Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851

There can be no doubt but that Napoleon's thoughts often turned with tenderness to the days that he had passed with Josephine. Proof was given of an unchanging attachment to her, in the favors which he lavished on those connected with her by relationship or affection. Among her friends was Mrs. Damer, so celebrated for her success in sculpture. She had become acquainted with her while she was passing some time in Paris. Charmed by Josephine's varied attractions, she delighted in her society, and they became fast friends; when parting, they promised never to forget each other. The first intimation which Mrs. Damer had of Josephine's second marriage was one day when a French gentleman waited on her; he was the bearer of a most magnificent piece of porcelain and a letter, with which he had been charged for her by the wife of the First Consul. Great was her astonishment, when she opened the letter to find that it was indeed from the wife of the First Consul; no longer Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, but her dear friend Josephine, who urged her with all the warmth of friendship, to pay her an immediate visit at Paris. "I do long," she added, "to present my husband to you." Such a tempting invitation was gladly accepted, and she was received with joy by Napoleon and Josephine. In after years, she constantly recalled to mind the pleasures of that visit, with mingled feelings of melancholy and delight. The domestic scene left a lasting impression. Napoleon, always so fascinating in conversation, made himself delightfully agreeable to her; he loved to talk with her of her art; and his originality, enthusiasm, and taste gave an interest to every thing he said. He had a great admiration for Fox, and expressed a wish to have his bust. When Mrs. Damer next visited Paris, she brought Fox's bust, but Josephine's place was occupied by another. The emperor saw her, and met her with all the cordiality and kindness which the recollection of former happy days, and her attachment to Josephine, were sure to inspire. At parting, he gave her a splendid snuff-box, with his likeness set in diamonds. The box is now in the British Museum.

It was in her retirement at Navarre that Josephine wept bitterly over the fallen fortunes of Napoleon. The Russian expedition caused her such deep inquietude that her health and spirits visibly declined; she saw in it a disastrous fate for Napoleon, and trembled, too, for the safety of Eugène, a son so dearly and so deservedly beloved, and who was, if possible, rendered still more precious, as the especial favorite of Napoleon, and as having been the means of introducing him to her. Josephine now scarcely joined her ladies, but would remain for the length of the day alone in her chamber, by the large traveling-desk which contained Napoleon's letters. Among these there was one that she was observed to read over and over again, and then to place in her bosom; it was the last that she had received; it was written from Brienne. A passage in it runs thus: "On revisiting this spot, where I passed my youthful days, and contrasting the peaceful condition I then enjoyed with the state of terror and agitation to which my mind is now a prey, often have I addressed myself in these words: I have sought death in numberless engagements, I can no longer dread its approach; I should now hail it as a boon. Nevertheless, I could still wish to see Josephine once more—" He again adds: "Adieu, my dear Josephine; never dismiss from your recollection one who has never forgotten, and never will forget you."

It would be needless to dwell on the rapid events which led to Napoleon's abdication, but it would be impossible, even in this imperfect sketch, not to be struck by the strange coincidences of Josephine's life—twice married—twice escaped from a violent death—twice crowned—both husbands sought for a divorce—one husband was executed—the other banished! One of Napoleon's first cares, in making his conditions when he abdicated, was an ample provision for Josephine; £40,000 per annum was settled on her.

It was after Napoleon's departure from the shores of France, that the Emperor Alexander, touched with admiration of Josephine's character, and with pity for her misfortunes, prevailed on her to return to Malmaison to see him there. The associations so linked with the spot that she had loved to beautify must, indeed, have been overpowering. It was there that Napoleon's passionate attachment to her was formed. How many recollections must have been awakened by the pleasure grounds adorned with the costly shrubs and plants which they had so often admired together; how many tears had afterward fallen among them when the hours of separation came. The Emperor Alexander used every effort to console her, and promised his protection to her children, but sorrow had done its part, and the memories of other times had their effect. Josephine fell sick; malignant sore throat was the form which disease took, during the fatal illness of but a few days. Alexander was unremitting in his attentions; he again soothed the dying mother by the renewal of his promise of care for her children, a promise most faithfully kept. It was in the year 1814 that Napoleon left France for Elba, and also that Josephine died. The bells to which they had loved to listen together tolled her funeral knell. Her remains rest in the parish church of Ruel, near Malmaison. They were followed to the place of interment by a great number of illustrious persons who were desirous of paying this parting token of respect to one so much loved and honored. Upward of eight thousand of the neighboring peasantry joined the funeral procession to pay their tribute of affection and veneration to her, who was justly called, "the mother of the poor and distressed." The tomb erected by her children marks the spot where she takes her "long last sleep." It bears the simple inscription—

