BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. FIRST CONSUL FOR LIFE. France was now at peace with all the world. It was universally admitted that Napoleon was the great pacificator. He was the idol of France. The masses of the people in Europe, every where regarded him as their advocate and friend, the enemy of aristocratic usurpation, and the great champion of equality. The people of France no longer demanded _liberty_. Weary years of woe had taught them gladly to relinquish the boon. They only desired a ruler who would take care of them, govern them, protect them from the power of allied despotism, and give them equal rights. Though Napoleon had now but the title of First Consul, and France was nominally a republic, he was in reality the most powerful monarch in Europe. His throne was established in the hearts of nearly forty millions of people. His word was law. It will be remembered that Josephine contemplated the extraordinary grandeur to which her husband had attained, with intense solicitude. She saw that more than ordinary regal power had passed into his hands, and she was not a stranger to the intense desire which animated his heart to have an heir to whom to transmit his name and his glory. She knew that many were intimating to him that an heir was essential to the repose of France. She was fully informed that divorce had been urged upon him as one of the stern necessities of state. One day, when Napoleon was busy in his cabinet, Josephine entered softly, by a side door, and seating herself affectionately upon his knee, and passing her hand gently through his hair, said to him, with a burst of tenderness, "I entreat you, my friend, do not make yourself king. It is Lucien who urges you to it. Do not listen to him." Napoleon smiled upon her kindly, and said, "Why, my poor Josephine, you are mad. You must not listen to these fables which the old dowagers tell you. But you interrupt me now; I am very busy; leave me alone." It is recorded that Lucien ventured to suggest to Josephine that a law higher than the law of ordinary morality required that she must become a mother, even were it necessary, for the attainment of that end, that she should violate her nuptial vows. Brutalizing and vulgar infidelity had obliterated in France, nearly all the sacredness of domestic ties. Josephine, instinctively virtuous, and revering the religion of her childhood, which her husband had reinstated, bursting into tears, indignantly exclaimed, "This is dreadful. Wretched should I be were any one to suppose me capable of listening, without horror, to your infamous proposal. Your ideas are poisonous; your language horrible." "Well, then, madame," responded Lucien, "all that I can say is, that from my heart I pity you."