She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too weak to offer any resistance.  But she was determined to act her part as wife and empress worthily to the end.  Her tears should not flow outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.  But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.

How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her daughter’s ear!

“If you knew,” said she, “in what torments I have passed the last few weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear before the world as such!  What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers fasten upon a discarded woman!  In what uncertainty, what expectancy more cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon’s eyes[15]!”

[Footnote 15:  Josephine’s own words.—­Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]

Hortense listened to her mother’s lamentations with a heart full of bitterness.  She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother’s union might be established on a firm basis.  And now all had been in vain; the sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to bear down her unhappy mother.  Hortense could do nothing to avert it.  She was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar on the street her freedom and her humble lot.  Both mother and daughter stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back with envy at the days of the revolution—­the days in which they had led in retirement a life of poverty and want.  Then, though struggling with want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions; now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed down to them, and saluted them with the proud word “majesty,” and yet empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.

A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called to his cabinet.  He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world now bowed, almost quailed.

“Hortense,” said he, “we are now called on to decide an important matter, and it is our duty not to recoil.  The nation has done so much for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of me.  The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a wife who can give the country an heir to the throne.  Josephine has been living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end.  You, Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more than all else in the world.  Will you undertake to prepare your mother for this step?  You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden.”