sorely limited in her means, and, if she did not succeed in selling
some of her property and raising funds, would be without the money
necessary to bring under cultivation the remnant of her large
plantation. She was, therefore, not immediately prepared to supply
her daughter with any considerable assistance, and Josephine endured
the anguish of seeing not only herself and children, but also her
dear mother, suffer through want and privation.
To the need of gold to procure bare necessaries, was soon added the
very lack of them. Famine, with all its horrors, was at hand; the
people were clamoring for food, and the land-owners as well as the
rich were suffering from the want of that prime necessary of life-
bread! The Convention had adopted no measures to satisfy the demands
of the howling populace, and it had to remain contented with making
accessible to all such provisions as were in the land. One law,
therefore, ordered all land-owners to deliver to the state their
stores of meal; a second law prohibited any person from buying more
than one pound of bread on the same day. The greatest delicacy in
those days of common wretchedness was white bread, and there were
many families that for a long time were unable to procure this
luxury.
Josephine herself had with many others to endure this privation: the
costly white loaf was beyond her reach. In her depressed and sad lot
the unfortunate widowed viscountess remained in possession of a
treasure for which many of the wealthy and high-born longed in vain,
and which neither gold nor wealth could procure - Josephine possessed
friends, true, devoted friends, who forsook her not in the day of
need, but stood the more closely at her side, helping and loving.
Among these friends were, above all, Madame Dumoulin and M. Emery.
Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a wealthy purveyor of the republican
army, was at heart a true royalist, and had made it her mission, as
much as was within her power, to assist with her means the most
destitute from whom the revolution had taken their family joys and
property. She aided with money and clothing the unfortunate
emigrants, who, as prominent and influential friends of the king and
of Old France, had abandoned their country, and who now, as
nameless, wretched beggars, returned home to beg of New France the
privilege at least to hunger and starve, and at last to die in their
motherland. Madame Dumoulin had always an open house for those
aristocrats and ci-devants who had the courage not to emigrate and
to bow their despised heads to all the fluctuations of the republic,
and had remained in France, though deprived by the republic of their
ancestral names, property, and rank. Those aristocrats who had not
migrated found a friendly reception in the house of the witty and
amiable Madame Dumoulin, and twice a week she gathered those friends
of the ancient regime to a dinner, which was prepared with all the
luxury of former days, and which offered to her friends, besides
material enjoyment, the pleasures of an agreeable and attractive
company.
Among Madame Dumoulin's friends who never failed to be present at
these dinners was Josephine de Beauharnais, of whom Madame Dumoulin
said she was the sunbeam of her drawing-room, for she warmed and
vitalized all hearts. But this sunbeam had not the power to bring
forth out of the unfruitful soil of the fatherland a few ears of
wheat to turn its flour into white bread. As every one was allowed
to buy bread only according to the numbers in the household, Madame
Dumoulin could not give to her guests at dinner any white bread, and
on her cards of invitation was the then usual form, "You are invited
to bring a loaf of white bread."
But it was beyond the means of the poor Viscountess de Beauharnais
to fulfil this invitation; her purse was not sufficient to afford
her twice a week the luxury of white bread. Madame Dumoulin, who
knew this, came kindly to the rescue of Josephine's distress, and
entreated her not to trouble herself with bringing bread, but to
allow her to procure it for her friend.
Josephine accepted this offer with tears of emotion, and she never
forgot the goodness and kindness of Madame Dumoulin. In the days of
her highest glory she remembered her, and once, when empress,
radiant with jewels and ornaments of gold, as she stood in the midst
of her court, related with a bewitching smile, to the ladies around
her, that there was a time when she would have given a year of her
life to possess but one of those jewels, not to adorn herself
therewith, but to sell it, so as to buy bread for her children, and
that in those days the excellent Madame Dumoulin had been a
benefactress to her, and that she had received at her hands the
bread of charity. [Footnote: "Memoires sur l'Imperatrice Josephine,"
par Mad. Ducrest, chap XXXVI.]
