Napoleon’s decision was taken, however. He must appoint a successor, and it should be one of his own family. But which one? Joseph had no head for affairs. With Lucien he had quarreled. But there was Louis, who had none of his brothers’ faults and all of their good qualities. Louis it should be. The knowledge that Napoleon undoubtedly favored Louis as his successor determined Josephine to arrange a marriage between him and her daughter Hortense. At this time, 1800, Hortense was seventeen years old, though the exceptional experiences of her childhood had given her a thoughtfulness quite superior to her years. She had been but ten when her mother, lest a suspicion of her patriotism might be roused because she brought up her children in idleness, had apprenticed her to a dressmaker. She was but eleven years old when her parents were imprisoned, and when in the costumes of laborers’ children she and Eugène had made frequent visits to les Carmes and had gone together more than once to beg of persons in authority for the lives of their father and mother. After the Revolution, Hortense had been placed in Mme. Campan’s school at St. Germain—a school established to give the young girls of the better class whose parents had been scattered or guillotined in the Revolution, an opportunity to learn the ways and the graces of that society which for so long the patriots had been trying to uproot. At Mme. Campan’s, Hortense had distinguished herself by her gentleness and her goodness, by the quickness with which she learned everything taught, and by her enthusiasm and ideals. She had left the school a thoroughly charming and accomplished girl, to join her mother, now the wife of the First Consul. She had all of Josephine’s charms of person, her grace and suppleness, her beautiful form, her interesting and mobile face; but she was more vivacious than Josephine and more intelligent. As for her accomplishments, they were many. She played the piano and the harp, and sang well. Her drawing and embroidery were not bad, as many specimens still preserved show. She danced with exquisite grace; she, even at this time, had literary aspirations, and she was the star of the company which put on so many pieces at the little theatre at Malmaison. Hortense was a favorite of Napoleon. He had loved her first because she was Josephine’s daughter. After she left school and was constantly of the household, he grew more and more attached to her, more and more anxious for her happiness. Hortense, though she never ceased to fear Napoleon, loved him with the enthusiasm of a young girl for a conquering hero. She seems never to have questioned his will—never to have doubted his affection for her.