Hortense, impetuous and unreflecting, was so impatient to see her mother, that one morning she secretly left her aunt"s house, and, in a market cart, traveled thirty miles to Paris. She found her mother"s maid, Victorine, at the family mansion, where all the property was sealed up by the revolutionary functionaries. After making unavailing efforts to obtain an interview with her parents, she returned the next day to Fontainebleau. Josephine was informed of this imprudent act of ardent affection, and wrote to her child the following admirable letter:
"I should be entirely satisfied with the good heart of my Hortense were I not displeased with her bad head. How is it, my daughter, that, without permission from your aunt, you have come to Paris? This was very wrong! But it was to see me, you will say. You ought to be aware that no one can see me without an order, to obtain which requires both means and precautions. And, besides, you got upon M. Dorcet"s cart, at the risk of incommoding him and r.e.t.a.r.ding the conveyance of his merchandise. In all this you have been very inconsiderate. My child! observe, it is not sufficient to do good; you must also do good properly. At your age, the first of all virtues is confidence and docility toward your relations. I am therefore obliged to tell you that I prefer your tranquil attachment to your misplaced warmth. This, however, does not prevent me from embracing you, but less tenderly than I shall do when I learn that you have returned to your aunt."
There was at this time, for some unknown reason, a little mitigation in the severity with which the prisoners were treated, and Josephine was very sanguine in the belief that the hour of their release was at hand.
Emboldened by this hope, she wrote a very earnest appeal to the Committee of Public Safety, before whom the accusations against M.
Beauharnais would be brought. The sincerity and frankness of the eloquent address so touched the feelings of the president of the committee, that he resolved to secure for Josephine and her husband the indulgence of an interview. The greatest caution was necessary in doing this, for he periled his own life by the manifestation of any sympathy for the accused.
The only way in which he could accomplish his benevolent project was to have them both brought together for trial. Neither of them knew of this design. One morning Josephine, while dreaming of liberty and of her children, was startled by the unexpected summons to appear before the Revolutionary tribunal. She knew that justice had no voice which could be heard before that merciless and sanguinary court. She knew that the mockery of a trial was but the precursor of the sentence, which was immediately followed by the execution. From her high hopes this summons caused a fearful fall. Thoughts of her husband and her children rushed in upon her overflowing heart, and the tenderness of the woman for a few moments triumphed over the heroine. Soon, however, regaining in some degree her composure, she prepared herself, with as much calmness as possible, to meet her doom. She was led from her prison to the hall where the blood-stained tribunal held its session, and, with many others, was placed in an ante-room, to await her turn for an examination of a few minutes, upon the issues of which life or death was suspended.
While Josephine was sitting here, in the anguish of suspense, an opposite door was opened, and some armed soldiers led in a group of victims from another prison. As Josephine"s eye vacantly wandered over their features, she was startled by the entrance of one whose wan and haggard features strikingly reminded her of her husband. She looked again, their eyes met, and husband and wife were instantly locked in each other"s embrace. At this interview, the stoicism of M. Beauharnais was entirely subdued--the thoughts of the past, of his unworthiness, of the faithful and generous love of Josephine, rushed in a resistless flood upon his soul. He leaned his aching head upon the forgiving bosom of Josephine, and surrendered himself to love, and penitence, and tears.
This brief and painful interview was their last. They never met again.
They were allowed but a few moments together ere the officers came and dragged M. Beauharnais before the judges. His examination lasted but a few minutes, when he was remanded back to prison. Nothing was proved against him. No serious accusation even was laid to his charge. But he was a n.o.ble. He had descended from ill.u.s.trious ancestors, and therefore, as an aristocrat, he was doomed to die. Josephine was also conducted into the presence of this sanguinary tribunal. She was the wife of a n.o.bleman. She was the friend of Marie Antoinette. She had even received distinguished attentions at court. These crimes consigned her also to the guillotine. Josephine was conducted back to her prison, unconscious of the sentence which had been p.r.o.nounced against her husband and herself. She even cherished the sanguine hope that they would soon be liberated, for she could not think it possible that they could be doomed to death without even the accusation of crime.
