The proudest monument in the Island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, so any inhabitant will tell you, is the statue of a woman in the town of St. Pierre. The woman thus honored is Josephine, once Empress of the French People, who, so the legend on the pedestal of the statue relates was born at the hamlet of Trois Ilets, Martinique, on June 23, 1763. If one searches in the legends of the island for an explanation of the position to which the child of this humble spot arose, he will find nothing more serious than the prophecy of an old negress, made to the little girl herself, that one day she would be Queen of France. If he looks in the chronicles of the island for an explanation, he will find nothing to indicate that she could ever rise higher than the life of an indolent creole, a life narrowed by poverty and made tolerable chiefly by the beauty of the nature about her and by her own happy indifference of temperament. Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, the child’s father, was the eldest son of a noble of Blois, France, who went to Martinique in the first quarter of the eighteenth century chiefly because he could not succeed in anything in his own country. He did no better in Martinique than he had done in France and was only able to start his children in life by dint of soliciting favors for them from his well-to-do relatives at home. For Joseph he obtained a small military position, but the lad was no better at improving his opportunities than his father had been and returned to Martinique after a few years a lieutenant of marines—without a place. When soliciting failed, nothing was left in those days for a nobleman who did not relish work but marriage, and Joseph succeeded, by help of his friends, in making a very good one with Mlle. Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, whose father was of noble descent and, what was more to the point, was prosperous and of good standing in Martinique. Joseph went to live on a charming plantation belonging to his father-in-law, just back from the sea and near the village of Trois Ilets. Soon after this, war with the English called him into service as a defender of the French West Indies. The war was not long, and for his services he secured a pension of 450 livres (about ninety dollars). It came none too soon, for a passing hurricane devastated the plantation at Trois Ilets in 1766, and drove the family into one of the sugar houses to live. M. de la Pagerie was never able to repair the damages to his plantation done by the storm or build another home for his family. He never, indeed, followed any steady employment, but idled his life away in gaming, intrigue, and soliciting—always in debt, always in bad odor among honest men—his only asset his birth.