EUGÈNE ET HORTENSE À JOSEPHINE

Napoleon, too, paid a parting visit to the residence which he had preferred to every other. After his unsuccessful attempt to resume the sovereignty of France, he spent six days at Malmaison to muse over departed power and happiness, and then left the shores of France forever!

WORK AWAY!

Work away!For the Master's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Work away!Keep the busy fingers plying,Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying;See that never thread lie wrong;Let not clash or clatter round us,Sound of whirring wheels, confound us;Steady hand! let woof be strongAnd firm, that has to last so long!Work away!Keep upon the anvil ringingStroke of hammer; on the gloomSet 'twixt cradle and 'twixt tombShower of fiery sparkles flinging;Keep the mighty furnace glowing;Keep the red ore hissing, flowingSwift within the ready mould;See that each one than the oldStill be fitter, still be fairerFor the servant's use, and rarerFor the master to behold:Work away!Work away!For the Leader's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Wide the trackless prairies round us,Dark and unsunned woods surround us,Steep and savage mountains bound us;Far awaySmile the soft savannas green,Rivers sweep and roll between:Work away!Bring your axes, woodmen true;Smite the forest till the blueOf Heaven's sunny eye looks throughEvery wild and tangled glade;Jungled swamp and thicket shadeGive to day!O'er the torrents fling your bridges,Pioneers! Upon the ridgesWiden, smooth the rocky stair—They that follow, far behindComing after us, will findSurer, easier footing there;Heart to heart, and hand with hand,From the dawn to dusk o' day,Work away!Scouts upon the mountain's peak—Ye that see the Promised Land,Hearten us! for ye can speakOf the country ye have scanned,Far away!Work away!For the Father's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and Day!Work and Pray!Pray! and Work will be completer;Work! and Prayer will be the sweeter;Love! and Prayer and Work the fleeterWill ascend upon their way!Fear not lest the busy fingerWeave a net the soul to stay;Give her wings—she will not linger;Soaring to the source of day;Cleaving clouds that still divide usFrom the azure depths of rest,She will come again! beside us,With the sunshine on her breast,Sit, and sing to us, while quickestOn their task the fingers move,While the outward din wars thickest,Songs that she hath learned above.Live in Future as in Present;Work for both while yet the dayIs our own! for Lord and Peasant,Long and bright as summer's day,Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant,Cometh soon our Holiday;Work away!

THE USURER'S GIFT

A FEW months ago in London an old man sat in a large paneled room in one of the streets near Soho-square. Every thing in the apartment was brown with age and neglect. Nothing more superlatively dingy could well be imagined. The leathern covers of the chairs were white and glossy at the edges; the carpet was almost of a uniform tint, notwithstanding its original gaudy contrasts; there were absurd old engravings upon the walls—relics of the infancy of the art; and curtains to the windows, which the smoke of years had darkened from a delicate fawn to a rusty chocolate color. In the centre of the room, and, as it were, the sun of this dusty system, stood an office-table of more modern manufacture, at which was seated the old man alluded to, sole lord and master of the dismal domicile. He was by profession a money-lender. His age might be from sixty to sixty-five years; his face was long, and his features seemed carved out of box-wood or yellow sand-stone, so destitute were they of mobility; his eyes were of a cold, pale, steel color, but his brows were black and tufted like a grim old owl's; a long aquiline nose, a thin and compressed mouth, and a vast double chin, buried in a voluminous white neckcloth of more than one day's wear, completed the portrait. Nor did the expression of his countenance undergo any perceptible change as, after a timid knock, the door opened, and a young man entered of singularly interesting appearance.

