Hortense’s marriage was, of course, an important question with the Bonapartes, and various suitors had been considered. The girl herself was not ambitious. Neither wealth nor station obscured her judgment. She wanted to marry for love, she declared. At one time she had a strong feeling for Duroc, and Napoleon favored the marriage strongly. Duroc was of good family and a brave soldier, and Hortense loved him; what better? Josephine opposed it. She had set her heart on Louis Bonaparte, in spite of the fact that Hortense felt something like an antipathy to the young man. Louis himself did not take to the marriage at first. He had imbibed from his mother and brothers the idea that the Beauharnais were the natural enemies of the Bonapartes, and a marriage with Hortense they all declared, would be disloyal. However, in September, 1801, when Louis returned to Paris after several months absence and saw Hortense at a ball, he was so impressed by her charm that he yielded at once to Josephine’s wishes, and asked for her hand. Napoleon consented with a little regret; Hortense obeyed as a matter of duty, urged to it as she was both by her mother and Mme. Campan. The marriage took place early in January, 1802. It was a victory for Josephine over the Bonapartes, so her friends said, and so the Bonapartes felt bitterly. But, alas, it was a victory for which Hortense paid the price. Before the end of the year, it was evident that Mme. Louis Bonaparte was very unhappy; her husband was jealous and exacting, and constantly tried to turn her against her mother in the family feud. Not even the birth of a son, in October, silenced his grievances for long, though to Napoleon and to Josephine the coming of the little Napoleon-Charles, as he was named, was an inexpressible joy. To Josephine the child was a new support to her position, a new reason why a succession could be established without divorcing her and re-marrying. It was a succession through her, too, since this was her daughter’s child. Napoleon himself soon became more devoted to the child than its father ever was. In a way, his own ardent desire for fatherhood was satisfied by the presence of the baby, which he kept by him as much as he could, riding it on his back, trotting it on his foot, rolling with it on the floor, lying beside it at night until it slept—a touching proof of this extraordinary man’s passion to possess a love which was faithful and disinterested. As time went on and the question of the succession came into the senate, the struggle between the brothers as to how the heredity should be regulated reached its climax. Napoleon determined to adopt Hortense’s child and make him his heir. Joseph, Lucien, and Louis himself refused to resign what they called their rights, and each had important supporters in his position. Lucien, in the struggle, broke entirely with Napoleon.