moment. Whatever art can imagine to enhance
female attraction, was cultivated by
her; but, with such cautious mystery, that its
existence could never be divined. The other,
on the contrary, never even suspected that
the most innocent artifice was requisite to
assist her attractions. The one was for ever
avoiding the truth, and a negation was her
first impulse: the other was ignorant of
the nature of dissimulation, and subterfuge
was foreign to her. The first never made a
request to her husband, but overwhelmed
herself with debt: the other never hesitated
to ask for what she wanted when she required
it; which was rare. She never conceived the
idea of having anything for which she did not
pay instantly. With all this difference;—both
were equally good, equally gentle, and equally
attached to the husband whom their destiny
had appointed them."

Equally!—poor Josephine, it is true, died
of a broken heart for wrongs and injuries
most undeserved. Marie Louise saw the
overthrow of the Empire, of which she shared
the rule, with more than indifference; and cast
aside—as unconsidered trifles only fit presents
for her femme de chambre, who sold them to
a pawnbroker—all the gages d'amour given
her by her Imperial admirer; sacrificing,
without a sigh, even the locket containing
the hair of her ill-fated son.

The coronation of the first Emperor of
France—since Charlemagne, when the fascinating
Josephine was in the utmost height of
her glory and perhaps of her happiness—
began to be talked of in 1804, at the time
Napoleon was at Boulogne, superintending
the manoeuvres of those famous flat-bottomed
boats which, to the number of two thousand,
were destined to land an army on the coasts
of amazed and terrified England.

While her ambitious husband was busy
with his great scheme, Josephine was preparing
to pay a visit to the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle;
some said for health, and some
whispered to reconnoitre a city where the
powerful Emperor of the West had preceded
the modern Charlemagne in an august
ceremony, of which the magnificent cathedral
still retained relics.

The official addresses now in vogue in
France, are exact parodies of those which
every prefect and every mayor, in the towns
through which the Court was to pass, was
tutored to pour forth at the Empress's feet;
and the replies dictated by Napoleon to his
wife, and carefully studied by her, were no
doubt extremely like those uttered at every
place where the pageant of Empire is at this
instant being exhibited. But, occasionally,
Josephine forgot her part, or became wearied
with its sameness. Whenever she did so, she
never failed to make a deep impression; so
charming was her manner, so sweet were her
words.

All the meanness, the servility, the grasping
for power and place, which now distinguish
the worthy magistrates who paraphrase
the Lord's Prayer and the whole gospels
to do honour to the shadow of Napoleon's
greatness, were brought into play at the
time when the bewitching Creole—who was
more sinned against than sinning throughout
her career—was journeying to Aix-la-Chapelle.
The Empress, " well-born, matched
greater" by her first sad marriage, had no
occasion to take lessons of an actor to learn
how to support her dignity with effect.
Nature had endowed her with that grace
beyond the reach of art, which, in her case,
art had rendered irresistible; and many of
those of her Court who could scarcely conceal
their contempt for the pompous and
vulgar habits and manners of the great
sovereign, could not but render justice to the
superiority of the late Vicomtesse de Beauharuais.

At that period there were no good roads
in France where the Emperor had not passed;
and, in the department of Roër, nothing could
be more wretched and neglected than the public
ways which, for the first time, were traversed
by an Imperial cortége. Most of the travellers
whose evil stars led them into these
regions, were forced to ride on horseback
after leaving the wrecks of their carriages in
ruts, and sloughs, and precipitous passes; but,
as the Empress could not be expected so to
travel, it was found necessary to apply to the
Minister of the Interior. The Director, willing
to gain credit for his zeal at as little expense
as possible, lost no time in ordering loads of
sand to be thrown into the frightful holes
which honeycombed the way, and which
threatened an overthrow at every step. The
Empress's carriage would, by this transient
means of repair, get on unscathed; but, with
regard to her suite, he troubled himself little
concerning their fate.

The inhabitants of Aix-la-Chapelle were
indignant at this proceeding, and resolved to
pay the Director des ponts et chaussées—as
hardhearted as our mythic Woods and Forests—in
his own coin. Accordingly, when it came to
his turn to travel along the same road from
Liège in order to pay his respects to Josephine,
they set to work and diligently removed the
whole of the sand which had concealed the
true state of the dangerous way. The unlucky
Director was, of course, overturned without
mercy, as so many unheeded travellers had
been before; and, he suffered more even than
former victims, for he was a remarkably fat,
heavy man.

The catastrophe of poor M. Crété, the
Director, so far from exciting pity at the
Imperial Court, afforded an endless source of
merriment; and while he was overwhelmed
with expressions of sympathy, the affair was
looked upon as a certain means of procuring
a good road; a consummation which no representations,
however eloquent, could have
produced.

Josephine, who never disputed her husband's