Josephine

Оглавление

Abbott John Stevens Cabot. Josephine

PREFACE

Chapter I. Life in Martinique

Chapter II. The Marriage of Josephine

Chapter III. Arrest of M. Beauharnais and Josephine

Chapter IV. Scenes in Prison

Chapter V. The Release from Prison

Chapter VI. Josephine in Italy

Chapter VII. Josephine at Malmaison

Chapter VIII. Josephine the Wife of the First Consul

Chapter IX. Developments of Character

Chapter X. The Coronation

Chapter XI. Josephine an Empress

Chapter XII. The Divorce and last Days

Отрывок из книги

The island of Martinique emerges in tropical luxuriance from the bosom of the Caribbean Sea. A meridian sun causes the whole land to smile in perennial verdure, and all the gorgeous flowers and luscious fruits of the torrid zone adorn upland and prairie in boundless profusion. Mountains, densely wooded, rear their summits sublimely to the skies, and valleys charm the eye with pictures more beautiful than imagination can create. Ocean breezes ever sweep these hills and vales, and temper the heat of a vertical sun. Slaves, whose dusky limbs are scarcely veiled by the lightest clothing, till the soil, while the white inhabitants, supported by the indolent labor of these unpaid menials, loiter away life in listless leisure and in rustic luxury. Far removed from the dissipating influences of European and American opulence, they dwell in their secluded island in a state of almost patriarchal simplicity.

About the year 1760, a young French officer, Captain Joseph Gaspard Tascher, accompanied his regiment of horse to this island. While here on professional duty, he became attached to a young lady from France, whose parents, formerly opulent, in consequence of the loss of property, had moved to the West Indies to retrieve their fortunes. But little is known respecting Mademoiselle de Sanois, this young lady, who was soon married to M. Tascher. Josephine was the only child born of this union. In consequence of the early death of her mother, she was, while an infant, intrusted to the care of her aunt. Her father soon after died, and the little orphan appears never to have known a father's or a mother's love.

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"On your own head be it, then. Listen. You will soon be married. That union will not be happy. You will become a widow, and then you will be Queen of France. Some happy years will be yours, but afterward you will die in a hospital, amid civil commotions."

The old woman then hurried away. Josephine talked a few moments with the young negroes upon the folly of this pretended fortune-telling, and leaving them, the affair passed from her mind. In subsequent years, when toiling through the vicissitudes of her most eventful life, she recalled the singular coincidence between her destiny and the prediction, and seemed to consider that the negress, with prophetic vision, had traced out her wonderful career.

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