The religious ceremony of marriage between Louis and Hortense took place Jan. 7, in a house in the Rue de la Victoire; and the marriage of General Murat with Caroline Bonaparte, which had been acknowledged only before the civil authorities, was consecrated on the same day.  Both Louis and his bride were very sad.  She wept bitterly during the whole ceremony, and her tears were not soon dried.  She made no attempt to win the affection of her husband; while he, on his side, was too proud and too deeply wounded to pursue her with his wooing.  The good Josephine did all she could to reconcile them; for she must have felt that this union, which had begun so badly, was her work, in which she had tried to combine her own interest, or at least that which she considered such, and the happiness of her daughter.  But her efforts, as well as her advice and her prayers, availed nothing; and I have many a time seen Hortense seek the solitude of her own room, and the heart of a friend, there to pour out her tears.  Tears fell from her eyes sometimes even in the midst of one of the First Consul’s receptions, where we saw with sorrow this young woman, brilliant and gay, who had so often gracefully done the honors on such occasions and attended to all the details of its etiquette, retire into a corner, or into the embrasure of a window, with one of her most intimate friends, there to sadly make her the a confidante of her trials.  During this conversation, from which she rose with red and swollen eyes, her husband remained thoughtful and taciturn at the opposite end of the room.  Her Majesty, the Queen of Holland, has been accused of many sins; but everything said or written against this princess is marked by shameful exaggeration.  So high a fortune drew all eyes to her, and excited bitter jealousy; and yet those who envied her would not have failed to bemoan themselves, if they had been put in tier place, on condition that they were to bear her griefs.  The misfortunes of Queen Hortense began with life itself.  Her father having been executed on a revolutionary scaffold, and her mother thrown into prison, she found herself, while still a child, alone, and with no other reliance than the faithfulness of the old servants of the family.  Her brother, the noble and worthy Prince Eugene, had been compelled, it is said, to serve as an apprentice.  She had a few years of happiness, or at least of repose, during the time she was under the care of Madame Campan, and just after she left boarding-school.  But her evil destiny was far from quitting her; and her wishes being thwarted, an unhappy marriage opened for her a new succession of troubles.  The death of her first son, whom the Emperor wished to adopt, and whom he had intended to be his successor in the Empire, the divorce of her mother, the tragic death of her best-loved friend, Madame de Brocq, who, before her eyes, slipped over a precipice; the overturning of the imperial throne, which caused her the loss of her title and rank as queen, a loss which she, however, felt less than the misfortunes of him whom she regarded as her father; and finally, the continual annoyance of domestic dissensions, of vexatious lawsuits, and the agony she suffered in beholding her oldest surviving son removed from her by order of her husband,—­such were the principal catastrophes in a life which might have been thought destined for so much happiness.