Josephine had entered upon her marriage with a pure maiden heart, and soon this heart glowed with enthusiasm for her young husband, who in reality was well qualified to excite enthusiasm in a young maid and instil into her a passionate attachment.  Alexandre de Beauharnais was one of the most brilliant and most beloved personages at the court of Versailles.  His face had all the beauty of regularity; his figure, marked by a lofty, even if somewhat heavy form, was tall, well knit, and of wonderful elasticity and energy; his manners were noble and prepossessing, fine and natural.  Even in a court so distinguished as that of Versailles for many remarkable chevaliers, the Viscount de Beauharnais was considered as one of the most lovely and most gifted:  even the young Queen Marie Antoinette honored him with special distinction.  She had called him the most beautiful dancer of Versailles, and consequently it was very natural that up to the time of his marriage he should be invited to every court-ball, and there should each time enjoy the pleasure of being requested to dance with the queen.

This flattering distinction of the Queen Marie Antoinette had naturally made the young viscount the mark of attention of all these beautiful, young, and coquettish ladies of Versailles.  They used to say of him, that in the dancing-room he was a zephyr, fluttering from flower to flower, but at the head of his regiment he was a Bayard, dreaming only of war and carnage.

It was, therefore, quite natural that so brilliant and so preferred a cavalier, a young man of so many varied accomplishments, a being so impassioned, so gallant, should soon become the object of the most tender and passionate fondness from a young wife, who in her quiet native land had seen none to compare with him, and who became for her the ideal of beauty, chivalry, elegance, and whom, in her devoted and admiring love, she used to call her own Achilles.

Josephine loved her husband; she loved him with all the devotedness and fire of a creole; she loved him and breathed but for him, and to be with him seemed to her life’s golden, blessed dream.  Added to all this, came the joys and raptures of a Parisian life—­these new, unknown, diversified pleasures of society, these manifold distractions and entertainments of the great city.  Josephine abandoned herself to all this with the joy and wantonness of an innocent, unsuspicious being.  With all these glorious things round about her, she felt as if surrounded by a sea of blessedness and pleasure, and she plunged into it with the quiet daring of innocency, which foresees not what breakers and abysses this sea encloses under the shining surface.

But these breakers were there, and against them was the happiness of Josephine’s love soon to be dashed to pieces.

She loved her young husband with her whole heart, with all her soul.  But he, the young, the flattered Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, he also loved his young wife, whom the wish and will of his superiors had placed at his side.