And Josephine packed up a few scanty effects and taking her two children started for her old home in the West Indies.  It took all the money she had to pay passage.

It was the old, old story—­a few years of gay life in the great city, then cruelty too great for endurance, tears, shut white lips, a firm resolve—­and back to the old farm where homely, loyal hearts await, and outstretched arms welcome the sorrowful, yet glad return.

Beauharnais failed to get his divorce.  The court said “no cause for action.”  He awoke, stared stupidly about, felt the need of sympathy in his hour of undoing, and looked for—­Josephine.

She was gone.

He tried absinthe, gambling, hot dissipation; but he could not forget.  He had sent away his granary and storehouse; his wand of wealth and heart’s desire.  Two ways opened for peace, only two:  a loaded pistol—­or get her back.

First he would try to get her back, and the pistol should be held in reserve in case of failure.

Josephine forgave and came back; for a good woman forgives to seventy times seven.

Beauharnais met her with all the tenderness a lover could command.  The ceremony of marriage was again sacredly solemnized.  They retired to the country and with their two children lived three of the happiest months Josephine ever knew; at least Josephine said so, and the fact that she made the same remark about several other occasions is no reason for doubting her sincerity.  Then they moved back to Paris.

Beauharnais sobered his ambitions, and kept good hours.  He was a soldier in the employ of the king, but his sympathies were with the people.  He was a Republican with a Royalist bias, but some said he was a Royalist with a Republican bias.

Josephine looked after her household, educated her children, did much charitable work, and knew what was going on in the State.

But those were troublous times.  Murder was in the air and revolution was rife.  That mob of a hundred thousand women had tramped out to Versailles and brought the king back to Paris.  He had been beheaded, and Marie Antoinette had followed him.  The people were in power and Beauharnais had labored to temper their wrath with reason.  He had even been Chairman of the Third Convention.  He called himself Citizen.  But the fact that he was of noble birth was remembered, and in September of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-three, three men called at his house.  When Josephine looked out of the window, she saw by the wan light of the moon a file of soldiers standing stiff and motionless.

She knew the time had come.  They marched Citizen Beauharnais to the Luxembourg.

In a few feverish months, they came back for his wife.  Her they placed in the nunnery of the Carmelites—­that prison where, but a few months before, a mob relieved the keepers of their vigils by killing all their charges.

Robespierre was supreme.  Now, Robespierre had come into power by undoing Danton.  Danton had helped lug in the Revolution, but when he touched a match to the hay he did not really mean to start a conflagration, only a bonfire.