. This alliance, which love
alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy
issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and
jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the
wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil
bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not
merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and
cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine
was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all
those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her
husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered
in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived,
then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter
grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention
and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet _blasee_ and
hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and
the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part
to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she
required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should
not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose
the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and both
became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love
they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their
children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a
son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy.
Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness; and often
when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the
presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress
from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and
mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive
attachment.

But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment
arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in
her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had
sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and
little Hortense, quite disheartened