Each evening there was brought into the prison a list of the names of those who were to be led to the guillotine on the ensuing morning. A few days after the trial, on the evening of the 24th of July, 1794, M. Beauharnais found his name with the proscribed who were to be led to the scaffold with the light of the next day. Love for his wife and his children rendered life too precious to him to be surrendered without anguish. But sorrow had subdued his heart, and led him with prayerfulness to look to G.o.d for strength to meet the trial. The native dignity of his character also nerved him to meet his fate with fort.i.tude.
He sat down calmly in his cell, and wrote a long, affectionate, and touching letter to his wife. He a.s.sured her of his most heartfelt appreciation of the purity and n.o.bleness of her character, and of her priceless worth as a wife and a mother. He thanked her again and again for the generous spirit with which she forgave his offenses, when, weary and contrite, he returned from his guilty wanderings, and anew sought her love. He implored her to cherish in the hearts of his children the memory of their father, that, though dead, he might still live in their affections. While he was writing, the executioners came in to cut off his long hair, that the ax might do its work unimpeded. Picking up a small lock from the floor, he wished to transmit it to his wife as his last legacy. The brutal executioners forbade him the privilege. He, however, succeeded in purchasing from them a few hairs, which he inclosed in his letter, and which she subsequently received.
In the early dawn of the morning, the cart of the condemned was at the prison door. The Parisians were beginning to be weary of the abundant flow of blood, and Robespierre had therefore caused the guillotine to be removed from the Place de la Revolution to an obscure spot in the Faubourg St. Antoine. A large number of victims were doomed to die that morning. The carts, as they rolled along the pavements, groaned with their burdens, and the persons in the streets looked on in sullen silence. M. Beauharnais, with firmness, ascended the scaffold. The slide of the guillotine fell, and the brief drama of his stormy life was ended.
While the mutilated form of M. Beauharnais was borne to an ign.o.ble burial, Josephine, entirely unconscious of the calamity which had befallen her, was cheering her heart with the hope of a speedy union with her husband and her children in their own loved home. The morning after the execution, the daily journal, containing the names of those who had perished on the preceding day, was brought, as usual, to the prison. Some of the ladies in the prison had received the intimation that M. Beauharnais had fallen. They watched, therefore, the arrival of the journal, and, finding their fears established, they tried, for a time, to conceal the dreadful intelligence from the unconscious widow.
But Josephine was eagerly inquiring for the paper, and at last obtaining it, she ran her eye hastily over the record of executions, and found the name of her husband in the fatal list. She fell senseless upon the floor. For a long time she remained in a swoon. When consciousness returned, and with it a sense of the misery into which she was plunged, in the delirium of her anguish she exclaimed, "Oh G.o.d! let me die! let me die! There is no peace for me but in the grave."
Her friends gathered around her. They implored her to think of her children, and for their sake to prize a life she could no longer prize for her own. The poignancy of her grief gradually subsided into the calm of despair. A sleepless night lingered slowly away. The darkness and the gloom of a prison settled down upon her soul. The morning dawned drearily. A band of rough and merciless agents from the Revolutionary a.s.sembly came to her with the almost welcome intelligence that in two days she was to be led to the Conciergerie, and from thence to her execution. These tidings would have been joyful to Josephine were it not for her children. A mother"s love clung to the orphans, and it was with pain inexpressible that she thought of leaving them alone in this tempestuous world--a world made so stormy, so woeful, by man"s inhumanity to his fellow-man.
The day preceding the one a.s.signed for her execution arrived. The numerous friends of Josephine in the prison hung around her with tears.
