Thus in an atmosphere of peace and piety, beloved of all for her sweetness and charity, Aurora of Koenigsmarck spent her last years until the end came one day in the year 1728; and in the crypt of the convent she loved so well she sleeps her last sleep.

CHAPTER X

THE SISTER OF AN EMPEROR

When Napoleon Bonaparte, the shabby, sallow-faced, out-of-work captain of artillery, was kicking his heels in morose idleness at Marseilles, and whiling away the dull hours in making love to Desiree Clary, the pretty daughter of the silk-merchant in the Rue des Phoceens, his sisters were living with their mother, the Signora Letizia, in a sordid fourth-floor apartment in a slum near the Cannebiere, and running wild in the Marseilles streets.

Strange tales are told of those early years of the sisters of an Emperor-to-be—­Elisa Bonaparte, future Grand Duchess of Tuscany; Pauline, embryo Princess Borghese; and Caroline, who was to wear a crown as Queen of Naples—­high-spirited, beautiful girls, brimful of frolic and fun, laughing at their poverty, decking themselves out in cheap, home-made finery, and flirting outrageously with every good-looking young man who was willing to pay homage to their beaux yeux.  If Marseilles deigned to notice these pretty young madcaps, it was only with the cold eyes of disapproval; for such “shameless goings-on” were little less than a scandal.

The pity of it was that there was no one to check their escapades.  Their mother, the imposing Madame Mere of later years, seemed indifferent what her daughters did, so long as they left her in peace; their brothers, Kings-to-be, were too much occupied with their own love-making or their pranks to spare them a thought.  And thus the trio of tomboys were left, with a loose rein, to indulge every impulse that entered their foolish heads.  And a right merry time they had, with their dancing, their private theatricals, the fun behind the scenes, and their promiscuous love affairs, each serious and thrilling until it gave place to a successor.

Of the three Bonaparte “graces” the most lovely by far (though each was passing fair) was Pauline, who, though still little more than a child, gave promise of that rare perfection of face and figure which was to make her the most beautiful woman in all France.  “It is impossible, with either pen or brush,” wrote one who knew her, “to do any justice to her charms—­the brilliance of her eyes, which dazzled and thrilled all on whom they fell; the glory of her black hair, rippling in a cascade to her knees; the classic purity of her Grecian profile, the wild-rose delicacy of her complexion, the proud, dainty poise of her head, and the exquisite modelling of the figure which inspired Canova’s ’Venus Victrix.’”

Such was Pauline Bonaparte, whose charms, although then immature, played such havoc with the young men of Marseilles, and who thus early began that career of conquest which was to afford so much gossip for the tongue of scandal.  That the winsome little minx had her legion of lovers from the day she set foot in Marseilles, at the age of thirteen, we know; but it was not until Freron came on the scene that her volatile little heart was touched—­Freron, the handsome coxcomb and arch-revolutionary, who was sent to Marseilles as a Commissioner of the Convention.