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Romance and Poetry: Josephine

Among the Bonaparte miniatures in the Mather Collection, at Liverpool, is one of the Empress Josephine, an enamel, after the original by Isabey. This celebrated artist used to relate, that while Josephine was sitting for her miniature, one morning, he asked her what jewels she would be painted in, and she, with a most sad and sweet expression of countenance, looked at him, and, with tears in her eyes, said, "I am about to change my state, and I have heard it said it is a custom in England, that when a true heart is severed from that it loves, that the women wear green, to denote to their friends that they are forsaken. Paint me also in emeralds, to represent the undying freshness of my grief, but let them be surrounded with diamonds, to portray the purity of my love."