his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this was a
quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she could never
avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how much care and
anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often Bonaparte had
scolded her about them; how often she had promised to do differently,
and make no more purchases until she should be in a condition to pay
at once!

But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing eyes
and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she could not
escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point precisely was it
that the penitent sinner continually fell into fresh transgression--and
again ran into debt!

Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular as her
own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two young,
careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to each other,
and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly as they did
their purses.

So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a premonitory
distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have happened that she took
the mighty eagle that fluttered above her head for a bird of evil omen
whose warning cry she frequently fancied that she heard in the stillness
of the night.

The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more than a
queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new fortune-teller, Madame
Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to her, "You will wear a crown,
but only for a short time."

Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and too
healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be something
else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had no children,
yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and his brothers
repeated to him daily that this was for him a political necessity.

Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her hands for
help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her daughter to give
up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure the real happiness of
her mother.

Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at the
thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying an
unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had sc