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The occasions were rare, however, when Josephine was allowed to enter into more than the mere ceremonies of international politics. She was neither allowed to act nor to advise. At the least hint of interference on her part Napoleon was up in arms on the instant. Current rumour credited her with attempting to save the life of the Duc d'Enghien, and this has frequently been affirmed since, but from what we know of Napoleon and from what we know of Josephine we can only conclude that her attempt was timid and that Napoleon's refusal was blank and brief. For Josephine there only remained a purely decorative function. Other activities were denied to her ; she was placidly content to spend her days in inspections of her wardrobe, in changing her toilettes half a dozen times daily and talking scandal with her ladies-in-waiting.

These amusements were not quite as harmless as might be imagined, for her passion for dress caused her to run heavily into debt, and every jeweller in Paris knew that he had only to send her jewellery for inspection for it to be instantly bought. To pay her debts she was put to curious expedients. She was in continual terror lest her husband should discover them, and she gladly paid enormous blackmail to her creditors to postpone the day of claim. She even appealed for assistance to Ministers and other high officials sooner than tell Napoleon. Naturally the storms which occurred when the day of reckoning could no longer be put off were terrible. Napoleon raged ferociously at every discovery. He paid the debts, it is true, but he usually arbitrarily reduced the totals by a quarter or even a half before doing so. Even then the tradespeople made a large profit, for they not only made allowance for his action, but they also took full advantage of Josephine's uninquiring nature.

The unstable situation dragged along, to the surprise of many people, to the consternation of many others, and to the delight of even more, for several nerve-racking years. The end had to come sooner or later, and it came surprisingly late.

AT the close of 1809 Napoleon was at the height of his power. Every country of Europe, except England, was his vassal or his ally, and he was about to send Mass?na and a sufficient force to Spain to ensure that England also would cease from troubling. The circumstances which were to lead to the fall of his enormous empire were already well developed, but they were hardly obvious to the common eye, which was dazzled by his brilliance.

The one element of weakness apparent was the lack of an heir to the throne. The equilibrium of Europe was poised upon the life of one man, and although many people believed that man to be superhuman, there was no one who thought him immortal. Napoleon had been wounded at Ratisbon; perhaps at his next battle the bullet would be better aimed. But hit or miss, there were many would-be assassins in Europe, and knives were being sharpened and infernal machines prepared in scores of dingy garrets.

No one could imagine what would happen were Napoleon to die. The Marshals recalled longingly the break-up of the Macedonian Empire, and already in fancy saw themselves kings. The Republicans saw in his death the downfall of autocracy; the Royalists hoped for the restoration of Legitimacy. Subject nations saw themselves free; hostile nations saw themselves enriched. The one thing which obviously could not happen was the succession of the legal heir; Joseph in Spain, Louis in Holland and Jerome in Westphalia were at that very moment showing how unfit they were to govern anything. The Viceroy of Italy was popular and capable, but Napoleon realized that on account of his lack of Bonaparte blood he would not be tolerated. There was one child who might perhaps have been accepted, and that was Napoleon Charles, son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense Beauharnais. Vulgar gossip gave Napoleon himself the credit for being the father of his step-daughter's child, and on this account Napoleon Charles was considered the likely heir, but he died of croup. It is possible that calamities without number would have been prevented had there been in 1807 an efficient nurse at the sick-bed of a child.

However that may be, Napoleon had no heir, and he had given up hope of Josephine presenting him with one. At the same time, any doubts he had on his own account were effaced by the birth of a son to him by Madame Walewska. He dismissed as impractical a suggested scheme of simulated pregnancy on Josephine's part; too many people would have to be in the secret; if they lived they would hold as much power as the Emperor himself; and if he executed everyone concerned, in Oriental fashion, tongues would wag harder than ever. Besides, although the French would apparently put up indefinitely with his losing a hundred thousand of their young men's lives a year, they would not tolerate for one second being made fools of in the eyes of the whole world.

