After the French defeat at Aspern (May 22, 1809), and while they were shut up in the island of Lobau, it had seemed that Napoleon’s position was almost desperate. The Tyrolese were in revolt, and had expelled the French and Bavarians; the young Duke of Brunswick had invaded Saxony and driven Napoleon’s vassal king from his capital. Popular insurrections broke out in WÜrtemberg and Westphalia; England was holding her ground in Portugal, and was preparing an armament to fall upon the Dutch coast. Prussian statesmen, officers, preachers, poets, and patriots were clamoring for war. In this anxious crisis the courage and confidence of Napoleon were perfect. To beat the Austrians in his front was the one thing he must do. Succeeding in that, resistance elsewhere would disappear. Failing in that, all was lost. Thus Napoleon had reasoned, and he had judged rightly. After Wagram his peril passed. Austria, after having pledged faith to the Tyrolese, coldly deserted them, and they were crushed. Brunswick’s effort failed as Schill’s had failed; popular insurrections were stamped out; Prussia dared not move; and England’s “Walcheren expedition” against Flushing and Antwerp ended in utter failure and heavy loss. Everywhere Napoleon’s Empire stood the test: EugÈne beat the Austrians in Italy; and Wellington, after defeating Victor at Talavera, was driven back into Portugal by Soult. Out of the storm which had threatened his very existence, Napoleon came forth with frontiers extended to the borders of Turkey, cutting off Austria from the sea—an empire stretching in unbroken line from Bosnia to the straits of Calais.

Never had Napoleon’s power seemed so great, nor his court so splendid. His vassal kings came to Paris with brilliant retinues, the kings of Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, WÜrtemberg, and Naples, the Viceroy of Italy, the Queen of Holland, besides princes and dukes by the dozen. Paris had become the capital of Continental Europe, and from Paris went forth the law to eighty million people. All Frenchmen realized the grandeur of this huge empire; but many a wise Frenchman was oppressed by anxieties. What if the Emperor should suddenly die? Would the succession go quietly to his brothers, or would the mighty fabric fall to pieces? All this power, all this splendor, hung as by a single hair upon the life of Napoleon; and there were others besides Talleyrand and FouchÉ who speculated upon what should be done if the Emperor should fall in battle. When the bullet struck his toe at Ratisbonne, the troops broke ranks and crowded toward him in their breathless eagerness to know whether he were seriously hurt; and the far-seeing said, “Suppose the ball had struck two feet higher!” When it became known that a young German fanatic, Staps, bent on assassinating the Emperor, had almost reached him with his knife when stopped, the same uneasy feeling prevailed. Too much depended on this one life. The Emperor had no bodily heir; by Josephine he would never have one; the favorite nephew, Hortense’s son, the little Napoleon, might have been adopted, but he died of croup in Holland.

His power in the north being now secure, it was expected that Napoleon would take charge of the war in the south, and end it. He could easily have done so. England had less than thirty thousand troops there, and the native soldiers, Spaniards and Portuguese, could not have stood against French veterans led by the greatest soldiers of all time. Besides, he could have crushed resistance by the mere weight of numbers. Why did he never return to Spain? Joseph was blundering as stupidly as mortal could; the French commanders were not acting in concert, but were pulling against each other; things were going as badly as the English could reasonably expect; and nowhere in the Empire was its Emperor needed worse than here. But Napoleon, once so quick to rush to the point of danger, let the “Spanish ulcer” run, year in and year out, with an apathy for which it is impossible to account. Either he had grown fonder of his personal ease, or the dreary kind of warfare necessary to reduce a national uprising did not appeal to his imagination, or he feared that in his absence the north might again give trouble, or he took an imperial pride in seeming to say to the world that the insurrection in the south was too trifling a matter for his personal attention and could be left to his lieutenants.

Whatever the motive, he astonished his enemies no less than his friends by failing to follow up Wagram with the complete conquest of the peninsula. Three hundred thousand French soldiers in Spain propped feeble Joseph on his throne; but they were never able to put down resistance or expel the English.

Another serious matter which might have been settled at this time was his quarrel with the Pope.

The Concordat had accomplished great results for both contracting parties, and at first both were highly satisfied. Napoleon complacently rubbed his hands and declared, “With my soldiers, my prefects, and my priests I can do as I like.”

