were
shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
daughter's ear!

"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"

[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]

Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.

A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
now bowed, almost quailed.

"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
wife who