he swarming city, and all the
streets of the metropolis and the broad facade of the Tuilleries were
glittering with illuminations when the emperor and empress returned to
the palace. Josephine, overcome with the conflicting emotions which the
day had excited, retired to her apartment, and, falling upon her knees,
with tears implored the guidance of the King of kings. Napoleon hastened
to his room, exclaiming impatiently to an attendant as he entered, "Off,
off with these confounded trappings!" He threw the mantle into one
corner of the room, and the gorgeous robe into another, and, thus
violently disencumbering himself, declared that hours of such mortal
tediousness he had never encountered before.

Josephine, in her remonstrances with Napoleon against assuming the
crown, predicted, with almost prophetic accuracy, the consequences which
would ensue. "Will not your power," she wrote to him, "opposed, as to
a certainty it must be, by the neighboring states, draw you into a
war with them? This will probably end in their ruin. Will not their
neighbors, beholding these effects, combine for your destruction? While
abroad such is the state of things, at home how numerous the envious and
discontented! How many plots to disconcert, and how many conspiracies to
punish."

Soon after the coronation, Josephine was one morning in her garden, when
an intimate friend called to see her. She saluted the empress by the
title of Your Majesty. "Ah!" she exclaimed, in tones deeply pathetic, "I
entreat that you will suffer me, at least here, to forget that I am an
empress." It is the unvarying testimony of her friends, that, while she
was receiving with surpassing gracefulness the congratulations of France
and of Europe, her heart was heavy. She clearly foresaw the peril of
their position, and trembled in view of an approaching downfall. The
many formal ceremonies which her station required, and upon which
Napoleon laid great stress, were exceedingly irksome to one whose warm
heart rejoiced in the familiarity of unrestrained friendship. She thus
described her feelings: "The nearer my husband approached the summit of
earthly greatness, the more dim became my last gleams of happiness. It
is true that I enjoyed a magnificent existence. My court was composed
of gentlemen and ladies the most illustrious in rank, all of whom were
emulous of the honor of being presented to me. But my time was no longer
at my command. The emperor was receiving from