recall
Josephine to a consciousness of her misery; but for her misery itself he
had no medicine; he knew that her tears and her daughter's sympathy
could alone give relief.

Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came in to
inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her bedside, she
shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased to flow, and her
usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances of anger and offended
love at the emperor. But love soon conquered anger. She extended her
tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet smile, peculiar to woman,
trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle, touching voice, she said: "Was
I not right, my friend, when I shrank back in terror from the thought of
becoming an empress[18]?"

[Footnote 18: Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
342, _et seq_.]

Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these farewell
tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the emperor had
already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the hand of the
Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in Vienna. Nothing
now remained to be done but to remove Josephine from the throne, and
elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the vacant place!

The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He assembled
about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and princes, created
by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of the Tuileries, in the
presence of his court and the Senate, the emperor appeared; at his side
the empress, arrayed for the last time in all the insignia of the
dignity she was about to lay aside forever.

In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
words. The arch-chancellor, Cambaceres, then caused the appropriate
paragraph of the _Code Civile_ to be read, applied it to the case under
consideration, in a short, terse address, and pronounced the union of
the emperor and empress dissolved.

This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the law.
Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the court,
and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the graceful,
sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few other women.

As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward
emotion