Mademoiselle Hortense was extremely pretty, with an expressive and mobile countenance, and in addition to this was graceful, talented, and affable.  Kindhearted and amiable like her mother, she had not that excessive desire to oblige which sometimes detracted from Madame Bonaparte’s character.  This is, nevertheless, the woman whom evil reports, disseminated by miserable scandal-mongers, have so outrageously slandered!  My heart is stirred with disgust and indignation when I hear such revolting absurdities repeated and scattered broadcast.  According to these honest fabricators, the First Consul must have seduced his wife’s daughter, before giving her in marriage to his own brother.  Simply to announce such a charge is to comprehend all the falsity of it.  I knew better than any one the amours of the Emperor.  In these clandestine liaisons he feared scandal, hated the ostentations of vice, and I can affirm on honor that the infamous desires attributed to him never entered his mind.  Like every one else, who was near Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, and because he knew his step-daughter even more intimately, he felt for her the tenderest affection; but this sentiment was entirely paternal, and Mademoiselle Hortense reciprocated it by that reverence which a wellborn young girl feels towards her father.  She could have obtained from her step-father anything that she wished, if her extreme timidity had not prevented her asking; but, instead of addressing herself directly to him, she first had recourse to the intercession of the secretary, and of those around the Emperor.  Is it thus she would have acted if the evil reports spread by her enemies, and those of the Emperor, had had the least foundation?

Before her marriage Hortense had an attachment for General Duroc, who was hardly thirty years of age, had a fine figure, and was a favorite with the chief of state, who, knowing him to be prudent and discreet, confided to him important diplomatic missions.  As aide-de-camp of the First Consul, general of division, and governor of the Tuileries, he lived long in familiar intimacy at Malmaison, and in the home life of the Emperor, and during necessary absences on duty, corresponded with Mademoiselle Hortense; and yet the indifference with which he allowed the marriage of the latter with Louis to proceed, proves that he reciprocated but feebly the affection which he had inspired.  It is certain that he could have had.  Mademoiselle de Beauharnais for his wife, if he had been willing to accept the conditions on which the First Consul offered the hand of his step-daughter; but he was expecting something better, and his ordinary prudence failed him at the time when it should have shown him a future which was easy to foresee, and calculated to satisfy the promptings of an ambition even more exalted than his.  He therefore refused positively; and the entreaties of Madame Bonaparte, which had already influenced her husband, succeeded.

Madame Bonaparte, who saw herself treated with so little friendship by the brothers of the First Consul, tried to make his family a defense for herself against the plots which were gathering incessantly around her to drive her away from the heart of her husband.  It was with this design she worked with all her might to bring about the marriage of her daughter with one of her brothers-in-law.