This was in 1780; and in 1783 Hortense was born,
who became Queen of Holland. Though surrounded
by all that could gratify ambition and taste — the em-
bellishments of art, lavished on a beautiful residence —
gorgeous equipage and retinue — happy in the domestic



un or joaram, 19



relations, and beloved by a legion of friends, a midnight
cloud was gathering upon her radiant future. Beau-
harnais had caught the moral infection which pervad-
ed the fashionable world, and made its shining exterior
delusive as the phosphorescent light that sometimes
plays upon the surface of a decaying form, from which
life has departed. Josephine suspected his fidelity,
while he in turn, it would seem from the partial dis-
closures made of this unpleasant and obscure transac-
tion, doubted the sincerity of her affection, through the
influence of a jealous female friend, who intimated that
the heart of his Creole wife was given unalterably to
another. Whether in any degree she gave occasion
for suspicion is of little consequence, where the guilt
and responsibility of what followed are plainly his
own.
His notions of conjugal fidelity in common with the
courtiers of that period, and those that prevailed during
the reign of the dissolute Charles of England, were un-
worthy the man who won the hand of Josephine ; and
she resented the insult he offered to her truthful and
virtuous spirit, by his gallantries toward a woman she
despised. It was not long, when the language of affec-
tion was exchanged for accusation and keen retort;
before that knell of happiness, separation, passed his
lips.
