen in sight, than the people remained dumb; and then, after this appalling pause, which petrified the heart of the queen, the women with their true instinct of hatred began to cry out, “Long live the Duke d’Orleans! Long live the people’s friend, the good Duke d’Orleans!”

The name of the duke thus derisively thrown in the face of the queen—for it was well known that she hated him, that she had forbidden him to enter into her apartments—this name at this hour, thrown at her by the people, struck the queen’s heart as the blow of a dagger; a deathly pallor overspread her cheeks, and nearly fainting she had to throw herself into the arms of the Princess de Lamballe, so as not to sink down. [Footnote: See “Count Mirabeau,” by Theodore Mundt. Second edition, vol. iii., p. 234.]

With the opening of the States-General, as already said, began the first act of the great drama which France was going to represent before the eyes of Europe terrified and horrified: with the opening of the States-General the revolution had begun. Every one felt it; every one knew it; the first man who had the courage to express it was Mirabeau—Mirabeau, the deputy of the Third Estate, the count who was at enmity with all those of his rank, who had solemnly parted with them to devote himself to the people’s service and to liberty!

On the day of the opening, as he entered the hall in which the States-General were convened, he gazed with scrutinizing and flaming eyes on the representatives of the nobility, on those brilliant and proud lords who, though his equals in rank, were now his inveterate enemies. A proud, disdainful smile fluttered athwart his lips, which ordinarily were pressed together with a sarcastic and contemptuous expression. He then crossed the hall with the bearing of a conqueror, and took his seat upon those benches from which was launched the thunderbolt which was to dash to pieces the throne of the lilies.

A long-tried friend, who was also a friend of the government and of the nobility, had seen this look of hatred and anger which Mirabeau had cast upon the gallery of the aristocrats; he now approached Mirabeau to salute him, and perhaps to pave a way of reconciliation between the prodigal Count de Mirabeau and his associates in rank.

“Think,” said he, “my friend, that society is not to be won by threats, but by flatteries; that, when once injured, it is difficult to effect a reconciliation. You have been unjust toward society, and if you look for forgiveness you must not be obstinate, but you must stoop to ask for pardon.”

Mirabeau had listened with impatience, but at the word “pardon,” his anger broke with terrible force. He sprang up, stamped violently on the floor with his feet; his hair which, like a lion’s mane, mantled his head, seemed to bristle up, his little eyes darted flashes, and his lips were blanched and trembling, and with a thundering voice he exclaimed: “I am not here to implore pardon for myself, but that others should sue for mercy.”

Was Mirabeau himself willing to grant pardon? Had he come with a reconciling heart into this assembly, where people and king were to measure their rights one against the other?

As the good King Louis this day entered the hall, in all the pomp of his royal dignity, to welcome the States-General with a solemn address, Mirabeau’s eyes were fixed on him: “Behold the victim,” said he. [Footnote: Theodore Mundt: “Graf Mirabeau,” vol. iv., p. 15.]

From this day the struggle began—the struggle of the monarchy against the revolution, of the liberal party against the reaction, the struggle of the people against the aristocracy, against every thing which hitherto had been legitimate, welcomed, and sacred!

A new day had broken in, and the prophetic mind of the queen understood that with it came the storm which was to scatter into fragments her happiness and her peace.

CHAPTER IX. JOSEPHINE’S RETURN.

To rest!—to forget! This was what Josephine sought for in Martinique, and what she found in the circle of her friends. She wanted to rest from the pains and struggles which had agitated the last years of her life. She wanted to forget that she still loved the Viscount de Beauharnais, though rejected and accused, though he had treacherously abandoned her for the sake of another woman.

But he was the father of her children, and there was Hortense with her large blue eyes and her noble, lovely countenance to remind Josephine of the father to whom Hortense bore so close a resemblance. Josephine’s tender-heartedness would not suffer the innocent, childish heart of Hortense to become alienated from her father, or to forget the esteem and respect which as a daughter she owed to him. Josephine therefore never allowed any one to utter a word of blame against her husband in the presence of her daughter; she even imposed silence on her mother when, in the just resentment of a parent who sees her child suffer, she accused the man who had brought wretchedness on her Josephine, who at so early an age had taught her life’s sorrows.

How joyous, beautiful, happy had her Josephine nearly ten years ago left her home, her country, her family, to go to a foreign land which attracted her with every thing which can charm a young girl—with the love of a young and beautiful husband—with the luxury, the pleasures and festivities of Paris!

And now after ten years Josephine returned to her father’s home, lonely, abandoned, unhappy, blighted with the mildew which ever deteriorates the character of a divorced woman; yet so young, with so many ruined hopes, with so many wounds in the heart!

Josephine’s mother could not pardon him all this, and her countenance became clouded whenever the little Hortense spoke of her father. And the child spoke of him so often—for each evening and morning she had to pray God in his behalf—and when she asked her mother where her brother Eugene was, why he had not come with them to Martinique; Josephine answered her, he had remained with his father, who loved him so much, and who must have at least one of his children with him.

“Why then can he not, with Eugene, be with us?” asked the little Hortense, thoughtfully. “Why does he remain in that hateful, stony Paris, whilst he could live with us in the beautiful garden where so many charming flowers and so many large trees are to be found? Why is papa not with us, mamma?”

“Because he has occupations—because he cannot leave his regiment, my child,” answered Josephine, carefully hiding her tears.

“If he cannot come to us, mamma, then let us go to him,” cried the loving child. “Come, mamma, let us go on board a ship, and let us go to our dear papa, and to my dear brother Eugene.”

“We must wait until your father sends for us, until he writes that we must come,” said Josephine, with a sad smile. “Pray to God, my child, that he may soon do it!”

And from this time the child prayed God every evening that her father would soon send for her mother and for herself; and whenever she saw her mother receive a letter she said: “Is it a letter from my papa? Does he write for us to travel and to come to him?”

One day Josephine was enabled to answer this question to her daughter with a proud and joyous yes.

Yes, the Viscount de Beauharnais had begged his wife to forget the past, and to come back to him. He had, with all the contrition of penitence, with the glow of an awakening love, prayed for pardon; he requested from her large-heartedness to be once more reunited to him who had despised, calumniated, and rejected her; he swore with sacred oaths to love her alone, and to keep to her in unbroken faithfulness.

At first Josephine received these vows with a suspicious, sorrowful smile; the wounds of her heart were not yet healed, the bitter experiences of the past were yet too fresh in her mind; and Madame de la Pagerie, Josephine’s mother, repelled with earnestness every thought of reconciliation and reunion. She did not wish to lose her daughter a second time, and see her go to meet a dubious and dangerous happiness; she did not wish that Josephine, barely returned to the haven of rest and peace, should once more risk herself on the open, tempestuous ocean of life.

But the letters of the viscount were more and more pressing, more and more tender. He had completely and forever broken with Madame de Gisard; he did not wish to see her again, and henceforth he desired to be the true, devoted husband of his Josephine.

Josephine read these assurances, these vows of love, with a joyous smile, with a beating heart: all the crushed flowers of her youth raised up their blossoms again in her heart; she began again to hope, to trust, to believe once more in the possibility of happiness; she was ready to listen to her husband’s call, and to hasten to him.

But her mother held her back. She believed not, she trusted not. Her insulted maternal heart could not forget the humiliations and the sufferings which this man who now called for Josephine had inflicted upon her daughter. She could not pardon the viscount for having deserted his young wife, and that for the sake of a coquette! She therefore sought to inspire Josephine with mistrust; she told her that these vows of the viscount were not to be relied upon; that he had not given up his paramour to come back to Josephine, but that he was forsaken by her and abandoned by her. Madame de Gisard had regretted to be only the paramour of the Viscount de Beauharnais, and, as she could never hope to be his legitimate wife, she had abandoned him, to marry a wealthy Englishman, with whom she had left France to go with him to Italy.

At this news Josephine’s head would sink down, and, with tears in her eyes and sorrow in her heart, she promised her mother no more to listen to the voice of a faithless husband; no more to value the assurances of a love which only returned to her because it was rejected elsewhere.

Meanwhile, not only the Viscount de Beauharnais prayed Josephine to return, but also his father the marquis claimed this from his beloved daughter-in-law; even Madame de Renaudin confirmed the entire conversion of Alexandre, and conjured Josephine to hesitate no longer once more to take possession of a heart which beat with so burning a sorrow and so longing a love toward her. She pictured to her, besides, how necessary she was to him; how much in these troublous and stormy days which had just begun, he was in need of a quiet haven of domestic life, there to rest after the labors and the conflicts of politics and of public life; how many dangers surrounded him, and how soon it might happen that he would need not only a household refuge but also a nurse who would bind his wounds and keep watch near the bed of sickness.

For the times of quietness were gone; the brand which the States-General had flung over France had lit a fire everywhere, in every city, in every house, in every head; and the flaming speeches of the deputies of the Third Estate only fanned the fire into higher flames.

The revolution was there, and nothing could keep back the torrent of blood, fire, enthusiasm, and hatred. Already the Third Estate had solemnly proclaimed its separation from Old France, from the ancient monarchy of the lilies, since that monarchy had abandoned the large assembly-hall where the States-General held their sessions, and in which the nobility and the clergy still imagined they were able to maintain the balance of power against the despised Third Estate. The Tiers Etat had, in the ballroom, converted itself into the National Assembly, and with enthusiasm had all these deputies of the third class sworn on the 17th of June, 1789, “never to part one from the other until they had given a constitution to France.”

Alexandre de Beauharnais, deputy from Blois, had passed with his colleagues into the ballroom, had with them taken the fatal oath; in the decisive night of the 4th of August he, with burning enthusiasm, had renounced all the privileges of the nobility, all his feudal rights; and, breaking with the past, with all its family traditions and customs, had passed, with all the passion and zest of his nine-and-twenty years, into the hostile camp of the people and of liberty.

The revolution, which moved onward with such rash and destructive strides, had drawn Alexandre de Beauharnais more and more into its flood. It had converted the king’s major into an enthusiastic speaker of the Jacobins, then into the secretary of the National Assembly, and finally into its president.

The monarchy was not yet powerless; it fought still with all the bitterness of despair, of the pains of death, against its foes; it still found defenders in the National Assembly, in the faithful regiments of the Swiss and of the guards, and in the hearts of a large portion of the people. The passions of parties were let loose one against another; and Alexandre de Beauharnais, the president of the National Assembly, stood naturally in the first rank of those who were threatened by the attacks of the royalists.

Yes, Alexandre de Beauharnais was in danger! Since Josephine knew this, there was for her but one place which belonged to her, to which she could lay claim—the place at her husband’s side.

How could she then have withstood his appeals, his prayers? How could she then have remained in the solitude and stillness of Martinique, when her husband was now in the fight, in the very struggle? She had, now that fate claimed it, either to share her husband’s triumphs, or to bring him comfort if he fell.

The intercessions of her family, even the tears of her mother, could no longer retain Josephine; at the side of her husband, the father of her two children, there was her place! No one could deprive her of it, if she herself wished to occupy it.

She was entitled to it, she was still the wife of the Viscount de Beauharnais. The Parliament, which had pronounced its verdict against the demands of a divorce from the viscount, had, in declaring Josephine innocent, condemned her husband to receive into his house his wife, if she desired it; or else, in case she waived this right, to pay her a fixed annual income.

Josephine had parted voluntarily from her husband, since she had not returned to him, but had exiled herself with her father-in-law and her aunt in Fontainebleau; but she had never laid claims to nor received the income which Parliament had appointed. She had never assumed the rights of a divorced wife, but she retained still all the privileges of a married woman, who at God’s altar had bound herself to her husband for a whole life, in a wedlock which, being performed according to the laws of the Catholic Church, was indissoluble.

Now the viscount claimed his wife, and who dared keep her back if she wished to follow this call? Who could stand between husband and wife, when their hearts claimed and longed for this reunion?

The tears of Madame de la Pagerie had attempted it, but had not succeeded! The soft, patient, pliant Josephine had suddenly become a strong-minded, joyous, courageous woman; the inconveniences of a long sea-voyage, the perils of the revolution, into whose open crater she was to enter, affrighted her not. All the energies of her being began to develop themselves under the first sunbeams of a renewed love! The years of sorrow had passed away. Life, love called Josephine again, and she listened to the call, jubilant and full of friendly trust of undimmed hope!

In the first days of September, 1790, Josephine, with the little Hortense, embarked from Martinique, and after a short, favorable passage, landed in France, in the middle of October. [Footnote: If, in the work “Queen Hortense, an Historical Sketch from the Days of Napoleon,” I have given a few different details of Josephine’s return to France and to her husband, I have followed the error common to all the historians of that time, who represent Josephine returning despite her husband’s will, who receives her into his house, and recognizes her as his wife, only at the instant supplication of his family, and especially of his children. It is only of late that all this has been satisfactorily refuted, and that it has been proved that Josephine returned only at the instance of her husband’s pressing demands. See Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 164.—L. M.]

Again a prophecy accompanied Josephine to France, and perhaps this prophecy is to be blamed for her sudden departure and her unwavering resolution to leave Martinique. The old negro woman who, once before Josephine’s departure, had prophesied that she would wear a crown and be more than a Queen of France—the old Euphemia was still living, and was still considered as an infallible oracle. A few days before her departure, Josephine, with all the superstitious faith of a Creole, went to ask the old prophetess if her journey would be propitious.

The old Euphemia stared long and fixedly into Josephine’s smiling countenance; then, as if overcome by a sudden thought, she exclaimed: “Go! go as fast as possible, for death and danger threaten you! Already are on the watch wicked and bloodthirsty fiends, who every moment are ready to rush among us with fire and sword, and to destroy the colony in their cruel wrath!”

“And shall I safely arrive in France?” asked Josephine. “Shall I again see my husband?”

“You will see him again,” exclaimed the prophetess, “but hasten to go to him.”

“Is he threatened with any danger?” demanded Josephine.

“Not yet!—not at once!” said the old negress. “They now applaud your husband and recognize his services. But he has powerful enemies, and one day they will threaten his life, and will lead him to the scaffold and murder him!”

Before Josephine left Martinique, a portion of these prophecies of the old negro woman were to be fulfilled. The wicked and bloodthirsty fiends, of whom she said they were ready with fire and sword to rush upon the colony—those fiends did light the firebrand and destroy the peace of Martinique.

The resounding cries for freedom uttered in the National Assembly, and which shook the whole continent, had rushed along across the ocean to Martinique. The storm-wind of the revolution had on its wings borne the wondrous story to Martinique—the wondrous story of man’s sacred rights, which Lafayette had proclaimed in the National Assembly, the wondrous story that man was born free, that he ought to remain free, that there were to be no more slaves in the land of liberty, in France, and in her colonies.

The storm-wind which brought this great news across the ocean to Martinique scattered it into the negro-cabins, and at first they listened to it with wondrous delight. Then the delirium of joy came over them; jubilant they broke their chains, and in wild madness anticipated their human rights, their personal freedom.

The revolution, with its terrible consequences of blood and horrors, broke loose in Martinique, and, exulting in freedom, the slaves threw the firebrand on the roof of their former masters, rushed with war’s wild cry into their dwellings, and, in freedom’s name, punished those who so long had punished them in tyranny’s name.

Amid the barbaric shouts of those dark free men, Josephine embarked on board the ship which was to carry her and her little Hortense to France; and the flames which rose from the roofs of the houses as so many way-marks of fire for the new era, were Josephine’s last, sad farewell from the home which she was never to see again. [Footnote: Le Normand, “Memoires de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 147]

CHAPTER X. THE DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION.

Happiness had once more penetrated into the heart of Josephine. Love again threw her sun-gleams upon her existence, and filled her whole being with animation and joy. She was once more united to her husband, who, with tears of joy and repentance, had again taken her to his heart. She was once more with her relatives, who, in the day of distress, had shown her so much love and faithfulness, and finally she had also her son, her own dear Eugene, from whom she had been separated during the sad years of their matrimonial disagreements.

How different was the husband she now found from him she had quitted! He was now a man, an earnest, thoughtful man, with a fiery determination, with decidedness of purpose, and yet thoughtful, following only what reason approved, even if the heart had been the mover. The passions of youth had died away. The excitable, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking officer of the king had become a grave, industrious, indefatigable, moral, austere servant of the people and of liberty. The songs of joy, of equivocal jesting, of political satire, had died away on those lips which only opened now in the clubs, in the National Assembly, to utter inspired words in regard to liberty, fraternity, and equality.

The most beautiful dancer of Versailles had become the president of the National Assembly, which made so many tears run, and awoke so much anger and hatred in the king’s palace of Versailles. He at least belonged to the constitutional fraction of the National Assembly; he was the friend and guest of Mirabeau and of Lafayette; he was the opponent of Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, and of all the fanatics of the Mountain party, who already announced their bloody views, and claimed a republic as the object of their conflicts.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was no republican, however enthusiastic he might have been in favor of America’s struggle for freedom, however deeply he had longed to go like Lafayette to America, for the sake of assisting the Americans to break the chains which yoked them to England, so as to build a republic for themselves. The enthusiasm of that day, the enthusiasm for France had driven him upon the path of the opposition; but while desiring freedom for the people, he still hoped that the people’s freedom was compatible with the power and dignity of the crown; that at the head of constitutional France the throne of a constitutional king would be maintained. To bring to pass this reunion, this balance of right between the monarchy and the people, such was the object of the wishes of Alexandre de Beauharnais; this was the ultimate aim of his struggles and longings.

