any accident."--" Be tranquil, my Prince; I can assure your Imperial Highness that there is no danger." During all the time that Bousquet was engaged in working on the pretty mouth, these recommendations continued. At length, having finished what he had to do, he passed into the waiting-room, where he found assembled the ladies of the palace, the chamberlains, etc., who were awaiting to enter the apartments of the Princess.

They hastened to ask Bousquet news of the princess, "Her Imperial Highness is very well, and must be happy in the tender attachment her august husband feels for her, which he has shown in my presence in so touching a manner. His anxiety was extreme. It was only with difficulty I could reassure him as to the result of the simplest thing in the world; I shall tell everywhere what I have just witnessed. It is pleasant to be able to cite such an example of conjugal tenderness in so high a rank. I am deeply impressed with it." They did not try to stop good M. Bousquet in these expressions of his enthusiasm. The desire to laugh prevented a single word; and he left convinced that nowhere existed a better household than that of the Prince and Princess Borghese. The latter was in Italy, and the handsome young man was M. de Canouville.

I borrow this curious anecdote from the "Memoirs of Josephine," the author of which, who saw and described the Court of Navarre and Malmaison with so much truth and good judgment, is said to be a woman, and must be in truth a most intellectual one, and in a better position than any other person to know the private affairs of her Majesty, the Empress.--CONSTANT.

He was slain by a ball from a French cannon, which was discharged after the close of an action in which he had shown the most brilliant courage.--CONSTANT.]

Moreover, however great may have been the frailty of Princess Pauline in regard to her lovers, and although most incredible instances of this can be related without infringing on the truth, her admirable devotion to the person of the Emperor in 1814 should cause her faults to be treated with indulgence.

On innumerable occasions the effrontery of her conduct, and especially her want of regard and respect for the Empress Marie Louise, irritated the Emperor against the Princess Borghese, though he always ended by pardoning her; notwithstanding which, at the time of the fall of her august brother she was again in disgrace, and being informed that the island of Elba had been selected as a prison for the Emperor, she hastened to shut herself up there with him, abandoning Rome and Italy, whose finest palaces were hers. Before the battle of Waterloo, his Majesty at the critical moment found the heart of his sister Pauline still faithful. Fearing lest he might be in need of money, she sent him her handsomest diamonds, the value of which was enormous; and they were found in the carriage of the Emperor when it was captured at Waterloo, and exhibited to the curiosity of the inhabitants of London. But the diamonds have been lost; at least, to their lawful owner.

CHAPTER XIV.

On the day of General Moreau's arrest the First Consul was in a state of great excitement.

[Jean Victor Moreau, born at Morlaix in Brittany, 1763, son of a prominent lawyer. At one time he rivaled Bonaparte in reputation. He was general-in-chief of the army of the Rhine, 1796, and again in 1800, in which latter year he gained the battle of Hohenlinden. Implicated in the conspiracy of Pichegru, he was exiled, and went to the United States. He returned to Europe in 1813, and, joining the allied armies against France, was killed by a cannon-shot in the attack on Dresden in August of that year.]