Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who was
scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an elder and
younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature had given
Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to this beauty
grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's
intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to
care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition
usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an
insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence,
not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls
usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with
the adornment of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath
the yoke of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to
amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if
not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the
brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the
school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a
womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet her noble and chaste
features still wore the impress of childhood, and in her large blue eyes
reposed a whole heaven of innocence and peace. When she sat with her
harp at the window in the evening twilight, the last rays of the setting
sun gilding her sweet countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her
beautiful blond hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter portray.
In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and melodies which
Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with the silvery tones of