In the night which followed his trial, Alexandre de Beauharnais
wrote to his wife a letter, in which he communicated to her his sad
forebodings, and bade her farewell for this life. The next day he
was transferred to the Conciergerie--that is to say, into the
vestibule of the scaffold.
This letter of her husband, received by Josephine the next day after
her conversation with Therese de Fontenay, ran thus:
"The fourth Thermidor, in the second year of the republic. All the
signs of a kind of trial, to which I and other prisoners have been
subjected this day, tell me that I am the victim of the treacherous
calumny of a few aristocrats, patriots so called, of this house. The
mere conjecture that this hellish machination will follow me to the
tribunal of the revolution gives me no hope to see you again, my
friend, no more to embrace you or our children. I speak not of my
sorrow: my tender solicitude for you, the heartfelt affection which
unites me to you, cannot leave you in doubt of the sentiments with
which I leave this life.
"I am also sorry to have to part with my country, which I love, for
which I would a thousand times have laid down my life, and which I
no more can serve, but which beholds me now quit her bosom, since
she considers me to be a bad citizen.
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