nowadays seat her experimental staff
- From: pig@xxxxxxxxx (M. B. Bucci-Teramoto)
- Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 08:03:27 GMT
then turned to her mother, who was
leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart
oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but
had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too
full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble,
for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.
Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told
her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses
beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to
dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have
her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her
pregnancy published in the next day's paper.
Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for
all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of
the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and
Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her
participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read
in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis
Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some
weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious
statement.
Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had
not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this
shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to
take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of
exertion to restore her to consciousness.
A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so
passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope
of a better understanding between her and her husband.
Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart. In tho
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