The heartless jailer came and took away her mattress, saying, with a sneer, that she would need it no longer, as her head was soon to repose upon the soft pillow of the guillotine. It is reported that, as the hour of execution drew nearer, Josephine became not only perfectly calm, but even cheerful in spirit. She looked affectionately upon the weeping group gathered around her, and, recalling at the moment the prediction of the aged negress, gently smiling, said, "We have no cause for alarm my friends; I am not to be executed. It is written in the decrees of Fate that I am yet to be Queen of France." Some of her friends thought that the suppressed anguish of her heart had driven her to delirium, and they wept more bitterly. But one of the ladies, Madame d"Aiguillon, was a little irritated at pleasantry which she deemed so ill timed. With something like resentment, she asked, "Why, then, madame, do you not appoint your household?" "Ah! that is true," Josephine replied. "I had forgotten. Well, you, my dear, shall be my maid of honor. I promise you the situation." They both lived to witness the strange fulfillment of this promise. Josephine, however, who, from the circ.u.mstances of her early life, was inclined to credulity, afterward declared that at the time her mind reposed in the full confidence that in some way her life would be saved, and that the prediction of the negress would be virtually realized.
The shades of night settled down around the gloomy convent, enveloping in their folds the despairing hearts which thronged this abode of woe.
Suddenly the most exultant shout of joy burst from every lip, and echoed along through corridors, and dungeons, and grated cells. There was weeping and fainting for rapture inexpressible. The prisoners leaped into each other"s arms, and, frantic with happiness, clung together in that long and heartfelt embrace which none can appreciate but those who have been companions in woe. Into the blackness of their midnight there had suddenly burst the blaze of noonday. What caused this apparently miraculous change? The iron-hearted jailer had pa.s.sed along, announcing, in coa.r.s.est phrase, THAT ROBESPIERRE WAS GUILLOTINED. There had been a new revolution. The tyrant had fallen. The prisons which he had filled with victims were to be emptied of their captives.
CHAPTER V.
THE RELEASE FROM PRISON.
A.D. 1794-A.D. 1795
Robespierre.--M. Tallien.--Madame de Fontenay.--A lover"s device.-- Execution of Robespierre decreed.--He is guillotined.--Singular mode of conveying information.--Pantomimic representation of Robespierre"s fall.--Universal joy caused by the death of the tyrant.--Josephine released from captivity.--Gloomy prospect.--Heartlessness of Marat.
--Eugene apprenticed to an artisan.--Kindness of Josephine"s friends.--She recovers her property.--A domestic scene.--A new order of knighthood.--The Order of _Filial Love_.--Inauguration.--Decorations of the room.--The oath.--New organisation of social society.--The "Ball of the Victims."--Fashionable style of hair-dressing.--A new insurrection.--The little Corsican.--Napoleon"s authority established.
--The Tuilleries fortified.--Advance of the insurgents.--Napoleon opens his batteries.--Defeat of the insurgents.--Rising fame of Napoleon.--His first interview with Josephine.--His "seal."--Napoleon disarms the populace.--The sword of Beauharnais.--Napoleon regards Josephine with interest.--Her opinion of him.--Letter to a friend.-- Foresight of Napoleon.--His confidence.--His ambition unbounded.--His moral principles.--Napoleon"s estimate of the female s.e.x.--Strength of his attachment.
The overthrow of Robespierre, and the consequent escape of Josephine from the doom impending over her, was in the following manner most strangely accomplished. The tyranny of Robespierre had become nearly insupportable. Conspiracies were beginning to be formed to attempt his overthrow. A lady of great beauty and celebrity, Madame de Fontenay, was imprisoned with Josephine. M. Tallien, a man of much influence with a new party then rising into power, had conceived a strong attachment for this lady, and, though he could not safely indulge himself in interviews with her in prison, he was in the habit of coming daily to the Convent of the Carmelites that he might have the satisfaction of catching a glimpse of the one he loved through her grated window.
