The Empress Josephine | Page 7

for no other happiness than the peaceful quietude of the household joys.
Her husband, her children, her home, constituted the world where she
breathed, in which alone centred her thoughts, her wishes, and her
hopes. To mould her daughters into good housekeepers and wives, and
if possible to secure for them in due time, by means of a brilliant and
advantageous marriage, a happy future--this was the only ambition of
this gentle and virtuous woman.
Above all things, it was necessary to procure to the daughters an
education suited to the claims of high social position, and which would
fit her daughters to act on the world's stage the part which their birth,
their wealth, and beauty, reserved for them. The tender mother
consented to part with her darling, with her eldest daughter; and
Josephine, not yet twelve years old, was brought, for completing her
education, to the convent of our Lady de la Providence in Port Royal.
There she learned all which in the Antilles was considered necessary
for the education of a lady of rank; there she obtained that light,
superficial, rudimentary instruction, which was then thought sufficient
for a woman; there she was taught to write her mother tongue with a
certain fluency and without too many blunders; there she was instructed
in the use of the needle, to execute artistic pieces of embroidery; there
she learned something in arithmetic and in music; yea, so as to give to
the wealthy daughter of M. Tascher de la Pagerie a full and complete
education, the pious sisters of the convent consented that twice a week
a dancing-master should come to the convent to give to Josephine
lessons in dancing, the favorite amusement of the Creoles. [Footnote:
"Histoire de l'Imperatrice Josephine," par Joseph Aubenas. vol. i., p.
36.]
These dancing-lessons completed the education of Josephine, and,
barely fifteen years old, she returned to her parents and sisters as an
accomplished young lady, to perform the honors of the house alongside
of her mother, to learn from her to preside with grace and ease over a
large mansion, and above all things to be a good mistress, a
benefactress, and a protectress to her slaves. Under her mother's
guidance, Josephine visited the negro cabins to minister unto the sick,
to bring comfort and nourishment to the old and to the weak, to pray

with the dying, to take under her loving guardianship the new-born
babes of the negro women, to instruct in the catechism the grown-up
children, to excite them to industry, to encourage them through
kindness and friendliness, to protect them, and to be a mediator when
for some offence they were condemned to severe punishment.
It was a wonderfully peaceful and beautiful life that of the young
Josephine, amid a bountiful nature, in that soft, sunny clime which
clothed her whole being with that tender, pleasing grace, that lovely
quietude, that yielding complacency, and at the same time with that
fiery, passionate nature of the Creoles. Ordinarily dressed only with the
"gaule," a wide, loose garment of white muslin, falling loosely about
the waist, where no belt gathered its folds, the beautiful head wrapped
up in the many-colored madras, which around the temples was folded
up into graceful knots holding together her chestnut-brown hair--in this
dress Josephine would swing for hours in her hammock made of
homespun silk and ornamented with borders of feathers from the
variegated iridescent birds of Cayenne.
Round about her were her young female slaves, watching with their
brilliant dark eyes their young mistress, ever ready to read every wish
upon that dreamy, smiling countenance, and by their swarthy tinge
heightening the soft, tender whiteness of her own complexion.
Then, wearied with the stillness and with her dreams, Josephine would
spring up from the hammock, dart into the house with all the lightness
of the gazelle to enliven the family with her own joyousness, her merry
pleasantry, and accompanied by her guitar to sing unto them with her
lovely youthful voice the songs of the Creoles. As the glowing sun was
at its setting, away she hastened with her slaves into the garden,
directed their labors, and with her own hands tended her own cherished
flowers, which commingled together in admirable admixture from all
climes under the genial skies of the Antilles. In the evening, the family
was gathered together in the light of the moon, which imparted to the
nights the brightness of day and streamed upon them her soft blue rays,
upon the fragrant terrace, in front of the house, where the faithful slaves
carefully watched the little group close one to another and guarded their
masters from the approaches of poisonous serpents, that insidious
progeny of the night.
On Sundays after Josephine had religiously and faithfully listened to an

early mass, she gladly