Then Napoleon might have adopted one of his own illegitimate sons. Even this wild project he considered carefully, but he put it aside. The only course left open was to divorce Josephine and take some more fruitful wife instead, and Napoleon gradually came to accept this project.

Napoleon had endeavoured to procure a more satisfactory form of divorce from the Pope, but Pius, to his credit, would not assist him. Five years before, at the coronation, he had refused his blessing until the Imperial pair had been married by the Church , and Napoleon, exasperated but compelled to yield, had submitted to a ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Paris under conditions of the utmost secrecy. Pius could not in decency give his aid to break a marriage celebrated at his especial request only five years before, and in consequence he found himself a prisoner in French hands, and the last of the patrimony of St. Peter was annexed to the French Empire.

It would puzzle a cleverer man even than Napoleon to devise a series of actions better calculated to annoy the Church and its more devout followers.

For Josephine the pill was gilded in a style more elaborate even than was customary under the Empire. She retained her Imperial titles; she received the Elys?e at Paris, Malmaison, and the palace of Navarre. An income of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum was settled upon her. No restraint in reason was set upon her actions; she was not forced into retirement; and Napoleon continued to visit her even after his marriage to Marie Louise. For the last four years of her life Josephine occupied a position unique in history.

Josephine bore her troubles well in public. However much she may have wept to Napoleon, however much she may have knelt at his feet imploring him to have mercy, to the world at large she showed dry eyes and an immobile expression. Perhaps her pride came to her help; perhaps, after all, freedom, the title of Empress, and a monstrous income, may have reconciled her to her loss of precedence; it is even conceivable that she preferred the sympathy of Europe, expressed in no uncertain voice, to the burdens of royalty.

For her, these possibilities were never cut short. She never had to endure the anticlimax of being the divorced wife of a fallen Emperor; she died suddenly just before Napoleon's first abdication, soon after receiving visits from all sorts of Emperors and Kings who were accompanying their armies in the campaign of 1814.

THUS at the beginning of 1810 Napoleon found himself once more unmarried, and free to choose himself a new bride. There never was a choice so fraught with possibilities of disaster. It was not so much a matter of making the most advantageous selection, as of making the least dangerous. If he married a woman of inferior rank, all Europe would exultantly proclaim that it was because no royal family would admit him. If he married a princess of one of his subject kingdoms, Bavaria, W?rtemberg or Saxony, the others would become instantly jealous. A Bourbon bride was obviously out of the question, seeing that he was keeping all three royal branches out of their patrimonies. Should he choose a Hohenzollern, then the countries which held territories which had once been Prussian would become justifiably uneasy. There only remained the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs, and a marriage with either would annoy the other. The best thing Napoleon could do was to ally himself with the more powerful, which was undoubtedly the royal house of Russia.

But here Napoleon met with an unexpected reverse. The Czar Alexander was at once a realist and an idealist, and he could not decide anything without months of cogitation. Moreover, the clever advisers round him foresaw that Napoleon's demands of their country must increase unbearably, and they had no intention of tying their ruler's hands in this fashion. Torn between his ministers' advice and the urging of his old admiration for Napoleon, between his pride of race and his desire for a powerful alliance, Alexander temporized and then temporized again. He explained that all the Grand Duchesses were members of the Greek Church, and he had qualms about the necessary change of religion. He tried to show that they were all already affianced. He said, literally, that his mother would not allow him to act.

In the end, Napoleon, fearing a rebuff, and conscious that delay would weaken his position, abandoned the project and turned his attention to Austria. Alexander was naturally annoyed. 1812 may be said to have begun in 1810.

