pleasant troubles beyond the Pyrenees, but the season was not over,
and before winter the Emperor's discipline would no doubt be
successful. The grand army now pouring out of Germany across France
into Spain evidently meant serious business, but there could be no
doubt of the result.

The court remained solemn and dull in its weary round of ceremony. The
moving spirit was now occupied elsewhere, and his constant
absent-mindedness made the whole structure meaningless; for it was an
open secret that the soft grace and beseeching eyes, the graceful and
willowy form, the exquisite taste and winning ways of Josephine would
avail her no longer. The little nephew, Hortense's son and Napoleon's
darling, his intended heir, was dead; Joseph had only daughters, and
there being no male successor to the throne, reasons of state made a
divorce inevitable.[25] The deference of others to the Empress and her
condescension to them were but a mockery, the reality of her power
having vanished. In this vain show the Emperor moved more dark and
mysterious than ever. It was his will that nothing should be changed,
and every courtier played his part as well as possible, the two
leading actors playing theirs superbly. There was an outward display
of confidence and kindness between them, which sometimes may have been
real; there were quarrels, explanations, and reconciliations--a
momentary return at times to old affection: but the resultant of the
conflicting forces was such as to destroy conjugal trust and create
general disquietude.

[Footnote 25: Masson: Josephine repudiee. Welschinger, La
divorce de Napoleon.]

When Napoleon looked abroad he saw nothing to reassure him, and
everything to create alarm. In Prussia there was a regeneration such
as was comparable only to a new birth. The old military monarchy,
under which the land had been repressed like an armed camp by its
sovereigns, was gone forever. The Tugendbund, that "band of virtue"
already mentioned, had ramified to the farthest borders; partizan
warfare was abandoned; piety, dignity, purity, courage, and the power
of organization were filling the land. The presence of the French
could not quench the new spirit, but instead it added fuel to the
flames of national hatred. Patriotic conventicles and every other form
of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the
training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion,
and under an uns