Josephine looked upon these tumultuous conflicts of parties, upon this wild storm of politics, with wondering, sad looks. With all the tact of tender womanhood she held herself aloof from every personal interference in these political party strifes. At the bottom of her heart a true and zealous royalist, she guarded herself carefully from endeavoring to keep her husband back from his chosen path, and to bring into her house and family the party strifes of the political arena. She wanted and longed for peace, unity, and rest, and in his home at least her husband would have no debates to go through, no sentiments to fight against.

In silence and devotedness Josephine submitted to her husband’s will, and left him to perform his political part, while she assumed the part of wife, mother, of the representative of the household; and every evening opened her drawing-room to her friends, and to her husband’s associates in the same conflict.

What a mixed and extraordinary assemblage was seen in the drawing-room of the president of the National Assembly! There were the representatives of old France, the brilliant members of the old nobility: the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the Count de Montmorency, the Marquis de Caulaincourt, the Prince de Salm-Cherbourg, the Princess von Hohenzollern, Madame de Montesson, the wife of the old Duke d’Orleans; and alongside of these names of the ancient regime, new names rose up. There were the deputies of the National Assembly—Barnave, Mounier, Thouvet, Lafayette, and the favorite of the people, the great Mirabeau. Old France and Young France met here in this drawing-room of Josephine on neutral grounds, and the beautiful viscountess, full of grace and prudence, offered to them both the honors of her house. She listened with modest bashfulness to the words of the great tribunes of the people, and oftentimes with a smile or a soft word she reconciled the royalists, those old friends who sought in this drawing-room for the Viscountess de Beauharnais, and found there only the wife of the president of the National Assembly.

The saloon of Josephine was soon spoken of, and seemed as a haven in which the refined, elegant manners, the grace, the wit, the esprit, had been saved from the stormy flood of political strife. Every one sought the privilege of being admitted into this drawing-room, whose charming mistress in her own gentleness and grace received the homage of all parties, pleased every one by her loveliness, her charms, the fine, exquisite tact with which she managed at all times the sentiments of the company, and with which she knew how to guide the conversation so that it would never dwindle into political debates or into impassioned speeches.

However violent was the tempest of faction outside, Josephine endeavored that in the interior of her home the serene peace of happiness should prevail. For she was now happy again, and all the liveliness, all the joys of youth, had again found entrance into her mind. The anguish endured, the tears shed, had also brought their blessing; they had strengthened and invigorated her heart; with their grave, solemn memories they preserved Josephine, that child of the South, of the sun, and of joy, from that light frivolity which otherwise is so often the common heritage of the Creoles.

The viscount had now the satisfaction which ten years ago, at the beginning of his married life, he had so intently longed for, the satisfaction of seeing his wife occupied with grave studies, with the culture of her own mind and talents. It was to him a ravishment to see Josephine in her drawing-room in earnest conversation with Buffon, and with all the aptitude of a naturalist speak of the organization and formation of the different families of plants; he exulted in the open praise paid to her when, with her fine, far-reaching voice, she sang the songs of her home, which she herself accompanied on the harp; he was proud when, in her saloon, with all the tact and assurance of a lady of the world, she took the lead in the conversation, and could speak with poets and authors, with artists and savants, and that, with understanding and feeling, upon their latest works and creations; he was made happy when, passing from serious gravity to the most innocent gayety, she jested, laughed, and danced, as if she were yet the sixteen-year-old child whom ten years ago he had made his wife, and from whom he had then so cruelly exacted that she should demean herself as a fine, experienced, and highly-refined lady.

Life had since undertaken to mould the young Creole into an elegant, highly-accomplished woman, but fortunately life had been impotent to change her heart, and that heart was ever beating in all the freshness of youth, in all the joyous warmth and faithfulness of the young girl of sixteen years who had come to France with so many ideal visions, so many illusions, so many dreams and hopes. It is true this ideal had vanished away, these illusions had burst into pieces like meteors in the skies; the dreams and hopes of the young maiden heart had fallen into dust, but the love, the confiding, faithful, hoping love, the love assured of the future, had remained alive; it had overcome the storms and conflicts; it had been Josephine’s consolation in the days of sorrow; it was now her delight in these days of happiness.

Her whole heart, her undivided love, belonged to her husband, to her children, and often from the society gathered in her reception-rooms, she would slip away and hasten to the bed of her little Hortense to bid good-night to the child, who never would sleep without bidding good-night to its mother, who would kneel at the side of the crib with little Hortense, and utter the evening prayer, asking of God to grant to them all prosperity and peace!

But this peace which Josephine so earnestly longed for was soon to be imperilled more and more, was to be banished from the interior of home and family, from its most sacred asylum, by the revolution and its stormy factions.

An important event, pregnant with results, suddenly moved all Paris, and filled the minds of all with the most fearful anticipations.

The king, with his wife and children, had fled! Openly and irretrievably he had separated himself from country and people; he had, by this flight, solemnly expressed before all Europe the discord which existed between him and his people, between the king and the constitution to which he had sworn allegiance.

Alexandre de Beauharnais, the president of the National Assembly, was the first to be informed of this extraordinary event. On the morning of the 21st of June, 1791, M. de Bailly, mayor of Paris, came to announce to him that the king with all his family had fled from Paris the previous evening.

It was the hour at which the sessions of the National assembly began every morning, and Beauharnais, accompanied by Bailly, hastened to the Assembly. The deputies were already seated when the president took the chair with a grave, solemn countenance. This countenance told the deputies of the people that the president had an important and very unusual message to communicate, and a deep stillness, an oppressive silence, overspread the whole assemblage as the president rose from his seat to address them.

“Gentlemen,” said he, with a voice which, amid the general silence, sounded solemn and powerful—“gentlemen, I have a sad message to bring before you. The mayor of Paris has just now informed me that the king and his family have this night been seduced into flight by the enemies of the people.” [Footnote: Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol i., p. 171.]

This news had a stupendous effect on the deputies. At first they sat there dumb, as if petrified with fear; then they all rose up to make their remarks and motions in a whirl of confusion, and it required all the energy and determination of the president to re-establish peace, and to control their minds.

The Assembly then, in quiet debate, resolved to declare itself in permanent session until the termination of this crisis, and gave to the president full power during this time to provide for the tranquillity and security of the Assembly. Bailly and Lafayette were by the president summoned before the deputies, to state what the sentiments of Paris were, what was the attitude of the National Guards, what were the precautions they had taken to preserve aright the peace of Paris.

But this peace was not in danger, and the only one whom the Parisian people at this moment dreaded, was he who had fled from Paris—the king. And yet, not for a moment did the people rise in anger against the king; actuated by a new and overpowering thought, the people in their enthusiasm for this idea forgot their anger against him who by his deed had kindled this thought. The thought which was uppermost in all minds at the flight of the king was this: that the state could subsist even if there were no king at its head; that law and order still remained in Paris, even when the king had fled.

This law and order was the National Assembly, the living representation and embodiment of the law; the government was there; the king alone had disappeared. Such was the sentiment which animated all classes, which brought the people in streaming masses to the palace where the National Assembly held its sittings. A few hours after the news of the king’s flight had spread through Paris, thousands were besieging the National Assembly, and shouting enthusiastically: “Our king is here; he is in the hall of session. Louis XVI. can go; he can do what he wills; our king is still in Paris!” [Footnote: Prudhomme, “Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution,” vol. x. p. 241.]

The Assembly, “the King of Paris,” remained in permanent session, waiting for the developments of events, and working out in committees the decrees passed in common deliberation, whilst the president and the secretary remained the whole night in the council-room, so as to be ready at any moment to rectify fresh news and to issue the necessary orders.

Early next morning the most important news had reached the president, and the deputies hastened from their respective committees into the hall of session, there to take their seats.

Amid the breathless silence of the Assembly, President Beauharnais announced that the king, the queen, the dauphin, Madame, and divers persons of their suite, had been arrested in Varennes.

The Assembly received this communication with dignified quietude, for they were conscious that the king’s return would in no wise impair their own sovereignty, that the power was in their hands, even if the king were there. In this full assurance of their dignity the National Assembly passed a decree ordering the proper authorities “to protect the king’s return, to seize and imprison all those who might forget, the respect they owed to the royal dignity.”

At the same time the National Assembly sent from their number two deputies, Barnave and Petion, to bring back from Varennes the unfortunate royal family and to accompany them to Paris.

Meanwhile the news of the king’s capture only increased the people’s enthusiasm for the National Assembly, the truly acknowledged sovereign of France. Every one was anxious to give expression to this enthusiasm; the National Guards of Paris begged for the privilege of taking the oath of allegiance to the National Assembly, and when at the motion of the president this was granted by the Assembly, a whole detachment was marched into the hall so as to take the oath of allegiance to the National Assembly with one voice, amid the applause of the Assembly and the tribunes. This detachment was followed by fresh companies, and the people filled the streets to see the National Guards come and go, and like them to swear allegiance to the National Assembly with enthusiastic shouts.

The provinces would not be a whit behind the enthusiasm of Paris; and whilst the guards swore their oath, from all cities and provinces came to the president of the National Assembly, addresses congratulating the Assembly on its triumphs, and promising the most unconditional devotedness.

Finally after two days of restless activity, after two days, during which Alexandre de Beauharnais had hardly found time to quiet his wife by a note, explaining his absence from home, finally a courier brought the news that the captive royal family were entering Paris. A second courier followed the first. He announced that the royal family had reached the Tuileries surrounded by an immense crowd, whose excitement caused serious apprehensions. Petion had, therefore, thought it expedient not to allow the royal family to alight, but had confined them to the two carriages, and he now sent the keys of these two carriages to the president of the National Assembly, as it was now his duty to adopt still further measures.

Beauharnais proposed that at once twenty deputies be chosen to speed on to the Tuileries to deliver the royal family from their prison, and to lead them into the palace.

The motion was carried, and the deputies reached the court of the Tuileries yet in time to save the affrighted family from the people, who, in their wild madness, were about to destroy the carriages, and to take possession of the king and queen.

The presence of the deputies imposed silence on the shouts and howlings of the people. The king had come into the Tuileries, and before him bowed the people in dumb respect. They quietly allowed that this their king should open the carriage wherein the other king, the king by God’s grace, Louis XVI., sat a prisoner; they allowed that the king by the grace of the people, the National Assembly, through its twenty deputies, should render liberty to Louis and to his family, and lead them quietly under their protection into the Tuileries.

But from this day the Tuileries, which for centuries had been the palace of the kings of France, now became a prison for the King of France!

Louis XVI. was returned, not as the head, but as the prisoner of the state; from the moment he left Paris, the ermine mantle of his royalty had fallen from his shoulders upon the shoulders of the National Assembly; King Louis XVI. had dethroned himself.

Amid these fatal storms, amid these ever-swelling revolutionary floods, there was yet an hour of happiness for Josephine. Out of the wild waves of rebellion was to rise, for a short time, an island of bliss. The National Assembly, whose president, Alexandre de Beauharnais, had once more, in the course of the sessions, been re-elected by general acclamation, declared itself on the 3d of September, 1791, dissolved, and its members vanished to make room for the Legislative Assembly, which organized the very next day.

Alexandre de Beauharnais, after having so long and so zealously discharged his duties as a citizen, returned to his Josephine, to his children; and, weary with the storms and debates of the last months, longed for a quiet little place, away from the turmoil of the capital and from the attrition of parties. Josephine acquiesced gladly in the wishes of her husband, for she felt her innermost being shattered by these last exciting times, and perhaps she cherished the secret hope that her husband, once removed from Paris, would be drawn away from the dangerous arena of politics, into which his enthusiasm had driven him. She was, and remained at heart, a good and true royalist; and as Mirabeau, dying in the midst of revolution’s storms, had said of himself, that “he took to his grave the mourning-badge for the monarchy,” [Footnote: Mirabeau died on the 6th of May, 1791.—See, on his death, “Count Mirabeau,” by Theodore Mundt, vol. iv.] so also Josephine’s heart, since the flight to Varennes, wore the mourning-badge for the unfortunate royal family, who since that day had to endure so much humiliation, so much insult, and to whom Josephine in her loyal sense of duty consecrated the homage of a devout subject.

Josephine, therefore, gladly consented to the viscount’s proposal to leave Paris. Accompanied by their children and by the governess of Hortense, Madame Lanoy, the viscount and his wife went to a property belonging to one of the Beauharnais family near Solange.

Three months were granted to Josephine in the quietude, in the sweet repose of country-life, at her husband’s side, and with her children, to gather strength from the anxieties and griefs which she had suffered in Paris. She enjoyed these days as one enjoys an unexpected blessing, a last sunshine before winter’s near approach, with thankful heart to God. Full of cheerful devotedness to her husband, to her children, her lovely countenance was radiant with joy and love; she was ever busy, with the sunshine of her smile, to dissipate the shadows from her husband’s brow, and to replace the impassioned excitements, the honors and distinctions of his Parisian life, by the pleasantness and joys of home.

But Alexandra de Beauharnais could no longer find satisfaction in the quiet, harmless joys of home; he even reproached himself that he could be cheerful and satisfied whilst France resounded with cries of distress and complaints, whilst France was torn in her innermost life by the disputes and conflicts of factions which, no more satisfied with the speeches of the tribune, filled the streets with blood and wounds. The revolution had entered into a new phase, the Legislative Assembly had become the Constituent Assembly, which despoiled the monarchy of the last appearance of power and degraded it to a mere insignificancy. The Girondists, those ideal fanatics, who wanted to regenerate France after the model of the states of antiquity, had seized the power and the ministerial portefeuilles. The beautiful, witty, and noble Madame Roland ruled, by means of her husband, the Minister Roland, and was striving to realize in France the ideal of a republic after the pattern of Greece; she was the very soul of the new cabinet, the soul of the Girondists, the rulers of France; in her drawing-room, during the evening, the new laws to be proposed next day in the Constituent Assembly, were spoken of, and the government measures discussed.

For a moment it had seemed as if the king, through his cabinet of Girondists, would once more be reconciled with his people, and especially with the Constituent Assembly, as if the nation and the monarchy would once more endeavor to stand one by the other in harmony and peace. Perhaps the Girondists had believed in this possibility, and had regarded the king’s assurances that he would adhere to the constitution, and that he would go hand in hand with his ministers, and accept the constitution as the faithful expression of his will. But when they discovered that Louis was not honorable in his assurances; that he was in secret correspondence with the enemies of France; that in a letter to his brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold, he had made bitter complaints about the constraint to which he was subjected, then the Girondists were inflamed with animosity, and had recourse to counter-measures. They decreed the exile of the priests, and the formation, in the vicinity of Paris, of a camp of twenty thousand militia from all the departments of France.

Foreign nations looked upon this decree as a sign of dawning hostilities, and threatened France with countermeasures. France responded to the challenge thus thrown at her, and, in a stormy session of the Assembly, the fatherland was declared to be in danger, the organization of an army to occupy the frontiers was decreed, and all the children of the fatherland were solemnly called to her defence.

This call awoke Alexandre de Beauharnais from the dreamy repose to which he had abandoned himself during the last months. His country called him, and he dared not remain deaf to this call; it was his duty to tear himself from the quiet peace of the household, from the arms of his wife and family, and place himself in the ranks of the defenders of his country.

Josephine heard this resolution with tears in her eyes, but she could not keep back her husband, whose countenance was beaming with enthusiasm, and who dreamed of fame and victory. She accompanied Alexandre to Paris, and after he had been gladly received by the minister of war, and appointed to the Northern army, she then took from him a last, fond farewell, entreated him with all the eloquence of love to spare himself, and not wantonly to face danger, but to preserve his life for his wife and children.

Deeply moved by this tender solicitude of his wife, Alexandre promised to hold her requests as sacred. Once more they embraced each other before they both quitted Paris on diverging roads.

Alexandre de Beauharnais went to Valenciennes, where commanded Marshal Rochambeau, to whom he had been commissioned adjutant.

Josephine hastened with her children toward Fontainebleau, so at least to be there united with her husband’s father, and to live under his protection until the return of her husband.

CHAPTER XI. THE TENTH OF AUGUST, AND THE LETTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

Since the death of Mirabeau, the last defender of the monarchy, since the failure of the contemplated flight, royalty in France had no chance of existence left; the throne had lost every prop upon which it could find support, and it sank more and more into the abyss which the revolution had dug under its feet.

Marie Antoinette was conscious of it; her foreboding spirit foresaw the coming evil; her proud soul nearly broke under the humiliations and griefs which every day brought on. She had hitherto courageously and heroically struggled against adversity; she had concealed tears and anguish, to smile at that people which hated her and cursed her, which insulted and reviled her constantly. But a day was to come in which the smile would forever depart from her lip—in which Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the Caesars, so deeply humbled and trodden down in the dust, would no more lift up her head, would no more rise from the terrible blow.

