r of the prison. The turnkey, in loud and
fearless tones, cried out to his dog, "Get out, you cursed brute of
a Robespierre!" This emphatic phraseology convinced them that the
sanguinary monster before whom all France had trembled was no longer to
be feared. In a few moments the glad tidings were resounding through the
prison, and many were in an instant raised from the abyss of despair to
almost a delirium of bliss. Josephine's bed was restored to her, and she
placed her head upon her pillow that night, and sank down to the most
calm and delightful repose.

No language can describe the transports excited throughout all France by
the tidings of the fall of Robespierre. Three hundred thousand captives
were then lingering in the prisons of Paris awaiting death. As the
glittering steel severed the head of the tyrant from his body, their
prison doors burst open, and France was filled with hearts throbbing
with ecstasy, and with eyes overflowing with tears of rapture. Five
hundred thousand fugitives were trembling in their retreats,
apprehensive of arrest. They issued from their hiding-places frantic
with joy, and every village witnessed their tears and embraces.

The new party which now came into power with Tallien at its head,
immediately liberated those who had been condemned by their opponents,
and the prison doors of Josephine were thrown open to her. But from the
gloom of her cell she returned to a world still dark and clouded. Her
husband had been beheaded, and all his property confiscated. She found
herself a widow and penniless. Nearly all of her friends had perished in
the storms which had swept over France. The Reign of Terror had passed
away, but gaunt famine was staring the nation in the face. They were
moments of ecstasy when Josephine, again free, pressed Eugene and
Hortense to her heart. But the most serious embarrassments immediately
crowded upon her. Poverty, stern and apparently remediless, was her lot.
She had no friends upon whom she had any right to call for aid. There
was no employment open before her by which she could obtain her
subsistence; and it appeared that she and her children were to be
reduced to absolute beggary. These were among the darkest hours of her
earthly career. It was from this abyss of obscurity and want that she
was to be raised to a position of splendor and of power such as the
wildest dreams of earthly ambition could hardly have conceived.

Though Robespierre was dead, the str