The same abiding friendship was shown to Josephine by M. Emery, a
banker who had a considerable business in Dunkirk, and who for many
years had been in mercantile relations with the family of Tascher de
la Pagerie in Martinique. Madame de la Pagerie had every year sent
him the produce of her sugar plantations, and he had attended to the
sale to the largest houses in Germany. He knew better than any one
else the pecuniary circumstances of the Pagerie family; he knew
that, if at present Madame de la Pagerie could not repay his
advanced sums, her plantations would soon produce a rich harvest,
and even now be a sufficient security. M. Emery was therefore
willing to assist the daughter of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, and
several times he advanced to Josephine considerable sums which she
had drawn upon her mother.
The cares of every-day life, its physical necessities, lifted
Josephine out of the sad melancholy in which she had lulled her
sick, wounded heart, within the solitude of Fontainebleau. She must
not settle down in this inactive twilight, nor wrap herself up in
the gloomy gray veil of widowhood! Life had still claims upon her;
it called to her through her children's voices, for whom she had a
future to provide, as well as through the voice of her own youth,
which she must not intrust hopelessly to the gloomy Fontainebleau.
And the young mother dared not and wanted not to close her ears to
these calls; she arose from her supineness, and courageously
resolved to begin anew life's battle, and to claim her share from
the enjoyments and pleasures of this world.
She first, by the advice of M. Emery, undertook a journey to
Hamburg, to make some arrangements with the rich and highly
respectable banking-house of Mathiesen and Sissen. Mathiesen, the
banker, who had married a niece of Madame de Genlis, had always
shown the greatest hospitality to all Frenchmen who had applied to
him, and he had assisted them with advice and deeds. To him
Josephine appealed, at the request of M. Emery, so as to procure a
safe opportunity to send letters to her mother in Martinique, and
also to obtain from him funds on bills drawn upon her mother.
M. Mathiesen met her wishes with a generous pleasure, and through
him Josephine received sufficient sums of money to protect her from
further embarrassments and anxieties, at least until her mother, who
was on the eve of selling a portion of her plantation, could send
her some money.
On her return from her business-journey to Hamburg, as she was no
longer a poor widow without means, she adopted the courageous
resolution of leaving her asylum and returning to dangerous and
deserted Paris, there to prepare for her son an honorable future,
and endeavor to procure for her daughter an education suited to her
rank and capacities.
At the end of the year 1795, Josephine returned with her two
children to Paris, which one year before she had left so sorrowfully
and so dispirited.
What changes had been wrought during this one year! How the face of
things had been altered! The revolution had bled to death. The
thirteenth Vendemiaire had scattered to the winds the seditious
elements of revolution, and the republic was beginning quietly and
peacefully to grow into stature. The Convention, with its Mountain,
its terrorists, its Committee of Safety, its persecutions and
executions, had outlived its power, which it had consigned to the
pages of history with so many tears and so much blood. In a strange
contradiction with its own bloody deeds, it celebrated the last day
of its existence by a law which, as a farewell to the thousand
corpses it had sacrificed to the revolution, it had printed on its
gory brow. On the day of its dissolution the Convention gave to
France this last law: "Capital punishment is forever abolished."
[Footnote: Norvins, "Histoire de Napoleon," vol. i., p. 82.]
With this farewell kiss, this love-salutation to the France of the
future, to the new self-informing France, the Convention dissolved
itself, and in its stead came the Council of Elders, the Council of
Five Hundred, and lastly the Directory, composed of five members,
among whom had been elected the more eminent members of the
Convention, namely, Barras and Carnot.
Josephine's first movement in Paris was to find the lovely friend
whom she made in the Carmelite prison, and to whom she in some
measure owed her life, to visit Therese de Fontenay and see if the
heart of the beautiful, celebrated woman had in its days of
happiness and power retained its remembrances of those of
wretchedness and mortal fears.
