character exalts it more than her conduct to the
family who had endeavored to injure her in the most tender point. She
often was the means of making peace between Napoleon and different
members of his family with whom he was displeased. Even after the
separation which they had been instrumental in effecting, she still
exerted that influence which she never lost, to reconcile differences
which arose between them. Napoleon could never long mistrust her
generous and tender feelings, and the intimate knowledge of such a
disposition every day increased his love; she was not only the object of
his fondest affection, but he believed her to be in some mysterious
manner connected with his destiny; a belief which chimed in with the
popular superstition by which she was regarded as his good genius--a
superstition which took still deeper hold of the public mind when days
of disaster came, whose date commenced in no long time after the
separation. The apparently accidental circumstance by which Josephine
had escaped the explosion of the infernal machine was construed by many
as a direct interposition of Providence in favor of _Napoleon's Guardian
Angel_.

It was just as she was stepping into her carriage, which was to follow
closely that of the First Consul to the theatre, that General Rapp, who
had always before appeared utterly unobservant of ladies' dress,
remarked to Josephine, that the pattern of the shawl did not match her
dress. She returned to the house, and ran up to her apartment to change
it for another; the delay did not occupy more than three minutes, but
they sufficed to save her life. Napoleon's carriage just cleared the
explosion; had Josephine's been close behind, nothing could have saved
her. In the happy days of love and confidence, Malmaison was the scene
of great enjoyment: the hand of taste could be discerned in all its
embellishments. Napoleon preferred it to any other residence. When he
arrived there from the Luxemburg or the Tuileries, he was wild with
delight, like a school-boy let loose from school--every thing enchanted
him, but most of all, perhaps, the chimes of the village church-bells.
It may have been partly owing to the associations which they awakened.
He would stop in his rambles if he heard them, lest his foot-fall should
drown the sound--he would remain as if entranced, in a kind of ecstasy,
till they ceased. "Ah! how they remind me of the first years I spent at
Brienne!"

Napoleon added cons