France with an army
to conquer, for the French Republic, that ancient land of Egypt, on
whose pyramids the green moss of long-forgotten ages was flourishing.

Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris; but she
needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to sustain this
separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to her might be just
as likely to last six years as six months. And what could afford better
consolation to a heart so tender as Josephine's than the presence of her
beloved daughter? She had willingly given up her son to her husband, and
he had accompanied the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and
her she would not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
boarding-school.

Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who had come
to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after two years'
stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all the charms of
innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.

Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had retained
the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a white sheet
of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name.
She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her
young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his
commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she
reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to
find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times the hero, the
lord and master, the father to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she
dared not love him; she could only look up to and honor him from
a distance.

Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of a child, upon
the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to her, and from which
she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling piece of good fortune
without having any accurate idea in what it was to consist. She still
loved all mankind, and believed in their truth and rectitude. No thorn
had yet wounded her heart; no disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed
to pieces, had yet left its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of
transparent whiteness. The expression of her large blue eyes was still
radiant and undimmed, and her laugh was so clear and ringin