Therese de Fontenay was now the wife of Tallien, who, elected to the
Council of the Five Hundred, continued to play an influential and
important part, and therefore had his court of flatterers and time-
serving friends as well as any ruling prince. His house was one of
the most splendid in Paris; the feasts and banquets which took place
there reminded one, by their extravagant magnificence, of the days
of ancient Rome, and that this remembrance might still be more
striking, ladies in the rich, costly costumes of patrician matrons
of ancient Rome appeared at those festivities not unworthy of a
Lucullus. Madame Tallien - in the ample robe of wrought gold of a
Roman empress, shod with light sandals, from which issued the
beautiful naked feet, and the toes adorned with costly rings, her
exquisitely moulded arms ornamented with massive gold bracelets; her
short curly hair fastened together by a gold bandelet, which rose
over the forehead in the shape of a diadem, bejewelled with precious
diamonds; the mantle of purple, fringed with gold and placed on the
shoulders - was in this costume of such a wonderful beauty, that men
gazed at her with astonishment and women with envy.
And this beautiful woman, often worshipped and adored, though
sometimes slandered, had amid her triumphs kept a faithful
remembrance of the past. She received Josephine with the affection
of a true friend. In her generosity she allowed her no time to
proffer any request, but came forward herself with offers to
intercede for her friend, and to use all the means at her disposal,
omitting nothing that would help Josephine to recover her fortune,
her lost property. With all the eagerness of true love she took the
arm of her friend and led her to Tallien, and with the enchanting
smile and attitude of a commanding princess she told him that he
must help Josephine to become happy again, that every thing he could
do for her would be rewarded by an increasing love; that if he did
not do justice to Josephine, she would punish him by her anger and
coldness.
Tallien listened with complacency to the praiseworthy commands of
his worshipped Therese, and promised to use all his influence to
have justice done to the will of the sacrificed General de
Beauharnais. He himself accompanied Josephine to Barras, that she
might present her application to him personally and request at his
hands restitution of her property. She was received by Barras, as
well as by the other four directors, with the greatest politeness;
each promised to attend to her case and to return to the widow and
to the children of Alexandre de Beauharnais the property which had
been so unjustly taken from them.
It is true, weeks and months of waiting and uncertainty passed away,
but Josephine had hope for a comforter; she had, besides, her
beautiful friend Therese Tallien, who with affectionate eloquence
endeavored to instil courage into Josephine, and by her constant
petitions and prayers did not allow the Directory, amid its many
important affairs of government, to forget the case of the poor
young widow. Therese took care also that Josephine should appear in
society at the receptions and balls given by the members of the new
government; and when made timid through misfortune, and depressed at
heart by the uncertainty of her narrow lot, she desired to keep
aloof from these rejoicings, Therese knew how to convince her that
she must sacrifice her love of retirement to her children; that it
was her duty to accept the invitations of the Directory, so as to
keep alive their interest and favor in her behalf; and that, were
she to retreat into solitude and obscurity, she would thereby
imperil her future and that of her children.
Josephine submitted to this law of necessity, and appeared in
society. She screened her cares and her heartsores under the covert
of smiles, she forced herself into cheerfulness, and when now and
then the smile vanished from her lip and tears filled her eyes, she
thought of her children, and, mastering her sorrows, she was again
the beautiful, lovely woman, whose elegant manners and lively and
witty conversation charmed and astonished every one.
At last, after long months of uncertainty, Therese Tallien, her face
beaming with joy, came one morning to visit her friend Josephine,
and presented to her a paper with a large seal, which Tallien had
given her that very morning.
It was an order, signed by the five directors, instructing the
administrator of the domains to relieve the capital and the property
of General Beauharnais from the sequestration laid upon them, and
also to remove the seals from his furniture and his movables, and to
reinstate the Widow Beauharnais in possession of all the property
left by her husband.
Josephine received this paper with tears of joy, and, full of
religious, devout gratitude, she fell on her knees and cried:
"I thank Thee, my God! I thank Thee! My children will no more suffer
from want, and now I can give them a suitable education."
She then fell upon her friend's neck, thanking her for her
faithfulness, and swore her everlasting friendship and affection.
The dark clouds which had so long overshadowed Josephine's life were
now gone, and in its place dawned day, bright and clear.
But the sun which was to illumine this day with wondrous glory had
not yet appeared. Therese at this hour reminded her friend of a day
in prison when Josephine had assured her friends trembling for her
life that she was not going to die, that she would one day be Queen
of France.
