hile lost
in thought. A more melancholy meal probably was never witnessed. The
attendants around the table seemed to catch the infection, and moved
softly and silently in the discharge of their duties, as if they were in
the chamber of the dead. At last the ceremony of dinner was over, the
attendants were dismissed, and Napoleon, rising, and closing the door
with his own hand, was left alone with Josephine. Another moment of most
painful silence ensued, when the emperor, pale as death, and trembling
in every nerve, approached the empress. He took her hand, placed it upon
his heart, and in faltering accents said, "Josephine! my own good
Josephine! you know how I have loved you. It is to you alone that I owe
the only few moments of happiness I have known in the world. Josephine!
my destiny is stronger than my will. My dearest affections must yield to
the interests of France."

Josephine's brain reeled; her blood ceased to circulate; she fainted,
and fell lifeless upon the floor. Napoleon, alarmed, threw open the door
of the saloon, and called for help. Attendants from the ante-room
immediately entered. Napoleon took a taper from the mantel, and uttering
not a word, but pale and trembling, motioned to the Count de Beaumont to
take the empress in his arms. She was still unconscious of every thing,
but began to murmur, in tones of anguish, "Oh, no! you can not surely do
it. You would not kill me." The emperor led the way, through a dark
passage, to the private staircase which conducted to the apartment of
the empress. The agitation of Napoleon seemed now to increase. He
uttered some incoherent sentences about a violent nervous attack; and,
finding the stairs too steep and narrow for the Count de Beaumont to
bear the body of the helpless Josephine unassisted, he gave the light to
an attendant, and, supporting her limbs himself, they reached the door
of her bed-room. Napoleon then, dismissing his male attendants, and
laying Josephine upon her bed, rang for her waiting-women. He hung over
her with an expression of the most intense affection and anxiety until
she began to revive. But the moment consciousness seemed returning, he
left the room. Napoleon did not even throw himself upon his bed that
night. He paced the floor until the dawn of the morning. The royal
surgeon, Corvisart, passed the night at the bed-side of the empress.
Every hour the restless yet unrelenting emperor called at her door to
inquire concerning her situati