Three months were granted to Josephine in the quietude, in the sweet repose of country-life, at her husband’s side, and with her children, to gather strength from the anxieties and griefs which she had suffered in Paris.  She enjoyed these days as one enjoys an unexpected blessing, a last sunshine before winter’s near approach, with thankful heart to God.  Full of cheerful devotedness to her husband, to her children, her lovely countenance was radiant with joy and love; she was ever busy, with the sunshine of her smile, to dissipate the shadows from her husband’s brow, and to replace the impassioned excitements, the honors and distinctions of his Parisian life, by the pleasantness and joys of home.

But Alexandra de Beauharnais could no longer find satisfaction in the quiet, harmless joys of home; he even reproached himself that he could be cheerful and satisfied whilst France resounded with cries of distress and complaints, whilst France was torn in her innermost life by the disputes and conflicts of factions which, no more satisfied with the speeches of the tribune, filled the streets with blood and wounds.  The revolution had entered into a new phase, the Legislative Assembly had become the Constituent Assembly, which despoiled the monarchy of the last appearance of power and degraded it to a mere insignificancy.  The Girondists, those ideal fanatics, who wanted to regenerate France after the model of the states of antiquity, had seized the power and the ministerial portefeuilles.  The beautiful, witty, and noble Madame Roland ruled, by means of her husband, the Minister Roland, and was striving to realize in France the ideal of a republic after the pattern of Greece; she was the very soul of the new cabinet, the soul of the Girondists, the rulers of France; in her drawing-room, during the evening, the new laws to be proposed next day in the Constituent Assembly, were spoken of, and the government measures discussed.

For a moment it had seemed as if the king, through his cabinet of Girondists, would once more be reconciled with his people, and especially with the Constituent Assembly, as if the nation and the monarchy would once more endeavor to stand one by the other in harmony and peace.  Perhaps the Girondists had believed in this possibility, and had regarded the king’s assurances that he would adhere to the constitution, and that he would go hand in hand with his ministers, and accept the constitution as the faithful expression of his will.  But when they discovered that Louis was not honorable in his assurances; that he was in secret correspondence with the enemies of France; that in a letter to his brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold, he had made bitter complaints about the constraint to which he was subjected, then the Girondists were inflamed with animosity, and had recourse to counter-measures.  They decreed the exile of the priests, and the formation, in the vicinity of Paris, of a camp of twenty thousand militia from all the departments of France.