La Malmaison, a village of France, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, about 7 m. TV. of the enceinte of Paris, noted for a palace which became celebrated through Josephine, the first wife of Napoleon I. The Norman pirates committed ravages in this vicinity in the 9th century, and the locality was thence called mala mansio ("evil spot"). In the 17th century it was owned by Christophe Perrot, councillor of the parliament of Paris, styling himself lord of Malmaison. Afterward it had various proprietors; and from Mine, Harenc, who received here many literary and scientific notabilities, it passed into the possession of M. Le Couteulx, who in 1798 sold the domain to Josephine for 160,000 francs. She made it a brilliant centre of fashionable and intellectual society, enlarging and embellishing the grounds after the model of Marie Antoinette's Trianon, furnishing it with a good library, and adding nfany fine pictures and other works of art to the collections. The chateau itself, however, retained a rather unseemly appearance.

Bonaparte often resided here previous to his removal to St. Cloud, and Malmaison preserved great prestige until the establishment of the empire in 1804. After her divorce (Dec. 10, 1809) Josephine kept up here the semblance of a court, and she was frequently visited by Napoleon, who also spent several days here with II or tense after the battle of Waterloo. The emperor Alexander, as well as the king of Prussia and his son, visited Josephine at Malmaison, on the first occupation of Paris. After her death here (May 29,1814) the property reverted to her son, Eugene de Beauharnais. The Swedish banker Haguerman purchased it in 1826, reducing the grounds to their original small dimensions. He sold it in 1842 to the dowager queen Maria Christina of Spain for 500,000 francs, and she resold it in 1861 for 1,500,000 francs to Napoleon III., who had it restored. Among the works which he collected here are Isabey's painting of "Bonaparte at La Malmaison," Hortense's portrait of herself, and a portrait of Josephine. The room which Napoleon used to occupy contains the bed on which he died at St. Helena.