eads severed by the keen edge of
the knife. Those whom they had imprisoned were set at liberty.

As Josephine emerged from the gloom of her prison into the streets of
Paris, she found herself a widow, homeless, almost friendless, and in
the extreme of penury. But for her children, life would have been a
burden from which she would have been glad to be relieved by the
executioner's axe. The storms of revolution had dispersed all her
friends, and terror reigned in Paris. Her children were living upon the
charity of others. It was necessary to conceal their birth as the
children of a noble, for the brutal threat of Marat ever rang in her
ears, "We must exterminate all the whelps of aristocracy."

Hoping to conceal the illustrious lineage of Eugene and Hortense, and
probably also impelled by the necessities of poverty, Josephine
apprenticed her son to a house carpenter, and her daughter was placed,
with other girls of more lowly birth, in the shop of a milliner. But
Josephine's beauty of person, grace of manners, and culture of mind
could not leave her long in obscurity. Every one who met her was charmed
with her unaffected loveliness. New friends were created, among them
some who were in power. Through their interposition, a portion of her
husband's confiscated estates was restored to her. She was thus provided
with means of a frugal support for herself and her children. Engaging
humble apartments, she devoted herself entirely to their education. Both
of the children were richly endowed; inheriting from their mother and
their father talents, personal loveliness, and an instinctive power of
attraction. Thus there came a brief lull in those dreadful storms of
life by which Josephine had been so long buffeted.

But suddenly, like the transformations of the kaleidoscope, there came
another and a marvellous change. All are familiar with the circumstances
of her marriage to the young and rising general, Napoleon Bonaparte.
This remarkable young man, enjoying the renown of having captured
Toulon, and of having quelled a very formidable insurrection in the
streets of Paris, was ordered by the then existing Government to disarm
the whole Parisian population, that there might be no further attempt at
insurrection. The officers who were sent, in performance of this duty,
from house to house, took from Josephine the sword of her husband, which
she had preserved as a sacred relic. The next day Eugene repaired to the
head-quarters of