But, after all, the Concordat was a compromise. Neither party got quite what was wanted. Napoleon expected that there would result a clergy wholly dependent upon his will; a pope who would be a sort of clerical lieutenant obeying imperial orders, content to move as a lesser light in the Napoleonic system. The Pope, on the other hand, eagerly expected a restoration, gradually, of the former spiritual prestige of the Church. When Napoleon was seen to attend Mass, and kneel for blessing or prayer, clerical fancy readily pictured the return of the good old times when pious Bourbon kings and their official mistresses had fallen on their knees at the feet of Jesuit confessors, and allowed the reins of government to be pulled by the Church. Especially did the Pope look for the restoration of his full temporal power, the return of the lost legations in Italy.

Both parties found themselves in grievous error. Napoleon not only believed he had done quite enough for the Church, but was inclined to think he had done too much. At any rate, he flatly declined to do more. He would not put priests in charge of the state schools; he would not restore the legations. He was ready to lavish respectful attentions upon the head of the Church, ready to aid him in restoring public worship, ready to fill his coffers with cash; but in the Concordat, the solemn contract already agreed on, he would make no change.

So the Pope had left Paris after the coronation in ill-humor. He refused to crown Napoleon at Milan; refused to annul Jerome’s marriage; refused to recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of Naples; refused to close his ports to English commerce. Professing neutrality, he became as much the enemy of France as he had been when an avowed member of the European league against the Revolution. Enemies of Napoleon flocked to Rome and found friendly welcome there. Fugitives from French justice took refuge under papal immunity, and were protected. The Roman court, as in the time of the Revolution, became a nucleus of anti-French sentiment and intrigue. Papal animosity to the French did not cool its ire when it saw him do in Spain what he had wished to do in Italy—abolish the Inquisition. Napoleon complained, remonstrated, threatened—all to no purpose. Meekly obstinate, piously implacable, the Pope refused to come to terms, using God’s name, of course, as a sanction to his own line of conduct.

During the campaign of 1809 Napoleon proclaimed the abolition of the temporal power of the Pope, and the papal territories were incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. The Pope’s spiritual powers were not challenged: his revenues were largely increased. The Pope protested, as usual, that the temporal power, lands, cities, rich revenues, were the patrimony of St. Peter, of God, and that he, the Pope, had no right to give them up. Napoleon, in effect, replied that what a French emperor had given, a French emperor could take away; and that it ill became the successor of Peter and the vicar of the homeless, moneyless Christ to be making such eternal clamor about money, wealth, lands, and earthly power and splendor. The situation at Rome, where French authorities and papal authorities were in conflict, became so embarrassing that the Pope was finally arrested, carried to Savona, and lodged in a palace there. Later, he was transferred to the magnificent chÂteau of Fontainebleau in France, where he was luxuriously lodged and treated as a prince.

This complete rupture between Napoleon and the Church might never have been more than an annoyance, a crab nibbling at the toe of Hercules, had Napoleon continued fortunate. But when disasters thickened, and his powers began to totter, the papal legions were not the weakest of those who assaulted his wavering lines.

Well had it been for France had Napoleon, in 1810, given personal attention to the Spanish war; equally well had he come to some terms with the Pope, who had excommunicated him. The longer each trouble was neglected, the more difficult its treatment became.

Napoleon would not go to Spain, he would not settle his differences with the Pope; but he made up his mind to bring to an issue another long-deferred and vitally important matter—that of divorcing Josephine.

The Emperor must have an heir, the question of succession must not be left open longer: political necessity was inexorable: ambition would tolerate no obstacle.

Great as a man may become, he is human after all; and Napoleon flinched from saying the fateful word to Josephine. From time to time he shrank from the pitiful task, and the way in which he led up to it is full of the pathos which sometimes lies in small things. Whenever Napoleon was at home, it was the custom for a page to bring in coffee for the Emperor after dinner. Every day Josephine herself would take the tray, pour the coffee, sweeten it, cool it, taste it, and hand it to Napoleon. Years had come and gone, and the little domestic custom had become as fixed as the relation of man and wife.

At length came the day of days for them both, the dismal evening upon which Napoleon had resolved to speak. He was gloomy and sad; she was red-eyed with weeping, wretched, waiting the word she dreaded and expected. Dinner was served, but neither ate, neither spoke. The Emperor rose from the table, she followed “with slow steps, her handkerchief over her mouth, as if to stifle her sobs.” The page came with the coffee, offering the tray to the Empress, as he had always done. But Napoleon, looking steadily at Josephine, took the tray, poured the coffee, sweetened it, and drank; and Josephine knew that they had reached the parting of the ways. The tray was handed back to the page, the attendants withdrew at a sign from the master, Napoleon closed the door, and then with face as cold and sad as death he spoke of the divorce.

