d Josephine of his love--of his ardent and
undying love. In every way he tried to soothe and comfort her, and for
some time they remained locked in each other's embrace. The attendant
was dismissed, and for an hour they continued together in this last
private interview. Josephine then, in the experience of an intensity of
anguish which few hearts have ever known, parted forever from the
husband whom she had so long, so fondly, and so faithfully loved.

After the empress had retired, with a desolated heart, to her chamber
of unnatural widowhood, the attendant entered the apartment of Napoleon
to remove the lights. He found the emperor so buried beneath the
bed-clothes as to be invisible. Not a word was uttered. The lights were
removed, and the unhappy monarch was left in darkness and silence to
the dreadful companionship of his own thoughts. The next morning the
death-like pallor of his cheek, his sunken eye, and the haggard
expression of his countenance, attested that the emperor had passed
the night in sleeplessness and suffering.

Great as was the wrong which Napoleon thus inflicted upon the noble
Josephine, every one must be sensible of a certain kind of grandeur
which pervades the tragedy. When we contemplate the brutal butcheries of
Henry VIII., as wife after wife was compelled to place her head upon the
block, merely to afford room for the indulgence of his vagrant passions;
when we contemplate George IV., by neglect and inhumanity driving
Caroline to desperation and to crime, and polluting the ear of the world
with the revolting story of sin and shame; when we contemplate the
Bourbons, generation after generation, rioting in voluptuousness, in
utter disregard of all the laws of God and man, while we can not abate
one iota of our condemnation of the great wrong which Napoleon
perpetrated, we feel that it becomes the monarchies of Europe to be
sparing in their condemnation.

The beautiful palace of Malmaison, which Napoleon had embellished with
every possible attraction, and where the emperor and empress had passed
many of their happiest hours, was assigned to Josephine for her future
residence. Napoleon settled upon her a jointure of about six hundred
thousand dollars a year. She was still to retain the title and the rank
of Empress-Queen.

The ensuing day, at eleven o'clock, all the household of the Tuilleries
were assembled upon the grand staircase and in the vestibule, to witness
the departure of their belo