em were sentenced to death
on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the
Marquis de Riviere, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on
behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mere"; and Napoleon
grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment. But the plebeian,
Georges Cadoudal, suffered death for the cause that had enlisted all
the fierce energies of his youth and manhood. With him perished the
bravest of Bretons and the last man of action of the royalists.
Thenceforth Napoleon was not troubled by Bourbon plotters; and
doubtless the skill with which his agents had nursed this silly plot
and sought to entangle all waverers did far more than the strokes of
the guillotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled before a
union of immeasurable power with unfathomable craft such as recalled
the days of the Emperor Tiberius.

Indeed, Napoleon might now almost say that his chief foes were the
members of his own household. The question of hereditary succession
had already reawakened and intensified all the fierce passions of the
Emperor's relatives. Josephine saw in it the fatal eclipse of a
divorce sweeping towards the dazzling field of her new life, and
Napoleon is known to have thrice almost decided on this step. She no
longer had any hopes of bearing a child; and she is reported by the
compiler of the Fouche "Memoirs" to have clutched at that absurd
device, a supposititious child, which Fouche had taken care to
ridicule in advance. Whatever be the truth of this rumour, she
certainly used all her powers over Napoleon and over her daughter
Hortense, the spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to have their son
recognized as first in the line of direct succession. But this
proposal, which shelved both Joseph and Louis, was not only hotly
resented by the eldest brother, who claimed to be successor designate,
it also aroused the flames of jealousy in Louis himself. It was
notorious that he suspected Napoleon of an incestuous passion for
Hortense, of which his fondness for the little Charles Napoleon was
maliciously urged as proof; and the proposal, when made with trembling
eagerness by Josephine, was hurled back by Louis with brutal violence.
To the clamour of Louis and Joseph the Emperor and Josephine seemed
reluctantly to yield.

New arrangements were accordingly proposed. Lucien and Jerome having,
for the present at least, put themselves out of court by their
unsatisfactory marriages, Napoleon