The Empress Josephine | Page 6

Rosa.
There was, however, one being who gladly and willingly forgave the
fault of her birth, and who consecrated to the daughter the same love
she would have offered to the son. This being was the mother of the
little Joseph Marie Rosa.
"Contrary to all our wishes," writes she to her husband's sister, the
beautiful Madame Renaudin, in Paris--"contrary to all our wishes, God
has given me a daughter. My joy is not therefore diminished, for I look
upon my child as a new bond which binds me still closer to your
brother, my dear husband, and to you. Why should I have such a poor
and meagre opinion of the female sex, that a daughter should not be
welcomed by me? I am acquainted with many persons of our sex who
concentrate in themselves as many good qualities as one would only
with difficulty find in the other sex. Maternal love already blinds me
and fosters in me the hope that my daughter may be like them, and if
even I cannot enjoy this satisfaction, yet I am thankful to my child that
by means of her existence I am gathering so much happiness."
Indeed, extraordinary joy, since the birth of the child, reigned in the
house of M. Tascher de la Pagerie; joy reigned all over Martinique, for
the long war between France and England was ended, and a few
months before the birth of little Joseph Marie Rosa, the peace which
secured to France the possession of her maritime colonies had been
signed. Martinique, so often attacked, bombarded, besieged by English
ships--Martinique was again the unconditional property of France, and
on the birthday of the little Marie Joseph Rosa the French fleet entered
into the harbor of Port Royal, landed a French garrison for the island,
and brought a new governor in the person of the Marquis de Fenelon,
the nephew of the famous Bishop de Fenelon.
Joyously and quietly passed away the first years of the life of the little
Joseph, or little Josephine, as her kind parents called her. Only once, in
the third year of her life, was Josephine's infancy troubled by a fright.
A terrible hurricane, such as is known to exist only in the Antilles,

broke over Martinique. The historians of that period know not how to
depict the awful and calamitous events of this hurricane, which, at the
same time, seemed to shake the whole earth with its convulsions. In
Naples, in Sicily, in the Molucca Islands, volcanoes broke out in fearful
eruptions; for three days the earth trembled in Constantinople. But it
was over Martinique that the hurricane raged in the most appalling
manner. In less than four hours the howling northwest' wind,
accompanied by forked lightning, rolling thunder, heavy water-spouts,
and tremendous earth-tremblings, had hurled down into fragments all
the houses of the town, all the sugar-plantations, and all the negro
cabins. Here and there the earth opened, flames darted out and spread
round about a horrible vapor of sulphur, which suffocated human
beings. Trees were uprooted, and the sugar and coffee plantations
destroyed. The sea roared and upheaved, sprang from its bounds, and
shivered as mere glass-work barks and even some of the larger ships
lying in the harbor of Port Royal. Five hundred men perished, and a
much larger number were severely wounded. Distress and poverty were
the result of this astounding convulsion of nature.
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