"Yes," said Josephine, smiling and thoughtful, "who knows if this
prophecy will not be fulfilled? To-day begins for me a new life. I
have done with the past, and it will sink behind me in the abyss of
oblivion. I trust in the future! It must repay me for all the tears
and anxieties of my past life, and who knows if it will not erect me
a throne?"
CHAPTER XXI.
THE NEW PARIS.
Yes, they were now ended, the days of sufferings and privations! The
wife of General Beauharnais was no more the poor widow who appeared
as a petitioner in the drawing-rooms of the members of the
Directory, and often obliged, even in the worst kind of weather, to
go on foot to the festivals of Madame Tallien, because she lacked
the means to pay for a cab; she was no longer the poor mother who
had to be satisfied to procure inferior teachers for her children,
because she could not possibly pay superior ones.
Now, as by a spell, all was changed, and gold was the magic wand
which had produced it. Thanks to this talisman, the Viscountess de
Beauharnais could now quit the small, remote, gloomy dwelling in
which she had hitherto resided, and could again procure a house,
gather society round about her, and, above all things, provide for
the education of her children.
This was her dearest duty, her most important obligation, with which
she busied herself even before she rented a modestly-furnished room.
Her Eugene, the darling of her heart, desired like his father to
devote himself to a military life, and his mother took him to a
boarding-school in St. Germain, where young men of distinguished
families received their education. Her twelve-year-old daughter
Hortense, of whom Josephine had said, "She is my angel with the gold
locks, who alone can smile away the tears from my eyes and sorrow
from my heart" - Hortense entered the newly-opened educational
establishment of Madame Campan, once the lady-in-waiting of Marie
Antoinette. Josephine wept hot tears as she accompanied her Hortense
into the boarding-school, and, embracing her blond curly-haired
angel, she closely pressed her to her heart, and said:
"Judge how much I love you, my daughter, since I have the courage to
leave you and to deprive myself of the greatest of my life's
enjoyments! Ah, I shall be very lonesome, Hortense, but my thoughts
will be with you continually - with you and your brother Eugene. Live
to be an honor to your father, grow and prosper to be your mother's
happiness!"
Then with a kiss she took leave of her daughter, and comfortless and
alone she returned to her solitary apartments in Paris.
During the next eight days her doors were shut; she opened them to
none, not even to her friend Therese, and not once did Josephine
leave her dwelling during this time, nor did she accept any of the
invitations which came to her from all sides.
Her heart was yet wrapped in mourning for her separation from her
children, and, with all the intensity of an affectionate mother's
love, she preferred leaving her anguish to die out of itself than to
suppress it with amusements and pleasures.
But after this last sorrow had been overcome, Josephine, with
serenity and a smile of cheerfulness, came again from her solitude
into the world which called her forth with all its voices of joy,
pleasure, and flattery. And Josephine no longer closed her ears to
these sweet attractive voices. She had long enough suffered, wept,
fasted; now she ought to reap enjoyments, and gather her portion of
this life's pleasures; now she must live! The past had set behind
her, and, as one new-born or risen from the dead, Josephine walked
into the world with a young maiden heart, and a mind opened to all
that is beautiful, great, and good; her soul filled with visions,
hopes, desires, and dreams. Out of the widow's veil came forth the
young, charming Creole, and her radiant eyes saluted the world with
intelligent looks and an expression of the most attractive goodness.
Her next care was to procure a pleasant, convenient home suited to
her rank. She purchased from the actor Talma a house which he
possessed in the Street Chautereine, and where he had, during the
storms of the revolution, received his friends as well as all the
literary, artistic, and political notables of the day with the
kindest hospitality. It was not a, brilliant, distinguished hotel,
no splendid building, but a small, tastefully and conveniently
arranged house, with pretty rooms, a cheerful drawing-room, lovely
garden, exactly suited to have therein a quiet, agreeable, informal
pastime. Josephine possessed in the highest degree the art of her
sex to furnish rooms with elegance and taste, so as to make every
one in them comfortable, satisfied, at ease, and cheerful.