The new-comer was well-dressed, though his clothes were none of the newest, and had the air of a man accustomed to society. His pale brow was marked with those long horizontal lines of which time is rarely the artist. His dark, deep-set gray eyes flashed with a painful brightness; his long chestnut hair, damp with perspiration, clung in narrow strips to his forehead; his whole manner implied the man who had made up his mind to some extraordinary course, from which no wavering or weakness on his part was likely to turn him aside, whatever the opposition of others might compel him to abandon or determine. Bending his tall figure slightly, he addressed the money-lender in a tone of constrained calmness.

"You lend money, I believe?"

"Sometimes—on good security," replied the usurer, indifferently, forming a critical summary of his visitor's costume at a glance.

The stranger hesitated: there was a discouraging sort of coldness in the mode of delivering this answer that seemed to prejudge his proposition. Nevertheless, he resumed with an effort—"I saw your advertisement in the paper." The usurer did not even nod in answer to this prelude. He sat bolt upright in his chair, awaiting further information. "I am, as you will see by these papers, entitled to some property in reversion."

The usurer stretched out his hand for the papers, which he looked over carefully with the same implacable tranquillity, while his visitor entered into explanations as to their substance.

Once only the money-lender peered over the top of a document he was scanning, and said, gruffly: "Your name, sir, is Bernard West?"

"It is," replied the stranger, mechanically taking up a newspaper, in which the first thing which caught his eye was the advertisement alluded to, which ran thus:—"Money to any amount advanced immediately on every description of security, real or personal. Apply between the hours of ten and five to Mr. John Brace, – street, Soho-square."

After a brief interval of silence, the usurer methodically rearranged the papers, and returned them to the stranger. "They are of no use," he said, "no use whatever: the reversion is merely contingent. You have no available security to offer?"

"Could you not advance something upon these expectations—not even a small sum?"

"Not a farthing," said the money-lender.

"Is there no way of raising fifty—thirty—even twenty pounds?" said the stranger, anxiously, and with the tenacity of a drowning man grasping at a straw.

"There is a way," said the usurer, carelessly. West in his turn was silent, awaiting the explanation of his companion. "On personal security," continued the latter with a sinister impatience, beginning to arrange his writing materials for a letter.

"I will give any discount," said the young man, eagerly. "My prospects are good: I can—"

"Get a friend to be security for the payment of the interest?"

"Of the interest and principal, you mean?"

"Of the interest only—and the life insurance," added the usurer, with a slight peculiarity of intonation that might have escaped the notice of one whose nerves were less exalted in their sensitive power than those of his visitor's.

"And what sum can I borrow on these terms?" said West, gloomily.

"A hundred pounds: more if you require it. In fact, any amount, if your security be good."

"The interest will doubtless be high?"

"Not at all: four or five per cent. As much is often given for money on mortgage of land."

"And the life insurance?"

"You will insure your life for five hundred pounds, and you will pay the premiums with the interest."

"For five hundred?" said West, hesitating. "That is, if I borrow—"

"One hundred," replied the usurer, sharply. "Men who lend money do not run risks. You may die, and four out of five insurance offices may fail; but the chances are that the fifth would pay."

"But it is not likely—" began Bernard West, amazed at this outrageous display of caution.

"I do not say it is likely," snarled the usurer with a contemptuous sort of pity for his visitor's dullness of apprehension; "I say it is possible; and I like to be on the safe side."

"Well, and how is the affair to be arranged?"

"Your security, who of course must be a person known to have property, will give a bond guaranteeing the regular payment of interest and premiums—that is all."