Madame de Fontenay had received secret intelligence that she was soon to be led before the Convention for trial. This she knew to be but the prelude of her execution. That evening M. Tallien appeared as usual before the guarded cas.e.m.e.nt of the Carmelites. Madame de Fontenay and Josephine, arm in arm, leaned against the bars of the window, as if to breathe the fresh evening air, and made a sign to arrest M. Tallien"s particular attention. They then dropped from the window a piece of cabbage-leaf, in which Madame de Fontenay had inclosed the following note:
"My trial is decreed--the result is certain. If you love me as you say, urge every means to save France and me."
With intense interest, they watched the motions of M. Tallien until they saw him take the cabbage-leaf from the ground. Roused by the billet to the consciousness of the necessity of immediate action, he proceeded to the Convention, and, with the impa.s.sioned energy which love for Madame de Fontenay and hatred of Robespierre inspired, made an energetic and fearless a.s.sault upon the tyrant. Robespierre, pale and trembling, saw that his hour had come. A decree of accusation was preferred against him, and the head of the merciless despot fell upon that guillotine where he had already caused so many thousands to perish. The day before Josephine was to have been executed, he was led, mangled and bleeding, to the scaffold. He had attempted to commit suicide. The ball missed its aim, but shattered his jaw. The wretched man ascended the ladder, and stood upon the platform of the guillotine. The executioners tore the bandage from his mangled face, that the linen might not impede the blow of the ax. Their rude treatment of the inflamed wound extorted a cry of agony, which thrilled upon the ear of the a.s.sembled crowd, and produced a silence as of the grave. The next moment the slide fell, and the mutilated head was severed from the body. Then the very heavens seemed rent by one long, loud, exulting shout, which proclaimed that Robespierre was no more!
The death of Robespierre arrested the ax which was just about to fall upon the head of Josephine. The first intimation of his overthrow was communicated to her in the following singular manner. Madame d"Aiguillon was weeping bitterly, and sinking down with faintness in view of the b.l.o.o.d.y death to which her friend was to be led on the morrow. Josephine, whose fort.i.tude had not forsaken her, drew her almost senseless companion to the window, that she might be revived by the fresh air.
Her attention was arrested by a woman of the lower orders in the street, who was continually looking up to the window, beckoning to Josephine, and making many very singular gestures. She seemed to desire to call her attention particularly to the _robe_ which she wore, holding it up, and pointing to it again and again. Josephine, through the iron grating, cried out _Robe_. The woman eagerly gave signs of a.s.sent, and immediately took up a stone, which in French is _Pierre_. Josephine again cried out _pierre_. The woman appeared overjoyed on perceiving that her pantomime began to be understood. She then put the two together, pointing alternately to the one and to the other. Josephine cried out _Robespierre_. The woman then began to dance and shout with delight, and made signs of cutting off a head.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PANTOMIME.]
This pantomime excited emotions in the bosom of Josephine which cannot be described. She hardly dared to believe that the tyrant had actually fallen, and yet she knew not how else to account for the singular conduct of the woman. But a few moments elapsed before a great noise was heard in the corridor of the prison. The turnkey, in loud and fearless tones, cried out to his dog, "Get out, you cursed brute of a Robespierre!" This emphatic phraseology convinced them that the sanguinary monster before whom all France had trembled was no longer to be feared. In a few moments the glad tidings were resounding through the prison, and many were in an instant raised from the abyss of despair to almost a delirium of bliss. Josephine"s bed was restored to her, and she placed her head upon her pillow that night, and sank down to the most calm and delightful repose.
No language can describe the transports excited throughout all France by the tidings of the fall of Robespierre. Three hundred thousand captives were then lingering in the prisons of Paris awaiting death. As the glittering steel severed the head of the tyrant from his body, their prison doors burst open, and France was filled with hearts throbbing with ecstasy, and with eyes overflowing with tears of rapture. Five hundred thousand fugitives were trembling in their retreats, apprehensive of arrest. They issued from their hiding-places frantic with joy, and every village witnessed their tears and embraces.