The drawing-room of the widow of General Beauharnais became soon the
central point where all her friends of former days found themselves
together again, and all the remnants of the good old society found
reception; where the learned, the artist, the poet, met with a
refuge, there to rest for a few hours from political strife, to put
aside the serpent's skin of assumed republican manners, and again
assume the tone and forms of the higher society. Such drawing-rooms
in these revolutionary days were extremely few; no one dared to
become conspicuous; every one was reserved and quiet; every one
shrank from making himself suspected of being a ci-devant, even if
under the republican toga he left visible his dress-coat of the
upper society with its embroidery of gold. Men had entirely broken
with the past, wishing to deny it, and not be under the yoke of its
forms and rules; it was therefore necessary, out of the chaos of the
republic, to create a new world, a new society, new forms of
etiquette, and new fashions. Meanwhile, until these new fashions for
republican France should be found, men had recourse (so as not to go
back to the days of the late monarchy of France) to the republics of
olden times; the ladies dressed according to the patterns of the old
statues of the deities of Greece and Rome, giving receptions in the
style of ancient Greece, and banquets laid out in all the
extravagant splendors of a Lucullus.
The members of the republican Directory, whose residence was in the
palace of the Luxemburg, took the lead in all these neo-Grecian and
neo-Roman festivities; and, whereas they loudly proclaimed that it
was necessary to furnish opportunities to the working-classes and
laborers to gain money, and that it was incumbent on all to promote
industry, they rivalled each other in their efforts to exhibit an
extravagant pomp and a brilliant display. On reception-days of the
members of the Directory the public streamed in masses toward the
Luxemburg, there to admire the splendors of the five monarchs, and
to rejoice that the days of the carmagnoles, the sans-culottes, the
dirty blouse, and the bonnet rouge were at least gone by. The five
directors, to the delight of the Parisian people, wore costly silk
and velvet garments embroidered with gold, and on their hats,
trimmed also with gold lace, waved large ostrich-plumes.
Luxury celebrated its return to Paris, after having had to secrete
itself, so long from the blood-stained hands of the sans-culottes,
in the most obscure corners of the deserted palaces of St. Germain.
Pleasure, which had fled away horrified from the guillotine and from
the terrorists, dared once more to show its rose-wreathed brow and
smiling countenance, and here and there make its cheerful
festivities resound.
Men became glad, and dared to laugh again; they came out from the
stillness of their homes, which anxiety had kept closed, to search
for amusement, pleasure, and recreation; but no citizen dared to be
select, none dared to assume aristocratic exclusiveness. One had to
be pleased with a dinner at a tavern; with a glass of ice-water in a
cafe, or to take part in a public ball which was opened to every one
who could pay his fee of admission; and especially in the evening
the public rushed to the theatre with the same eagerness that was
exhibited in the morning to reach the shops of the bakers and
butchers, where each received his portion of meat or bread by
producing a card signed by the circuit commissioners. In front of
these shops, as well as in front of the theatres, the pressure was
so great that for hours it was necessary to fall into line, and
sometimes go away dissatisfied; for the republic had yet retained
the system of equality, so that the rich and the influential were
not served any sooner than the poor and the unknown; there was only
one exception: only one condition received distinction before the
baker's shop and the theatre: it was that of the mothers of the
future, those women whose external appearance revealed that they
would soon bring forth a future citizen, a new soldier for the
republic, which had lost so many of its sons upon the scaffold and
on the battle-field.
It was so long that one had been deprived of laughter and merriment,
and had walked with sad countenance and grave solemnity through the
days of blood and terror, that now every occasion for hilarity was
received eagerly and thankfully, and every opportunity for mirth and
amusement sought out. The theatres were therefore filled every
evening with an attentive, thankful audience; every jest of the
actor, every part well performed, elicited enthusiastic approbation.
It is true no one yet dared act any other pieces than those which
had reference to the revolution, and in some shape or other
celebrated the republic, accusing and vilifying the royalists. The
pieces represented were - "The Perfect Equality," or else "Thee and
Thou," "The Last Trial of the Queen," "Tarquin, or the Fall of the
Monarchy," "Marat's Apotheosis," and similar dramas, all infused
with republicanism; still, men faint at heart and satiated with the
republic, hastened notwithstanding to the theatre, to enjoy an hour
of recreation and merriment.