West reflected for some minutes in silence. The faint expression of hope that had for an instant lighted up his countenance vanished. He understood the money-lender and his proposition. A sufficiently clear remembrance of the tables of life assurance which he had seen, enabled him to perceive that the interest and premiums together would amount to nearly twenty per cent., and that the bond engaged his security to pay an annuity for his (West's) life of that amount. It is true that, full of energy and hope, he felt no doubt of his capacity to meet the payments regularly: it is true that, monstrous as were the terms, he would have accepted eagerly still harder ones, had it simply depended on his own decision. But where find, or how ask, a friend to become his bondsman? He ran over in despair the scanty list of acquaintances whom his poverty had not already caused to forget him. He felt that the thing was impossible. There was not one he could think of who would have even dreamed of entering into such a compact. He turned desperately to the money-lender.

"I have no friend," he said, "of whom I could or would ask such a service. If I had, I should not be here. Are there no terms, however high, on which you can lend me even the most trifling sum, for which I myself alone need be responsible?"

"None," replied the usurer, already commencing his letter.

"I will give thirty per cent.?"

"Impossible."

"Fifty?"

The usurer shook his head impatiently.

"A hundred—cent. per cent.?"

"No!"

The strange seeker of loans at length rose to depart. He reached the door. Suddenly he turned back, his eyes blazing with the sombre radiance of despair. He strode up to the table, and planted himself, with folded arms, immediately in front of the usurer.

"Mark me!" said West, in a tone of deep suppressed passion, like the hollow murmur of the sea before a storm: "It is a question of life or death with me to get money before sunset. Lend me only twenty pounds, and within twelve months I will repay you one hundred. I will give you every power which the law can give one man over another; and I will pledge my honor, which never yet was questioned, to the bargain!"

The usurer almost smiled, so strangely sarcastic was the contraction of his features, as he listened to these words.

"I do not question your honor," he said, icily, "but honor has nothing to do with business. As for the law, there is an old axiom which says, Out of nothing, nothing comes."

Bernard West regarded the cold rocky face and the passionless mouth from which these words proceeded with that stinging wrath a man feels who has humiliated himself in vain. Nevertheless he clung to the old flinty usurer as to the last rock in a deluge, and a sense of savage recklessness came over him when he advanced yet closer to the living cash-box before him, while the latter shrank half-terrified before the burning gaze of his visitor's dilated pupils.

Laying his hand upon the money-lender's shoulder, by a gesture of terrible familiarity that insisted upon and commanded attention to his words, West spoke with a sudden clearness and even musical distinctness of utterance that made his words yet more appalling in their solemn despair—"Old man, I am desperate; I am ruined. It is but a few months since my father died, leaving me not only penniless, but encircled by petty obligations which have cramped every movement I would have made. I have had no time, no quiet, to make an effort such as my position requires. This day I have spent my last shilling. I am too proud to beg, and to borrow is to beg when a man is known to be in real distress. Within one hour from this time I shall be beyond all the tortures of a life which for my own sake I care little to preserve. And yet I have spent my youth in accumulating treasures, which but a brief space might have rendered productive of benefit to man, and of profit to myself. My father's little means and my own have vanished in the pursuit of science, and in the gulf of suffering more immediate than our own. If I die also, with me perish the results of his experiments, his studies, and his sacrifices. There are moments when all ordinary calculations and prudence are empty baubles. Life is the only real possession we have, and death the only certainty. Listen! I will make one last proposal to you. Lend me but ten pounds—that is but ten weeks of life—and I swear to you that if I live, I will repay you for each pound lent not ten or twenty, but one hundred—in all; one thousand pounds! Grant that it be but a chance upon the one hand, yet, upon the other, how small is the risk; and then, to save a human life– is not that something in the scale?" And the stranger laughed at these last words with a bitter gayety, which caused a strange thrill to creep along the nerves of the usurer.

However, the lender of gold shrugged his shoulders without relaxing his habitual impassibility of manner. He did not speak. Possibly the idea occurred to him that his strange client meditated some act of violence upon himself or his strong box. But this idea speedily vanished, as the stranger, relapsing suddenly into silence and conventional behavior, removed his hand from the usurer's shoulder, and strode rapidly but calmly from the apartment.

The door closed behind the ruined man, and the usurer drew a long breath, while his bushy brows were contracted in a sort of agony of doubt and irresolute purpose.

