One day, when Josephine was about fifteen years of age, she was walking through the spacious grounds of her uncle’s West Indian plantation, in the island of Martinique, when she observed a number of negro girls gathered around an old woman who was engaged in telling their fortunes. Josephine, with girlish curiosity, drew near; whereupon, the old sibyl seized her hand, and, reading the lines there, appeared to be greatly moved.
“What do you see?” inquired Josephine.
“You will not believe me if I speak,” answered the fortune-teller.
“Speak on, good mother,” said Josephine; “what have I to fear or hope?”
“On your own head be it then; listen,” said the old sibyl.
“You will be married soon; that union will not be happy; you will become a widow, and then,—you will be queen of France! Some happy years will be yours; but you will die in a hospital, amid civil commotion;” after saying which, the old woman speedily disappeared.
Josephine thought little of this matter at the time, and only laughed about it with her friends; and when she was residing at Navarre, after the divorce, she thus commented upon it:—
“On account of the seeming absurdity of this ridiculous prediction, I thought little of the affair. But afterwards, when my husband had perished on the scaffold, in spite of my better judgment this prediction forcibly recurred to my mind; and though I was then myself in prison, the transaction assumed a less improbable character, and when I, myself, had been also condemned to die, I comforted my companions, who were weeping around me, by smilingly exclaiming:—
“‘That not only should I not die, but that I should become Queen of France’.
“‘Why then do you not appoint your household?’ asked Madame d’Aiguillon, who was also one of the prisoners of the Revolution.