To be cheerful, happy, and joyous, seemed now to the Parisians the
highest duty of life, and every thing was made subservient to it.
The people had wept and mourned so long, that now, to shake off this
oppressive heaviness of mind, they rushed with fanatical
precipitancy into pleasure; they gave themselves up to the wildest
orgies and bacchanals, and without disgust or shame abandoned
themselves to the most immoral conduct. All tears were dried up as
if by magic; honest poverty began to be ashamed of itself; and the
wealth so carefully hid until now, was again brought to light; even
those who in the days of revolutionary terror had become rich
through the property of the sacrificed victims, exposed themselves
to public gaze with impunity and without shame. They plundered and
adorned themselves with a wealth acquired only through cunning,
treachery, and murder. Everywhere feasts, banquets, and balls, were
organized; and it was an ordinary event to find in the same company
the accuser and the accused, the executioner and his victim, the
murderer near the daughter of the man whose head he had given over
to the guillotine!
This was especially the case at the so-called victim balls (bals a
la victime) which were given by the heirs, the sons and fathers of
those who had perished by the guillotine. People gathered together
in brilliant entertainments and balls to the honor and memory of the
executed ones. Every one who could pay the large fee of admission to
these bals a la victime were permitted to enter. Those who came
there, not for pleasure, but to honor their dead, showed this
intention by their clothing, and especially by the arrangement of
their hair. To remind them that those who had been led to the
guillotine had had their hair cut close, gentlemen now had theirs
cut short, and the dressing of the hair a la victime was for
gentlemen as much a fashion as the dressing of the hair a la Titus
(the Roman emperor) was for the ladies. Besides this, the heirs of
the victims wore some token of the departed ones, and ladies and
gentlemen were seen in the blood-stained garments which their
relatives had worn on their way to the scaffold, and which they had
purchased with large sums of money from the executioner, that lord
of Paris. It often happened that a lady in the blood-stained dress
of her mother danced with the son of the man who had delivered her
mother to the guillotine; that a son of a member of the Convention
of 1793 led, in the minuet, the graceful "pas de chale," with the
daughter of an emigrant marquis. The most fanatical men of the days
of terror, now exalted into wealthy land-owners, led on in the gay
waltz the daughters of their former landlords; and these women
pressed the hand soiled with the blood of their relatives because
now, as amends for their traffic in blood, they could offer future
wealth and distinction.
It seemed that all Paris and all France had gone mad - that the whole
nation was drunk with blood as with intoxicating wine, and wanted to
stifle the voice of conscience in the horrible revelry of the
saturnalia.
Josephine never took part in these public balls and festivities;
never did the widow of General Beauharnais, one of the victims of
the revolution, attend these bals a la victime, where man prided
himself on his misfortune and gloried in his sorrows. The Moniteur -
which then gave daily notices of the balls and amusements that were
to take place in Paris, so as to let the world know how cheerful and
happy every one felt there, and which made it its business to
publish the names of the ci-devants and ex-nobles who had partaken
in these festivities - never in its long and correct list mentions
the name of the widow of General Beauharnais.
Josephine kept aloof from all these wild dissipations - these balls
and banquets. She would neither dance, nor adorn herself in the
memory of her husband; she would not take a part in the splendid
festivities of a republic which had murdered him, and had pierced
her loyal heart with the deepest wounds.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE FIRST INTERVIEW.
In the midst of these joys and amusements of the new-growing Paris,
the storm of the thirteenth Vendemiaire launched forth its
destructive thunderbolts, and another rent was made in the lofty
structure of the republic. The royalists, who had cunningly
frequented these bals a la victime, to weave intrigues and
conspiracies, found their webs scattered, and the republic assumed a
new form.
Napoleon with his sword had cut to pieces the webs and snares of the
royalists as well as of the revolutionists, and France had to bow to
the constitution. In the Tuileries now sat the Council of the
Elders; in the Salle du Manege sat the Five Hundred; and in the
palace of Luxemburg resided the five directors of the republic.
