fided their
feelings to their neighbors and friends.

Josephine tenderly loved Madame de Montesquieu, and when they were parted
wrote to her often; this correspondence lasted till Josephine's death.
One day Madame de Montesquieu received orders from the Emperor to take
the little king to Bagatelle, where Josephine then was. She had obtained
permission to see this child, whose birth had covered Europe with fetes.
It is well known how disinterested Josephine's love for Napoleon was, and
how she viewed everything that could increase his glory and render it
more durable; and there entered into the prayers she made for him since
the burning disgrace of the divorce, even the hope that he might be happy
in his private life, and that his new wife might bear this child, this
firstborn of his dynasty, to him whom she herself could not make a
father.

This woman of angelic goodness, who had fallen into a long swoon on
learning her sentence of repudiation, and who since that fatal day had
dragged out a sad life in the brilliant solitude of Malmaison; this
devoted wife who had shared for fifteen years the fortunes of her
husband, and who had assisted so powerfully in his elevation, was not the
last to rejoice at the birth of the King of Rome. She was accustomed to
say that the desire to leave a posterity, and to be represented after our
death by beings who owe their life and position to us, was a sentiment
deeply engraved in the heart of man; that this desire, which was so
natural, and which she had felt so deeply as wife and mother, this desire
to have children to survive and continue us on earth, was still more
augmented when we had a high destiny to transmit to them; that in
Napoleon's peculiar position, as founder of a vast empire, it was
impossible he should long resist a sentiment which is at the bottom of
every heart, and which, if it is true that this sentiment increases in
proportion to the inheritance we leave our children, no one could
experience more fully than Napoleon, for no one had yet possessed so
formidable a power on the earth; that the course of nature having made
her sterility a hopeless evil, it was her duty to be the first to
sacrifice the sentiments of her heart to the good of the state, and the
personal happiness of Napoleon sad but powerful reasoning, which policy
invoked in aid of the divorce, and of which this excellent princess in
the illusion of her devotion thought herself convinced in the depths of