The estate of M. Tascher de la Pagerie was made desolate.  His residence, his sugar-plantations, were but a heap of ruins and rubbish, and as a gift of Providence he looked upon the one refuge left him in his sugar-refinery, which was miraculously spared by the hurricane.  There M. Tascher saved himself, with Josephine and her younger sister, and there his wife bore him a third child.  But Heaven even now did not fulfil the long-cherished wishes of the parents, for it was to a daughter that Madame de la Pagerie gave birth.  The parents were, however, weary with murmuring against fate, which accomplished not their wish; and so to prove to fate that this daughter was welcome, they named the child born amid the horrors of this terrific hurricane, Desiree, the Desired.

Peaceful, happy years followed;—­peaceful and happy, in the midst of the family, passed on the years of Josephine’s infancy.  She had every thing which could be procured.  Beloved by her parents, by her two sisters, worshipped by her servants and slaves, she lived amid a beautiful, splendid, and sublime nature, in the very midst of wealth and affluence.  Her father, casting away all ambition, was satisfied to cultivate his wide and immense domains, and to remain among his one hundred and fifty slaves as master and ruler, to whom unconditional and cheerful obedience was rendered.  Her mother sought and wished for no other happiness than the peaceful quietude of the household joys.  Her husband, her children, her home, constituted the world where she breathed, in which alone centred her thoughts, her wishes, and her hopes.  To mould her daughters into good housekeepers and wives, and if possible to secure for them in due time, by means of a brilliant and advantageous marriage, a happy future—­this was the only ambition of this gentle and virtuous woman.

Above all things, it was necessary to procure to the daughters an education suited to the claims of high social position, and which would fit her daughters to act on the world’s stage the part which their birth, their wealth, and beauty, reserved for them.  The tender mother consented to part with her darling, with her eldest daughter; and Josephine, not yet twelve years old, was brought, for completing her education, to the convent of our Lady de la Providence in Port Royal.  There she learned all which in the Antilles was considered necessary for the education of a lady of rank; there she obtained that light, superficial, rudimentary instruction, which was then thought sufficient for a woman; there she was taught to write her mother tongue with a certain fluency and without too many blunders; there she was instructed in the use of the needle, to execute artistic pieces of embroidery; there she learned something in arithmetic and in music; yea, so as to give to the wealthy daughter of M. Tascher de la Pagerie a full and complete education, the pious sisters of the convent consented that twice a week a dancing-master should come to the convent to give to Josephine lessons in dancing, the favorite amusement of the Creoles. [Footnote:  “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” par Joseph Aubenas. vol. i., p. 36.]