would have been too happy if she could have known
love only from the absurd effects which it produced on this diseased
brain, as she thus saw it only in its pleasant and comic aspect. But the
time came when she was forced to feel all that is painful and bitter in
the experience of that passion. In January, 1802, she was married to
Louis Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul, which was a most suitable
alliance as regards age, Louis being twenty-four years old, and
Mademoiselle de Beauharnais not more than eighteen; and nevertheless it
was to both parties the beginning of long and interminable sorrows.

Louis, however, was kind and sensible, full of good feeling and
intelligence, studious and fond of letters, like all his brothers (except
one alone); but he was in feeble health, suffered almost incessantly, and
was of a melancholy disposition. All the brothers of the First Consul
resembled him more or less in their personal appearance, and Louis still
more than the others, especially at the time of the Consulate, and before
the Emperor Napoleon had become so stout. But none of the brothers of
the Emperor possessed that imposing and majestic air and that rapid and
imperious manner which came to him at first by instinct, and afterwards
from the habit of command. Louis had peaceful and modest tastes. It has
been asserted that at the time of his marriage he was deeply attached to
a person whose name could not be ascertained, and who, I think, is still
a mystery.

Mademoiselle Hortense was extremely pretty, with an expressive and mobile
countenance, and in addition to this was graceful, talented, and affable.
Kindhearted and amiable like her mother, she had not that excessive
desire to oblige which sometimes detracted from Madame Bonaparte's
character. This is, nevertheless, the woman whom evil reports,
disseminated by miserable scandal-mongers, have so outrageously
slandered! My heart is stirred with disgust and indignation when I hear
such revolting absurdities repeated and scattered broadcast. According
to these honest fabricators, the First Consul must have seduced his
wife's daughter, before giving her in marriage to his own brother.
Simply to announce such a charge is to comprehend all the falsity of it.
I knew better than any one the amours of the Emperor. In these
clandestine liaisons he feared scandal, hated the ostentations of vice,
and I can affirm on honor that the infamous desires attributed to him
never entered