Every thing was resplendent with beauty and joy at these festivities; every thing wore an appearance of happiness; only the countenances of the newly-married couple were grave and sad, and their deep melancholy contrasted strikingly with the happiness of which they themselves were the cause.  Adorned with diamonds and flowers, Hortense appeared to be a stranger to all the pomp which surrounded her, and to be occupied only with her own sad communings.  Louis Bonaparte was pale and grave, like Hortense; he seldom addressed a word to the young wife that the orders of his brother had given him; and she avoided her husband’s looks, perhaps to hinder him from reading there the indifference and dislike she felt for him. [Footnote:  “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine, la Cour de Navarre,” etc., par Mlle. Ducrest, vol. i., p. 49.]

But Josephine was happy, for she knew the noble, faithful, and generous spirit of the man to whom she had given her daughter; and she trusted that the two young hearts, now that they were linked together, would soon love one another.  She hoped much more from this alliance; she hoped not only to find in it a shield against domestic animosities, but also to give to her husband, even if indirectly, the children he so much desired—­for the offspring of his brother and the daughter of his Josephine would be nearly the same as his own, and they could adopt and love them as such.  This was Josephine’s hope, the dream of her happiness, when she gave her daughter in marriage to the brother of her husband.

The fact that the first consul was childless was not only a family solicitude, it was also a political question.  The people themselves had changed the face of affairs, they had by solemn vote decided to confer the consulate for life upon Napoleon, who had previously been elected for ten years only.  In other words, the French people had chosen Bonaparte for their master and ruler, and he now lacked but the title to be king.  Every one felt and knew that this consulate for life was but the prelude to royalty; that the golden laurel-wreath of the first consul would soon be converted into a golden crown, so as to secure to France an enduring peace, and to make firm its political situation.

With her keen political instinct, Josephine trembled at the thought that the King or Emperor Bonaparte would have to establish for himself a dynasty—­that he would have to appease the apprehensions of France by offering to the nation a son who would be his legitimate heir and successor.  Thus was the subject of divorce kept hanging over her head until the conviction was forced upon her mind that some day Napoleon would be led into sacrificing his love to politics.  Josephine was conscious of it, and consequently the hopes of Napoleon’s future greatness, which so pleased his brothers and sisters, only made her sorrowful, and she therefore entreated Bonaparte with tender appeal to remain content with the high dignity he already possessed, and not to tempt fate, nor to allow it to bear him up to a dizzy height, from which the stormy winds of adversity might the more easily prostrate him.