Farewell to those I love: you know them! Be their
consolation, and through your solicitude for them prolong my life in
their hearts! Farewell! for the last time in this life I press you
and my children to my heart!--ALEXANDRE BEAUHARNAIS."
Josephine had read this letter with a thousand tears, but she hoped
still; she believed still in the possibility that the gloomy
forebodings of her husband would not be realized; that some
fortunate circumstance would save him or at least retard his death.
But this hope was not to be fulfilled. A few hours after receiving
this letter the turnkey brought to the prisoners the bulletin of the
executions of the preceding day. It was that day Josephine's turn to
read this bulletin to her companions. She therefore began her sad
task; and, as slowly and thoughtfully she let fall name after name
from her lips, here and there the faces of her hearers were
blanched, and their eyes filled with tears.
Suddenly Josephine uttered a piercing cry, and sprang up with the
movement of madness toward the door, shook it in her deathly sorrow,
as if her life hung upon the opening of that door, and then she sank
down fainting.
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