This day was the 10th of August, in the year 1792. The terrible storm, which so long had filled the air with its mutterings, and had shaken the throne with its thunderings, was on this day with terrific power to be let loose and to dash in pieces the monarchy. The king furnished the occasion for this eruption by dismissing his Girondist ministry, by not signing the decree for the organization of a national militia, and for the exile of the priests.

This refusal was the flash which broke open the heavy clouds that so long had hung over his head—the flash which caused the tempest to burst forth.

Since that day Paris was in a state of rebellion; fresh disturbances took place every day; and finally, on the morning of the 10th of August, bands of people rushed to the palace of the Tuileries and surrounded it with wild howlings and shouts. A portion of the National Guards endeavored to force the people into a retreat; the other portion united with the people in fierce assaults upon the Tuileries, and on its defenders the Swiss. These were massacred by the people armed with pikes; with jubilant howlings the armed masses rushed over the corpses of the fallen into the king’s palace.

The Procurator-General Roderer implored the king to save himself with his family by taking refuge in the National Assembly, for there alone was safety for him and the queen.

Louis hesitated; but Marie Antoinette felt once more the pride of a queen awake within her; she felt it was nobler and worthier to die as the loyal Swiss had done, to die sword in hand, than to meet pardon and disgrace, than to bow her head under the yoke. She entreated the king to remain with the loyal National Guards and to fight with his soldiers and die in the palace of his fathers. She spoke to the successor of Henry IV., to the father of the dauphin, for whom he should maintain the inheritance received; she appealed to the heart, to the honor of Louis; she spoke with flaming eyes, and with the eloquence of despair.

But Louis listened not to her, but to the solicitations of Roderer, who told him that he had but five minutes to save himself, the queen, and his children; that in five minutes more all would be lost.

“It cannot be helped,” muttered the king; and then with louder voice he continued: “It is my will that we be conducted into the Legislative Assembly; I command it!”

A shriek of terror broke forth from the breast of the queen; her proud heart resisted once more her husband’s weakness, who, for his own and for her misfortune, was not made of the stuff which moulds kings.

“Sire,” cried she, angrily and excited—“sire, you must first command that I be nailed to the walls of this palace! I remain here. I stir not from this spot!” [Footnote: The very words of the queen.—See “Memoires Secretes et Universelles,” par Lafont d’Aussone.]

But Madame Elizabeth, the Princesses de Lamballe and de Tarent, begged her with tears to consent; the good king fixed on her sad, weeping eyes, and Roderer entreated her not to abandon, by her delays, to the approaching executioners, her husband, her children, and herself.

Marie Antoinette offered to her husband her last and her greatest sacrifice; she bowed her proud head to his will; she consented to accompany the king with her children into the Assembly.

She took the dauphin in her arms, Madame Therese by the hand, and, at the side of the king, followed by the Princesses Lamballe and Tarent, walked out of the palace of the Tuileries to go to the Convent des Peuillants, where the Legislative Assembly held its sessions.

What a martyrdom in this short distance from the Tuileries to the Feuillants—what dishonor and fears were gathered on this path! Between the deep ranks of Swiss grenadiers and National Guards was this path; the queen stares fixedly on the ground, and she does not see that her thin silk shoes will be torn by the hard, fallen leaves of the trees under which they are moving.

But the king sees every thing, notices every thing. “How many leaves,” said he, gazing forward—“they fall early this year!”

Now at the foot of the terrace the advance of the royal family is stopped by a multitude of people, who, with wild howlings, swing their pikes and clubs, and in their madness shout: “No, they must not enter the Assembly!—they are the cause of all our misery! Let us put an end to all this! Down with them!—down!”

The queen pays no attention to these shouts; she sees not that the National Guards are clearing a way by force; she walks forward with uplifted head, with a countenance petrified like that of Medusa at the sight of evil.

But as a man approaches her, seizes the dauphin and takes him in his arms, the transfixed queen is aroused, and, with all the anguish of a mother’s despair, grapples the arm of the man who wants to rob her of all she now possesses, her child!

“Be not afraid,” whispered the man, “I will do him no harm, I am but going to carry him;” and Marie Antoinette, her eyes fixed on the child, moves forward. At their entrance into the hall of the Assembly the man gives her back the dauphin, and she makes him sit down near her on the seats of the ministers.

A rough voice issues from the midst of the Assembly: “The dauphin belongs to the nation; place him at the side of the president. The Austrian is not worthy of our confidence!”

They tear away from the queen the weeping child, who clings to her, and who is carried to the president, at whose left hand the king has seated himself.

Again a voice is heard reminding the Assembly of the law which forbids them to deliberate in the presence of the king.

The royal family must leave the lower portion of the hall, and are led into a small room, with iron trellis-work, behind the president’s chair.

The royal family, with their attendants, pressed into the small space of this room, can here at least, away from the gaze of their enemies, hide their dishonored heads; at least no one sees the nervousness of despair which now and then agitates the tall figure of the queen, the tears trembling on her eyelids when she looks to the poor little dauphin, whose blond curly head lies in her bosom, asleep from exhaustion, hunger, and sorrow.

No one sees the king and the queen, but they see and hear every thing. They hear from without the howlings of the mob, the cannon’s roar, the reports of the rifles, telling them that a bloody fratricidal strife, a terrible civil war, is raging. They hear there in the hall, a few steps from them, the fanatical harangues of the deputies, whose words, full of blood, are like the hands of the murdering Marsellais there without. Marie Antoinette hears Vergniaud’s motion, “to divest the king at once of his power and rank,” and she hears the acclamations of the Assembly in favor of the motion. She hears the Assembly by their own power reinvesting the Girondist ministers, dismissed by the king, with their dignity and power! She hears the Assembly decide “to invite the French people to form a national compact.”

She hears all this, and the cold perspiration of anguish and horror covers her brow while she has yet strength enough to force hack her tears into her heart. She asks for a handkerchief to wipe her forehead. Not one of the attendants around can furnish a kerchief which is not stained with the blood of the victims fallen at their side in protecting the royal family with their lives. [Footnote: “Memoires inedites du Comte de la Rochefoucauld.”]

At last, at two o’clock in the morning, is this painful martyrdom ended, and the royal family are led into the upper rooms of the convent, where hastily and penuriously enough a few chambers had been furnished.

The howlings of the crowd ascend to their windows. Under those of the queen’s room groups of infuriated women sing the song whose horrible burden is, “Madame Veto avait promis de faire egorger tout Paris.” Between the sentences other voices shout and howl: “The queen is the cause of our misery! Kill her! kill the queen, the murderess of France! Kill Madame Veto! Throw us her head!”

Three days after, the royal family are led to the Temple. The rulers of the state are now state prisoners. But the queen had already found the peace which misfortune generally brings to strong souls; and as she walked to the Temple, and saw her foot protruding from the extremity of her shoe, she said with an affecting smile, “Who could have believed that one day the Queen of France should be in want of shoes!”

With the 10th of August began the last act of the great tragedy of the revolution. Its second scene had its representation in the first days of September, in those days of blood and tears, in which infuriated bands of the people stormed the prisons to murder the captive priests, aristocrats, and royalists.

Under the guillotine fell during this month the head of the queen’s friend, the Princess de Lamballe, who was followed in crowds by the king’s faithful adherents, sealing their loyalty and their love with their death.

This loyalty and love for the royal family was during this month branded as an unpardonable crime, for the National Convention, which on the 21st of September had taken the place of the Constituent Assembly, on the 25th declared France to be a republic, and the royalists became thereby criminals, who had sinned in the respect and love which they owed to the “republic one and indivisible.”

The new republic of France celebrated her saturnalia in the following months, and unfurled her blood-stained standard over the nation. She was not satisfied with having brought to the guillotine more than ten thousand aristocrats and royalists, to terrify the faithful adherents and servants of the throne. She required, moreover, the death of those for whose sake so many thousands had perished—the death of the king and of the queen.

On the 5th of December began the trial of Louis Capet, ex-King of France, now accused by the Convention. The pages of history have illustrated this stupendous and tragical event in all its shapes and colors. Each party has preyed upon it, the poets have sung it, and made it the central point of tragedy and romance: but none have painted it in so telling, in so terse, masterly traits, none have so fully comprehended and expressed the already stupendous event, as Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte, the future Emperor of France.

He happened to be in Paris during these days of terror. He had, with all the energies of his soul, given himself up to the new state of things, and he belonged to the most upright and zealous faction of the republicans. He acknowledged himself won over to their ideas, he participated in their celebrations, he was the friend of many of the most influential and conspicuous members of the Convention, and he was rarely absent from their meetings; but in the presence of the awful catastrophe of the king’s accusation and execution his proud and daring soul shrank back, and, full of misgivings, shuddered within itself. The young, enthusiastic republican, to his own great horror, found in the depths of his soul a holy respect and awe in the presence of this royalty which he so often in words had despised, and the fall of the king, this enemy of the republic, moved his heart as a calamity which had fallen upon him and upon all France. He himself gave to one of his friends in Ajaccio a very correct description of these days. After narrating the events of the first days of the trial of the king, he continues:

“The day after I heard that the advocate Target had refused to undertake the king’s defence, to which he was privileged by virtue of his office. This is what may be called, in the strictest sense of the word, to erase one’s name from history. What grounds had he for such a low cunning? ‘His life I will not save, and mine I dare not risk!’ Malherbes, Tronchet, Deseze, loyal and devoted subjects, to imitate them in their zeal would be impossible for me; but were I a prince I would have them sit at my right hand—united together in the most strenuous efforts to defend the successor of St. Louis. If they survive this deed of sublime faithfulness, never can I pass by them without uncovering my head.

“Business detained me unavoidably in Versailles. Only on the 16th of January did I return to Paris, and consequently I had lost three or four scenes of this tragedy of ambition. But on the 18th of January I went to the National Convention. Ah, my friend, it is true, and the most infuriated republicans avow it also, a prince is but an ordinary man! His head will as surely fall as that of another man, but whosoever decrees his death trembles at his own madness, and were he not urged by secret motives, his vote would die on his lips ere it was uttered. I gazed with much curiosity at the fearless mortals who were about deciding the fate of their king. I watched their looks. I searched into their hearts. The exceeding weightiness of the occasion had exalted them, intoxicated them, but within themselves they were full of fear in the presence of the grandeur of their victim.

“Had they dared retreat, the prince had been saved. To his misfortune, they had argued within themselves, ‘If his head falls not to-day, then we must soon give ours to the executioner’s stroke.’

“This was the prominent thought which controlled their vote. No pen can adequately portray the feelings of the spectators in the galleries. Silent, horrified, breathless, they gazed now on the accused, now on the defenders, now on the judges.

“The vote of Orleans sounded forth—‘Death!’ An electric shock could not have produced deeper impression. The whole assembly, seized with an involuntary terror, rose. The hall was filled with the murmurs of conflicting emotions.

“Only one man remained seated, immovable as a rock, and that one was myself.

“I ventured to reflect on the cause of such indifference (as that of Orleans) and I found that cause grounded on ambition, but this cannot justify the conduct of Orleans. It is only thus that I could account for his action: he seeks a throne, though without any right to it, and a throne cannot be won if the pretender renounces all claims to public respect and virtue.

“I will be brief, for to unfold a mournful story is not my business. The king was sentenced to death; and if the 21st day of January does not inspire hatred for the name of France, a glorious name at least will have been added to the roll-call of her martyrs.

“What a city was Paris on that day! The population seemed to be in a state of bewilderment; all seemed to exchange but gloomy looks, and one man hurried on to meet another without uttering a word. The streets were deserted; houses and palaces were like graves. The very air seemed to mirror the executioner. In a word, the successor of St. Louis was led to the scaffold through the ranks of mourning automatons, that a short time before were his subjects.

“If any one is at your side, my friend, when you read this, conceal the following lines from him, even were he your father. It is a stain on the stuff of which my character is made—that Napoleon Bonaparte, for the sake of a human being’s destruction, should have been deeply moved and compelled to retire to his bed, is a thing barely credible, though it is true, and I cannot confess it without being ashamed of myself.

“On the night before the 21st of January I could not close my eyes, and yet I could not explain to myself the cause of this unusual excitement. I rose up early and ran everywhere to and fro where crowds had gathered. I wondered at, or much more I despised, the weakness of those forty thousand National Guards, of which the nineteenth part were practically the assistants of the executioner. At the gate of St. Denis I met Santerre; a numerous staff followed him. I could have cut off his ears. I spat down before him—it was all I could do. In my opinion, the Duke d’Orleans would have filled his place better. He had set his eyes on a crown, and, as every one knows, such a motive overcomes much hesitancy.

“Following the Boulevards, I came to the Place de la Revolution. The guillotine, a new invention, I had not yet seen. A cold perspiration ran over me. Near me stood a stranger, who attributed my uneasiness and pallor to some special interest on my part for the king’s fate. ‘Do not be alarmed,’ said he, ‘he is not going to die; the Convention is only glad to exhibit its power, and at the foot of the scaffold the king will find his letters of pardon.’ ‘In this case,’ said I, ‘the members of the Convention are not far from their own ruin, and could a guilty man have more deserved his fate than they? Whoever attacks a lion, and desires not to be destroyed by it, must not wound but kill on the spot.’

“A hollow, confused noise was heard. It was the royal victim. I pushed forward, making way with my elbows, and being pushed myself. All my efforts to come closer were fruitless. Suddenly the noise of drums broke upon the gloomy silence of the crowd. ‘This is the signal for his freedom,’ said the stranger. ‘It will fall back on the head of his murderers,’ answered I; ‘half a crime in a case like this is but weakness.’

“A moment’s stillness followed. Something heavy fell on the scaffold. This sound went through my heart.

“I inquired of a gendarme the cause of this sound. ‘The axe has fallen,’ said he. ‘The king is not saved then?’ ‘He is dead.’ ‘He is dead!’

“For ten times at least I repeated the words ‘He is dead.’

“For a few moments I remained unconscious. Without knowing by whom, I was carried along by a crowd, and found myself on the Quai des Theatines, but could say nothing, except ‘He is dead.’

“Entirely bewildered, I went home, but a good hour elapsed before I fully recovered my senses.” [Footnote: See “Edinburgh Quarterly Review,” 1830.]

CHAPTER XII. THE EXECUTION OF THE QUEEN.

The king’s execution was the signal-fire which announced to the horrified world the beginning of the reign of terror, and told Europe that in France the throne had been torn down, and in its stead the guillotine erected. Yes, the guillotine alone now ruled over France; the days of moderation, of the Girondists, had passed away; the terrorists, named also men of the Mountain, on account of the high seats they occupied in the Convention, had seized the reins of power, and now controlled the course of events.

Everywhere, in every province, in every city, the blood-red standard of the revolution was lifted up; might had become law; death was the rule, and in lieu of the boasted liberty of conscience was tyranny. Who dared think otherwise than the terrorists, who presumed to doubt the measures of the Convention, was a criminal who, in the name of the one and indivisible republic, was to be punished with death; whose head must fall, for he had cherished thoughts which agreed not with the schemes of the revolutionists.

How in these days of agitation and anguish Josephine rejoiced at her good fortune, that she had not to tremble for her husband’s life; that she was away from the crater of the revolution which raged in Paris, and daily claimed so many victims!

Alexandre de Beauharnais was still with the army. He had risen from rank to rank; and when, in May, General Custine was deposed by the Committee of Public Safety from the command of the Northern army, Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was then chief of the general’s staff of this army, was appointed in his place as commanding general of the Army of the Rhine; and the important work now to be achieved was to debar the besieging Prussians and Austrians from recapturing Mayence. The Committee of Public Safety had dismissed General Custine from his post, because he had not pressed on with sufficient speed to the rescue of Mayence, according to the judgment of these new rulers of France, who wanted from Paris to decide all military matters, and who demanded victories whilst too often refusing the means necessary for victory.

General de Beauharnais was to turn to good what General Custine, according to the opinion of these gentlemen of the Convention, had failed to do. This was an important and highly significant order, and to leave it unfulfilled was to excite the anger of the Committee of Safety; it was simply to deserve death.

General de Beauharnais knew this well, but he shrank not back from the weighty and dangerous situation in which he was placed. To his country belonged his life, all his energies; and it was to him of equal importance whether his head fell on the battle-field or on the scaffold; in either case it would fall for his country; he would do his duty, and his country might be satisfied with him.

In this enthusiastic love for country, De Beauharnais accepted cheerfully the offered command of the Army of the Rhine as general-in-chief, and he prepared himself to march to the rescue of besieged Mayence.

Whilst General de Beauharnais was on the French frontier, Josephine trembled with anxious misgivings. The new dignity of her husband filled her with fear, for she multiplied the dangers which surrounded him and his family, for now the eyes of the terrorists were fixed on him. An unfortunate move, an unsuccessful war operation, could excite the wrath of these men of power, and send Beauharnais to the guillotine. It was well known that he belonged not to the Mountain party, but to the moderate republicans, to the Girondists; and as the Girondists were now incarcerated, as the Committee of Safety had brought accusations against them, and declared them guilty of treason toward France, it was also easy, if it pleased the terrorists, to find a flaw in the character of General Beauharnais, and to bring accusations against him as had been done against the Girondists.