Meanwhile Bernard West paused for an instant on the threshold of the outer-door, as if undecided which road to take. In truth all roads were much alike to him at that moment. Some cause, too subtle to be seized by the mental analyst, determined his course. He turned to the right, and strode rapidly onward.

He felt already like one of the dead, to join whom he was hurrying headlong. He looked neither to the right nor to the left; and before him was a mist, in which the phantoms of his imagination disported themselves, to the exclusion of all other visible objects. Nothing earthly had any further interest for him. He did not even hear the steps of some one running behind him, nor hear the voice which called after him to stop; but his course was soon more effectually arrested by the firm grasp of a man's hand, which seized him by the arm with the force and the tenacity of a vice.

He turned fiercely round. He was in no humor for the converse of casual acquaintances. Nor was it any gay convivialist of happier days whose face now greeted him: it was the old money-lender, who in a voice husky with loss of breath, or possibly emotion, said, thrusting couple of twenty-pound bank-notes into West' hand—

"Here! take these notes. Take them, I say!" he repeated, as the young man, dizzy with amazement, stammered out—

"You accept, then, my terms?"

"No!" growled the usurer, "I give them to you. Do you understand me? I say I give them to you. I am an old man; I never gave away a shilling before in my life! Repay me if you will, when and how it please you. I have no security—I ask no acknowledgment; I want none. I do not count upon it. It is gone!" and the usurer pronounced the last words with an effort which was heroic, from the evident self-mastery it cost him. "There! go—go!" he resumed, "and take an old man's advice—Make money at all hazards, and never lend except on good security. Remember that!" The old man gently pushed West away, and all hatless and slippered as he was, ran back muttering to his den, leaving the object of his mysterious generosity fixed like a statue of amazement in the centre of the pavement.

About three months had elapsed, when Bernard West once more knocked at the door of the money-lender.

"Is Mr. Brace at home?" he inquired, cheerfully.

"Oh! if you please, sir, they buried him yesterday," replied the servant, with a look of curiously-affected solemnity.

"Buried him!" cried the visitor, with sincere disappointment and grief in his tone.

"Yes, sir; perhaps you would like to see Miss Brace, if it's any thing very particular?"

"I should, indeed," said West; "and when she knows the cause of my visit, I think she will excuse the intrusion."

The servant gave an odd look, whose significance West was unable to divine, as she led the way to her young mistress's drawing-room.

West entered timidly, for he doubted the delicacy of such a proceeding, though his heart was almost bursting with desire of expansion under the shock just received. A beautiful and proud-looking girl of nineteen or twenty years rose to meet him. Her large blue eyes, which bore traces of many and recent tears, worked strangely upon his feelings, already sufficiently excited.

"I came," he said, in his deep musical voice, "to repay a noble service. Will you permit me to share a grief for the loss of one to whom I owe my life—yes, more than my life!" West paused, and strove vainly to master the emotion which checked his utterance.

"My father rendered you a service?" said the young lady, eagerly, regarding with involuntary interest the noble countenance of Bernard, which, though it still bore traces of great suffering, was no longer wild and haggard, as at his interview with the money-lender.

"A most unexpected and generous service," replied West, who, softening down the first portion of the scene we have described, proceeded to recount to the fair orphan the narrative of the great crisis in his destiny.

"I knew it was so!" cried the young lady, almost hysterically affected; "I knew he was not so grasping—so hard-hearted, as they said—as he himself pretended. I knew he had a generous heart beneath all his seeming avarice! Oh, you are not the only one doubtless whom he has thus served!"

West did not discourage the illusion. Nay, the enthusiasm of the charming woman before him was contagious. "Thanks to your father's disinterested liberality," he resumed, "I am now in comparatively prosperous circumstances. I came not merely to discharge a debt; believe me, it is no common gratitude I feel! Doubtless you inherit all your father's wealth—doubtless it is but little service I can ever hope to render you. Yet I venture to entreat you never to forget that you possess one friend of absolute devotion, ready at all times to sacrifice himself in every way to your wishes and to your happiness."