an ally in the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and
now that daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense from
the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs by means
of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the effect of calumny.

They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had married
his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was attached to her
himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.

These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child whose birth
Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte than merely
through the fact that his step-daughter was his brother's wife.

This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those who
devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such
immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive
it therefore would be to him to find himself made the object of such
infamous slanders.

The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these evil
rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense away to a
distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus isolated, could also
be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte, being separated from his
guardian angel, would no longer hear her whispering:

"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory of the
greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not make
thyself a king!"

In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very lightly
whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard. Bonaparte's
enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a weapon of it with
which to assail him as a hero.

One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had always
been hostile to him, and