Such were Josephine’s fears, which made her tremble for her husband, for her children. She wished at least to secure these from the impending danger, and to save and shield them from the guillotine. Her friend, the Princess von Hohenzollern, was on the eve of leaving for England with her brother the Prince von Salm, and Josephine was anxious to seize this opportunity to save her children. She brought Eugene and Hortense to the princess, who was now waiting in St. Martin, in the vicinity of St. Pol, in the county of Artois, expecting a favorable moment for departure; for already was the emigration watched, already it was considered a crime to leave France. With bitter tears of grief, and yet glad to know her children safe, Josephine bade farewell to her little ones, and then returned to Paris, so as to excite no suspicion through her absence. But no sooner had General Beauharnais heard of Josephine’s plan to send her children from the country, than in utmost speed he dispatched to his wife a courier bearing a letter in which he decidedly opposed the departure of the children, for by this emigration his own position would be imperilled and his character made suspicious.

Josephine sighed, and, with tears in her eyes, submitted to her husband’s will; she sent a faithful messenger to St. Martin to bring back Eugene and Hortense. But the Princess von Hohenzollern would not trust the children to any one; she had sworn to her friend Josephine to watch over them, never to let them go out of her sight, and she wished to keep her oath until such time as she could restore the children to their mother. She therefore returned herself to Paris, to bring back Eugene and Hortense to Josephine; and this journey, so short and so insignificant in itself, was nevertheless the occasion that the Princess von Hohenzollern remained in France; that her brother, the Prince von Salm, should mount the scaffold! The favorable moment for emigration was lost through this delay; the journey to Paris had attracted the eyes of the authorities to the doings of the princess and of her brother, the contemplated journey to England was discovered, and the incarceration of the Prince von Salm and of his sister was the natural consequence. A few months after, the prince paid with his life the contemplated attempt to migrate; his sister, the Princess von Hohenzollern, was saved from the guillotine through accident.

Meanwhile, Josephine had at least her children safely returned, and, in the quietude and solitude of Fontainebleau, she awaited with beating heart the future developments of events; she saw increase every day the dangers which threatened her, her family, and, above all things, her husband.

Mayence was still besieged by the Austrian and Prussian forces. General Beauharnais had not completed the organization of his army so as to press onward to the rescue of the besieged, whose perils increased every day. But whilst, in unwearied activity, he urged on the preliminary operations, a courier arrived, who brought to the general his appointment to the office of minister of war, and required his immediate presence in Paris, there to assume his new dignity.

Alexandre de Beauharnais had the courage to answer with a declination the office. He entreated the Convention to make another choice, for he considered himself more competent to serve his country against the coalition of tyrants, among his companions-in-arms, than to be minister of war amid revolution’s storms.

The Convention pardoned his refusal for the sake of the patriotic sentiments which he had expressed. But this refusal was to have, not only for the general, but also for all the aristocracy of France, the most fatal results. Some of the most fanatical members of the Mountain party ever considered as an audacious resistance to the commands of the Convention this refusal of Alexandre de Beauharnais, to accept the office which the highest powers of the land offered him.

It was a nobleman, an aristocrat, who had dared oppose the democratic Convention, and hence the welcome pretext was found to begin the long-wished-for conflict against the aristocrats. One of the deputies of the Mountain made the motion to remove from all public offices, from the army, from the cabinet, all noblemen. Another accused General de Beauharnais, as well as all officers from amongst the nobility, of moderate tendencies, and requested at the same time that a list of all officers from the nobility, and now in the army, should be laid before the Convention.

But on this very day a letter from the general reached the Convention. In this letter he expressed the hope of a speedy rescue of Mayence; he announced that he had completed the organization of his forces and all his preparations, and that soon from the camps of Vicembourg and Lauterburg he would advance against Mayence.

This letter was received by the Convention with loud acclamations, and so took possession of all minds that they passed over the motion of hostility against the nobility, to the order of the day.

Had General de Beauharnais accomplished his purpose—had he succeeded in relieving the garrison besieged in Mayence, now sorely pressed, and in delivering them, this horrible decree which caused so much blood to flow, this decree against the nobility, would never have appeared, and France would have been spared many scenes of cruelty and horror.

Beauharnais hoped still to effect the rescue. Trusty messengers from Mayence had brought him the news that the garrison held on courageously and bravely, and that they could hold their ground a few days longer. Dispatch was therefore necessary; and if in a few days they could be re-enforced, then they would be saved, provided the other generals should advance with their troops in time to attack the Austrian and Prussian forces lying round about Mayence. The French had already succeeded in obtaining some advantages over the enemy; and General de Beauharnais could triumphantly announce to the Convention that, on the 22d of July, a warm encounter with the Prussians had taken place at St. Anna’s chapel, and that he had forced the Prussians to a retreat with considerable loss.

The Convention received this news with jubilant shouts, and already trusted in the sure triumph of the French armies against the united forces of Prussia and Austria. If in these days of joyous excitement some one had dared renew the motion to dismiss Beauharnais from his command because he was a nobleman, the mover would undoubtedly have been considered an enemy of his country.

How much attention in these happy days was paid to the general’s wife—how busy were even the most fanatical republicans, the dreaded ones of the Mountain, to flatter her, to give expression to their enthusiastic praises of the general who was preparing for the arms of the republic so glorious a triumph!

Josephine now came every day to be present in the gallery at the sessions of the Convention, and her gracious countenance radiated a cheerful smile when the minister of war communicated to the Assembly the newly-arrived dispatches which announced fresh advantages or closer approaches of General Beauharnais. By degrees a new confidence filled the heart of Josephine, and the gloomy forebodings, which so long had tormented her, began to fade away.

In the session of the 28th of July, Barrere, with a grave, solemn countenance, mounted the tribune and with a loud, sad voice announced to the Convention, in the name of the Committee of Safety, that a courier had just arrived bringing the news that, on the 23d of July, Mayence, in virtue of an unjust capitulation, had fallen.

A loud, piercing shriek, which issued from the gallery, broke the silence with which the Assembly had received this news. It was Josephine who had uttered this cry—Josephine who was carried away fainting from the hall. She awoke from her long swoon only to shed a torrent of tears, to press her children to her heart, as if desirous to screen them from the perils of death, which now, said her own forebodings, were pressing on from all sides.

Josephine was not deceived: this calamitous news, all at once, changed the whole aspect of affairs, gave to the Convention and to the republic another attitude, and threw its dark shadows over the unfortunate general who had undertaken to save Mayence, and had not been able to fulfil his word.

Surely this was not his fault, for General Dubayet had capitulated before it had been possible for Beauharnais to accomplish the rescue. No one therefore ventured to accuse him, but undeserved misfortune always remains a misfortune in the eyes of those who had counted upon success; and the Convention could never forgive the generals from whom they had expected so much, and who had not met these expectations.

These generals had all been men of the aristocracy. As there was no reason to accuse them on account of their unsuccessful military operations, it was necessary to attack them with other weapons, and seek a spot where they could be wounded. This spot was their name, their ancestors, who in the eyes of the republican Convention rose up like embodied crimes behind their progeny, to accuse the guilty.

The Jacobin Club, a short time after the capture of Mayence, began again in an infuriated session the conflict against the nobility, and the fanatical Hebert moved:

“All the noblemen who serve in the army, in the magistracy, in any public office, must be driven away and dismissed. The people must require this, the people themselves! They must go in masses to the Convention, and after exposing the crimes and the treachery of the aristocrats, must insist on their expulsion. The people must not leave the Convention, it must remain in permanent session, there until it is assured that its will is carried out.”

The multitude with loud, jubilant tones cried, “Yes. yes, that is what we want, let us go to the Convention! No more nobility! the nobles are our murderers!”

The next day, the Jacobins, accompanied by thousands of shouting women and infuriated men, went to the Convention to make known its will in the name of the people. The Convention received their petition and decreed the exile and the dissolution of the nobility, and delivered to the punishment of the law the guilty subject who would dare use the name of noble.

General de Beauharnais saw full well the blow aimed at him, and at all the officers from the nobility in the army; he foresaw that they would not stop at these measures; that soon he and his companions of fate would be accused and charged with treason, as had been already done to General Custine, and to so many others who had paid with their lives their tried loyalty to the republic. He wanted to anticipate the storm, and sent in his resignation. As the Convention left his petition unanswered, he renewed it, and as it remained still ineffective, he gladly, forced to this measure by sickness, transferred his command to General Landremont. The Convention had then to grant him leave of absence, and, as it maintained him in his rank, they ordered him back to Paris.

At last Josephine saw her husband again, for whom during the last few months she had suffered so much anxiety and pain. At last she was enabled to bring to her children the father for whom every evening they had prayed God to guard him from foes abroad and from foes at home. As a gift sent again by Heaven, she received her husband and entreated him to save himself with his family from revolution’s yawning abyss, which was ready to swallow them all, and to go away with his own into a foreign land, as his brother had done, who for some months past had been in Coblentz with the Prince d’Artois.

But Alexandre de Beanharnais rejected with something like anger these tearful supplications of his wife. He was not blinded to the dangers which threatened him, but he wanted to meet them bravely; true to the oath he had taken to the republic and to his country, he wished as a dutiful son to remain near her, even if his allegiance had to be paid with his death.

Josephine, on the bosom of her husband, wept hot, burning tears as he communicated to her his irrevocable decision not to leave France, but in the depths of her heart she experienced a noble satisfaction to find her husband so heroic and so brave, and, offering him her hand, said with tears in her eyes:

“It is well—we remain; and if we must go to the scaffold, we will at least die together.”

The general, with his wife and children, retired to his small property, Ferte-Beauharnais, where he longed to obtain rest during a few happy months of quietude.

But the fearful storms which had agitated France in her innermost life, now raged so violently that each household, each family, trembled; there was neither peace nor rest in the home nor in the hearts of men.

The Convention, threatened from outside by failures and defeats—for the capture of Mayence by the Prussians and Austrians had been followed by the capture of Toulon in September by the English—the Convention wanted to consolidate at least its internal authority, and to terrify by severe measures those who, on account of the misfortunes on the frontiers, might hope for a fresh change of affairs in the interior, and who might help it to pass.

Consequently the Convention issued a decree ordering all dismissed or destitute soldiers to return in four-and-twenty hours to their respective municipalities, under pain of ten years in chains, and at the same time forbade them to enter Paris or to approach the capital nearer than ten leagues.

A second decree ordered the formation of a revolutionary army in Paris, to which was assigned the duty of carrying out the decrees of the Convention.

Finally a third decree, which appeared on the 17th of September, ordered the arrest and punishment of all suspected persons.

This decree thus characterized the suspected ones: “All those who, by their conduct, their relations, their discourses, their writings, had shown themselves the adherents of tyranny, of federalism, the enemies of liberty, much more all the ex-nobles, men, women, fathers, brothers, sons or daughters, sisters or brothers, or agents of the migrated ones, all who had not invariably exhibited and proved their adherence to the revolution.”

With this decree the days of terror had reached their deepest gloom; with this decree began the wild, bloody hunting down of aristocrats and ci-devants; then began suspicions, accusations which needed no evidence to bring the accused to the guillotine; then were renewed the dragonnades of the days of Louis XIV., only that now, instead of Protestants, the nobles were hunted down, and hunted down to death. The night of the St. Bartholomew, the night of the murderess Catharine de Medicis and of her mad son Charles IX., found now in France its cruel and bloody repetition; only this night of horror was prolonged during the day, and shrank not back from the light.

The sun beamed upon the pools of blood which flowed through the streets of Paris, and packs of ferocious dogs in large numbers lay in the streets, and fed upon this blood, which imparted to these once tamed creatures their natural wildness. The sun beamed on the scaffold, which, like a threatening monster, lifted itself upon the Place de la Revolution, and the sun beamed upon the horrible axe, which every day out off so many noble heads, and ever glittering, ever menacing, rose up from the midst of blood and death.

The sun also shone upon the day in which Marie Antoinette, like her husband, ascended the scaffold, to rest at last in the grave from all her dishonor and from the agonies of the last years.

This day was the 16th of October, 1793. For the last four months, Marie Antoinette had longed for this day as for a long-expected bliss; four months ago she had been led from the prison of the Temple into the Conciergerie, and she knew that the prisoners of the Conciergerie only left it to obtain the freedom which men do not give, but which God gives to the suffering ones, the freedom of death.

Marie Antoinette longed for this liberty, and for this deliverance of death. How distant behind were the days of happiness, of joyous youth, far behind in infinite legendary distance! How long since this tall, grave figure, with its proud and yet affable countenance, had lost all similarity to the charming Queen Marie Antoinette, around whom had fluttered the genii of beauty, of youth, of love, of happiness; who once in Trianon had represented the idyl of a pastoral queen; who, in the exuberance of joy, had visited in disguise the public opera-ball; who imagined herself so secure amid the French people as to believe she could dispense with the protection of “Madame Etiquette;” who then was applauded by all France with jubilant acclamations, and who now was persecuted with mad anger!

No, the queen of that day, Marie Antoinette, who, in the golden halls of Versailles and of the Tuileries, received the homage of all France, and who, with smiling grace and face radiant with happiness, responded to all this homage; she had no resemblance with Louis Capet’s widow, who now stands before the tribunal of the revolution, and gravely, firmly gives her answers to the proposed questions.

She has also made her toilet for this day; but how different is this toilet of the Widow Capet from that which once Marie Antoinette had worn to be admired!

Then could Marie Antoinette, the frivolous, fortunate daughter of bliss, shut herself up in her boudoir for long hours with her confidante the milliner, Madame Bertier, to devise some new ball-dress, some new fichu, some new ornament for her robes; then could Leonard, for this queen with her wondrous blond hair, tax all the wealth of his science and of his imagination; to invent continually new coiffures and new head-dresses wherewith to adorn the beautiful head of the Queen Marie Antoinette, on whose towering curls clustered tufts of white plumes; or else diminutive men-of-war unfurled the net-work of their sails; or else, for variety’s sake, on that royal head was arranged a garden, a parterre adorned with flowers and fruits, with butterflies and birds of paradise.

The Widow Capet needs no milliner now; she needs no friseur now for her toilette. Her tall, slim figure is draped in a black woollen dress, which the republic at her request has granted her to mourn her beheaded husband; her neck and shoulders, once the admiration of France, are now covered with a white muslin kerchief, which in pity Bault, her attendant at the jail, has given her. Her hair is uncovered, and falls in long natural curls on either side of her transparent, blanched cheeks. This hair needs no powder now; the long sleepless nights, the anxious days, have covered it with their powder forever, and the thirty-eight-year-old widow of Louis Capet wears on her head the gray hairs of a seventy-year-old woman.

In this toilet, Marie Antoinette stands before the tribunal of the revolution from the 6th to the 13th day of October. There is nothing royal about her, nothing but her look and the proud attitude of her figure.

And the people who fill the galleries in closely-packed masses, and who weary not to gaze on the queen in her humiliation, in her toilet of anguish, the people claim constantly that Marie Antoinette will rise from her rush-woven seat; that she will allow herself to be stared at by these masses of people, whom curiosity and not compassion have brought there.

Once, as at the call from the public in the galleries, she rose up, the queen sighed: “Ah, will not the people soon be tired of my sufferings?” [Footnote: Marie Antoinette’s own words.—See Goncourt, “Histoire de Marie Antoinette,” p. 404.]

Another time her dry, blanched lips murmured, “I thirst.” But no one near her dares have compassion on this sigh of agony from the queen; each looks embarrassed at his neighbor; not one dares give a glass of water to the thirsty woman.

One of the gendarmes has at last the courage to do so, and Marie Antoinette thanks him with a look which brings tears in the eyes of the gendarme, and which may perchance cause his death to-morrow under the guillotine as a traitor!

The gendarmes who guard the queen have alone the courage to show pity!

One night, as she is led from the hall of trial to her prison, Marie Antoinette becomes so exhausted, so overpowered, that staggering, she murmurs, “I can see no longer! I can go no farther! I cannot move!”

One of the gendarmes walking alongside of her offers his arm, and supported by it Marie Antoinette totters up the three stone steps which lead into the prison.

At last, at four o’clock in the morning, on the 15th of August, the jury have given their verdict. It runs: “Death!—execution by the guillotine!”

Marie Antoinette has heard the verdict with unmoved composure, whilst the noise from the excited crowd in the galleries is suddenly hushed as by a magic spell, and even the faces of the infuriated fish women turn pale!

Marie Antoinette alone has remained calm; grave and cool she rises from her seat and herself opens the balustrade to leave the hall and return to her prison.

And then at last, on the morning of the 16th of October, her sorrows will end, and Marie Antoinette can find refuge in the grave! Her soul is almost joyous and serene; she has suffered so much, and for her to sink into death is truly blessedness!

She has passed the undisturbed hours of the night in writing to her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, and this letter is also the queen’s testament. But the widow of Louis Capet has no riches, no treasures, no property to will; she has nothing left which belongs to her—nothing but her love, her tears, her farewell salutations. These she leaves behind to all those who have loved her. She takes leave of her relatives, her brothers and sisters, and cries out to them a farewell.

