emotions of
Josephine and her children as, encompassed with regal splendor, they
took up their residence in the palace. But a few years before,
Josephine, in poverty, friendlessness, and intensest anguish of heart,
had led her children by the hand through those halls to visit her
imprisoned husband. From one of those apartments the husband and father
had been led to his trial, and to the scaffold, and now this mother
enters this palace virtually a queen, and her children have opening
before them the very highest positions of earthly wealth and honor.

CHAPTER III.

HORTENSE AND DUROC.

1799-1804

Calumnies.--Testimony of the Berkeley men.--Remarks of Napoleon at St.
Helena.--The voice of slander.--Testimony of the Duchess of
Abrantes.--Portrait of Hortense.--Testimony of Bourrienne.--Napoleon at
the Tuileries.--Beauty of Josephine.--Malmaison.--Remarkable testimony
of Napoleon.--The infernal machine.--The royalist conspiracy.--Letter
from Josephine.--Michel Duroc.--General Duroc at Bautzen.--Death of
Duroc.--Grief of Napoleon.--Affecting scene.--Quotation from J. T.
Headley.--Character of Duroc.--Family complications.--The divorce
suggested.--Character of Louis Bonaparte.--Testimony of
Bourrienne.--Disappointed lovers.

It is a very unamiable trait in human nature, that many persons are more
eager to believe that which is bad in the character of others than that
which is good. The same voice of calumny, which has so mercilessly
assailed Josephine, has also traduced Hortense. It is painful to witness
the readiness with which even now the vilest slanders, devoid of all
evidence, can be heaped upon a noble and virtuous woman who is in her
grave.

In the days of Napoleon's power, he himself, his mother, his wife, his
sisters, and his stepdaughter, Hortense, were assailed with the most
envenomed accusations malice could engender. These infamous assaults,
which generally originated with the British Tory press, still have
lingering echoes throughout the world. There are those who seem to
consider it no crime to utter the most atrocious accusations, even
without a shadow of proof, against those who are not living. Well do the
"Berkeley men" say:

"The Bonapartes, especially the women of that family, have always been
too proud and haughty to degrade themselves. Even had they lacked what
is technically called moral character, their virtue has been intrenched
behind their ancestry, and the achievements of their o