In 1779, while the boys at Brienne were still tormenting the little untamed Corsican nobleman, and driving him to his garden fortalice to seek lonely refuge from their taunts in company with his Plutarch, there had arrived in Paris from Martinique a successful planter of that island, a French gentleman of good family, M. Tascher de la Pagerie, bringing back to that city for the second time his daughter Josephine. She was then a girl of sixteen, without either beauty or education, but thoroughly matured, and with a quick Creole intelligence and a graceful litheness of figure which made her a most attractive woman. She had spent the years of her life from ten to fourteen in the convent of Port Royal. Having passed the interval in her native isle, she was about to contract a marriage which her relatives in France had arranged. Her betrothed was the younger son of a family friend, the Marquis de Beauharnais. The bride landed on October twentieth, and the ceremony took place on December thirteenth. The young vicomte brought his wife home to a suitable establishment in the capital. Two children were born to them--Eugène and Hortense; but before the birth of the latter the husband quarreled with his wife, for reasons that have never been known. The court granted a separation, with alimony, to Mme. de Beauharnais, who some years later withdrew to her father's home in Martinique. Her husband sailed to America with the forces of Bouillé, and remained there until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he returned, and was elected a deputy to the States-General.