They were an oddly contrasting couple. He was forty, she was eighteen. He was an Italian-Corsican-French hybrid of unknown ancestry, she was of the bluest blood in Christendom. He was the victorious leader of the new idea, she was the scion of a dying autocracy. Three times had Marie Louise fled with her family from the wrath of the French; all her life she had heard the man who was about to become her husband alluded to as the embodiment of evil, as the Corsican Ogre, as the Beast of the Apocalypse. They had never met, and she had certainly not the least idea as to what kind of a man he was. All things considered, it was as well that she had been trained all her life to accept her parents' decision on her marriage without demur.

Her training had been what might have been expected of the etiquette-ridden, hidebound, conservative, dogmatic House of Hapsburg. She was familiar with every language of Europe, because it could not be foreseen whom she would eventually marry. Music, drawing, embroidery, all those accomplishments which permitted of surveillance and which did not encourage thought were hers. But she was proudest of the fact that she could move her ears without moving her face.

Every possible precaution that she would retain her valuable innocence had been taken. She had never been to a theatrical performance. She had never been allowed to own a male animal of any species; her principal pets were hen canaries. Her reading matter was closely scrutinized beforehand, and every single word which might possibly hint at difference of sex was cut out with scissors. It seems probable that she had spoken to no man other than her father and her uncles. One can hardly be surprised at reading that her mental power was small, after being stunted in its growth in this fashion for eighteen years.

Napoleon sent as his proxy to Vienna Berthier, his trusted chief of staff. One can find nowhere any statement that the Austrians were pleased to see their princess standing side by side with a general whose latest acquired title was Prince of Wagram.

Perhaps as a sop to the national pride of Austria, Napoleon sent the bride he had not yet seen presents which have never been equalled in cost or magnificence. The trousseau he sent cost a hundred thousand francs; it included a hundred and fifty chemises each costing five pounds sterling, and enormous quantities of all other necessary linen. In addition he sent another hundred thousand francs' worth of lace and twelve dozen pairs of stockings at from one to three pounds sterling a pair. Dressing-table fittings and similar trifles cost nearly twenty thousand pounds, but all this expenditure was a mere trifle compared to the cost of the jewellery which Marie Louise received. The lowest estimate of this is placed at ten million francs--four hundred thousand pounds. Her dress allowance was to be over a thousand pounds a month.

Poor stupid Marie Louise might well fancy she was in Heaven. The daughter of an impoverished emperor, she had never possessed any jewellery other than a few corals and seed-pearls, and her wardrobe had been limited both by her niggardly stepmother and by circumstances.

All her life she had been treated as a person of minor importance, but suddenly she found even her pride-ridden father regarding her with deference. Metternich and Schwartzenberg sought her favour. Her aunts and cousins clustered eagerly round her, anxious to share in the spoils. It certainly was a silver lining to the cloud of matrimony with an unknown.

It was not merely her home that Napoleon adorned for Marie Louise, but even himself. For a space the green coat was laid aside, and he arrayed himself in a tunic stiff with embroidery. He tried to learn to waltz, and failed miserably. In everything he acted in a manner which amazed even those who had lived with him for years. No woman was half so excited over her first ball as was Napoleon over the prospect of marrying a Hapsburg.

He grew more and more excited as Marie Louise and her train journeyed across Germany and drew nearer and nearer. From every halting place despatches reached him in dozens. Marie Louise wrote to him, Caroline Murat wrote to him, Berthier wrote to him, the ladies-in-waiting wrote to him, even the mayors of the towns passed through wrote to him. The officers who brought the letters were eagerly cross-questioned. The Emperor who, when on the brink of grand military events, would tell his attendants only to awaken him for bad news, passed his days waiting for his unknown bride in a fever of impatience.

