Queen Hortense | Page 6

him in his prison, where she visited him,
whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.
But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and

Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of an
aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was arrested
and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.
Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only left
their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all help, avoided
by all whom they had once known and loved, the two children were
threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger, for the estate of
their parents had been confiscated, and, in the same hour in which
Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances and doors of their
dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left to find a sheltering roof
for themselves. But yet they were not entirely helpless, not quite
friendless, for a friend of Josephine, a Madame Ho1stein, had the
courage to come to the rescue, and take the children into her own
family.
But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in order to
avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who, coming from the
scum of the people, were now the rulers of France. An imprudent word,
a look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon, and render up to the
guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this courageous friend of the
two children. It was in itself a capital crime that she had taken the
children of the accused into her house, and it was therefore necessary to
adopt every means of conciliating the authorities. It was thought
necessary that Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend
the festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was never
required to take an active part in these celebrations. She was not
considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the people; she had
not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a viscount, of an
imprisoned ci-devant. Eugene had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and
the son of the viscount was now often seen walking through the streets
in a blouse, carrying a board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.
While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary

security, the future of their parents was growing darker and darker, and
not only the life of the general, but also that of his wife, was now
seriously endangered. Josephine had been removed from the prison of
St. Pelagie to that of the Carmelites, and this brought her a step nearer
the scaffold. But she did not tremble for herself, she thought only of her
children and her husband; she wrote affectionate letters to the former,
which she bribed her jailer to forward to their destination, but all her
efforts to place herself in communication with her husband were
abortive. One day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband
had just been conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine
waited for further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this
tribunal acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was
he already free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he
were free, he would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if
he were dead, his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list
of the condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long
day. Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.
The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille,
whose seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there
was the Marquise de Créqui, the intellectual lady who has often been
called the last marquise of the ancien régime, and who in her witty
memoirs wrote the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed
from an aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbé Téxier, who, when the
revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will you
see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was yet
another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his master,
could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter full of water
and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than