beautiful, helpful life and
produced great art, yet knew it not.

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

You have met General Bonaparte in my house. Well--he it is who
would supply a father's place to the orphans of Alexander de
Beauharnais, and a husband's to his widow. I admire the General's
courage, the extent of his information, for on all subjects he
talks equally well, and the quickness of his judgment, which
enables him to seize the thoughts of others almost before they
are expressed; but, I confess it, I shrink from the despotism he
seems desirous of exercising over all who approach him. His
searching glance has something singular and inexplicable, which
imposes even on our Directors; judge if it may not intimidate a
woman. Even--what ought to please me--the force of a passion,
described with an energy that leaves not a doubt of his
sincerity, is precisely the cause which arrests the consent I am
often on the point of pronouncing.
--_Letters of Josephine_

[Illustration: EMPRESS JOSEPHINE]

It was a great life, dearie, a great life! Charles Lamb used to study
mathematics to subdue his genius, and I'll have to tinge truth with gray
in order to keep this little sketch from appearing like a red Ruritania
romance.

Josephine was born on an island in the Caribbean Sea, a long way from
France. The Little Man was an islander, too. They started for France about
the same time, from different directions--each, of course, totally unaware
that the other lived. They started on the order of that joker, Fate, in
order to scramble Continental politics, and make omelet of the world's
pretensions.

Josephine's father was Captain Tascher. Do you know who Captain Tascher
was? Very well, there is satisfaction then in knowing that no one else
does either. He seems to have had no ancestors; and he left no successor
save Josephine.

We know a little less of Josephine's mother than we do of her father. She
was the daughter of a Frenchman whom the world had plucked of both money
and courage, and he moved to the West Indies to vegetate and brood on the
vanity of earthly ambitions. Young Captain Tascher married the planter's
daughter in the year Seventeen Hundred Sixty-two. The next year a
daughter was born, and they called her name Josephine.

Not long after her birth, Captain Tascher thought to mend his prospects by
moving to one of the neighboring islands. His wife went with him