“I had friends,” she continues; “the thought of being forever separated from them, and your grief for my death, are my deepest sorrow; you will at least know that to the last moment I have remembered you.”

Then, when Marie Antoinette has finished this letter, some of whose characters here and there are disfigured by her tears, she thinks of leaving to her children a last token of remembrance—one which the executioner’s hand has not desecrated.

The only ornament which remains is her long hair, whose silver-gray locks are the tearful history of her sufferings.

Marie Antoinette with her own hands despoils herself of this last ornament; she cuts off her long hair behind the head, so as to leave it as a last token to her children, to her relatives and friends. Then, after having taken her spiritual farewell of life, she prepares herself for the last great ceremony of her existence, for death.

She feels exhausted, weary unto death, and she strengthens herself for this last toilsome journey, that she may worthily pass through it.

Marie Antoinette needs food, and with courageous mind she eats a chicken’s wing which has been brought to her. After having eaten, she makes her last toilet, the toilet of death.

The wife of the jailer, at the queen’s request, gives her one of her own chemises, and Marie Antoinette puts it on. Then she clothes herself with the garments which she has worn during her days of trial before the tribunal of the revolution, only over the black woollen dress, which she has often mended and patched with her own hand, she puts on a mantle of white needlework. Around her neck she ties a small plain kerchief of white muslin, and, as it is not allowed her to mount the scaffold with uncovered head, she puts on it the round linen hood which the peasant-women used to wear. Black stockings cover her feet, and over them she draws shoes of black woollen stuff.

Her toilet is now ended—earthly things have passed away! Ready to meet death, the queen lays herself down on her bed and sleeps.

She still sleeps when she is notified that a priest is there, ready to come in, if she will confess.

But Marie Antoinette has already unveiled her heart to God; she will have none of these priests of reason, whom the republic has ordained, after having exiled or murdered with the guillotine the priests of the Church.

“As I cannot do as I please,” she has written to Madame Elizabeth, in her farewell letter, “so must I endure it if a priest is sent to me; but I now declare that I will tell him not a word, that I will consider him entirely as a stranger to me.”

And Marie Antoinette held her word. She forbids not the priest Girard to come in, but she answers in the negative when he asks her if she will receive from him the consolations of religion.

She paces her small cell to and fro, to warm herself, for her feet are stiff with cold. As seven o’clock strikes, the door opens.

It is the executioner of Paris, Samson, who enters.

A slight tremor runs through the queen’s frame. “You come very early, sir,” murmurs she, “could you not delay somewhat?”

As Samson replies in the negative, Marie Antoinette assumes again a calm, cold attitude. She drinks without any reluctance the cup of chocolate which has been brought to her from a neighboring cafe. Proudly, calmly, she allows her hands to be bound with strong ropes behind her back.

At eleven o’clock she finally leaves her room to descend the corridor, and to mount into the wagon which waits for her before the gate of the Conciergerie.

No one guides her on the way; no one bids her a last farewell; no one shows a sympathizing or sad countenance to the departing one.

Alone, between two rows of gendarmes posted on both sides of the corridor, the queen walks forward; behind her is Samson, holding in his hand the end of the rope; the priest and the two assistants of the executioner follow him.

On the path of Death—such is the suite of the queen, the daughter of an emperor!

Perchance at this hour thousands were on their knees to offer to God their heart-felt prayers for Marie Antoinette, whom in the silence of the soul they still call “the queen;” perchance many thousand compassionate hearts pour out warm tears of sympathy for her who now ascends into the miserable wagon, and sits on a plank which ropes have made firm to both sides of the vehicle. But those who pray and weep have retired into the solitude of their rooms, for God alone must receive their sighs and see their tears. The eyes which follow the queen on her last journey must not weep; the words which are shouted at her must betray no compassion.

Paris knows that this is the hour of the queen’s execution, and the Parisian crowd is ready, it is waiting. In the streets, in the windows of the houses, on the roofs, the people have stationed themselves in enormous masses; they fill the whole Place de la Revolution with their dark, destructive forms.

Now resound the drums of the National Guard posted before the Conciergerie. The large white horse, which draws the chariot in which Marie Antoinette sits backward, at the side of the priest, is driven onward by the man who swings on its back. Behind her in the wagon is Samson and his assistants.

The queen’s face is white; all blood has left her cheeks and lips, but her eyes are red; they have wept so much, unfortunate queen! She weeps not now. Not one tear dims her eye, which pensively and calmly soars above the crowd, then is lifted up to the very roofs of the houses, then again is slowly lowered, and seems to stare over the human heads away into infinite distance.

Calm and pensive as the eye is the queen’s countenance, her lips are nearly closed, no nervous movement on her face tells whether she suffers, whether she feels, whether she notices those tens of thousands of eyes which are fixed on her, cold, curious, sarcastic! And yet Marie Antoinette sees every thing! She sees yonder woman who lifts up her child; she sees how this child with his tiny hands sends a kiss to the queen! Suddenly a nervous agitation passes over the queen’s features, her lips tremble, and her eyes are obscured with a tear! This first, this single token of human sympathy has revived the heart of the queen and awakened her from her torpor.

But the people are bent upon this, that Marie Antoinette shall not reach the end of her journey with this last comfort of pity. They press on, howling and shouting, scorning and jubilant, nearer and nearer to the wagon; they sing sarcastic songs on Madame Veto, they clap hands, and point at her with the finger of scorn.

She, however, is calm; her look, cold and indifferent, runs over the crowd; only once it flames up with a last angry flash as she passes by the Palais Royal, where Philippe Egalite, the ex-Duke d’Orleans, resides, as she reads the inscription which he had placed at the gate of his palace.

At noon the chariot reaches at last its destination. It stops at the foot of the scaffold, and Marie Antoinette alights from the wagon, and then calm and erect ascends the steps of the scaffold.

Her lips have not opened once on this awful journey; they now have no word of complaint, of farewell! The only farewell which she has yet to say on earth is told by her look—by a look which is slowly directed yonder to the Tuileries—it is the farewell to past memories—it deepens the pallor on the cheeks, it opens her lips to a painful sigh. She then bows her head—a momentary, breathless silence follows. Samson lifts up the white head, which once had been the head of the Queen of France, and the people cry and shout, “Long live the republic!”

CHAPTER XIII. THE ARREST.

Uninterruptedly had the guillotine for the last three months of the year 1793 continued its destructive work of murder, and the noblest and worthiest heads had fallen under this reaper of Death. No personal merit, no nobility of character, no age, no youth, could hope to escape the death-instrument of the revolution when a noble name stood up as accuser. Before this accuser every service was considered as nothing; it was enough to be an aristocrat, a ci-devant, to be suspected, to be dragged as a criminal before the tribunal of the revolution, and to be condemned.

The execution of the queen was followed by that of the Girondists; and this brilliant array of noble and great men was followed in the next month by names no less noble, no less great. It was an infuriated chase of the aristocrats as well as of the officers, of all the military persons who, in the unfortunate days of Toulon and of Mayence, had been in the army, and who had been dismissed, or whose resignation had been accepted.

The aristocrats were tracked in their most secret recesses, and not only were they punished, but also those who dared screen them from the avenging hand of the republic. The officers were recognized under every disguise, and the very fact that they had disguised themselves or remained silent as to their true character was a crime great enough to be punished with the guillotine.

More than twenty generals were imprisoned during the last months of the year 1793, and many more paid with their lives for crimes which they had never committed, and which had existence only in the heated imagination of their accusers. Thus had General Houchard fallen; he was followed in the first days of the new year of 1794 by the Generals Luckner and Biron.

Alexandre de Beauharnais had served under Luckner, he had been Biron’s adjutant, he had been united with General Houchard in the unfortunate attempt to relieve Mayence. It was therefore natural that he should be noticed and espied. Besides which, he was an aristocrat, a relative of many of the emigres, the brother of the Count de Beauharnais, who was now residing in Coblentz with the Count d’Artois, and it had not been forgotten what an important part Alexandre de Beauharnais had played in the National Assembly; it was well known that he belonged to the moderate party, that he had been the friend of the Girondists.

Had the Convention wished to forget it, the informers were there to remind them of it. Alexandre de Beauharnais was denounced as suspected, and this denunciation was followed, in the first days of January, by an arrest. He was taken to Paris, and at first shut up in the Luxemburg, where already many of his companions-in-arms were incarcerated.

Josephine was not in Ferte-Beauharnais when the emissaries of the republic came to arrest her husband. She was just then in Paris, whither she had gone to seek protection and assistance for Alexandre at the hands of influential acquaintances; in Paris she learned the arrest of her husband.

The misfortune, which she had so long expected and foreseen, was now upon her and ready to crush her and the future of her children. Her husband was arrested—that is to say, he was condemned to die.

At this thought Josephine rose up like a lioness; the indolence, the dreamy quietude of the creole, had suddenly vanished, and Josephine was now a resolute, energetic woman, anxious to risk every thing, to try every thing, so as to save her husband, the father of her children. She now knew no timidity, no trembling, no fear, no horror; every thing in her was decision of purpose; keen, daring action. Letters, visits, petitions, and even personal supplications, every thing was tried; there was no humiliation before which she shrank. For long hours she sat in the anterooms of the tribunal of the revolution, of the ministers who, however much they despised the aristocrats, imitated their manners, and made the people wait in the vestibule, even as the ministers of the tyrant had done; with tears, with all the eloquence of love, she entreated those men of blood and terror to give her back her husband, or at least not to condemn him before he had been accused, and to furnish him with the means of defence.

But those new lords and rulers of France had no heart for compassion; Robespierre, Marat, Danton, could not be moved by the tears which a wife could shed for an accused husband. They had already witnessed so much weeping, listened to so many complaints, to so many cries of distress, their eyes were not open for such things, their ears heard not.

France was diseased, and only by drawing away the bad blood could she be restored to health, could she be made sound, could she rise up again with the strength of youth! And Marat, Danton, Robespierre, were the physicians who were healing France, who were restoring her to health by thus horribly opening her veins. Marat and Danton murdered from bloodthirsty hatred, from misanthropy and vengeance; Robespierre murdered through principle, from the settled fanatical conviction, that France was lost if all the old corrupt blood was not cleansed away from her veins, so as to replenish them with youthful, vitalizing blood.

Robespierre was therefore inexorable, and Robespierre now ruled over France! He was the dictator to whom every thing had to bow; he was at the head of the tribunal of revolution; he daily signed hundreds of death-warrants; and this selfsame man, who once in Arras had resigned his office of judge because his hand could not be induced to sign the death-warrant of a convicted criminal [Footnote: See “Maximilian Robespierre,” by Theodore Mundt, vol. i.]—this man, who shed tears over a tame dove which the shot of a hunter had killed, could, with heart unmoved, with composed look, sit for long hours near the guillotine on the tribune of the revolution, and gaze with undimmed eyes on the heads of his victims falling under the axe.

He was now at the summit of his power; France lay bleeding, trembling at his feet; fear had silenced even his enemies; no one dared touch the dreaded man whose mere contact was death; whose look, when coldly, calmly fixed on the face of any man, benumbed his heart as if he had read his sentence of death in the blue eyes of Robespierre.

At the side of Robespierre sat the terrorists Fouquier-Tinville and Marat, to whom murder was a delight, blood-shedding a joy, who with sarcastic pleasure listened unmoved to the cries, to the tearful prayers of mothers, wives, children, of those sentenced to death, and who fed on their tears and on their despair.

With such men at the head of affairs it was natural that the reign of terror should still be increasing in power, and that with it the number of the captives in the prisons should increase.

In the month of January, 1794, the list of the incarcerated within the prisons of Paris ran up to the number of 4,659; in the month of February the number rose up to 5,892; in the beginning of April to 7,541; and at the end of the same month it was reckoned that there were in Paris eight thousand prisoners. [Footnote: Thiers, “Histoire de la Revolution Francaise,” vol. vi., p. 41]

The greater the number of prisoners, the more zealous was the tribunal of the revolution to get rid of them; and with satisfaction these judges of blood saw the new improvements made in the guillotine, and which not only caused the machine to work faster, but also prevented the axe from losing its edge too soon by the sundering of so many necks.

“It works well,” exclaimed Fouquier-Tinville, triumphantly; “to-day we have fifty sentenced. The heads fall like poppy-heads!”

And these fifty heads falling like poppy-heads, were not enough for his bloodthirstiness.

“It must work better still,” cried he; “in the next decade, I must have at least four hundred and fifty poppy-heads!”

And then, as if inspired by a joyous and happy thought, his gloomy countenance became radiant with a grinning laughter, and, rubbing his hands with delight, he continued: “Yes, I must have four hundred and fifty! Then, if we work on so perseveringly, we will soon write over our prison-gates, ‘House to let!’” [Footnote: “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine.”]

They worked on perseveringly, and the vehicles which carried the condemned to execution rolled every morning with a fresh freight through the streets of Paris, where the guillotine, with its glaring axe, awaited them.

The month of April, as already said, had brought the number of prisoners in Paris to eight thousand; the month of April had therefore more executions to engrave with its bloody pen into the annals of history. On the 20th of April fell on the Place de la Revolution the heads of fourteen members of the ex-Parliament of Paris; the next day followed the Duke de Villeroy, the Admiral d’Estaing, the former Minister of War Latour du Pin, the Count de Bethune, the President de Nicolai. One day after, the well-laden wagon drove from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Revolution; in it were three members of the Constituent Assembly, and to have belonged to it was the only crime they were accused of. Near these three sat the aged Malesherbes, with his sister; the Marquis de Chateaubriand, with his wife; the Duchess de Grammont, and Du Chatelet. It will be seen that the turn for women had now come; for those women who were now led to the execution had committed no other crime than to be the wives or the relatives of emigrants or of accused persons, than to bear names which had shone for centuries in the history of France.

Josephine also had an ancient aristocratic name; she also was related to the migrated ones, the wife of an accused, of a prisoner! And she wearied the tribunal of the revolution constantly with petitions, with visits, with complaints. They were tired of these molestations, and it was so easy, so convenient to shield one’s self against them! There was nothing else to do but to arrest Josephine; for once a prisoner, she could no longer—in anterooms, where she would wait for hours; in the street before the house-door, where she would stand, despite rains and winds—she could no longer trouble the rulers of France, and beseech them with tears and prayers for her husband’s freedom. The prisoner could no more write petitions, or move heaven and earth for her husband’s sake.

The Viscountess de Beauharnais was arrested. On the 20th of April, as she happened to be at the proper authority’s office to obtain a pass according to the new law, which ordered all ci-devants to leave Paris in ten days, Josephine was arrested and led into the Convent of the Carmelites, which for two years had served as a prison for the bloody republic, and from which so many of its victims had issued to mount the wagon which led them to the guillotine.

Amid this wretchedness there was one sweet joy. Alexandre de Beauharnais had no sooner heard of the arrest of his wife, than he asked as a favor from the tribunal of the revolution to be removed into the same prison where his wife was. In an incomprehensible fit of merciful humor his prayer was granted; he was transferred to the Convent of the Carmelites, and if the husband and wife could not share the same cell, yet they were within the same walls, and could daily (through the turnkeys, who had to be bribed by all manner of means, by promises, by gold, as much as could be gathered together among the prisoners) hear the news.

Josephine was united to her husband. She received daily from him news and messages; she could often, in the hours when the prisoners in separate detachments made their promenades in the yard and in the garden, meet Alexandre, reach him her hand, whisper low words of trust, of hope, and speak with him of Eugene and Hortense, of these dear children who, now deserted by their parents, could hope for protection and safety only from the faithfulness and love of their governess, Madame Lanoy. The thought of these darling ones of her heart excited and troubled Josephine, and all the pride and courage with which she had armed her heart melted into tears of anxiety and into longings for her deserted children.

But Madame Lanoy with the most faithful solicitude watched over the abandoned ones; she had once sworn to Josephine that if the calamity, which Josephine had constantly anticipated, should fall upon her and upon her husband, she would be to Hortense and Eugene a second mother; she would care for them and protect them as if they were her own children. And Madame Lanoy kept her promise.

To place them beyond the dangers which their very name made imminent, and also perhaps to give by means of the children evidence of the patriotic sentiments of the parents, Madame Lanoy left with the children the viscount’s house, where they had hitherto resided, and occupied with both of them a small shabby house, where she established herself as seamstress. The little eleven-year-old Hortense, the daughter of the Citizeness Beauharnais, was now the assistant of the Citizeness Lanoy, at the trade of seamstress. Eugene was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; a leather apron was put on, and then with a plank under his arm, and carrying a plane in his hand, he went through the streets to the workshop of the cabinet-maker, and every one lauded the patriotic sentiments of the Citizeness Lanoy, who tried to educate the brood of the ex-aristocrats into orderly and moral beings.

Eugene and Hortense fell rapidly and understandingly into the plan of their faithful governess; they transformed themselves in their language, in their dress, in their whole being and appearance, into little republicans, full of genuine patriotism. Like their cousin, Emile de Beauharnais, whose mother (the wife of the elder brother of the Viscount de Beauharnais) had already for a long time languished in prison, they attended the festivals which had for its object the glorification of the republic, and, alongside of the Citizeness Lanoy, the little milliner Hortense followed the procession of her quarter of the city, perhaps to awaken thereby the good-will of the authorities in favor of her imprisoned parents.

