loving yet more than she was loved, entirely given up in unswerving
loyalty to him who rejected her; languishing for very sorrow on
account of his misfortune, and dying for very grief as vanished away
the star of his happiness. Thousands in her place, rejected,
forgotten, cast away, as she was--thousands would have rejoiced in
the righteousness of the fate which struck and threw in the dust the
man who, for earthly grandeur, had abandoned the beloved one and
disowned her love. Josephine wept over him, lamented over his
calamities, and had but a wish to be allowed to share them with him.
Josephine died broken-hearted--the misfortunes of her beloved, who
no more loved her, the misfortunes of Napoleon, broke her heart.

She was a woman, "take her for all in all"--a noble, a beautiful
woman, a loving woman, and such as belongs to no peculiar class, to
no peculiar nation, to no peculiar special history; she belongs to
the world, to humanity, to universal history. In the presence of
such an apparition all national hatred is silent, all differences of
political opinion are silent. Like a great, powerful drama drawn
from the universal history of man and represented before our eyes,
so her life passes before us; and surprised, wondering, we gaze on,
indifferent whether the heroine of such a tragedy be Creole, French,
or to what nation she may owe her birth. She belongs to the world,
to history, and if we Germans have no love for the Emperor Napoleon,
the tyrant of the world, the Caesar of brass who bowed the people
down into the dust, and trod under foot their rights and liberties--
if we Germans have no love for the conqueror Napoleon, because he
won so many battles from us, yet this does not debar us from loving
Josephine, who during her lifetime won hearts to Napoleon, and whose
beautiful death for love's sake filled with tears the eyes of those
whose lips knew but words of hatred and cursing against the emperor.