Constant, the valet, dreading “some terrible event,” had sat down outside by the door. He heard shrieks, and rushed forward. The Emperor opened the door, the Empress was on the floor, “weeping and crying enough to break one’s heart.” They lifted her and bore her to her room, Napoleon assisting. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was broken and trembling. It was a bitter night to them both, and Napoleon visited her room several times to inquire after her condition. He did not sleep; he did not utter a word to his attendants. “I have never seen him,” writes Constant, “in such affliction.”

But his resolution stood, and on December 16, 1809, the divorce was formally pronounced. There was a final heart-breaking interview in Napoleon’s bedchamber, to which the stricken wife had come to say good-by; there were sobs and tears and tender, regretful words; then Josephine, weeping, went back to her room, leaving Napoleon “silent as the grave, and so buried in his bed that it was impossible for one to see his face.”

The ex-Empress’s humiliation was softened in every manner possible. She was regally endowed with pensions and estates; she was treated with the most delicate respect; the friendship between herself and Napoleon remained uninterrupted; he delighted to do her honor; and her place in the Empire remained one of dignity and grandeur. Once the Emperor, returning from the chase with the kings of Bavaria, Baden, and WÜrtemberg, stopped at Malmaison to pay the ex-Empress a visit, and spent an hour in the chÂteau with her while the three little kings waited and lunched at her gate.

Napoleon’s first thought was to wed a sister of the Czar of Russia, and proposals to that effect were made. The mother of the princess, however, was bitterly opposed to Napoleon, and alleged that her daughter was too young. Alexander, greatly embarrassed, asked for time. To the impatient Emperor of the French this evasion seemed to cover a refusal, and he would not grant the delay. In the meantime the Austrian Cabinet, dreading the increased strength which such a marriage would give to the Franco-Russian alliance, let it be known to Napoleon that if he asked for the daughter of the Emperor Francis, she would be promptly delivered. Irritated by the hesitation of the Romanoffs, and flattered by the advances of the Hapsburgs, Napoleon put his foot upon the “abyss covered with flowers.” On March 11, 1810, he was married by proxy to Maria Louisa in Vienna, and the bride set out at once for Paris. “Take as your standpoint that children are wanted,” Napoleon had frankly written to his negotiator at St. Petersburg: and the Austrian princess understood the situation thoroughly. After a triumphal progress through the provinces of the Empire, she reached the French frontier, was formally received, her clothing all changed, her Austrian attendants relieved, and France, taking her precious person in custody, reclothed her, surrounded her with a fresh lot of attendants, and hastened with her in the direction of CompiÈgne, where by appointment she was to meet her imperial spouse. Napoleon had himself dictated, to the minutest detail, every movement of the bridal party, and he awaited its coming with the utmost impatience, “cursing the ceremonial and the fÊtes which delayed the arrival of his young bride.”

At length when Maria was within ten leagues of Soissons, Napoleon broke from all restraint.

At the top of his voice he shouted to his valet: “Heigho, Constant! Order a carriage without livery, and come and dress me!”

He bathed, he perfumed, he dressed, laughing all the time like a boy at the effect which the surprise he was planning would produce on his bride. Over his uniform he drew the gray overcoat he had worn at Wagram; and calling Murat to go with him, he secretly left the park of CompiÈgne, entered the plain carriage, and dashed along the road beyond Soissons. The rain was pouring down when he and Murat reached Courcelles, where they left the carriage and stood in the porch of the church for the bridal train to come up. Signing to the postilions to stop, Napoleon had intended to reach Maria Louisa unannounced; but the equerry, recognizing him, let down the step and called out, “His Majesty!”

“Didn’t you see that I signed you to be silent?” exclaimed Napoleon, in a pet. But his ill-humor vanished at once, he hastened into the carriage, and flung his arms around the neck of his bride, who, nicely tutored, was all graceful submission, and who, looking from his face to his portrait which she held in her hand, remembered to say, “Your portrait does not flatter you.”