The new party which now came into power with Tallien at its head, immediately liberated those who had been condemned by their opponents, and the prison doors of Josephine were thrown open to her. But from the gloom of her cell she returned to a world still dark and clouded. Her husband had been beheaded, and all his property confiscated. She found herself a widow and penniless. Nearly all of her friends had perished in the storms which had swept over France. The Reign of Terror had pa.s.sed away, but gaunt famine was staring the nation in the face. They were moments of ecstasy when Josephine, again free, pressed Eugene and Hortense to her heart. But the most serious embarra.s.sments immediately crowded upon her. Poverty, stern and apparently remediless, was her lot.
She had no friends upon whom she had any right to call for aid. There was no employment open before her by which she could obtain her subsistence; and it appeared that she and her children were to be reduced to absolute beggary. These were among the darkest hours of her earthly career. It was from this abyss of obscurity and want that she was to be raised to a position of splendor and of power such as the wildest dreams of earthly ambition could hardly have conceived.
Though Robespierre was dead, the strife of rancorous parties raged with unabated violence, and blood flowed freely. The reign of the mob still continued, and it was a mark of patriotism demanded by the clamors of haggard want and degradation to persecute all of n.o.ble blood. Young girls from the boarding-schools, and boys just emerging from the period of childhood, were beheaded by the guillotine. "We must exterminate,"
said Marat, "all the _whelps_ of aristocracy." Josephine trembled for her children. Poverty, and the desire of concealing Eugene among the ma.s.s of the people, induced her to apprentice her son to a house-carpenter. For several months Eugene cheerfully and laboriously toiled in this humble occupation. But the sentiments he had imbibed from both father and mother enn.o.bled him, and every day produced new developments of a lofty character, which no circ.u.mstances could long depress.
Let such a woman as Josephine, with her cheerful, magnanimous, self-sacrificing, and generous spirit, be left dest.i.tute in any place where human beings are congregated, and she will soon inevitably meet with those who will feel honored in securing her friendship and in offering her a home. Every fireside has a welcome for a n.o.ble heart.
Madame Dumoulin, a lady of great elevation of character, whose large fortune had by some chance escaped the general wreck, invited Josephine to her house, and freely supplied her wants. Madame Fontenay, also, who was a woman of great beauty and accomplishments, soon after her liberation was married to M. Tallien, to whom she had tossed the note, inclosed in a cabbage-leaf, from her prison window. It was this note which had so suddenly secured the overthrow of the tyrant, and had rescued so many from the guillotine. They both became the firm friends of Josephine. Others, also, soon became strongly attracted to her by the loveliness of her character, and were ambitious to supply all her wants.
Through M. Tallien, she urged her claim upon the National Convention for the restoration of her confiscated property. After a long and tedious process, she succeeded in regaining such a portion of her estate as to provide her amply with all the comforts of life. Again she had her own peaceful home, with Eugene and Hortense by her side. Her natural buoyancy of spirits rose superior to the storms which had swept so mercilessly over her, and in the love of her idolized children, and surrounded by the sympathies of appreciative friends, days of serenity, and even of joy, began to shine upon her.
A domestic scene occurred in the dwelling of Josephine on the anniversary of the death of M. Beauharnais peculiarly characteristic of the times and of the French people. Josephine called Eugene to her room, and presented to him a portrait of his father. "Carry it to your chamber, my son," she said, "and often let it be the object of your contemplations. Above all, let him whose image it presents be your constant model. He was the most amiable of men; he would have been the best of fathers."
Eugene was a young man of that enthusiastic genius which is the almost invariable accompaniment of a n.o.ble character. His emotions were deeply excited. With the characteristic ardor of his countrymen, he covered the portrait with kisses, and wept freely. Josephine folded her n.o.ble boy in her embrace, and they mingled their tears together.
