he; "for the last time in my life I press you and my
children to my breast."

These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the
widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of their tragic
married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the great essentials
which assure happiness.

Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round
rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes
they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too
familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young
lady suspect. The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable,
and they may well be regarded as malicious slander. It is not unlikely
that Josephine was on friendly terms with the General before they met
in Les Carmes, but that it was more than friendship is a mere
hypothesis. Her relation with that unspeakable libertine Barras was
especially unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after
her release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She
was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her family,
and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the chosen friend
of a creature who took advantage of her and then betrayed her to the
world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the sad and sickening story
of his connection with Josephine, and gloats over the opportunity it
gives him of repeating conversations he had with General Hoche as to
her love entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress
of Hoche in the sight of the whole world."

The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal
statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the relations
he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself to him may not
be readily believed when he deliberately involves his own friends in
the liaisons. There is no question of what his part was in the
degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of dragging other names into
the moral quagmire, in order, it may be, to justify his own dealings
and to further debase her, could only be undertaken by a person soaked
with the venom of indecency, and, in this case, had no other object
than that of gratifying his malice against her husband. His
assumption of moral superiority is quite entertaining when he, the
seducer and corrupter, speaks of the unfortunate woman's
"libertinism," and calls her in his bitterness "a licentious Creole."

Th