Napoleon was in ecstasies. He was a boy again, amorous, rapturous, seeing everything with the eyes of a lover. Soissons had prepared a magnificent reception and banquet, but Napoleon could not think of tarrying. He must hasten on to CompiÈgne with the blushing Maria that very night. “He made love like a hussar!” some have sneered. So he did, and most men who are not invalids or frigid decadents make love like hussars. Furthermore, most women who are young, healthy, and sane, have a stealthy preference for the hussar style of love-making.

Etiquette had prepared a bed for Maria at the Chancellor’s, and one for Napoleon at the palace. Etiquette insisted that this separation was decorous, was most essential, was demanded by precedent and custom. “Not so,” maintained Napoleon; “Henry IV. breached the custom, and so will I.”

Had not the marriage already taken place in Vienna? If that ceremony, solemnized by the Archbishop of Vienna was valid, were not Napoleon and Maria man and wife? Why, then, separate apartments? He decided that a husband’s rights were already his, and Maria made no strenuous objection,—so well had she been tutored in Vienna. Read what the imperial valet-de-chambre, Constant, writes:—

“The next morning at his toilet the Emperor asked me if any one had noticed his change of the programme.” Constant lied, like a good servant, and “I told him, no.” At that moment entered one of the Emperor’s intimates who was unmarried. Pinching his ears, his Majesty said to him: “Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the world: gentle, good, artless and as fresh as roses.” And Constant states that Napoleon “was charmingly gay all the remainder of the day.”

With imperial pomp the civil and religious marriage was solemnized at St. Cloud and Paris, April 1 and 2, 1810. The illuminations, the processions, the festivities, were gorgeous beyond description. After these were ended, there was a grand tour of the provinces by the imperial couple. Returning to Paris, the Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, tendered them the magnificent fÊte during which the tapestries in the vast temporary ballroom caught on fire, the building burned to the ground, and some of the revellers met fiery death.

As to Maria Louisa it may be said, once for all, that she was a commonplace woman, with no talent, no character, no graces of manner, and no beauty. She was strong, healthy, physically fresh and buxom, therefore admirably suited to Napoleon’s immediate purpose. She was never a companion to him, never had any influence over him, never had any love for him, never understood or appreciated him. Dull, indolent, sensual, capable of no warm attachment, she simply yielded to her father’s policy, married where she was told to marry, obeyed Napoleon as she was told to obey him, accepted his caresses, ate four or five times per day, bore him a child, pleaded her health against the bearing of more, gave herself little concern about his reverses, left him when her father called for her to leave him, took up with another man whom her father selected, lived with him in much contentment, and bore him several children.

Increasingly heavy became to Napoleon the burden of his family. Joseph in Spain required huge armies and huge subsidies to uphold him there, and his correspondence with his brother was one long, lugubrious howl for “more.” Jerome’s reckless dissipations and extravagance in Westphalia scandalized Germany, bringing reproach upon the Empire. Lucien contributed his share of mischief by encouraging the ill-temper of the Pope. Pauline, Caroline, Elisa were so many thorns in the flesh, so many annoyances more or less acute. Brother-in-law Murat, by his pride and boasting and complaints, disgusted friends of the Emperor, arousing jealousies among old comrades who had not been made kings. Mother Letitia, like the mother of Washington, complained that the illustrious son had not done enough for the author of his being. Uncle Fesch, now a cardinal, had absorbed all the essence of his clerical order, and maddened his nephew by opposition in the quarrel with Rome.

And to cap a climax and advertise family feuds to the world, Louis Bonaparte vacated the throne of Holland, left the country privately, and went, almost as a fugitive, to “drink the waters” at Teplitz in Bohemia. For some days it was not even known what had become of him.

The Emperor’s grief, anger, and mortification were extreme. Stunned by the blow dealt him by his brother, he said in broken voice: “To think that Louis should make me this return! When I was a poor lieutenant of artillery, I divided my slender pay with him, fed him, taught him as though he were my son.” And this cross-grained, thankless Louis had brought shame upon Emperor and Empire! Why? Because the brother who had put the sceptre in his hand wished him to rule Holland as a province of the Empire, in line with the policy of the Empire, sharing all the benefits of the Empire, and sharing likewise its burdens! Because Napoleon would not consent that Holland should violate the Continental system, and become practically the ally of England in the great struggle for national supremacy, Louis had dropped the crown and gone away to drink mineral water in Bohemia.

