And _she_? When pealing bells and roaring cannon announced to France that her rival had presented her husband the long-desired heir; _she_, upon whose quivering heart every stroke of those joyous bells must have smitten like a death-knell; _she_, the deserted wife, hung festal wreaths over the grave of her hopes, gave jewels to the messenger who brought her the news of _his_ happiness, and ordered a _fête_ in honor of the young heir. Match me that, who can, in the wide annals of _man's_ history? But, oh! when midnight came on, and garlands drooped, and bright eyes closed, and tripping feet were stilled, when the farce was played out, and the iron hand of court etiquette was lifted from off that loving, throbbing, bursting heart, it thus poured itself out to Napoleon:
"She (Maria Louise), can not be more tenderly devoted to you than I; but she has been enabled to contribute more to your happiness, by securing that of France. She has then a right to your first feelings, to all your cares; and I, who was but your companion in times of difficulty, I can not ask more than a place in your affections far removed from that occupied by the Empress Louise. _Not till you shall have ceased to watch by her bed, not till you are weary of embracing your son, will you take the pen to converse with your best friend. I will wait._"
The answer to the touching letter, from which this is an extract (and every _woman_ with a heart, who reads it, can measure the height and depth of its anguish), was the following _verbal_, the following _delicate_ message, through Eugene!
"Tell your mother I would have written to her already, _had I not been completely absorbed in the pleasure of looking upon my son_."
About eleven o'clock that evening she received the much-coveted line from his own hand; in which he seemed to have been able at last to remember somebody beside himself; and for which the all-enduring, all-forgiving Josephine adores as a god, "the man who, _when he willed_, could be the most delightful of men." Nobody will deny the matchless tact of the lines which dried poor Josephine's tears:
"This infant, _in concert with our Eugene_, will constitute my happiness, and that of France."
But the man "who could be so delightful when he willed," did not, any more than the rest of his sex, always will it. Motes and butterflies seek the sunbeams, and the friends of poor Josephine's happier days, forsook her for those whom Fortune smiled upon. Malice, always on tiptoe to whisper into the tortured ear, told her of the "happiness" of the inconstant Napoleon; and with the birds, flowers, and fountains of Malmaison mocking her tears, her crushed heart thus sobs itself out to the emperor: