ss of the little
instruments taken from them, as they were in consequence forced to
give up all the feminine handiworks which till then had served to
beguile prison hours. At this time the king's coat became ragged, and
as the Princess Elizabeth, his sister, was mending it, as she had no
scissors, the king observed that she had to bite off the thread with
her teeth--'What a reverse!' said the king, looking tenderly upon her;
'you were in want of nothing at your pretty house at Montreuil.' 'Ah,
brother!' she replied, 'can I feel a regret of any kind while I share
your misfortunes?'"

The Empress Josephine is said to have played and sung with exquisite
feeling: her dancing is said to have been perfect. She exercised her
pencil, and--though such be not now antiquated for an _elegante_--her
needle and embroidery-frame, with beautiful address.

Towards the close of her eventful career, when, after her divorce
from Bonaparte, she kept a sort of domestic court at Navarre or
Malmaison, she and her ladies worked daily at tapestry or
embroidery--one reading aloud whilst the others were thus occupied;
and the hangings of the saloon at Malmaison were entirely her own
work. They must have been elegant; the material was white silk, the
embroidery roses, in which at intervals were entwined her own
initials.

An interesting circumstance is related of a conversation between one
of those ministering spirits a _soeur de la charite_ and Josephine,
in a time of peculiar excitement and trouble. At the conclusion of it,
the _soeur_, having discovered with whom she was conversing, added,
"Since I am addressing the mother of the afflicted, I no longer fear
my being indiscreet in any demand I may make for suffering humanity.
We are in great want of lint; if your majesty would condescend"----"I
promise you shall have some; we will make it ourselves."

From that moment the evenings were employed at Malmaison in making
lint, and the empress yielded to none in activity at this work.

Few of my readers will have accompanied me to this point without
anticipating the name with which these slight notices of royal
needlewomen must conclude--a name which all know, and which, knowing,
all reverence as that of a dignified princess, a noble and admirable
matron--Adelaide, our Dowager Queen. It was hers to reform the morals
of a court which, to our shame, had become licentious; it was hers to
render its charmed circle as pure and virtuous as the domesti