e importunities of the poor madman increased to such an extent
that they became insupportable. He placed himself at the door of the
theaters in Paris at which Mademoiselle Hortense was expected, and threw
himself at her feet, supplicating, weeping, laughing, and gesticulating
all at once. This spectacle amused the crowd too much to long amuse
Mademoiselle de Beauharnais; and Carrat was ordered to remove the poor
fellow, who was placed, I think, in a private asylum for the insane.

Mademoiselle Hortense would have been too happy if she could have known
love only from the absurd effects which it produced on this diseased
brain, as she thus saw it only in its pleasant and comic aspect. But the
time came when she was forced to feel all that is painful and bitter in
the experience of that passion. In January, 1802, she was married to
Louis Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul, which was a most suitable
alliance as regards age, Louis being twenty-four years old, and
Mademoiselle de Beauharnais not more than eighteen; and nevertheless it
was to both parties the beginning of long and interminable sorrows.

Louis, however, was kind and sensible, full of good feeling and
intelligence, studious and fond of letters, like all his brothers (except
one alone); but he was in feeble health, suffered almost incessantly, and
was of a melancholy disposition. All the brothers of the First Consul
resembled him more or less in their personal appearance, and Louis still
more than the others, especially at the time of the Consulate, and before
the Emperor Napoleon had become so stout. But none of the brothers of
the Emperor possessed that imposing and majestic air and that rapid and
imperious manner which came to him at first by instinct, and afterwards
from the habit of command. Louis had peaceful and modest tastes. It has
been asserted that at the time of his marriage he was deeply attached to
a person whose name could not be ascertained, and who, I think, is still
a mystery.

Mademoiselle Hortense was extremely pretty, with an expressive and mobile
countenance, and in addition to this was graceful, talented, and affable.
Kindhearted and amiable like her mother, she had not that excessive
desire to oblige which sometimes detracted from Madame Bonaparte's
character. This is, nevertheless, the woman whom evil reports,
disseminated by miserable scandal-mongers, have so outrageously
slandered! My heart is stirred with disgust and indignation w