Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in order that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of her beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the Church of St. Leu.

While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine’s whole figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her countenance.  Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her sufferings to-day, for the first time; Hortense was not present, and she might therefore, for once, allow herself the sad consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and its paint, the pale countenance, which death had already lightly touched.

“Your majesty is ill!” exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.

With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander’s eyes, Josephine pointed to her breast, and whispered:  “Sire, I have received the death-wound here!”

Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her heart was bleeding to death.

Terrified by Josephine’s condition, the emperor hurried to Paris, and sent his own physician to inquire after her condition.  When the latter returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine was dangerously ill, and that he did not believe her recovery possible.

He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more!  Hortense and Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother’s bedside throughout the night.  The best physicians were called in, but these only confirmed what the Russian physician had said—­the condition of the empress was hopeless.  Her heart was broken!  With strong hands, she had held it together as long as her children’s welfare seemed to require.  Now that Hortense’s future was also assured—­now that she knew that her grandchildren would, at least, not be compelled to wander about the world as exiled beggars—­now Josephine withdrew her hands from her heart, and suffered it to bleed to death.

On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an illness which had apparently lasted but two days.  Hortense had not heard her mother’s death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with Eugene, after her mother had received the sacrament from Abbe Bertrand—­when she saw her mother, with outstretched arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to them—­Hortense fainted away at her mother’s bedside, and the empress breathed her last sigh in Eugene’s arms.

The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris profoundly.  It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a day that Napoleon was no longer the ruler of France, and that the Bourbons had reascended the throne of their fathers.  All Paris mourned; for the hearts of the French people had not forgotten this woman, who had so long been their benefactress, and of whom each could relate the most touching traits of goodness, of generosity, and of gentleness.