On the thirteenth Vendemiaire Paris had passed through a crisis of
its revolutionary disease; and, to prevent its falling immediately
into another, it permitted the newly-appointed commander-in-chief of
the army of the interior of France, General Napoleon Bonaparte, to
have every house strictly searched, and to confiscate all weapons
found.
Even into the house of the Viscountess de Beauharnais, in the rue
Chantereine, came the soldiers of the republic to search for
secreted weapons. They found there the sword of Alexandre de
Beauharnais, which certainly Josephine had not hidden, for it was
the chief ornament of her son's room. When Eugene, on the next
Saturday, came to Paris from St. Germain, as he did every week, to
pass the Sunday in his mother's house, to his great distress he saw
vacant on the wall the place where the sword of his father had been
hanging. With trembling voice and tears in her eyes his mother told
him that General Bonaparte, the new commander-in-chief, had ordered
the sword to be carried away by his soldiers.
A cry of anger and of malediction was Eugene's answer; then with
flaming eyes and cheeks burning with rage he rushed out, despite the
supplications of his affrighted and anxious mother. Without pausing,
without thinking - conscious only of this, that he must have again
his father's sword, he rushed on. It was impossible, thought he,
that the republic which had deprived his father of the honors due to
him, his property, his money - that now, after his death, she should
also take away his sword.
He must have this sword again! This was Eugene's firm determination,
and this made him bold and resolute. He rushed into the palace where
the general-in-chief, Bonaparte, resided, and with daring vehemence
demanded an interview with the general; and, as the door-keeper
hesitated, and even tried to push away the bold boy from the door of
the drawing-room, Eugene turned about with so much energy, spoke,
scolded, and raged so loudly and so freely, that the noise reached
even the cabinet where General Bonaparte was. He opened the door,
and in his short, imperious manner asked the cause of this uproar;
and when the servant had told him, with a sign of the hand he
beckoned the young man to come in.
Eugene de Beauharnais entered the drawing-room with a triumphant
smile, and the eye of General Bonaparte was fixed with pleasure on
the beautiful, intelligent countenance, on the tall, powerful figure
of the fifteen-year-old boy. In that strange, soft accent which won
hearts to Napoleon, he asked Eugene his business. The young man's
cheeks became pallid, and with tremulous lips and angry looks, the
vehement eloquence of youth and suffering, Eugene spoke of the loss
he had sustained, and of the pain which had been added to it by
despoiling him of the sword of his father, murdered by the republic.
At these last words of Eugene, Bonaparte's brow was overshadowed,
and an appalling look met the face of the brave boy.
"You dare say that the republic has murdered your father?" asked he,
in a loud, angry voice.
"I say it, and I say the truth!" exclaimed Eugene, who did not turn
away his eyes from the flaming looks of the general. "Yes, the
republic has murdered my father, for it has executed him as a
criminal, as a traitor to his country, and he was innocent; he ever
was a faithful servant of his country and of the republic."
"Who told you that it was so?" asked Bonaparte, abruptly.
"My heart and the republic itself tell me that my father was no
traitor," exclaimed Eugene, warmly. "My mother loved him much, and
she regrets him still. She would not do so had he been a traitor,
and then the republic would not have done what it has done - it would
not have returned to my mother the confiscated property of my
father, but would, had he been considered guilty, have gladly kept
it back."
The grave countenance of Bonaparte was overspread by a genial smile,
and his eyes rested with the expression of innermost sympathy on the
son of Josephine.
"You think, then, that the republic gladly keeps what it has?" asked
he.
"I see that it gladly takes what belongs not to it," exclaimed
Eugene, eagerly. "It has taken away my father's sword, which
belonged to me, his son, and my mother has made me swear on that
sword to hold my father's memory sacred, and to strive to be like
him."
"Your mother is, it seems, a very virtuous old lady," said
Bonaparte, in a friendly tone.
"My mother is a virtuous, young, and beautiful lady," said Eugene,
sturdily; "and I am certain, general, that if you knew her, you
would not in your heart have caused her so much pain."
"She has, then, suffered much on account of this sword being taken
away?" asked Bonaparte, interested.
"Yes, general, she has wept bitterly over this our loss, as I have.
