“The interests of France:” he continued, addressing De Bausset, “and as my dynasty does violence to my heart, the divorce has become a rigorous duty. I am more afflicted by what has happened to Josephine, because, three days ago, she must have learned it from Hortensia. The unhappy obligation which condemns me to separate myself from her, I deplore with all my heart, but I thought she possessed more strength of character, and I was not prepared for these bursts of grief.” They hurried away. Conscience, ever-faithful conscience, was already performing its duty; he felt its just upbraidings. He essayed to stifle it. It was this that led him to utter such language to De Bausset—to assert that he thought she possessed strength of character enough to receive the announcement without those bursts of grief. What virtuous and affectionate woman could receive with calmness a sentence of repudiation; and that, too, by the tongue of a beloved husband? Her heart must have become as stone. On the sixteenth of December, 1809, the law, authorising the divorce, was enacted by the conservative senate. In the following March the nuptials between Napoleon and Marie Louise, were performed in Vienna; and on the first day of April, a little more than four months after the scene above described, they were joined in wedlock in the city of Paris, by his uncle, Cardinal Fesch. Thus was consummated that act which cast a stain upon the character of “the great Napoleon,” which time cannot efface. A blot, deep and indelible, that will remain whilst his name lives among men. It was an act contrary to the laws of God and of humanity. One wrong action will often tarnish a whole life. We may admire his bravery, and courage, his vast conception of mind, his gigantic intellect, his unparalleled energy, his perseverance, and his determination of character, but when we turn to this dark page in his history, admiration vanishes, and contempt and disgust usurp its place. It was indeed an act unworthy of the man, and one that admits of no palliation. It was not to France the sacrifice, as he termed it, was made; it was to ambition. And may we not surmise that the lowering fortunes which ever after were his, and the dark fate which closed his days in a lonely island, afar off on the bosom of the ocean, were, in some measure, acts of divine retribution, which this act of his called forth.