hing
disturbed the sepulchral silence of the scene but the convulsive
sobbings of Hortense, blending with the mournful tones of the reader's
voice. Eugene, in the mean time, pale and trembling as an aspen leaf,
had taken a position by the side of his mother. Silent tears were
trickling down the cheeks of the empress.

As soon as the reading of the act of separation was finished, Josephine
for a moment pressed her handkerchief to her weeping eyes, and then,
rising, in clear and musical, but tremulous tones, pronounced the oath
of acceptance. She then sat down, took the pen, and affixed her
signature to the deed which sundered the dearest hopes and the fondest
ties which human hearts can feel. Poor Eugene could endure this anguish
no longer. His brain reeled, his heart ceased to beat, and he fell
lifeless upon the floor. Josephine and Hortense retired with the
attendants who bore out the insensible form of the affectionate son and
brother. It was a fitting termination of this mournful but sublime
tragedy.

But the anguish of the day was not yet closed. Josephine, half delirious
with grief, had another scene still more painful to pass through in
taking a final adieu of him who had been her husband. She remained in
her chamber, in heart-rending, speechless grief, until the hour arrived
in which Napoleon usually retired for the night. The emperor, restless
and wretched, had just placed himself in the bed from which he had
ejected his most faithful and devoted wife, and the attendant was on the
point of leaving the room, when the private door of his chamber was
slowly opened, and Josephine tremblingly entered. Her eyes were swollen
with grief, her hair disheveled, and she appeared in all the dishabille
of unutterable anguish. She tottered into the middle of the room, and
approached the bed; then, irresolutely stopping, she buried her face in
her hands, and burst into a flood of tears. A feeling of delicacy seemed
for a moment to have arrested her steps--a consciousness that she had
_now_ no right to enter the chamber of Napoleon; but in another moment
all the pent-up love of her heart burst forth, and, forgetting every
thing in the fullness of her anguish, she threw herself upon the bed,
clasped Napoleon's neck in her arms, and exclaiming, "My husband! my
husband!" sobbed as though her heart were breaking. The imperial spirit
of Napoleon was for the moment entirely vanquished, and he also wept
almost convulsively. He assure