Such were the reasons with which her relatives, even the grandfather of her two children, sought to persuade her to a voyage to Martinique—bitter though the anguish would be for them to be deprived of the presence of the gentle, lovely young woman, whose youthful freshness and grace had like sunshine cheered the lonely house in Fontainebleau; to see also part from them the little Hortense, whose joyous voice of childhood had now and then recalled the faithless son to the father’s house, and which was still a bond which united Josephine with her husband and with his family.
Josephine had to give way before these arguments, however much her heart bled. She had long felt how much of impropriety and of danger there was in the situation of a young woman divorced from her husband, and how much more dignified and expedient it would be for her to return to her father’s home and to the bosom of her family. She therefore took a decided resolution; she tore herself away from her relatives, from her beloved son, whom she could not take with her, for he belonged to the father. With a stream of painful tears she bade farewell to the love of youth, to the joys of youth, from which naught remained but the wounds of a despised heart, and the children who gazed at her with the beloved eyes of their father.
In the month of July of the year 1788, Josephine, with her little five-year-old daughter Hortense, left Fontainebleau, went to Havre, whence she embarked for Martinique.
CHAPTER VII. LIEUTENANT NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
While the Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais was, during long years of resignation, enduring all the anguish, humiliations, and agonies of an unhappy marriage, the first pain and sorrow had also clouded the days of the young Corsican boy who, in the same year as Josephine, had embarked from his native land for France.
In the beginning of the year 1785, Napoleon Bonaparte had lost his father. In Montpellier, whither he had come for the cure of his diseased breast, he died, away from home, from his Letitia and his children. Only his eldest son Joseph stood near his dying couch, and, moreover, a fortunate accident had brought to pass that the poor, lonely sufferer should meet there a friendly home, where he was received with the most considerate affection. Letitia’s companion of youth, the beautiful Panonia Comnene, now Madame de Permont, resided in Montpellier with her husband, who was settled there, and with all the faithfulness and friendship of a Corsican, she nursed the sick husband of her Letitia.
But neither the skill of the renowned physicians of Montpellier, nor the tender care of friends, nor the tears of the son, could keep alive the unfortunate Charles de Bonaparte. For three days long he struggled with death; for three days long his youth, his manhood’s powers, resisted the mighty foe, which already held him in its chains; then he had to submit to the conqueror. Exhausted with death’s pallor, Charles de Bonaparte sank back on his couch, and as Death threw his dark shadows on his face bathed in cold perspiration, Charles de Bonaparte, with stammering tongue, in the last paroxysms of fancy, exclaimed: “It is in vain! Nothing can save me! Even Napoleon’s sword, which one day is to triumph over all Europe, even that sword cannot frighten away the dragon of death which crouches on my breast!” [Footnote: See “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 29.]
Wonderful vision of a dying man! The dimmed eye of the dying father saw his son Napoleon’s sword, “which one day was to triumph over all Europe;” as he prophesied its power, he sighed at the same time over the impotency which holds all mankind in its bands, and leaves even the hero as a powerless child in the hands of fate. The sword which was to be a yoke to all Europe could not terrify from the breast of his father the dragon of death!