Then, when Madame Lanoy thought this good-will had been gained, she made a step further, and undertook to have the children present to the Convention a petition for their parents. This petition ran thus:

“Two innocent children appeal to you, fellow-citizens, for the freedom of their dear mother—their mother against whom no reproach can be made but the misfortune of being born in a class from which, as she has proven, she ever felt completely estranged, for she has ever surrounded herself with the best patriots, the most distinguished men of the Mountain. After she had on the 26th of Germinal requested a pass in order to obey the law, she was arrested on the evening of that day without knowing the cause. Citizen representatives, you cannot be guilty of oppressing innocence, patriotism, and virtue. Give back to us unfortunate children our life. Our youth is not made for suffering.” Signed: EUGENE BEAUHARNAIS, aged twelve years, and HORTENSE BEAUHARNAIS, aged eleven years. [Footnote: “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” par Aubenas.]

To this complaint of two deserted children no more attention was paid than to the cries of the dove which the hawk carries away in its claws, but perhaps the innocent touching words of the petition had awakened compassion in the heart of some father.

It is true no answer was given to the petition of the children, but the Citizeness Lanoy was allowed to take the children of the accused twice a week into the reception-room of the Carmelite Convent, that there they might see and speak to their mother.

This was a sweet comfort, an unhoped-for joy, as well to Josephine as to her husband; for if he was not permitted to come into the lower room and see the children, yet he now saw them through the eyes of his wife, and through her he received the wishes of their tender affection.

What happiness for Josephine, who loved her children with all the unrestrained fondness of a Creole! what happiness to see her Eugene, her Hortense, and to be permitted to speak to them! How much they had to say one to another, how much to communicate one to the other!

It is true much had to be passed in silence if they would not excite the anger of the turnkey, who was always present at the meeting of the children with their mother. Strict orders had been given that Josephine should never whisper one word to the children, or speak to them of the events of the day, of what was going on beyond the prison walls. The least infringement of this rule was to be punished by debarring the children from having any further conversation with their mother.

And yet they had so much to say; they needed her advice so much, so as to know what future steps they might take to accomplish their mother’s freedom! They had so much to tell to Josephine about relatives and friends, and above all so much to say about what was going on outside of the prison! But how bring her news? how speak to their mother? how receive her message in such a way that the jailer’s ears could not know what was said?

Love is full of invention. It turns every thing into subserviency to its end. Love once turned the dove into a carrier; love made Josephine’s children find out a new mail-carrier—it made them invent the lapdog mail.

Josephine, like all Creoles, had, besides her love for flowers, botany, and birds, a great fondness for dogs. Never since the earliest days of her childhood had Josephine been seen in her room, at the promenade, or in her carriage, without one of these faithful friends and companions of man, which share with the lords of creation all their good qualities and virtues, without being burdened with their failings. The love, the faithfulness, the cunningness of dogs are virtues, wherewith they successfully rival man, and the dogs boast only of one quality which amongst men is considered a despicable vice, namely, the canine humbleness which these animals practise, without egotism, without calculation, whilst man practises it only when his interest and his selfishness make it seem advantageous.

Two years before, a friend of Josephine had given her a small, young model of the then fashionable breed of dogs, a small lapdog, and at once Josephine had made a pet of the little animal, which had been recommended to her as the progeny of a rare and genuine race of lapdogs. It is true the little Fortune had not fulfilled what had been promised; he had not grown up exactly into a model of beauty and loveliness. With small feet, a long body of a pale yellow rather than red, a thick, double, flat nose, this lapdog had nothing of its race but the black face, and the tail in the shape of a corkscrew. Besides all this, he was undoubtedly of a surly, quarrelsome disposition, and he preferred the indolent and ease of his cushion to either a promenade with Josephine or to a game with her children.

But since Josephine was no more there, since her beautiful hands no more presented him his food, a change had come over Fortune’s character; he had awakened from the effeminacy of happiness to full activity. The children had but to say, “We are going to mamma,” and at once Fortune would spring up from his cushion with a cheerful bark, and run out into the streets, describing circles and performing joyous leaps. Fortune, as soon as the reception-room of the prison was opened, was always the first to rush in, barking loudly at the jailer; then, when his spite was over, to run with all the signs of passionate tenderness toward his mistress; then he would surround her with caresses, and leap, bark, and whine, until she noticed him, until she should have kissed and embraced the children, and then taken him up in her arms.

But one day, as the door of the reception-room opened, and Eugene and Hortense entered with Madame Lanoy, Fortune’s loud barking trumpet sounded not, and he sprang not forward toward Josephine. He walked on gravely with measured steps at the side of Madame Lanoy, who led him with a string which she had fastened to his collar. With important, thoughtful mien, he gazed resignedly and gravely at his mistress, and even for his hated foe the jailer he had but a dull growl, which he soon repressed.

Josephine was somewhat alarmed at this change in Fortune’s demeanor, and after she had welcomed, taken to her bosom and kissed her darling children, after she had saluted the good Madame Lanoy, she inquired why Fortune was so sad and why he was led as a captive.

“Because he is so wild and unruly, mamma,” said Eugene, with a peculiar smile, “because he wants always to be the first to salute you, and because he barks so loud that we cannot possibly for some time hear what our dear mamma has to say.”

“And then, in the street, he is so wicked and troublesome,” cried Hortense, with eagerness, “and he always begins quarrelling and fighting with every dog which passes by, and we must stand there and wait for him when we are so anxious to see our dear mamma.”

“For all these reasons,” resumed Madame Lanoy, with slow, solemn intonation, “for all these reasons we have thought it necessary to chain Fortune and to tighten up his collar.”

“And you have done quite well, citizeness,” growled the turnkey, “for I had already thought of silencing forever the abominable lapdog if he again barked at me so.”

Josephine said nothing, but the peculiar smile she had noticed on her children’s face had passed, at the words of Madame Lanoy, over Josephine’s radiant countenance, and she now with her pet names called Fortune to her, to press him to her heart, to pat him, and by all these caresses to make amends for his having his collar somewhat tightened.

But whilst thus petting him, and tenderly smoothing down his sleek fur, her slim fingers quickly and cautiously passed under the wide collar of Fortune. Then her eyes were rapidly directed toward the jailer. He was engaged in animated conversation with Madame Lanoy, who knew how to make him talk, by inquiring after the health of his little sick daughter.

A second time Josephine’s fingers were passed under Fortune’s collar—for she had well understood the words of Madame Lanoy—with a woman’s keen instinct she understood why Fortune’s collar had been drawn closer about him. She had felt the thin, closely-folded paper, which was tied up with the string in the dog’s collar, and she drew it out rapidly, adroitly to hide it in her hand. She then called Hortense and Eugene, and whilst she talked with them, she slowly and carefully, under pretext of adjusting more closely the kerchief round her neck, secreted the paper in her bosom.

The jailer had seen nothing; he was telling Madame Lanoy, with all the pride of a kind father, that all the prisoners were anxious about his little Eugenie; that all, more than once a day, inquired how it fared with the little one; that she was the pet of the prisoners, who were so delighted to have the child with them, and for long hours to jest and play with her. Unfortunate captives, who nattered the child, and feigned love for it, so as to move the father’s heart, and instil into it a little compassion for their misfortune!

When Eugene and Hortense came the next time with their faithful Lanoy, Fortune was again led by the string as a prisoner, and this time Josephine was still more affectionate than before. She not only welcomed him at his entrance, and lifted him up in her arms, but she was yet, if possible, more affectionate toward him at the time of departure, and embraced him, and tried if the collar had not been buckled on too tightly, if the string which was tied round it did not hurt him too much. And whilst she examined this, Eugene was telling the jailer that he was now a worthy apprentice of a cabinet-maker, and that he hoped one day to be a useful citizen of the republic. The jailer was listening to him with a complacent smile, and had no suspicion that at this moment Josephine’s cunning fingers were making sure with the string under the collar the note in which she gave an answer to the other note that she had before found under the collar of Fortune. [Footnote: “Souvenirs d’un Sexagenaire,” par M.L. Arnould, vol. iii., p. 3.]

From this day, Josephine knew every thing of importance in Paris; from this time she could point out to her children the means to pursue so as to win to their parents influential and powerful friends, so that they might one day be delivered from their captivity. Fortune was love’s messenger between Josephine and her children; a beam of happiness had penetrated both cells, where lived Alexandre de Beauharnais and Josephine, and they owed this gleam only to the lapdog mail.

CHAPTER XIV. IN PRISON.

Since France had become a democratic republic, since the differences in rank were abolished, and liberty, equality, and fraternity alone prevailed, the aristocracy was either beyond the frontiers of France or else in the prisons. Outside of the prison were but citoyens and citoyennes; inside of the prison were yet dukes and duchesses, counts and countesses, viscounts and viscountesses; there, behind locks and bars, the aristocracy was represented in its most glorious and high-sounding names.

And there also, within these walls, was the proud, strict dame, whom Marie Antoinette had once, to her misfortune, driven away from the Tuileries, and who had not been permitted to possess a single foot of ground in all France—there, within the prison with the aristocrats, lived also Madame Etiquette. She had to leave the Tuileries with the nobility, and with the nobility she had entered into the prisons of the Conciergerie and of the Carmelite Convent. There she ruled with the same authority and with the same gravity as once in happier days she had done in the king’s palace.

The republic had mixed together the prisoners without any distinction, and in the hall, where every morning they gathered together to attend to the roll-call of the condemned who were to report for the guillotine; in the narrow rooms and cells, where they passed the rest of the day, the republic had made no distinction between all these inmates of the prison, dukes and simple knights, duchesses and baronesses, princesses of the blood and country nobility of inferior degree. But etiquette was there to remedy this unseemliness of fate and to re-establish the natural order of things—etiquette, which had enacted rules and laws for the halls of kings, enforced them also in the halls of prisons. Only for the ladies of the most ancient nobility, the duchesses and princesses of the blood, in the prison-rooms, as once in the king’s halls, the small stool (tabouret) was reserved, and they were privileged to occupy the rush-bottomed seats which were in the prisons, and which now replaced the tabouret. No lady of inferior rank would consent to sit down in their presence unless these ladies of superior rank had expressly requested and entitled their inferior companions of misfortune to do so. When, at the appointed hour, the halls were abandoned for the general promenade in the yards of the Conciergerie, or in the small cloistered gardens of the Carmelites, this recreation was preceded by a ceremony which shortened its already short hour by at least ten minutes: the ladies and the gentlemen, according to their order, rank, and nobility, placed themselves in two rows on either side of the outer door, and between them passed on first in ceremonial order of rank, as at a court-festival, the ladies and gentlemen who at court were entitled to the high and small levees, as well as to the tabouret, and to the kissing of the queen’s hand. As they passed, each bowed low, and then, with the same due observance of rank, as was customary at court, the ladies and gentlemen of inferior titles followed two by two, when the higher nobility had passed. [Footnote: “Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequi,” vol. v].

It was yet the court-society which was assembled here in the rooms and cells of the prison; only this court-society, this aristocracy, had no more King Louis to do homage unto, but they served another king, they bowed low before another queen! This king to whom the nobility of France belonged was Death; this queen to which proud heads bowed low was the Guillotine!

It was King Death who now summoned the aristocrats to his court; the scaffold was the hall of festivity where solemn homage was made to this king. It would therefore have been against all etiquette to crowd into this hall of festivity with beclouded countenance; this would have diminished the respect due to King Death, if he had not been approached with full-court ceremonial, and with the serene, easy smile of a courtier. To die, to meet death was now a distinction, an honor for which each almost envied the other. When at ten o’clock in the morning the gathering took place in the large room, the conversation was of the most cheerful and unaffected easiness; they joked, they laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death’s harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison’s gate to drive them to the guillotine.

While the jailer read his list, suspense and excitement were visible on all faces, but no one would have so deeply lowered himself as to betray fear or anguish when his name fell from the lips of the jailer. The smile remained on the lip, friends and acquaintances were bidden farewell with a cheerful salutation, and with easy, unaffected demeanor they quitted the hall to mount the fatal vehicle.

To die gracefully was now considered as much bon ton as it had been once fashionable gracefully to enter the ballroom and do obeisance to the king; contempt and scorn would have followed him who might have exhibited a sorrowful mien, hesitation, or fear.

One morning the jailer had read his list, and sixteen gentlemen and ladies of the aristocracy had consequently to leave the hall of the Conciergerie to enter both wagons now ready at the gate. As they were starting for the fatal journey a second turnkey appeared, to say that through some accident only one of the wagons was ready, and that consequently only eight of the sentenced ones could be driven to the guillotine. This meant that the accident nullified eight death-warrants and saved the lives of eight sentenced persons. For it was not probable that these eight persons would next morning be honored with an execution. Their warrants were signed, their names had been called; neither the tribunal of the revolution nor the jailer could pay special attention whether their heads had fallen or not. The next day would bring on new condemnations, new lists, new distinctions for the wagons, new heads for the guillotine. Whoever, on the day appointed for the execution, missed the guillotine, could safely reckon that his life was saved; that henceforth he was amongst the forgotten ones, of whom a great number filled the prisons, and who expected their freedom through some favorable accident.

To-day, therefore, only eight of the sixteen condemned were to mount the wagon. But who were to be the favored ones? The two turnkeys, with cold indifference, left the choice to the condemned. Only eight could be accommodated in the wagon, they said, and it was the same who went or who remained. “Make your choice!”

A strife arose among the sixteen condemned ones—not as to who might remain behind, but as to those who might mount into the wagon.

The ladies declared that, according to the rules of common politeness, which allowed ladies to go first, the choice belonged to them; the gentlemen objected to this motion of the ladies on the plea that to reach the guillotine steps had to be ascended, and as etiquette required that in going up-stairs the gentlemen should always precede the ladies, they were also now entitled to go first and to mount the steps of the scaffold before the ladies. At last all had to give way to the claims of the Duchess de Grammont, who declared that at this festival as at every other the order of rank was to be observed, and that she, as well as all the gentlemen and ladies of superior rank, had the undisputed privilege now, as at all other celebrations, to take the precedency.

No one ventured to oppose this decision, and the Duchess de Grammont, proud of the victory won, was the first to leave the room and mount the wagon.

Another time the turnkey began to read the list: every one listened with grave attention, and at every call a clear, cheerful “Here I am!” followed.

But after the jailer, with wearied voice, had many times repeated a name from his list, the accustomed answer failed. No one came forward, no one seemed to be there to lay claim to that name and to the execution. The jailer stopped a few minutes, and as all were dumb, he continued, indifferent and unmoved, to call out the names.

“We will then have only fifteen heads to deliver to-day,” said he, after reading the list, “for there must have been a mistake. One of the names is false, or else the person to whom it belongs has already been delivered.”

“It is probably but a blunder of the pen!” exclaimed a handsome young man who, smiling, stepped out of the crowd of listeners and passed on to the side where the victims stood. “You read Chapetolle. There is no such name here. The hand of the writer was probably tired of writing the numerous lists of those who are sentenced to death, and he has therefore written the letters wrong. My name is Chapelotte, and I am the one meant by Chapetolle.”

“I do not know,” said the jailer, “but it is certain that sixteen sentenced ones ought to go into the wagons, and that only fifteen have reported themselves in a legal way.”

“Well, then, add me in an illegal manner to your fifteen,” said the young man, smiling. “Without doubt it is my name they intended to write. I do not wish to save my life through a blunder in writing, and who knows if another time I may find such good company as to-day in your chariot? Allow me then to journey on with my friends.”

The jailer had no reason to refuse him this journey, and he had the satisfaction besides of being thus able to deliver sixteen sentenced prisoners to the guillotine.

Such was the society of the aristocrats, among whom Josephine lived the long, dreary days of her imprisonment. The cell she occupied was shared by two companions of misfortune, the Duchess de Aguillon and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who afterward became Madame Tallien, so distinguished and renowned for her beauty and wit. Therese de Fontenay knew, and every one knew, that she was already sentenced, even if her sentence was not yet written down and countersigned. It was recorded in the heart of Robespierre. He had sentenced her, without any concealment. She had but a few weeks more to endure the martyrdom, the anguish of hope and of expectation. She was his secure victim; Robespierre needed not hasten the fall of this beautiful head, which was the admiration of all who saw it. This beauty was the very crime which Robespierre wanted to punish, for with this beauty, Therese de Fontenay, who then resided in Bordeaux with her husband, had captivated the old friend and associate in sentiments of Robespierre, the fanatical Tallien; with this beauty she had converted the man of blood and terror into a soft, compassionate being, inclined to pardon and to mercy toward his fellow-beings.

Tallien had been sent as commissionnaire from the Convention to Bordeaux, and there with inexorable severity he had raged against the unfortunate merchants, from whom he exacted enormous assessments, and whom he sentenced to the guillotine if they refused, or were unable to pay. But suddenly love changed the bloodthirsty tiger into a sensitive being, and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who had become acquainted with Tallien in the prison of Bordeaux, had worked a complete change in his whole being. For the first time this man, who unmoved had condemned to death King Louis and the Girondists, found on his lips the word “pardon;” for the first time the hand which had signed so many death-warrants wrote the order to let a prisoner go free.