A very aggravating mortal must have been this Louis, on general principles. Yielding to his brother’s influence, he had wedded Hortense, the daughter of Josephine. There was no love prior to this marriage, and none afterward. Despite Napoleon’s repeated, patient efforts, the two could never harmonize. With or without reason, Louis suspected the virtue of his wife. Ugly rumor reported that the first child of Hortense was not begotten by Louis, but by Napoleon. The younger brother may not have believed the story, but the fondness of the childless elder brother for the son of the younger, attracted attention and excited remark. The child was a promising boy; he was named after his uncle Napoleon, and he was devotedly fond of this uncle. The little fellow would come into Napoleon’s room, put on the Emperor’s hat, catch up his sword, put the belt over his shoulders, and, whistling a military air, go marching about in military style, with the sword dragging along on the floor. And Napoleon would be thrown into ecstasy, and would cry out, rubbing his hands: “Look at him! See the pretty picture!”

His love for the boy growing with the boy’s growth, Napoleon had offered to make him King of Italy, preparatory, doubtless, to adopting him as heir to the Empire. Louis would not hear of it. Put his son above him? Give his child a throne, when he himself had none? Never in the world! So he objected flatly, saying to his brother with unparalleled impudence, “Such a favor from you to this child would revive the rumors that you are his father.”

Is it any wonder that Napoleon’s temper escaped control, and that he caught Louis about the body and flung him out at the door?

The little Napoleon had died, Hortense had separated from her impossible spouse, and was going a rapid pace of her own, with a certain Duc de Flahaut, famous for his shapely legs,—so much so that they wrung from the Emperor an exclamation on the subject of Flahaut and “his eternal legs.” Holland’s throne was vacant: what was Napoleon to do? Give it to some one else who would be as ungrateful as Louis had been? Abandon it entirely, and see England get a foothold there?

To escape the dilemma, Holland was annexed to the Empire (July, 1810).

The royal line of Sweden was about to become extinct. It became necessary to provide for the succession. The Swedes decided to choose a Crown Prince from among the illustrious Frenchmen who stood around Napoleon’s throne. They wished to win Napoleon’s good-will and protection by selecting one of his favorites, and they were made to believe that they could not please him better than by the choice of Bernadotte.

Were not this a matter so gravely serious, it would be comical to the last degree. The marshal whom Napoleon most detested and distrusted was Bernadotte. The marshal who most envied the Emperor, most hated him, most longed to betray him, was Bernadotte. He had plotted against his chief during the Consulate, and escaped court-martial because he and Joseph Bonaparte had married sisters. He had left Davoust in the lurch at AuerstÄdt, imperilled the army, coldly leaving thirty thousand French to combat sixty thousand Prussians, without lifting a hand to help the French. Again he had escaped; he was a member of the Bonaparte family.

At Wagram his conduct had been so darkly suspicious, his proclamation claiming a victory where he had failed miserably to do his duty, had been so insolent, that Napoleon ordered him home in disgrace. But again family influence prevailed, and he was made Governor of Rome. The Swedes had not kept the run of these events, and when Bernadotte’s agents plied them with the argument that he was a member of the Bonaparte family, and a favorite with the Emperor, there were none to deny. Napoleon knew what was going on. He alone could have set the Swedes right, and nipped the intrigue in the bud. Why did he not do so? Absolutely no satisfactory answer can be given. A word from him would have made some other man Prince Royal of Sweden, but he would not speak. With apathetic scorn he looked on while Bernadotte worked the wires, feeling all the while that Bernadotte’s success would be a misfortune to France. He not only refused to interfere, not only refused to correct the false representations upon which the Swedes acted, but gave his formal consent when it was asked, and furnished Bernadotte with $400,000 to equip himself in a suitable way in setting out to take possession of his new dignity.

Some months after Napoleon’s second marriage, he and the Empress stood sponsors at the baptism of several infants of his great officers. When the baptismal ceremony had been finished, the Emperor turned to some of his intimate friends and said rubbing his hands together as he did when well pleased, “Before long, gentlemen, I hope we shall have another baby to baptize.”

This joyful intelligence gradually spreading, the whole French nation began to look forward with a feeling of hope and satisfaction to the birth of Napoleon’s heir.