I cannot bear to see my mother weep; it breaks my heart. I therefore
implore you to give me back my father's sword; and I swear to you
that when I am a man, I will carry that sword only for the defence
of my country, as my father had done."
General Bonaparte nodded kindly to the boy. "You are a brave
defender of your cause," said he, "and I cannot refuse you - I must
do as you wish."
He gave orders to an ordnance officer present in the room to bring
General de Beauharnais's sword; and when the officer had gone to
fetch it, Bonaparte, in a friendly and sympathizing manner,
conversed with the boy. At last the ordnance officer returned, and
handed the sword to the general.
With solemn gravity Bonaparte gave it to Eugene. "Take it, young
man," said he, "but never forget that you have sworn to carry it
only for the honor and defence of your country."
Eugene could not answer: tears started from his eyes, and with deep
affection he pressed to his lips the recovered sword of his father.
This manifestation of true childish emotion moved Bonaparte to
tender sympathy, and an expression of affectionate interest passed
over his features as he offered his hand to Eugene.
"By Heaven, you are a good son," exclaimed he from his heart, "and
you will be one day a good son to your country! Go, my boy, take to
your mother your father's sword. Tell her that I salute her, though
unknown to her - that I congratulate her in being the mother of so
good and brave a son."
Such was the beginning of an acquaintance to which Josephine was
indebted for an imperial crown, and, for what is still greater, an
undying fame and an undying love.
Beaming with joy, Eugene returned to Josephine with his father's
sword, and with all the glowing sentiments of thankfulness he
related to her how kindly and obligingly General Bonaparte had
received him, what friendly and affectionate words he had spoken to
him, and how much forbearance and patience he had manifested to his
impassioned request.
Josephine's maternal heart was sensitive and grateful for every
expression of sympathy toward her son, and the goodness and
forbearance of the general affected her the more, that she knew how
bold and wild the boy, smarting under pain, must have been. She
therefore hastened to perform a duty of politeness by calling the
next day on General Bonaparte, to thank him for the kindness he had
shown Eugene.
For the first time General Bonaparte stood in the presence of the
woman who one day was to share his fame and greatness, and this
first moment was decisive as to his and her future. Josephine's
grace and elegance, her sweetness of disposition, her genial
cheerfulness, the expression of lofty womanhood which permeated her
whole being, and which protected her securely from any rough
intrusion or familiarity; her fine, truly aristocratic bearing,
which revealed at once a lady of the court and of the great world;
her whole graceful and beautiful appearance captivated the heart of
Napoleon at the first interview, and the very next day after
receiving her short call he hastened to return it.
Josephine was not alone when General Bonaparte was announced; and
when the servant named him she could not suppress an inward fear,
without knowing why she was afraid. Her friends, who noticed her
tremor and blush, laughed jestingly at the timidity which made her
tremble at the name of the conqueror of Paris, and this was,
perhaps, the reason why Josephine received General Bonaparte with
less complacency than she generally showed to her visitors.
Amid the general silence of all those present the young general
(twenty-six years old) entered the drawing-room of the Viscountess
de Beauharnais; and this silence, however flattering it might be to
his pride, caused him a slight embarrassment. He therefore
approached the beautiful widow with a certain abrupt and perplexed
manner, and spoke to her in that hasty, imperious tone which might
become a general, but which did not seem appropriate in a lady's
saloon. General Pichegru, who stood near Josephine, smiled, and even
her amiable countenance was overspread with a slight expression of
scorn, as she fixed her beautiful eyes on this pale, thin little
man, whose long, smooth hair fell in tangled disorder on either side
of his temples over his sallow, hollow cheeks; whose whole sickly
and gloomy appearance bore so little resemblance to the majestic
figure of the lion to which he had been so often compared after his
success of the thirteenth Vendemiaire.
"I perceive, general," suddenly exclaimed Josephine, "that you are
sorry it was your duty to fill Paris once more with blood and
horror. You would undoubtedly have preferred not to be obliged to
carry out the bloody orders of the affrighted Convention?"
Bonaparte shrugged his shoulders somewhat. "That is very possible,"