21. The New Paris

Yes, they were now ended, the days of sufferings and privations! The wife of General Beauharnais was no more the poor widow who appeared as a petitioner in the drawing-rooms of the members of the Directory, and often obliged, even in the worst kind of weather, to go on foot to the festivals of Madame Tallien, because she lacked the means to pay for a cab; she was no longer the poor mother who had to be satisfied to procure inferior teachers for her children, because she could not possibly pay superior ones.

Now, as by a spell, all was changed, and gold was the magic wand which had produced it. Thanks to this talisman, the Viscountess de Beauharnais could now quit the small, remote, gloomy dwelling in which she had hitherto resided, and could again procure a house, gather society round about her, and, above all things, provide for the education of her children.

This was her dearest duty, her most important obligation, with which she busied herself even before she rented a modestly-furnished room. Her Eugene, the darling of her heart, desired like his father to devote himself to a military life, and his mother took him to a boarding-school in St. Germain, where young men of distinguished families received their education. Her twelve-year-old daughter Hortense, of whom Josephine had said, "She is my angel with the gold locks, who alone can smile away the tears from my eyes and sorrow from my heart"--Hortense entered the newly-opened educational establishment of Madame Campan, once the lady-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette. Josephine wept hot tears as she accompanied her Hortense into the boarding-school, and, embracing her blond curly-haired angel, she closely pressed her to her heart, and said:

"Judge how much I love you, my daughter, since I have the courage to leave you and to deprive myself of the greatest of my life's enjoyments! Ah, I shall be very lonesome, Hortense, but my thoughts will be with you continually--with you and your brother Eugene. Live to be an honor to your father, grow and prosper to be your mother's happiness!"

Then with a kiss she took leave of her daughter, and comfortless and alone she returned to her solitary apartments in Paris.

During the next eight days her doors were shut; she opened them to none, not even to her friend Therese, and not once did Josephine leave her dwelling during this time, nor did she accept any of the invitations which came to her from all sides.

Her heart was yet wrapped in mourning for her separation from her children, and, with all the intensity of an affectionate mother's love, she preferred leaving her anguish to die out of itself than to suppress it with amusements and pleasures.

But after this last sorrow had been overcome, Josephine, with serenity and a smile of cheerfulness, came again from her solitude into the world which called her forth with all its voices of joy, pleasure, and flattery. And Josephine no longer closed her ears to these sweet attractive voices. She had long enough suffered, wept, fasted; now she ought to reap enjoyments, and gather her portion of this life's pleasures; now she must live! The past had set behind her, and, as one new-born or risen from the dead, Josephine walked into the world with a young maiden heart, and a mind opened to all that is beautiful, great, and good; her soul filled with visions, hopes, desires, and dreams. Out of the widow's veil came forth the young, charming Creole, and her radiant eyes saluted the world with intelligent looks and an expression of the most attractive goodness.

Her next care was to procure a pleasant, convenient home suited to her rank. She purchased from the actor Talma a house which he possessed in the Street Chautereine, and where he had, during the storms of the revolution, received his friends as well as all the literary, artistic, and political notables of the day with the kindest hospitality. It was not a, brilliant, distinguished hotel, no splendid building, but a small, tastefully and conveniently arranged house, with pretty rooms, a cheerful drawing-room, lovely garden, exactly suited to have therein a quiet, agreeable, informal pastime. Josephine possessed in the highest degree the art of her sex to furnish rooms with elegance and taste, so as to make every one in them comfortable, satisfied, at ease, and cheerful.

The drawing-room of the widow of General Beauharnais became soon the central point where all her friends of former days found themselves together again, and all the remnants of the good old society found reception; where the learned, the artist, the poet, met with a refuge, there to rest for a few hours from political strife, to put aside the serpent's skin of assumed republican manners, and again assume the tone and forms of the higher society. Such drawing-rooms in these revolutionary days were extremely few; no one dared to become conspicuous; every one was reserved and quiet; every one shrank from making himself suspected of being a ci-devant, even if under the republican toga he left visible his dress-coat of the upper society with its embroidery of gold. Men had entirely broken with the past, wishing to deny it, and not be under the yoke of its forms and rules; it was therefore necessary, out of the chaos of the republic, to create a new world, a new society, new forms of etiquette, and new fashions. Meanwhile, until these new fashions for republican France should be found, men had recourse (so as not to go back to the days of the late monarchy of France) to the republics of olden times; the ladies dressed according to the patterns of the old statues of the deities of Greece and Rome, giving receptions in the style of ancient Greece, and banquets laid out in all the extravagant splendors of a Lucullus.

The members of the republican Directory, whose residence was in the palace of the Luxemburg, took the lead in all these neo-Grecian and neo-Roman festivities; and, whereas they loudly proclaimed that it was necessary to furnish opportunities to the working-classes and laborers to gain money, and that it was incumbent on all to promote industry, they rivalled each other in their efforts to exhibit an extravagant pomp and a brilliant display. On reception-days of the members of the Directory the public streamed in masses toward the Luxemburg, there to admire the splendors of the five monarchs, and to rejoice that the days of the carmagnoles, the sans-culottes, the dirty blouse, and the bonnet rouge were at least gone by. The five directors, to the delight of the Parisian people, wore costly silk and velvet garments embroidered with gold, and on their hats, trimmed also with gold lace, waved large ostrich-plumes.

Luxury celebrated its return to Paris, after having had to secrete itself, so long from the blood-stained hands of the sans-culottes, in the most obscure corners of the deserted palaces of St. Germain. Pleasure, which had fled away horrified from the guillotine and from the terrorists, dared once more to show its rose-wreathed brow and smiling countenance, and here and there make its cheerful festivities resound.

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