A new day had broken in, and the prophetic mind of the queen understood that with it came the storm which was to scatter into fragments her happiness and her peace.
CHAPTER IX. JOSEPHINE’S RETURN.
To rest!—to forget! This was what Josephine sought for in Martinique, and what she found in the circle of her friends. She wanted to rest from the pains and struggles which had agitated the last years of her life. She wanted to forget that she still loved the Viscount de Beauharnais, though rejected and accused, though he had treacherously abandoned her for the sake of another woman.
But he was the father of her children, and there was Hortense with her large blue eyes and her noble, lovely countenance to remind Josephine of the father to whom Hortense bore so close a resemblance. Josephine’s tender-heartedness would not suffer the innocent, childish heart of Hortense to become alienated from her father, or to forget the esteem and respect which as a daughter she owed to him. Josephine therefore never allowed any one to utter a word of blame against her husband in the presence of her daughter; she even imposed silence on her mother when, in the just resentment of a parent who sees her child suffer, she accused the man who had brought wretchedness on her Josephine, who at so early an age had taught her life’s sorrows.
How joyous, beautiful, happy had her Josephine nearly ten years ago left her home, her country, her family, to go to a foreign land which attracted her with every thing which can charm a young girl—with the love of a young and beautiful husband—with the luxury, the pleasures and festivities of Paris!
And now after ten years Josephine returned to her father’s home, lonely, abandoned, unhappy, blighted with the mildew which ever deteriorates the character of a divorced woman; yet so young, with so many ruined hopes, with so many wounds in the heart!
Josephine’s mother could not pardon him all this, and her countenance became clouded whenever the little Hortense spoke of her father. And the child spoke of him so often—for each evening and morning she had to pray God in his behalf—and when she asked her mother where her brother Eugene was, why he had not come with them to Martinique; Josephine answered her, he had remained with his father, who loved him so much, and who must have at least one of his children with him.
“Why then can he not, with Eugene, be with us?” asked the little Hortense, thoughtfully. “Why does he remain in that hateful, stony Paris, whilst he could live with us in the beautiful garden where so many charming flowers and so many large trees are to be found? Why is papa not with us, mamma?”