eon until she heard of him
being on his way from Egypt to France, her love intrigues were well
known, and her lovers were certainly not men of high public repute. In
short, Josephine was anything but "nobleminded." She was a confirmed
and audacious flirt until the stern realities of the dissolution of
her marriage brought her to her senses, and from that time until the
great political divorce took place, she appears to have kept free from
further love entanglements. Napoleon's attachment to her was very
genuine, and remained steadfast up to the time of her death, and even
at St. Helena he always spoke of her with great reverence. Forsyth
does not enhance Lowe's reputation or damage Napoleon's by the popular
use he makes of the annulment of the little Creole lady's marriage,
the merits of which may be referred to at greater length hereafter, as
it is a subject of itself and this reference to a momentous incident
of her husband's history is only by the way.

Meanwhile the Emperor's remains, in layers of coffins composed of
wood, tin, and lead, were hermetically sealed, and the tomb, having
been securely battened down with cement and slab, was substantially
railed in to prevent the intrusion of a sympathetic and curious
public. His tomb was left in charge of a British garrison, and the
heroes who followed him to his grave, and shared his martyrdom and
exile on that fatal rock for six mortal years, were shipped aboard the
_Camel_ and conveyed to England, there to be received by a set of
mildew-witted bureaucrats smitten with suspicion that the exiles may
have brought with them the spirit of their dead master, with the
object of invoking a sanguinary reaction in his favour by disturbing
the peace of Europe--as though Europe had experienced a single day of
real peace since the downfall of the Empire!

These exemplary men had faced and borne with magnificent fortitude
hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their mission was to carry
out the dying command of the hero whom they adored, and who had
succumbed to the hospitable treatment of Bathurst, Castlereagh,
Liverpool, and Wellington, and their accomplices. These guilty men,
whose names, strange to say, are as undying as that of their victim,
would fain have made it appear that had he not died of cancer of the
stomach, it were not possible that he could have died of anything but
robust health, owing to the salubrity of the climate they had selected
and the unequalled ca