She marries the Viscount Beauharnais.
The Viscount Beauharnais often called to see her, and was permitted to converse with her at the gate of her window. In the simplicity of her heart, she told her friends at the convent of her attachment for William; how they had been reared together, and how they had loved from childhood. She felt that it was a cruel fate which separated them, but a fate before which each must inevitably bow. At last she calmly made up her mind to comply with the wishes of her friends, and to surrender herself to the Viscount Beauharnais. There was much in the person and character of Beauharnais to render him very attractive, and she soon became sincerely, though never passionately, attached to him.
Fashionable life.
Josephine was sixteen years of age when she was married. Her social position was in the midst of the most expensive and fashionable society of Paris. She was immediately involved in all the excitements of parties, and balls, and gorgeous entertainments. Her beauty, her grace, her amiability, and her peculiarly musical voice, which fell like a charm upon every ear, excited great admiration and not a little envy. It was a dangerous scene into which to introduce the artless and inexperienced Creole girl, and she was not a little dazzled by the splendor with which she was surrounded. Every thing that could minister to convenience, or that could gratify taste, was lavished profusely around her. For a time she was bewildered by the novelty of her situation. But soon she became weary of the heartless pageantry of fashionable life, and sighed for the tranquil enjoyments of her island home.
Josephine is introduced at court.
Maria Antoinette and Josephine.
Her husband, proud of her beauty and accomplishments, introduced her at court. Maria Antoinette, who had then just ascended the throne, and was in the brilliance of her youth, and beauty, and early popularity, was charmed with the West Indian bride, and received her without the formality of a public presentation. When these two young brides met in the regal palace of Versailles—the one a daughter of Maria Theresa and a descendant of the Cæsars, who had come from the court of Austria to be not only the queen, but the brightest ornament of the court of France—the other the child of a planter, born upon an obscure island, reared in the midst of negresses, as almost her only companions—little did they imagine that Maria Antoinette was to go down, down, down to the lowest state of ignominy and woe, while Josephine was to ascend to more and more exalted stations, until she should sit upon a throne more glorious than the Cæsars ever knew.
French philosophy.
Infidelity of Beauharnais.
French philosophy had at this time undermined the religion of Jesus Christ. All that is sacred in the domestic relations was withering beneath the blight of infidelity. Beauharnais, a man of fashion and of the world, had imbibed, to the full, the sentiments which disgraced the age. Marriage was deemed a partnership, to be formed or dissolved at pleasure. Fidelity to the nuptial tie was the jest of philosophers and witlings. Josephine had soon the mortification of seeing a proud, beautiful, and artful woman taking her place, and openly and triumphantly claiming the attentions and the affections of her husband. This woman, high in rank, loved to torture her poor victim. "Your dear Alexander," she said to Josephine, "daily lavishes upon others the tribute of attachment which you think he reserves solely for you." She could not bear to see the beautiful and virtuous Josephine happy, as the honored wife of her guilty lover, and she resolved, if possible, to sow the seeds of jealousy so effectually between them as to secure a separation.
Birth of a daughter.