In the circle immediately surrounding Bonaparte there was much quarreling and jealousy. Josephine having been barren since her second marriage, would the succession go to her children or to her husband's relatives? This was becoming a serious question. Joseph Bonaparte had kept the new order in touch with the republican idea by his skilful diplomacy both in society and in foreign negotiation. He was disposed to yield to his arbitrary brother in any extremity, and his beautiful wife was a tower of strength to the family interest. The vigorous and able Lucien had risen to the height of his chances, and, having acquired a handsome fortune while occupying the post of French minister to Madrid, began to assert his old democratic independence. He was now a widower, and refusing to marry the queen regent of Etruria, espoused a wife from among the people, and this step eventually cost him the penalty of exile. Josephine was successful in making a match between her daughter Hortense and her husband's third brother, Louis; but although at a later time the Emperor contemplated bequeathing his power to their son, for the present their quarrels, instead of appeasing, intensified the Bonaparte-Beauharnais feud. It was sometimes said in loud whispers that the only solution of the impending difficulties was the divorce of the First Consul from his wife; but the question was not yet seriously discussed. The consular pair had never been married by ecclesiastical form, and many have since suggested that it was a discontented husband who had spoken in the manifest partiality for easy divorce which Bonaparte displayed in discussing the civil code. Jerome had been among the officers blockaded in the West Indies by the English fleet. Having escaped to the United States, he became desperately enamored of Elizabeth Patterson, a beautiful woman of Baltimore, and in December, 1803, married her. The pre-nuptial contract is couched in language which proves that her father understood the risks he was taking. As might have been and was expected, the First Consul was furious, refusing to recognize the marriage or the child born of it, and forbidding his sister-in-law to live in France. In a short time the unworthy object of his wrath deserted his family, and returned, with few qualms apparently, to his elder brother's fold and a share in the splendors of the Empire.