had been put in tier place, on
condition that they were to bear her griefs. The misfortunes of Queen
Hortense began with life itself. Her father having been executed on a
revolutionary scaffold, and her mother thrown into prison, she found
herself, while still a child, alone, and with no other reliance than the
faithfulness of the old servants of the family. Her brother, the noble
and worthy Prince Eugene, had been compelled, it is said, to serve as an
apprentice. She had a few years of happiness, or at least of repose,
during the time she was under the care of Madame Campan, and just after
she left boarding-school. But her evil destiny was far from quitting
her; and her wishes being thwarted, an unhappy marriage opened for her a
new succession of troubles. The death of her first son, whom the Emperor
wished to adopt, and whom he had intended to be his successor in the
Empire, the divorce of her mother, the tragic death of her best-loved
friend, Madame de Brocq, who, before her eyes, slipped over a precipice;
the overturning of the imperial throne, which caused her the loss of her
title and rank as queen, a loss which she, however, felt less than the
misfortunes of him whom she regarded as her father; and finally, the
continual annoyance of domestic dissensions, of vexatious lawsuits, and
the agony she suffered in beholding her oldest surviving son removed from
her by order of her husband,--such were the principal catastrophes in a
life which might have been thought destined for so much happiness.

The day after the marriage of Mademoiselle Hortense, the First Consul set
out for Lyons, where there awaited him the deputies of the Cisalpine
Republic, assembled for the election of a president. Everywhere on his
route he was welcomed with fetes and congratulations, with which all were
eager to overwhelm him on account of the miraculous manner in which he
had escaped the plots of his enemies. This journey differed in no wise
from the tours which he afterwards made as Emperor. On his arrival at
Lyons, he received the visit of all the authorities, the constituent
bodies, the deputations from the neighboring departments, and the members
of the Italian councils. Madame Bonaparte, who accompanied him on this
journey, attended with him these public displays, and shared with him the
magnificent fete given to him by the city of Lyons. The day on which the
council elected and proclaimed the First Consul president of the Italian
Repub