AT the time of the debate in the House of Lords on the third reading of the Divorce Bill, I was very much interested in the argument of Lord Halifax against the passage of the Bill, and of his final earnest and pathetic appeal to their lordships' House to refuse to give sanction to a measure that was intended to increase the facilities for the commission of what is held to be a sacrilege on any ground but one. "This is probably the last time," said the octogenarian peer, "that I shall ever address your lordships," and, like Chatham when protesting against the separation of the colonies from the Crown, Lord Halifax succumbed to age and weakness, and was carried from the House in an exhausted state.
I did not then think that a few months afterwards my ever-thoughtful friend, Mrs. Drew, would suggest to Lord Halifax that, during his convalescence from an operation for cataract, he might have his portrait painted by me.
When Mrs. Drew told me that I should be expected with my brushes and paints on a certain day, I expressed my pleasure at having the opportunity of meeting such a champion of the sanctity of marriage. My sympathy had always gone out to Josephine because Napoleon had divorced her on such shallow grounds. Had he adopted an heir, as the Roman emperors were not seldom accustomed to do, he very possibly might have saved the Empress from the most humiliating suffering a woman can undergo. When
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