utiful bride to the altar, the deepest dejection marked his
countenance. Hortense buried her eyes in her handkerchief and wept
bitterly.

From that hour the alienation commenced. The grief-stricken bride,
young, inexperienced, impulsive, made no attempt to conceal the
repugnance with which she regarded the husband who had been forced upon
her. On the other hand, Louis had too much pride to pursue with his
attentions a bride whom he had reluctantly received, and who openly
manifested her aversion to him. Josephine was very sad. Her maternal
instincts revealed to her the true state of the case. Conscious that
the union, which had so inauspiciously commenced, had been brought about
by her, she exerted all her powers to promote friendly relations between
the parties. But her counsels and her prayers were alike in vain. Louis
Bonaparte, in his melancholy autobiography, writes:

"Never was there a more gloomy wedding. Never had husband and wife a
stronger presentiment of a forced and ill-suited marriage. Before the
ceremony, during the benediction, and ever afterwards, we both and
equally felt that we were not suited to each other."

"I have seen," writes Constant, "a hundred times Madame Louis Bonaparte
seek the solitude of her apartment and the bosom of a friend, there to
shed her tears. She would often escape from her husband in the midst of
the saloon of the First Consul, where one saw with chagrin this young
woman, formerly glittering in beauty, and who gracefully performed the
honors of the palace, retire into a corner or into the embrasure of a
window, with some one of her intimate friends, sadly to confide her
griefs. During this interview, from which she would return with her eyes
her husband would remain pensive and silent at the end of the saloon."

Napoleon at St. Helena, referring to this painful subject, said: "Louis
had been spoiled by reading the works of Rousseau. He contrived to agree
with his wife only for a few months. There were faults on both sides. On
the one hand, Louis was too teasing in his temper, and, on the other,
Hortense was too volatile. Hortense, the devoted, the generous Hortense,
was not entirely faultless in her conduct towards her husband. This I
must acknowledge, in spite of all the affection I bore her, and the
sincere attachment which I am sure she entertained for me. Though
Louis's whimsical humors were in all probability sufficiently teasing,
yet he loved Hortense. In such a case a