This prisoner was Therese de Fontenay, the daughter of the Spanish banker Cabarrus, and she rewarded him for the gift of her life with a smile which forever made him her captive. From this time the death-warrants were converted into pardons from his lips, and for every pardon Therese thanked him with a sweet smile, with a glowing look of love.

But this leniency was looked upon as criminal by the tribunal of terror in Paris. They recalled the culprit who dared pardon instead of punishing; and if Robespierre did not think himself powerful enough to send Tallien as a traitor and as an apostate to the scaffold, he punished him for his leniency by separating from him Therese de Fontenay, who had abandoned the husband forced upon her, and who had followed Tallien to Paris, and Robespierre had sent her to prison.

There, at the Carmelites’, was Therese de Fontenay; she occupied the same cell as Josephine; the same misfortune had made them companions and friends. They communicated one to the other their hopes and fears; and when Josephine, with tears in her eyes, spoke to her friend of her children, of her deep anguish, for they were alone and abandoned in the world outside of the prison walls, whilst their unfortunate pitiable mother languished in prison, Therese comforted and encouraged her.

“So long as one lives there is hope,” said Therese, with her enchanting smile. “Myself, who in the eyes of you all am sentenced to death, hope—no, I hope not—I am convinced that I will soon obtain my freedom. And I swear that, as soon as I am free, I will stir heaven and earth to procure the liberty of my dear friend Josephine and of her husband the Viscount de Beauharnais, and to give back to the poor orphaned children their parents.”

Josephine answered with an incredulous smile, and a shrugging of the shoulders; and then Therese’s very expressive countenance glowed, and her large, black eyes flashed deeper gleams.

“You have no faith in me, Josephine,” she said, vehemently; “but I repeat to you, I will soon obtain my freedom, and then I will procure your liberty and that of your husband.”

“But how will you obtain that?” asked Josephine, shaking her head.

“I will ruin Robespierre,” said Therese, gravely.

“In what do your means of ruining him consist?”

“In this letter here,” said Therese, as she drew out of her bosom a small paper folded up. “See, this sheet of paper; it consists but of a few lines which, since they would not furnish me with writing-materials, I have written with my blood on this sheet of paper, which I found yesterday in the garden during the promenade. The turnkey will give this letter to-day to Tallien. He has given me his word, and I have promised him that Tallien will recompense him magnificently for it. This letter will ruin Robespierre and make me free, and then I will procure the freedom of the Viscount and of the Viscountess de Beauharnais.”

“What then, in that letter is the magic word which is to work out such wonders?”

Therese handed the paper to her friend.

“Read,” said she, smiling.

Josephine read: “Therese of Fontenay to the citizen Tallien. Either in eight days I am free and the wife of my deliverer, the noble and brave Tallien, who will have freed the world from the monster Robespierre, or else, in eight days, I mount the scaffold; and my last thought will be a curse for the cowardly, heartless man who has not had the courage to risk his life for her he loved, and who suffers for his sake, for his sake meets death—who had not the mind to consider that with daring deed he must destroy the bloodthirsty fiend or be ruined by him. Therese de Fontenay will ever love her Tallien if he delivers her; she will hate him, even in death, if he sacrifices her to Robespierre’s blood-greediness!”

“If, through mishap, Robespierre should receive this letter, then you and Tallien are lost,” sighed Josephine.

“But Tallien, and not Robespierre, will receive it, and I am saved,” exclaimed Therese. “Therefore, my friend, take courage and be bold. Wait but eight days patiently. Let us wait and hope.”

“Yes, let us wait and hope,” sighed Josephine. “Hope and patience are the only companions of the captive.”

CHAPTER XV. DELIVERANCE.

Meanwhile the patience of the unfortunate prisoners of the Carmelite convent were to be subjected to a severe trial; and the very next day after this conversation with Therese de Fontenay, Josephine believed that there was no more hope for her, that she was irrevocably lost, as her husband was lost. For three days she had not seen the viscount, nor received any news from him. Only a vague report had reached her that the viscount was no longer in the Carmelite convent, but that he had been transferred to the Conciergerie.

This report told the truth. Alexandre de Beauharnais had once more been denounced, and this second accusation was his sentence of death. For some time past the fanatical Jacobins had invented a new means to find guilty ones for the guillotine, and to keep the veins bleeding, so as to restore France to health. They sent emissaries into the prisons to instigate conspiracies among the prisoners, and to find out men wretched enough to purchase their life by accusing their prison companions, and by delivering them over to the executioner’s axe. Such a spy had been sent into that portion of the prison where Beauharnais was, and he had begun his horrible work, for he had kindled discord and strife among the prisoners, and had won a few to his sinister projects. But Beauharnais’s keen eye had discovered the traitor, and he had loudly and openly denounced him to his fellow-prisoners. The next day, the spy disappeared from the prison, but as he went he swore bloody vengeance on General de Beauharnais. [Footnote: “Memoires du Comte de Lavalette,” vol. i., p. 175.]

And he kept his word; the next morning De Beauharnais was summoned for trial, and the gloomy, hateful faces of his judges, their hostile questions and reproaches, the capital crimes they accused him of, led him to conclude that his death was decided upon, and that he was doomed to the guillotine.

In the night which followed his trial, Alexandre de Beauharnais wrote to his wife a letter, in which he communicated to her his sad forebodings, and bade her farewell for this life. The next day he was transferred to the Conciergerie—that is to say, into the vestibule of the scaffold.

This letter of her husband, received by Josephine the next day after her conversation with Therese de Fontenay, ran thus:

“The fourth Thermidor, in the second year of the republic. All the signs of a kind of trial, to which I and other prisoners have been subjected this day, tell me that I am the victim of the treacherous calumny of a few aristocrats, patriots so called, of this house. The mere conjecture that this hellish machination will follow me to the tribunal of the revolution gives me no hope to see you again, my friend, no more to embrace you or our children. I speak not of my sorrow: my tender solicitude for you, the heartfelt affection which unites me to you, cannot leave you in doubt of the sentiments with which I leave this life.

“I am also sorry to have to part with my country, which I love, for which I would a thousand times have laid down my life, and which I no more can serve, but which beholds me now quit her bosom, since she considers me to be a bad citizen. This heart-rending thought does not allow me to commend my memory to you; labor, then, to make it pure in proving that a life which has been devoted to the service of the country, and to the triumph of liberty and equality, must punish that abominable slanderer, especially when he comes from a suspicious class of men. But this labor must be postponed; for in the storms of revolution, a great people, struggling to reduce its chains to dust, must of necessity surround itself with suspicion, and be more afraid to forget a guilty man than to put an innocent one to death.

“I will die with that calmness which allows man to feel emotion at the thought of his dearest inclinations—I will die with that courage which is the distinctive feature of a free man, of a clear conscience, of an exalted soul, whose highest wishes are the prosperity and growth of the republic.

“Farewell, my friend; gather consolation from my children; derive comfort in educating them, in teaching them that, by their virtues and their devotion to their country, they obliterate the memory of my execution, and recall to national gratitude my services and my claims. Farewell to those I love: you know them! Be their consolation, and through your solicitude for them prolong my life in their hearts! Farewell! for the last time in this life I press you and my children to my heart!—ALEXANDRE BEAUHARNAIS.”

Josephine had read this letter with a thousand tears, but she hoped still; she believed still in the possibility that the gloomy forebodings of her husband would not be realized; that some fortunate circumstance would save him or at least retard his death.

But this hope was not to be fulfilled. A few hours after receiving this letter the turnkey brought to the prisoners the bulletin of the executions of the preceding day. It was that day Josephine’s turn to read this bulletin to her companions. She therefore began her sad task; and, as slowly and thoughtfully she let fall name after name from her lips, here and there the faces of her hearers were blanched, and their eyes filled with tears.

Suddenly Josephine uttered a piercing cry, and sprang up with the movement of madness toward the door, shook it in her deathly sorrow, as if her life hung upon the opening of that door, and then she sank down fainting.

Unfortunate Josephine! she had seen in the list of those who had been executed the name of General Beauharnais, and in the first excitement of horror she wanted to rush out to see him, or at least to give to his body the parting kiss.

On the sixth Thermidor, in the year II., that is, on the 24th of July, 1794, fell on the scaffold the head of the General Viscount de Beauharnais. With quiet, composed coolness he had ascended the scaffold, and his last cry, as he laid his head on the block, was, “Long live the republic!”

In the wagon which drove him to the scaffold, he had found again a friend, the Prince de Salm-Kirbourg, who was now on his way to the guillotine, and who had risked his life in bringing back to Paris the children of Josephine.

His bloodthirsty enemies had not enough of the head of General Beauharnais; his wife’s head also should fall, and the name of the traitor of his country was to be extinguished forever.

Two days after the execution of her husband, the turnkey brought to Josephine the writ of her accusation, and the summons to appear before the tribunal of the revolution—a summons which then had all the significancy of a death-warrant.

Josephine heard the summons of the jailer with a quiet, easy smile; she had not even a look for the fatal paper which lay on her bed. Near this bed stood the physician, whom the compassionate republic, which would not leave its prisoners to die on a sick-bed, but only on the scaffold, had sent to Josephine to inquire into her illness and afford her relief.

With indignation he eagerly snatched the paper from the bed, and, returning it back to the jailer, exclaimed: “Tell the tribunal of the revolution that it has nothing more to do with this woman! Disease will bring on justice here, and leave nothing to do for the guillotine. In eight days Citoyenne Beauharnais is dead!” [Footnote: Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. i., p. 235.]

This decision of the physician was transmitted to the tribunal, which resolved that the trial of Madame Beauharnais would be postponed for eight days, and that the tribunal would wait and see if truly death would save her from the guillotine.

Meanwhile, during these eight days, events were to pass which were to give a very different form to the state of things, and impart to the young republic a new, unexpected attitude.

Robespierre ruled yet, he was the feared dictator of France! But Tallien had received the note of his beautiful, fondly-loved Therese, and he swore to himself that she should not ascend the scaffold, that she should not curse him, that he would possess her, that he would win her love, and destroy the fiend who stood in the way of his happiness, whose blood-streaming hands were every day ready to sign her death-warrant.

On the very same day in which he received the letter of Therese, he conversed with a few trusty friends, men whom he knew detested Robespierre as much as himself, and who all longed for an occasion to destroy him. They planned a scheme of attack against the dictator who imperilled the life of all, and from whom it was consequently necessary to take away life and power, so as to be sure of one’s life. It was decided to launch an accusation against him before the whole Convention, to incriminate him as striving after dominion, as desirous of breaking the republic with his bloody hands, and ambitious to exalt himself into dictator and sovereign. Tallien undertook to fulminate this accusation against him, and they all agreed to wait yet a few days so as to gain amongst the deputies in the Convention some members who would support the accusation and give countenance to the conspirators. On the ninth Thermidor this scheme was to be carried out; on the ninth Thermidor, Tallien was to thunder forth the accusation against Robespierre and move his punishment!

This enterprise, however, seemed a folly, an impossibility, for at this time Robespierre was at the height of his power, and fear weighed upon the whole republic as a universal agony. No one dared oppose Robespierre, for a look from his eye, a sign from his hand sufficed to bring death, to lead to the scaffold.

The calm, peaceful, and united republic for which Robespierre had toiled, which had been the ultimate end of his bloodthirstiness, was at last there, but this republic was built upon corpses, was baptized with streams of blood and tears. And now that the republic had given up all opposition, now that she bowed, trembling under the hand of her conqueror, now, Robespierre wanted to make her happy, he wanted to give her what the storms of past years had ravished from her—he wanted to give the republic a God! On the tribune of the Convention, on this tribune which was his throne, rose Robespierre, to tell with grave dignity to the republic that there was a Supreme Being, that the soul of man was immortal. Then, accompanied by the Convention, he proceeded to the Champ de Mars, to inaugurate the celebration of the worship of a Supreme Being as his high-priest. But amid this triumph, on his way to the Champ de Mars, Robespierre the conqueror had for the first time noticed the murmurs of the Tarpeian rock; he had noticed the dark, threatening glances which were directed at him from all sides. He felt the danger which menaced him, and he was determined to remove it from his person by annihilating those who threatened.

But already terror had lost its power, no one trembled before the guillotine, no one took pleasure in the fall of the axe, in the streams of blood, which empurpled the Place de la Revolution. The fearful stillness of death hung round the guillotine, the people were tired of applauding it, and now and then from the silent ranks of the people thundered forth in threatening accents the word “tyrant!” which, as the first weapon of attack, was directed against Robespierre, who, on the heights of the tribune, was throned with his unmoved, calm countenance.

Robespierre felt that he must strike a heavy, decisive blow against his foes and annihilate them. On the eighth Thermidor, he denounced a plot organized by his enemies for breaking up the Convention. Through St. Just he implicated as leaders of this conspiracy some eminent members of the committees, and requested their dismissal. But the time was past when his motions were received with jubilant acclamations, and unconditionally obeyed. The Convention decided to submit the motion of Robespierre to a vote, and the matter was postponed to the next morning’s session.

In the night which preceded the contemplated action of the Convention, Robespierre went to the Jacobin Club and requested assistance against his enemies in the Convention. He was received with enthusiasm, and a general uprising of the revolutionary element was decided upon, and organized for the following morning.

The same night, Tallien, his friends and adherents, met together, and the mode of attack for the following day, the ninth Thermidor, was discussed, and the parts assigned to each.

The prisoners in the Carmelite convent did not of course suspect any thing of the events which were preparing beyond the walls of their prison. Even Therese de Fontenay was low-spirited and sad; for this day, the ninth Thermidor, was the last day of respite fixed by her to Tallien for her liberty.

This was also the last day of respite which had saved Josephine from the tribunal of the revolution, through the decision of her physician. Death had spared her head, but now it belonged to the executioner. The captives feared the event, and they were confirmed in this fear by the jailer, who, on the morning of the ninth Thermidor, entered the room which Josephine, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and Therese de Fontenay occupied, and who removed the camp-bed which Josephine had hitherto used as a sofa, to give it to another prisoner.

“How,” exclaimed the Duchess d’Aiguillon, “do you want to give this bed to another prisoner? Is Madame de Beauharnais to have a better one?”

The turnkey burst into a coarse laugh. “Alas! no,” said he, with a significant gesture, “Citoyenne Beauharnais will soon need a bed no more.”

Her friends broke into tears; but Josephine remained composed and quite. At this decisive moment a fearful self-possession and calmness came over her; all sufferings and sorrow appeared to have sunk away, all anxiety and care seemed overcome, and a radiant smile illumined Josephine’s features, for, through a wondrous association of ideas, she suddenly remembered the prophecy of the negro-woman in Martinique.

“Be calm, my friends,” said she, smiling; “weep not, do not consider me as destined to the scaffold, for I assure you I am going to live: I must not die, for I am destined to be one day the sovereign of France. Therefore, no more tears! I am the future Queen of France!”

“Ah!” exclaimed the Duchess d’Aiguillon, half angry and half sad, “why not at once appoint your state dignitaries?”

“You are right,” said Josephine, eagerly; “this is the best time to do so. Well, then, my dear duchess, I now appoint you to be my maid of honor, and I swear it will be so.”

“My God! she is mad!” exclaimed the duchess, and, nearly fainting, she sank upon her chair.

Josephine laughed, and opened the window to admit some fresh air. She perceived there below in the street a woman making to her all manner of signs and gestures. She lifted up her arms, she then took hold of her dress, and with her hand pointed to her robe.

It was evident that she wished through these signs and motions to convey some word to the prisoners, whom perhaps she knew, for she repeatedly took hold of her robe with one hand, and pointed at it with the other.

“Robe?” cried out Josephine interrogatively.

The woman nodded in the affirmative, then took up a stone, which she held up to the prisoner’s view.

“Pierre?” ask Josephine.

The woman again nodded in the affirmative, and then placed the stone (pierre) in her robe, made several times the motion of falling, then of cutting off the neck, and then danced and clapped her hands.

“My friends,” cried Josephine, struck with a sudden thought, “this woman brings us good news, she tells us Robespierre est tombe.” (Robespierre has fallen.)

“Yes, it is so,” exclaimed Therese, triumphantly; “Tallien has kept his word; he conquers, and Robespierre is thrust down!”

And, overpowered with joy and emotion, the three women, weeping, sank into each other’s arms.

They now heard from without loud cries and shouts. It was the jailer, quarrelling with his refractory dog. The dog howled, and wanted to go out with his master, but the jailer kicked him back, saying: “Away, go to the accursed Robespierre!”

Soon joyous voices resounded through the corridor; the door of their cell was violently opened, and a few municipal officers entered to announce to the Citizeness Madame Fontenay that she was free, and bade her accompany them into the carriage waiting below to drive her to the house of Citizen Tallien. Behind them pressed the prisoners who, from the reception-room, had followed the authorities, to entreat them to give them the news of the events in Paris.

There was now no reason for the municipal authorities to make a secret of the events which at this hour occupied all Paris, and which would soon be welcomed throughout France as the morning dawn of a new day.