At last he could bear it no longer. Napoleon was at Soissons, where the meeting had been arranged to take place, but, unable to wait, he rode forward post haste through pelting rain, with only Murat at his side. At Courcelles they met the Empress. At first the coachman was minded to drive past the two muddy figures who hailed him, but Napoleon made himself known, and clambered into the Imperial berline. He would brook not another moment's delay. The carriage pelted forward through all the towns where addresses of welcome were ready, where droves of damsels all in white were preparing to greet them, where banquets and f?tes were ready. They drove past Soissons, where a wonderful pavilion had been erected, in which the Imperial pair had expected to meet for the first time during a ceremony more pompous even than epoch-making Tilsit; they only stopped when they reached the palace of Compiegne, where, at nine o'clock at night, a hurried dinner was prepared by the astonished servants.

Even the dinner was cut short. Half-way through Napoleon asked Marie Louise a question; she blushed, and was unable to answer. It is to be doubted if she even knew what he was talking about. Napoleon turned to the Austrian envoy. "Her Majesty is doubtful," he said. "Is it not true that we are properly married?" The envoy hesitated. No one had expected that Napoleon would take the ceremony by proxy seriously; elaborate arrangements had been made for a further ceremony in Paris. But it was useless for the envoy to demur; Napoleon carried off Marie Louise to his own apartments, and breakfasted at her bedside next morning. Later his meanness of soul once more obtruded itself, when he hinted at his experiences to one of his friends.

If Napoleon was a parvenu among monarchs, he was at least able to show scoffers that his own royal ceremonies could put in the shade any similar display by thousand-year-old dynasties. At Marie Louise's coronation four queens bore her train.

Characteristically they tried to trip her up with it. Never before had the world beheld four queens bearing another woman's robes, and certainly never before had it seen anything parallel to the other exhibition.

When we come to see who these queens were, we shall appreciate the peculiar irony of the situation. First, there was the Queen of Spain, Joseph's wife, who was still angry about Napoleon's jilting of her sister D?sir?e, and who furthermore saw as a consequence of this marriage the probability of the arrival of a direct heir and the extinction of her husband's chances of the succession. Secondly came Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, Napoleon's sister, violently jealous of Napoleon, of Marie Louise, and of everyone else. Third came the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, Catherine, Queen of Westphalia, whom Napoleon had torn from the arms of her betrothed to give to his loose-living young brother. The fourth was Hortense, Queen of Holland, whose mother Napoleon had just divorced in order to marry the woman whose train Hortense was carrying. Had Marie Louise been capable of any unusual thought whatever, she must have felt that she would be safer entering a powder magazine than going up the aisle of N?tre Dame with those four viragoes at her heels.

ONCE bitten, twice shy. Napoleon had had one wife of whom doubtful stories had circulated. He would run no risk with the new one. Marie Louise had been strictly guarded all her life. Napoleon determined that in that respect he would substitute scorpions for her father's whips. No man was ever to be presented to his wife without his consent; under no circumstances whatever was she to be alone with a man at any time.

To achieve his object he revived all the court ceremony of the Soleil Monarque; he added a few oriental improvements of his own, and to see that his orders were carried out he surrounded Marie Louise with women who were the wives and sisters of his own generals, absolutely dependent on him and accustomed to military procedure.

The Austrian ladies who had attended on Marie Louise before her marriage were sent home, every single one of them, as soon as she crossed the frontier. Marie Louise bade good-bye there to the friends of a lifetime--Napoleon was risking nothing. As Dame d'Honneur and consequently first lady-in-waiting, Napoleon appointed the Duchess of Montebello, widow of the unfortunate Lannes, who had died fighting at Aspern against Marie Louise's father and an army commanded by Marie Louise's uncle. The other important positions were filled in similar fashion. Four "red women" were appointed, whose duty was to be by the Empress's side night and day, two on duty and two within call. Had enough eunuchs been available, Napoleon would probably have employed them. A seraglio would have been quite in agreement with his estimation of woman's constancy.

