Madame Louis Bonaparte was enceinte. Josephine, although she tenderly
loved her children, did not seem to behold the approaching event which
the situation of her daughter indicated with the interest natural to the
heart of a mother. She had long been aware of the calumnious reports
circulated respecting the supposed connection between Hortense and the
First Consul, and that base accusation cost her many tears. Poor
Josephine paid dearly for the splendour of her station! As I knew how
devoid of foundation these atrocious reports were, I endeavoured to
console her by telling her what was true, that I was exerting all my
efforts to demonstrate their infamy and falsehood. Bonaparte, however,
dazzled by the affection which was manifested towards him from all
quarters, aggravated the sorrow of his wife by a silly vanity. He
endeavoured to persuade her that these reports had their origin only in
the wish of the public that he should have a child, so that these seeming
consolations offered by self-love to Josephine's grief gave force to
existing conjugal alarms, and the fear of divorce returned with all its
horrors. Under the foolish illusion of his vanity Bonaparte imagined
that France was desirous of being governed even by a bastard if supposed
to be a child of his,--a singular mode truly of founding a new
legitimacy!

Josephine, whose susceptibility appears to me even now excusable, well
knew my sentiments on the subject of Bonaparte's founding a dynasty, and
she had not forgotten my conduct when two years before the question had
been agitated on the occasion of Louis XVIII.'s letters to the First
Consul. I remember that one day, after the publication of the parallel
of Caesar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte, Josephine having entered our cabinet
without being announced, which she sometimes did when from the good
humour exhibited at breakfast she reckoned upon its continuance,
approached Bonaparte softly, seated herself on his knee, passed her hand
gently through his hair and over his face, and thinking the moment
favourable, said to him in a burst of tenderness, "I entreat of you,
Bonaparte, do not make yourself a King! It is that wretch Lucien who
urges you to it. Do not listen to him!" Bonaparte replied, without
anger, and even smiling as he pronounced the last words, "You are mad,
my poor Josephine. It is your old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain,
your Rochefoucaulds, who tell you all these fables!... Come now, you
inter