gay, was amused by the antics of her admirer, read the verses which he
addressed to her, and showed them to the ladies who accompanied her. One
such poetical effusion was enough to provoke laughter (and can you blame
her?); but after the first burst of laughter, Mademoiselle Hortense, good
and charming as her mother, never failed to say, with a sympathetic
expression and tone, "The poor man, he is much to be pitied!" At last,
however, the importunities of the poor madman increased to such an extent
that they became insupportable. He placed himself at the door of the
theaters in Paris at which Mademoiselle Hortense was expected, and threw
himself at her feet, supplicating, weeping, laughing, and gesticulating
all at once. This spectacle amused the crowd too much to long amuse
Mademoiselle de Beauharnais; and Carrat was ordered to remove the poor
fellow, who was placed, I think, in a private asylum for the insane.

Mademoiselle Hortense would have been too happy if she could have known
love only from the absurd effects which it produced on this diseased
brain, as she thus saw it only in its pleasant and comic aspect. But the
time came when she was forced to feel all that is painful and bitter in
the experience of that passion. In January, 1802, she was married to
Louis Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul, which was a most suitable
alliance as regards age, Louis being twenty-four years old, and
Mademoiselle de Beauharnais not more than eighteen; and nevertheless it
was to both parties the beginning of long and interminable sorrows.

Louis, however, was kind and sensible, full of good feeling and
intelligence, studious and fond of letters, like all his brothers (except
one alone); but he was in feeble health, suffered almost incessantly, and
was of a melancholy disposition. All the brothers of the First Consul
resembled him more or less in their personal appearance, and Louis still
more than the others, especially at the time of the Consulate, and before