Napoleon himself was mainly responsible for this. He was never good company in any sense of the word. He had a remarkable gift for saying unpleasant things in an unpleasant manner, and in his presence the whole company was on tenterhooks, wondering what was going to happen next. If a lady had a snub nose, he said so; if a gentleman's coat was shabby, he said so with fury, because it was his pride to be the only shabby person present. If rumours hinting at a lady's fall from virtue were in circulation, he told her so at the top of his voice, and demanded an explanation. When Napoleon quitted his court he invariably left half the women in tears and half the men in a rage. Then Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento and Grand Chamberlain, would go limping round from group to group, saying with his twisted smile, "The Emperor commands you to be amused."

While Josephine was Empress, this state of affairs was not so noticeable, for her dexterous tact soothed the smart caused by Napoleon's brusqueness, but under Marie Louise unbearable situations occurred again and again.

It must be admitted that the various parties at court made at least as dangerous a mixture as the constituents of gunpowder. To begin with, the members of the Imperial family itself were as jealous of each other as they could possibly be. Pauline, who was a mere Serene Highness, would grind her teeth when she had to address her sister Caroline as "Your Majesty." Caroline and the other Queens would rejoice openly because, being Queens, they were given armchairs when Napoleon's own mother had to be content with a stool. And they were one and all scheming for the succession in the event of Napoleon's fall.

Then there were still a few Republicans among the Princes and Dukes. One of the Marshals, compelled by Napoleon to be present at the solemn Mass which celebrated the Concordat, salved his conscience by swearing horribly throughout the ceremony, and, when asked by the First Consul how he had liked it, replied that it only needed to complete the picture the presence of the half million men who had died to uproot the system. Such men as these thought little of pushing in front of Serene Highnesses, or of laughing loudly when Pauline Bonaparte made the gesture which led to her banishment from court.

The largest group at court was that of the new nobility, but its superiority of numbers was discounted by the violent jealousies of its individual members. The maxim which guided Napoleon in his dealings with his subordinates was, apparently, "Divide et impera." He set his generals and ministers by the ears until there was not one of them who had not some cherished hatred for another. Davout hated Berthier, Lannes hated Bessi?res, Ney hated Mass?na, Fouch? hated them all, Savary hated Talleyrand; and the resultant bickerings were incessant. At court this was merely undignified; in the field, as was proved twenty times over in the Peninsular War, it was positively dangerous. It might be thought that Napoleon, with inexhaustible funds and domains at his disposal, and unlimited princely titles in his gift, could have satisfied them all. But that was where the trouble began. Napoleon could not give them all they desired, as otherwise they would have nothing to fight for. There were glaring examples of this. When Mass?na had been made a prince, and had accumulated wealth and glory past calculation, he deteriorated hopelessly. He failed badly in the Busaco campaign of 1810-11, and sank promptly into an effete degeneracy at the age of fifty-five. No, Napoleon could not afford to give his Marshals all they desired, and in consequence jealousies and friction increased unbearably.

With the junior officers the difficulties were just as great. Brutes like Vandamme, aristocrats like Belliard and S?gur, rakes like Lasalle and fools like Grouchy, were all mingled together. What was worse was that generals and diplomats of subject states necessarily came into contact with them also. It must have been maddening for the Prussian, Von Yorck, to hear Vandamme discoursing on the plunder he had acquired in Silesia in 1806, or for Schwartzenburg, the Austrian, to hear Lasalle boasting of his successes among the ladies of Vienna during the Austerlitz campaign.

But for a whole year, beginning in 1810, Napoleon in spite of these difficulties was supremely happy. There was peace all over the Continent, and the Continental system seemed at last to be on the point of success, for England's finances were undoubtedly shaken. So short was gold in England that Wellington in the Peninsula rarely had enough for his needs, and the Portuguese and Spanish subsidies were heavily in arrears. Mass?na with a hundred thousand men had plunged into the fog of guerilla warfare on the Tagus, and everyone was confidently expecting to hear of the fall of Lisbon and the expulsion of the English from Portugal.