In the evening, as Josephine was sitting alone in her parlor, her son entered, accompanied by six young men, his companions, each decorated with a copy of the portrait of M. Beauharnais suspended from the neck by a black and white ribbon. "You see," said Eugene to his mother, "the founders of a new order of knighthood. Behold our tutelary saint,"
pointing to the portrait of his father. "And these are the first members." He then introduced his youthful companions to his mother.
"Ours," he continued, "is named the Order of _Filial Love_; and, if you would witness the first inauguration, pa.s.s with these gentlemen into the small drawing-room."
Josephine entered the drawing-room with the youthful group, and found it very tastefully ornamented with garlands of ivy, roses, and laurels.
Inscriptions, taken from the printed discourses or remarkable sayings of M. Beauharnais, were suspended upon the walls. Girandoles, with lighted tapers, brilliantly illuminated the room. An altar was erected, hung with festoons of flowers, and upon this altar was placed the full-length portrait of M. Beauharnais. Three crowns of white and red roses were suspended from the picture-frame, and in front were placed two vases with perfumes.
The young gentlemen ranged themselves about the altar in perfect silence, and, at a concerted signal, eagerly unsheathed the swords which they wore at their sides, and, clasping hands, solemnly took the oath, "_To love their parents, succor each other, and to defend their country_." At this moment, Eugene, unfurling and waving a small banner, with its folds shaded the head of his father. "We then embraced each other," says Josephine, "mingling tears with smiles, and the most amiable disorder succeeded to the ceremonial of inauguration."
The fascination of Josephine"s person and address drew mult.i.tudes of friends around her, and her society was ever coveted. As time softened the poignancy of her past sorrows, she mingled more and more in the social circles of that metropolis where pleasure and gayety ever reign.
The terrible convulsions of the times had thrown the whole fabric of society into confusion. Great efforts were now made to revive the festivities of former days. Two centers of society were naturally established. The first included that in which Josephine moved. It was composed of the remains of the ancient n.o.bility, who had returned to Paris with the fragments of their families and their shattered fortunes.
Rigid economy was necessary to keep up any appearance of elegance.
But that polish of manners which almost invariably descends from an ill.u.s.trious ancestry marked all their intercourse. The humiliations through which the n.o.bles had pa.s.sed had not diminished the exclusiveness of their tastes. The other circle was composed of merchants and bankers who had acquired opulence in the midst of the confiscations and storms of revolution. The pa.s.sion for display was prominent in all their a.s.semblies, as is necessarily the case with those whose pa.s.sport to distinction is wealth.
At the theaters and all the places of public festivity, there were presented studied memorials of the scenes of horror through which all had recently pa.s.sed. One of the most fashionable and brilliant a.s.semblies then known in Paris was called _The Ball of the Victims_. No one was admitted to this a.s.sembly who had not lost some near relative by the guillotine. The most fashionable style of dressing the hair was jocosely called "a la guillotine." The hair was arranged in the manner in which it had been adjusted by the executioner for the unimpeded operation of the ax. And thus, with songs, and dances, and laughter-moving jokes, they commemorated the b.l.o.o.d.y death of their friends.
A new insurrection by the populace of Paris was at this time planned against the Convention. The exasperated people were again to march upon the Tuilleries. The members were in extreme consternation. The mob could bring tens of thousands against them, well armed with muskets and heavy artillery. There were but five hundred regular troops with which to resist the onset. Menou, the officer in command, acknowledged his inability to meet the crisis, and surrendered his power to Barras. This general immediately, as by a sudden thought, exclaimed, "I know the man who can defend us! He is a little Corsican, who dares do any thing, and is perfectly reckless of consequences!"
The little Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, the day-star of whose fame was just beginning to rise over the smouldering ruins of Toulon, was invited to meet the Convention. His fragile form was almost feminine in its proportions, but an eagle eye calmly reposed in his pallid and emaciate countenance. He had been severely sick, and the Convention looked with amazement and incredulity upon this feeble youth, as the one presented to rescue them from their impending peril.
The president fixed his eye upon him doubtingly, and said, "Are you willing to undertake our defense?"