s, her brilliant court
assembled around her, while in a retired nook of England the legitimate
King of France was leading a lonely and gloomy life.

Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as empress, she
still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate Bourbons, and esteemed it
her sacred duty to assist and advise those who, true to their principles
and duties, had followed the royal family, or had emigrated, in order
that they might, at least, not be compelled to do homage to the new
system. Her purse was always at the service of the emigrants; and, if
Josephine continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly
allowance, her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her
kindly, generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the
half of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her creditors,
she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of misfortune and
the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other purpose[13].

[Footnote 13: Memoires sur la reine Hortense, par le Baron van Schelten,
vol. i., p. 145.]

Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the High
Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant court of
the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now a "Princess
of France," an "imperial highness," who must be approached with
reverence, who had her court and her maids of honor, and whose liberty
and personal inclinations, as was also the case with her mother, were
confined in the fetters of the strict etiquette which Napoleon required
to be observed at the new imperial court.

But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded by this
new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no additional
happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance Hortense's youth and
beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She would have been contented
to live in retirement, at the side of a beloved husband; her proud
position could not indemnify her for her lost woman's happiness.

But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to bear
misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered her a
recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a new
hope--she promised to become a mother again.

Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her daughter's
hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should giv