red without any serious injury and without the
slightest diminution of his excessive vanity, the fun-loving Hortense
could not repress her propensity still to make him the butt of her
practical jokes. It was a defect in her character that she could find
pleasure in this mischievous kind of torment. It is not improbable that
this trait of character, which appears so excusable in a mirthful girl
of fifteen, was the cause of that incessant train of sorrows which
subsequently embittered her whole life. Carrat was perfectly devoted to
Josephine; Hortense was his torment.

The unlucky valet occupied a sleeping-room separated from another only
by a thin deal partition. A hole was made through this, and a pail of
water so suspended in equilibrium over the pillow of the victim, that by
drawing a cord the whole contents would be emptied upon his head. The
supports of the bedstead had also been removed, so that the whole fabric
would fall as soon as any weight was placed upon it. Carrat, among his
other eccentricities, was ever in the habit of going to bed without a
light. Matters being thus prepared, Hortense, who had employed an
attendant to aid her in her plans, stood in an adjoining room to enjoy
the catastrophe.

The poor man entered his room, and threw himself upon his pallet. Down
it came with a crash, and his shriek of fright was for a moment drowned
in the inundation of water. Hortense, knowing the almost delirious fear
which the puerile valet had of reptiles, cried, "Poor man! poor man!
what will he do. The water was full of toads." Carrat, in utter
darkness, drenched with cold water, and overwhelmed in the ruins of
his bed and bedding, shrieked, "Murder! help! fire! drowning!" while
Hortense and her accomplices enjoyed his ludicrous terror. She afterward
made him a handsome present as a compensation. Hortense was not a
malicious girl, but, like many others who are mirthful and thoughtless,
she found a strange pleasure in teasing. Josephine's only happiness was
in making others happy. "It is a necessity of my heart," she said, "to
love those around me, and to be loved by them in return." How much more
noble such a spirit!

Though Josephine was not fully informed respecting the ultimate designs
of Napoleon, and though Napoleon at this time probably had no very
definite plans respecting his future actions, his interests manifestly
required that she should exert all her powers to strengthen the ties of
those who were alr