On March 19, 1811, the Empress felt the first pains, and “the palace was in a flutter.” Next morning early the crisis came. Napoleon sprang out of his bath, and covered with a dressing-gown hastened to his wife’s room, saying to the excited doctor in charge, “Come, now, Dubois, don’t lose your head.” He embraced the suffering Empress tenderly, but, unable to endure the sight of her anguish, went to another room, where he stood, pale and trembling, awaiting the event. When the physician reported that an operation might be necessary, and that one or the other, mother or child, might have to be sacrificed Napoleon answered, without hesitation, “Save the mother, it is her right.”

To calm them, he said: “Forget that you are operating upon an Empress. Treat her as though she were some shopkeeper’s wife.”

At length the cruel ordeal was over, the child safely delivered, and the mother relieved. The Emperor sprang to her couch and covered her with caresses. He was overwhelmed with joy; his face shone with delight. “Well, Constant, we have a big boy!” he cried to his valet; and to all others as he met them he continued to repeat rapturously, “We have a big boy!” Very, very human was this “Corsican ogre,” Napoleon Bonaparte.

If words and looks go for evidence, the warrior of Austerlitz, the giver of crowns and kingdoms, was never so happy as when he took his son in his arms, kissed it tenderly, and holding it toward his courtiers, said proudly, “Gentlemen, the King of Rome!”

All Paris listened, eagerly attentive, to the great bells of Notre Dame; steeple answered steeple, until every church had joined in the chorus. All Paris hearkened to the cannon, counting report after report: for if the child were a girl, the shots would stop at twenty-one; if a boy, there would be one hundred. At the sound of the twenty-second gun there burst out a universal shout of joy and congratulation. “Hats flew up into the air, people ran to meet entire strangers, and with mutual embraces shouted, Long live the Emperor! Old soldiers shed tears of joy.”

Behind a curtain at the window of the palace stood Napoleon, looking out upon this display of enthusiastic gladness. “His eyes swam with tears, and he came in that condition to kiss his son.”

Never were national rejoicings greater at the birth of an heir to the throne. Cities, towns, private dwellings, illuminated not only in France, but throughout the Empire. Couriers rode with the news to foreign courts. Congratulations poured into the Tuileries from the four quarters of the earth. The Emperor seemed to be “walking in the midst of a delicious dream.” He was the mightiest monarch of earth; his wife “a daughter of the CÆsars”; his son, his long-yearned-for son, had come, was strong and fair,—the “King of Rome!” Napoleon’s imagination was aflame; human grandeur he had pushed to its limit.

His memory may have swept back to far-off Corsica, and to that day of 1769 when his mother had brought him into the world, lying on the floor “upon a wretched rug.” From that dim period to this, what a march onward!

If Napoleon had been kind and indulgent to the barren Josephine, what was his tenderness to the fruitful Maria! He almost smothered her with caresses, and almost, if not quite, wearied her with attentions. As to his boy, nothing could have been more touching than his boundless pride in him, his infinite patience with him, his intense paternal fondness for him.

Nothing would satisfy the Emperor but that Josephine must see his boy. Maria must not know; Maria being jealous of the ex-Empress. One day Napoleon had his child carried privately out to Bagatelle. Josephine was there. The little King of Rome was presented to her. Was she envious and jealous? Not so. She took the child in her arms, pressed it, kissed it, wept over it, prattled “baby talk” to it, fondling it with “unutterable tenderness” as though it were her own. Poor Josephine! Sternly truthful historians have told us about the infidelities and the want of honesty and scruple. With pain and sorrow we must tell the story of these as it is told to us; but let us turn the picture as quickly as we may, and look upon the other side—for there is another and a brighter.

It was true womanhood at its best when the barren, discarded wife continued to love the husband who had put her away; who loved and fondled the offspring of the other marriage with a greater tenderness than the child’s own mother ever showed it; who remained faithful to Napoleon in the dark days when the second wife was false; who grieved brokenly over his fall, and wished to share his exile.

Evermore will this record speak for Josephine; evermore will it speak for Napoleon also.

Constant relates: “One day when Bonaparte came back very much fatigued from hunting, he sent to ask Maria Louisa to come and see him. She came. The Emperor took her in his arms and gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek. Maria took her handkerchief and wiped it off. “‘Well, Louise,’ said the Emperor, ‘so I disgust thee?’

“‘No,’ replied the Empress, ‘I have a habit of wiping myself like that. I do the same with the King of Rome.’ The Emperor seemed dissatisfied.”

A wife and mother wiping off the kisses of husband and child reveals her own character so fully by the act that comment is unnecessary.