Page:History of the Empress Josephine (1).pdf/5

Rh force seized my hand. She appeared to be under the greatest agitation. Amused at these absurdities, as I thought them, I allowed her to proceed, saying, 'So you discover something extraordinary in my destiny?' 'Yes.'-'Is happiness or misfortune to be my lot?'-'Misfortune. Ah, stop!-and happiness too.'-'You take care not to commit yourself, my good dame; your oracles are not the most intelligible.'-'I am not permitted to render them more clear,' said the woman, raising her eyes with a mysterious expression towards heaven. 'But to the point,' replied I, for my curiosity began to be excited; 'What read you coneerning me in futurity?'- 'What do I see in the future? You will not believe me if I speak.'-'Yes, indeed, I assure you. Come, my good mother, what am I to fear and hope?'— 'On your own head be it then; listen: you will be married soon: that uuion will not be happy; you will become a widow, and then then you will be queen of France! Some happy years will be yours; but you will die in an hospital, amid civil commotion.'

"'On concluding these words,' eontinued Josephine, the old woman burst from the crowd, and hurried away, as fast as her limbs, enfeebled by age, would permit. I forbade the bystanders to molest or banter the pretended prophetess on this ridiculous, prediction; and took oecasion, from the seeming absurdity of the whole proceeding, to caution the young negresses how they gave heed to such matters.'"

We have already stated that Josephine was arrested; and the merited but dreadful end of Robespierre alone saved Madame de Beauharnois, with about seventy others, destined for the usual morning sacrifice to the "deities of Reason and Revolution." Had we not her own eonfession, it might be deemed altogether incredible, that, under such eireumstances, Josephine's thoughts should involuntarily revert to, and dwell upon, the singular prediction which has been reported in the commencement of these memoirs. "In spite of myself," said the empress, long after, to her ladies," I incessantly revolved in my mind this propheey. Aceustomed thus to exercise imagination, every thing that had been told me began to appear less absurd, and finally terminated in