"I win the battles, Josephine wins me the hearts." These words of
Napoleon are the most beautiful epitaph of the Empress Josephine,
the much-loved, the much-regretted, and the much-slandered one. Even
while Napoleon won battles, while with lofty pride he placed his
foot on the neck of the conquered, took away from princes their
crowns, and from nations their liberty--while Europe trembling bowed
before him, and despite her admiration cursed him--while hatred
heaved up the hearts of all nations against him--even then none
could refuse admiration to the tender, lovely woman who, with the
gracious smile of goodness, walked at his side; none could refuse
love to the wife of the conqueror, whose countenance of brass
received light and lustre from the beautiful eyes of Josephine, as
Memnon's statue from the rays of the sun.

She was not beautiful according to those high and exalted rules of
beauty which we admire in the statues of the gods of old, but her
whole being was surrounded with such a charm, goodness, and grace,
that the rules of beauty were forgotten. Josephine's beauty was
believed in, and the heart was ravished by the spell of such a
gracious, womanly apparition. Goethe's words, which the Princess
Eleonore utters in reference to Antonio, were not applicable to
Josephine:

"All the gods have with one consent brought gifts to his cradle,
but, alas! the Graces have remained absent, and where the gifts of
these lovely ones fail, though much was given and much received, yet
on such a bosom is no resting-place."

No, the Graces were not absent from the cradle of Josephine; they,
more than all the other gods, had brought their gifts to Josephine.