After nearly a year in the Abbey, Josephine returned to her father-in-law, who was living at Fontainebleau. The life she here took up pleased her very well. She had an income for herself and children of something over $2,000 a year, she was free, she knew many amusing people, she had admirers, many say, lovers,—we should be surprised more if she had not had them than if she had, it was the way of her world. She was devoted to her children, she cared for the Marquis de Beauharnais and Mme. Renaudin in their illnesses, and she corresponded regularly with her husband—whom she never saw—concerning their children. In 1788, she broke the monotony of her life by a trip to Martinique, taking Hortense with her. She remained some two years in the island—a sad two years, for both her father and her sister were very ill at the time, and both died soon after her return to Paris, in the fall of 1790. CHAPTER II JOSEPHINE IN THE REVOLUTION—IMPRISONED AT LES CARMES—STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE—MARRIAGE WITH BONAPARTE When Josephine returned to Paris in 1790, she found the city in full revolution. In the two years she had been gone the States Generals had met, the Bastile had fallen, the National Assembly had begun to make France over. In the front of all this activity moved her husband, Viscount de Beauharnais. Like his patron, the Duke de la Rouchefoucauld, Beauharnais was an ardent advocate of liberty and equality. Sent to the States General by his friends at Blois, he had joined the few noblemen there who in 1789 espoused the cause of the Revolution, and soon was one of the leaders of the faction. Later he was sent to the National Assembly, where he took an active part in framing the constitution. He was a power even in the Jacobin Society.