He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense and Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's bedside throughout the night. The best physicians were called in, but these only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the condition of the empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With strong hands, she had held it together as long as her children's welfare seemed to require. Now that Hortense's future was also assured--now that she knew that her grandchildren would, at least, not be compelled to wander about the world as exiled beggars--now Josephine withdrew her hands from her heart, and suffered it to bleed to death. On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an illness which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not heard her mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with Eugene, after her mother had received the sacrament from Abbé Bertrand--when she saw her mother, with outstretched arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to them--Hortense fainted away at her mother's bedside, and the empress breathed her last sigh in Eugene's arms. The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris profoundly. It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a day that Napoleon was no longer the ruler of France, and that the Bourbons had reascended the throne of their fathers. All Paris mourned; for the hearts of the French people had not forgotten this woman, who had so long been their benefactress, and of whom each could relate the most touching traits of goodness, of generosity, and of gentleness. Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as empress in the hearts of the French people and thousands poured into Malmaison, to pay their last homage to their deceased empress. Even the Faubourg St. Germain mourned with the Parisians; these haughty and insolent royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons, may, perhaps, for a moment, have recalled the benefits which the empress had shown them, when, as the mighty Empress of France, she employed the half of her allowance for the relief of the emigrants. They had returned without thinking of the thanks they owed their forgotten benefactress; now that she was dead, they no longer withheld the tribute of their admiration. "Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness! How well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and good taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"