Robespierre had indeed fallen! Tallien and his friends had in the Convention brought against the despot the accusation that he was striving for the sovereign power, and that he had enthroned a Supreme Being merely to proclaim himself afterward His visible representative, and to take all power in his own hands. When Robespierre had endeavored to justify himself, he had been dragged away from the speaker’s tribune; and, as he defended himself, Tallien had drawn a dagger on Robespierre, and was prevented from killing the tyrant by a few friends, who by main force turned the dagger away. Immediately after this scene, the Convention decided to arrest Robespierre and his friends Couthon and St. Just; and the prisoners, among whom Robespierre’s younger brother had willingly placed himself, were led away to the Luxemburg. [Footnote: The next day, on the tenth Thermidor, Robespierre, who in the night had attempted to put an end to his life with a pistol, was executed with twenty-one companions. His brother was among the number of the executed.]

The prisoners welcomed this news with delight; for with the fall of Robespierre, had probably sounded for them the hour of deliverance, and they could hope that their prison’s door would soon be opened, not to be led to the scaffold, but to obtain their freedom.

Therese de Fontenay, with the messengers sent by Tallien, left the Carmelite cloisters to fulfil the promise made by her to Tallien in her letter, to become his wife, and to pass at his side new days of happiness and love.

She embraced Josephine tenderly as she bade her farewell, and renewed to her the assurance that she would consider it her dearest and most sacred duty to obtain her friend’s liberty.

In the evening of the same day, Josephine’s camp-bed was restored to her; and, stretching herself upon it with intense delight, she said smilingly to her friends: “You see, I am not yet guillotined; I will be Queen of France.” [Footnote: “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine,” ch. xxxiii.]

Therese de Fontenay, now Citoyenne Tallien, kept her word. Three days after obtaining her liberty, she came herself to fetch Josephine out of prison. Her soft, mild disposition had resumed its old spell over Tallien, whom the Convention had appointed president of the Committee of Safety. The death-warrants signed by Robespierre were annulled, and the prisons were opened, to restore to hundreds of accused life and liberty. The bloody and tearful episode of the revolution had closed with the fall of Robespierre, and on the ninth Thermidor the republic assumed a new phase.

Josephine was free once more! With tears of bliss she embraced her two children, her dear darlings, found again! In pressing her offspring to her heart with deep, holy emotion, she thought of their father, who had loved them both so much, who had committed to her the sacred trust of keeping alive in the hearts of his children love for their father.

Encircling still her children in her arms, she bowed them on their knees; and, lifting up to heaven her eyes, moist with tears, she whispered to them: “Let us pray, children; let us lift up our thoughts to heaven, where your father is, and whence he looks down upon us to bless his children.”

Josephine delayed not much longer in Paris, where the air was yet damp with the blood of so many murdered ones; where the guillotine, on which her husband had died, lifted yet its threatening head. She hastened with her children to Fontainebleau, there to rest from her sorrows on the heart of her father-in-law, to weep with him on the loss they both had suffered.

The dream of her first youth and of her first love had passed away, and to the father of her beheaded husband Josephine returned a widow; rich in gloomy, painful experiences, poor in hopes, but with a stout heart, and a determination to live, and to be at once a father and a mother to her children.

BOOK II. THE WIFE OF GENERAL BONAPARTE.

CHAPTER XVI. BONAPARTE IN CORSICA.

The civil war which for four years had devastated France had also with its destruction and its terrors overspread the French colonies, and in Martinique as well as in Corsica two parties stood opposed to each other in infuriated bitterness—one fighting for the rights of the native land, the other for the rights of the French people, for the “liberty, equality, and fraternity” which the Convention in Paris had adopted for its motto, since it delivered to the guillotine, on the Place de la Revolution, the heads of those who dared lay claim for themselves to this liberty of thought so solemnly proclaimed.

In Corsica both parties fought with the same eagerness as in France, and the execution of Louis XVI. had only made the contest more violent and more bitter.

One of these parties looked with horror on this guillotine which had drunk the blood of the king, and this party desired to have nothing in common with this French republic, with this blood-streaming Convention which had made of terror a law, and which had destroyed so many lives in the name of liberty.

At the head of this party stood the General Pascal Paoli, whom the revolution had recalled to his native isle from his exile of twenty years, and who objected that Corsica should bend obediently under the blood-stained hand of the French Convention, and whose wish it was that the isle should be an independent province of the great French republic.

To exalt Corsica into a free, independent republic had been the idea of his whole life. For the sake of this idea he had passed twenty years in exile; for, after having made Corsica independent of Genoa, he had not been able to obtain for his native isle that independence for which he had fought with his brave Genoese troops. During eight years he had perseveringly maintained the conflict—during eight years he had been the ruler of Corsica, but immovable in his republican principles; he had rejected the title of king, which the Corsican people, grateful for the services rendered to their fatherland, had offered him. He had been satisfied to be the first and most zealous servant of the island, which, through his efforts, had been liberated from the tyrannical dominion of Genoa. But Genoa’s appeal for assistance had brought French troops to Corsica; the Genoese, harassed and defeated everywhere by Paoli’s brave troops, had finally transferred the island to France. This was not what Paoli wanted—this was not for what he had fought!

Corsica was to be a free and independent republic; she was to bow no more to France than to Genoa; Corsica was to be free.

In vain did the French government make to General Paoli the most brilliant offers; he rejected them; he called the Corsicans to the most energetic resistance to the French occupation; and when he saw that opposition was in vain, that Corsica had to submit, he at least would not yield, and he went to England.

The cry for liberty which, in the year 1790, resounded from France, and which made the whole world tremble, brought him back from England to Corsica, and he took the oath of allegiance to free, democratic France. But the blood of the king had annulled this oath, the Convention’s reign of terror had filled his soul with horror; and, after solemnly separating himself from France, he had, in the year 1793, convoked a Consulta, to decide whether Corsica was to submit to the despotism of the French republic, or if it was to be a free and independent state. The Consulta chose the latter position, and named Paoli for president as well as for general-in-chief of the Corsicans.

The National Convention at once called the culprit to its bar, and ordered him to Paris to justify his conduct, or to receive the punishment due. But General Paoli paid no attention to the imperious orders of the Convention, which, as the chief appeared not at its bar, declared him, on the 15th of May, 1793, a traitor to his country, and sent commissioners to Corsica to arrest the criminal.

This traitor to the state, the General Pascal Paoli, was then at the head of the Moderate party in Corsica, and he loudly and solemnly declared that, in case of absolute necessity, it would be preferable to call England to their assistance than to accept the yoke of the French republic, which had desecrated her liberty, since she had soiled it with the blood of so many innocent victims.

But in opposition to General Paoli rose up with wild clamor the other party, the party of young, enthusiastic heads, who were intoxicated with the democratic ideas which had obtained the sway in France, and which they imagined, so great was their impassioned devotedness to them, possessed the power and the ability to conquer the whole world.

At the head of this second party, which claimed unconditional adherence to France, to the members of the Convention—at the head of this fanatical, Corsican, republican, and Jacobin party, stood the Bonaparte family, and above them all the two brothers Joseph and Napoleon.

Joseph was now, in the year 1793, chief justice of the tribunal of Ajaccio; Napoleon, who was captain of artillery in the French army of Italy, had then obtained leave of absence to visit his family. Both brothers had been hitherto the most affectionate and intimate admirers of Paoli, and especially Napoleon, who, from his earliest childhood, had cherished the most unbounded admiration for the patriot who preferred exile to a dependent grandeur in Corsica. Even now, since Paoli’s return to Corsica, and Napoleon had had many opportunities to see him, his admiration for the great chief had lost nothing of its force or vitality. Paoli seemed sincerely to return this inclination of Napoleon and of his brother, and in the long evening walks, which both brothers made with him, Napoleon’s mind opened itself, before his old, experienced companion, the great general, the noble republican, with a freedom and a candor such as he had never manifested to others. With subdued admiration Paoli listened to his short, energetic explanations, to his descriptions, to his war-schemes, to his warm enthusiasm for the republic; and one day, carried away by the warmth of the young captain of artillery, the general, fixing his glowing eyes upon him, exclaimed: “Young man, you are modelled after the antique; you belong to Plutarch!”

“And to General Paoli!” replied Napoleon, eagerly, as he pressed his friend’s hand affectionately in his own.

But now this harmonious concord between General Paoli and the young men was destroyed by the passion of party views. Joseph as well as Napoleon belonged to the French party; they soon became its leaders; they were at the head of the club which they had organized according to the maxims and principles of the Jacobin Club in Paris, and to which they gave the same name.

In this Jacobin Club at Ajaccio Napoleon made speeches full of glowing enthusiasm for the French republic, for the ideas of freedom; in this club he enjoined on the people of Corsica to adhere loyally to France, to keep fast and to defend with life and blood the acquired liberty of republican France, to regard and drive away as traitors to their country all those who dared guide the Corsican people on another track.

But the Corsican people were not there to hear the enthusiastic speeches about liberty and to follow them. Only a few hundred ardent republicans of the same sentiment applauded the republican Napoleon, and cried aloud that the republic must be defended with blood and life. The majority of the Corsican people flocked to Paoli, and the commissioners sent by the Convention from Paris to Corsica, to depose and arrest Paoli, found co-operation and assistance only among the inhabitants of the cities and among the French troops. Paoli, the president of the Consulta, was located at Corte; the messengers of the Convention gathered in Bastia the adherents of France, and excited them to strenuous efforts against the rebellious Consulta and the insurgent Paoli. Civil war with all its horrors was there; the raging conflicts of the parties tore apart the holy bonds of family, friendship, and love. Brother fought and argued against brother, friend rose up against friend, and whole families were destroyed, rent asunder by the impassioned rivalries of sentiment and partisanship. Denunciations and accusations, suspicions and enmities, followed. Every one trembled at his own shadow; and, to turn aside the peril of death, it was necessary to strike. [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 51.]

The Bonaparte brothers opposed General Paoli with violent bitterness; bloody conflicts took place, in which the national Corsican party remained victorious. Irritated and embittered by the opposition which some of the natives themselves were making to his patriotic efforts, Paoli persecuted with zealous activity the conquered, whom he resolved to destroy, that they might not imperil the young Corsican independence. Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte were the leaders of this party, and Paoli knew too well the energy and the intellectual superiority of Napoleon not to dread his influence. Him, above all things, him and his family, must he render harmless, so as to weaken and to intimidate the French party. He sent agents to Ajaccio, to arrest the whole Bonaparte family, and at the same time his troops approached the town to occupy it and make the French commissioners prisoners. But these latter, informed in time of the danger, had gained time and saved themselves on board the French frigate lying in the harbor, and with them the whole Bonaparte family had embarked. Napoleon, on whom the attention of Paoli’s agents had been specially directed, was more than once in danger of being seized by them, and it was due to the advice of a friend that, disguised as a sailor, he saved himself in time on board the French frigate and joined his family. [Footnote: “Memoires de la Duchess d’Abrantes,” vol. i.] The commissioners of the Convention at once ordered the anchor to be weighed, and to steer toward France.

This frigate, on board of which the Bonaparte family in its flight had embarked, carried to France the future emperor and his fortune.

The house, the possessions of the Bonaparte family, fell a prey to the conquerors, and on them they gave vent to their vengeance for the successful escape of the fugitives. A witness of these facts is a certificate which Joseph Bonaparte a few months later procured from Corsica, and which ran as follows:

“I, the undersigned, Louis Conti, procurator-syndic of the district of Ajaccio, department of Corsica, declare and certify: in the month of May of this year, when General Paoli and the administration of the department had sent into the city of Ajaccio armed troops, in concert with other traitors in the city, took possession of the fortress, drove away the administration of the district, incarcerated a large portion of the patriots, disarmed the republican forces, and, when these refused to give up the commissioners of the National Convention, Paoli’s troops fired upon the vessel which carried these commissioners:

“That these rebels endeavored to seize the Bonaparte family, which had the good fortune to elude their pursuit:

“That they destroyed, plundered, and burnt everything which belonged to this family, whose sole crime consisted in their unswerving fidelity to the republicans, and in their refusal to take any part in the scheme of isolation, rebellion, and disloyalty, of which Paoli and the administration of the department had become guilty.

“I moreover declare and certify that this family, consisting of ten individuals, and who stood high in the esteem of the people of the island, possessed the largest property in the whole department, and that now they are on the continent of the republic.

“(Signed) CONTI, Proc.-Synd. Delivered on the 5th of September, 1793, Year II. of the republic.” [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 52.]

Paoli, the conqueror of the French republic, the patriotic enemy of the Bonaparte family, drove Napoleon Bonaparte from his native soil! The cannon of the Corsican patriots fired upon the ship on which the future emperor of the French was steering toward his future empire!

But this future lay still in an invisible, cloudy distance—of one thing, however, was the young captain of artillery fully conscious: from this hour he had broken with the past, and, by his dangers and conflicts, by the sacrifice of his family’s property, by his flight from Corsica, given to the world a solemn testimony that he recognized no other country, that he owed allegiance to no other nation than to France. He had proved that his feelings were not Corsican, but French.

The days of his childhood and youth sank away behind him, with the deepening shadows of the island of Corsica, and the shores which rose before him on the horizon were the shores of France. There lay his future—his empire!

CHAPTER XVII. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE BEFORE TOULON.

Whilst Paris, yet trembling, bowed under the bloody rule of the Convention, a spirit of opposition and horror began to stir in the provinces; fear of the terrorists, of the Convention, began to kindle the courage, to make defiance to these men of horror, and to put an end to terrorism. The province of Vendee, in her faithfulness and loyalty to the royal family, arose in deadly conflict against the republicans; the large cities of the south, with Toulon at their head, had shielded themselves from the horrors which the home government would have brought them, by uniting with the enemies who now from all sides pressed upon France.

Toulon gave itself up to the combined fleet of England and Spain. Marseilles, Lyons, and Nismes, contracted an alliance together, and declared their independence of the Convention and of the terrorists. Everywhere in all the cities and communities of the south the people rose up, and seditions and rebellions took place. Everywhere the Convention had to send its troops to re-establish peace by force, and to compel the people to submit to its rule. Whole army corps had to be raised to win back to the republic the rebellious cities, and only after hard fighting did General Carteaux subdue Marseilles.

But Toulon held out still, and within its protecting walls had the majority of the inhabitants of Marseilles taken refuge before the wrath of the Convention, which had already sent to the latter some of its representatives, to establish there the destructive work of the guillotine. Toulon offered them safety; it seemed impregnable, as much by its situation as by the number and strength of its defenders. It could also defy any siege, since the sea was open, and it could by this channel be provisioned through the English and Spanish fleet.

No one trembled before the little army of seventeen thousand men which, under General Carteaux, had invested Toulon.

But in this little army of the republicans was a young soldier whom yet none knew, none feared, but whose fame was soon to resound throughout the world, and before whom all Europe was soon tremblingly to bow.

This young man was Napoleon Bonaparte, the captain of artillery. He had come from Italy (where his regiment was) to France, to make there, by order of his general, some purchases for the park of artillery of the Italian army. But some of the people’s representatives had had an opportunity of recognizing the sharp eye and the military acquirements of the young captain of artillery; they interceded in his favor, and he was promoted to the army corps which was before Toulon, and at once sent in the capacity of assistant to General Carteaux, with whom also was Napoleon’s brother Joseph, as chief of the general’s staff.

From this moment the siege, which until now had not progressed favorably, was pushed on with renewed energy, and it was due to the cautious activity, the daring spirit of the captain of artillery, that marked advantages were gained over the English, and that from them many redoubts were taken, and the lines of the French drawn closer and closer to the besieged city.

But yet, after many months of siege, Toulon held out still. From the sea came provisions and ammunition, and on the land-side Toulon was protected against capture by a fort occupied by English troops, and which, on account of its impregnable position, was called “Little Gibraltar.” From this position hot-balls and howitzers had free range all over the seaboard, for this fort stood between the two harbors of the city and immediately opposite Toulon. The English, fully appreciating the importance of the position, had occupied it with six thousand men, and surrounded it with intrenchments.

It came to this, as Napoleon in a council of war declared to the general, that the English must be driven out of their position; then, when this fort was taken, in two days Toulon must yield.

The plan was decided upon, and from this moment the besiegers directed all their strength no more against Toulon, but against the important fort, “Little Gibraltar,” “for there,” as Napoleon said, “there was the key to Toulon.”

All Europe now watched with intense anxiety the events near Toulon; all France, which hitherto with divided sentiments had wished the victory to side now with the besieged, now with the besiegers, forgot its differences of opinion, and was united in the one wish to expel the hated enemy and rival, the English, from the French city, and to crown the efforts of the French army with victory.

The Convention, irritated that its orders should not have been immediately carried out, had in its despotic power recalled from his command General Carteaux, who could not succeed in capturing Toulon, and had appointed as chief of battalion the young captain of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, on account of his bravery in capturing some dangerous redoubts. The successor of Carteaux, the old General Dugommier, recognizing the superior mind of the young chief of battalion, willingly followed his plans, and was readily guided and led by the surer insight of the young man.

Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon