of the battle brought him
within a few miles of Malmaison, he turned aside and sought a hurried
interview with his most faithful friend. It was their last meeting.
Napoleon took the hand of Josephine, and, gazing tenderly upon her,
said:

"Josephine, I have been as fortunate as ever was man upon the face of
this earth. But in this hour, when a storm is gathering over my head, I
have not in this wide world any one but you upon whom I can repose."

Soon after this, as the seat of war approached nearer to Paris,
Josephine found it necessary to retire to Navarre. She wrote to
Hortense, on the 28th of March: "To-morrow I shall leave for Navarre. I
have but sixteen men for a guard, and all wounded. I shall take care of
them; but in truth I have no need of them. I am so unhappy in being
separated from my children that I am indifferent respecting my fate."

At eight o'clock in the morning of the 29th Josephine took her carriage
for Navarre. The Allies were rapidly approaching Paris, and a state of
indescribable consternation filled the streets of the metropolis.
Several times on the route the Empress was alarmed by the cry that the
Cossacks were coming. The day was dark and stormy, and the rain fell in
torrents. The pole of the carriage broke as the wheels sunk in a rut.
Just at that moment a troop of horsemen appeared in the distance. The
Empress, in her terror, supposing them to be the barbarous Cossacks,
leaped from the carriage and fled through the fields. Was there ever a
more cruel reverse of fortune? Josephine, the Empress of France, the
admired of all Europe, in the frenzy of her alarm, rushing through the
storm and the rain to seek refuge in the woods! The troops proved to be
French. Her attendants followed and informed her of the mistake. She
again entered her carriage, and uttered scarcely a word during the rest
of her journey. Upon entering the palace of Navarre, she threw herself
upon a couch, exclaiming:

"Surely Bonaparte is ignorant of what is passing within sight of the
gates of Paris, or, if he knows, how cruel the thoughts which must now
agitate his breast."

In a hurried letter which the Emperor wrote Josephine from Brienne, just
after a desperate engagement with his vastly outnumbering foes, he said:

"On beholding the scenes where I had passed my boyhood, and comparing my
peaceful condition then with the agitation and terrors I now experience,
I several times said, in my own mind, 'I have sought to m