Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/138

 LOVE ii8 much more rapidly than in any other, and among the most voluptuous people upon earth. Her lover was also but a child. He was an Englishman, the son of exiled royalist parents, whose name still remains a mystery, and it is merely as William de K — — that their son has been handed down to posterity. For three years the children loved each other in their island home, and then came the sorry da}^ of parting. Tearfully, and with pathetic anguish in their hearts, the children swore eternal vows of loyalty and love. Then William sailed, and a cruel fate strangled at its birth as delicate a tale of love as any idealist has yet con- ceived. Josephine always cherished the memory of William, and he appears ever to have been true to his vows ; his strength never wavered. Many months, however, elapsed before Jose- phine realised his loyalty ; at the time she had good reason to regard him as a fickle, faithless swain. Madame de la Pagerie desired to see her daughter a more important woman than she would be as the wife of a penniless champion of the defeated Stuart cause ; she had arranged another match for Josephine ; she intercepted William's letters, and hoped that her daughter would forget. HER FIRST MARRIAGE Josephine, however, did not forget; but, becaus3 she was a fatalist, she bowed her head to the inevitable, and allowed herself to be married to a man whom she never even thought of loving. Before her wedding, William found her and pleaded with her long, but all in vain. It was too late ; her course was marked out ; she must follow it. And the lover of her youth departed a broken- hearted man. " To die ! Oh, what is it to die, now that I must give up the bright illusion which I have cherished from my very childhood ? No, I shall never see her again, never again !" And he did not, although, when death already held her in his clutches, he came to visit Josephine at La Malmaison to say farewell. He had come too late, but her kindnesses he had not forgotten. Josephine's first marriage, after the manner of such marriages, was eminently correct ; it was solely a manage de conven- ance ; it was gross ; it was horrible ; it was very French ; but to the respective parents "it was a consummation devoutly to be wished." ALEXANDRE DE BEAUHARNAIS Alexandre de Beauharnais was the son of the Marquis de Beauharnais, late Governor of Martinique ; he was a young man of culture and of breeding ; clever and ambitious ; and. It seemed, destined ultimately to climb high up the ladder of success. Josephine, on the other hand, was a welcome asset to the Beauharnais menage ; she was rich— that was most important— and also she was charming. The old marquis greeted his daughter-in-law with real enthusiasm ; her wealth pleased him, and her fascinating naivete won his heart. At first, moreover, the gallant young vicomte was delighted with the country maiden whom he found to be his wife ; she was a delicious novelty after the frail beauties of the capital. His parents doted on her, his fellow-officers admired her. This flattered him. Moreover, she was faithful to him, and a faithful wife in revolutionary France was an ideal he had never dreamed v-of realising. Yes, he almost loved her ! Josephine also, at first, was quite content ; she was pleased with her new position ; Paris was delightful after her humdrum life at Sannois ; she loved gaiety, she loved luxury, she loved the delicate and priceless fruits of power. For power, however, as power, she cared not ; but to her husband a thirst for power was the very raison d'etre of life. He was for ever striving to advance, and for a wife he wanted one who would strive with him, a clever, scheming woman who was prepared to employ all the powers of seductive womanhood to pave his way. Josephine, however, refused to become clever, refused to scheme, and, therefore, as was inevitable, Beauharnais grew weary of her, weary of his home, and once again rejoined the magic, brilliant circle of the Paris half -world, that wonderful collection of dazzling women who were ever plotting and ever scheming around the mysterious temples of place and power.^ Steadily he drifted downwards. In vain his parents implored ; in vain M. de la Pagerie protested. Alexandre had grown weary of his wife ; he hated his home, and added insult to injury. He accused her of infidehty, and once he dared even to deny the parentage of Hortense, Josephine's second child and his ow;n image. In 1788 he instituted legal proceedings against his wife, but even the Parlement de Paris was not insensible to justice, and the vicomte failed to win his case. THE REVOLUTION For his wife to live with him, however, was now impossible. She returned to Martinique, and there, amid the scenes of her childhood, made her home until at length the spectre of her husband, face to face with death, melted the image of his cruelty. His desperate and urgent plea for a reconciliation convulsed her with a wave of wifely feeUng, and she hastened back to France to comfort or, perhaps, to save him. The clouds of revolution now at last had burst. That gruesome tragedy, those two foul years of awful carnage, had begun, and France lay prostituted to the butchers' whims. Alexandre, patriot though he declared himself to be, was too moderate in his views for men hke Robespierre. In his veins, moreover, blue blood flowed ; he was a noble, he was suspected, and on