Napoleon gave up hours of his precious time to his wife, waited patiently when she was late for an appointment and generally acted the devoted husband to the life. For a whole year he was faithful to Marie Louise, a feat which he never achieved before or after until St. Helena. And as the months rolled by and hope changed to certainty his devotion grew greater still.

For the birth of the child the most elaborate preparations were made. Some time before he was born Mme. de Montesquieu was named Governess of the Children of France, a healthy Normandy girl who was in the same condition as the Empress was secured as prospective wet nurse and kept under strict surveillance , and all France waited in a hush of expectation.

Once again Napoleon was risking nothing. He was going to leave no possible foundation for rumours to the effect that the child was not his, or was not Marie Louise's. Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles was born in the presence of the four doctors, Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier and Yvan; of the Duchess of Montebello, dame d'honneur; of Mme. de Lu?ay, dame d'atours; of Mme. de Montesquieu, Governess of the Children of France; of six premi?res dames de chambre; of five women of inferior rank, and of two filles de garde-robe. Cambac?res, Duke of Parma and Archchancellor of the Empire, was present in an ante-room, and should have witnessed the birth even if he did not; Berthier, Prince of Neufch?tel and Wagram, was in attendance on Napoleon, and also may have witnessed it, while immediately after the birth all the other Grand Dignitaries of the Empire and the representatives of all the friendly countries of Europe were paraded through the room. Napoleon had ordered Corvisart, whose nerve was giving way under the strain of the business, to treat Marie Louise like a bourgeois wife, but he hardly practised what he preached. The birth took three days; it certainly seemed a good omen for this scrap of humanity to keep all these dozens of people with high-sounding titles waiting for seventy-two consecutive hours.

After an anxious ten minutes the young Napoleon showed signs of life; he had at first appeared to be dead, and brandy had to be given him and he had to be discreetly smacked before he would cry. But he did so at length, and Napoleon announced to the waiting dignitaries, "It is a King of Rome." The guns fired a salute to inform the expectant crowds; twenty-one guns were to herald the birth of a daughter; one hundred a son. At the twenty-second gun a storm of cheers arose. More than forty years after, a ceremony almost identical announced the birth of an equally ill-fated son to another Emperor of the French.

Thus the wish of Napoleon's heart was fulfilled. For the moment he disregarded all the counter-balancing disadvantages and revelled in the possession of an heir. He cared nothing at the time for the fact that the doctors forbade the Empress to have the much desired second son to inherit the crown of Italy; it was nothing to him that Bavaria, Holland, W?rtemberg and Saxony at once became restless at seeing their period of thraldom indefinitely prolonged; he hardly cared that Mass?na had come miserably back from Portugal, with a ruined army, baulked irretrievably by Wellington at Torres Vedras, so that the "running sore" of the Peninsular campaign was reopened. He flung away his last chance of going in person to end the business, merely to remain by the side of the wife and child of whom he was so proud.

But despite his pride, he still left nothing to chance. Attendance on Marie Louise was maintained as strictly as before; an unauthorized presentation to the Empress by the Duchess of Montebello of some relation of hers called forth a tornado of wrath from the Emperor. The surveillance was redoubled when Napoleon left for the Russian campaign, although he paid her a compliment which had never been paid to Josephine--he appointed her Regent. Poor, silly Marie Louise, three years after being an insignificant princess, found herself Empress of the French, Queen of Italy and Regent of half Europe!

Her august husband nevertheless saw fit to have the Empress-Queen-Regent spied upon by a scullion, who sent him weekly reports, fantastically spelt on blotched and smeared kitchen paper! Nothing else is necessary to prove how utterly lacking in decent instincts was the victor of Austerlitz.

The action was typical of many. Perhaps Napoleon was right; everyone knows how readily autocracy becomes bureaucracy when the autocrat ceases to supervise his subordinates adequately; but not even the Second Empire nor Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century could show so many spies and counter-spies, police and counter-police and counter counter-police as did the First Empire. Secret delation flourished, and the prisons were full of people who had been arbitrarily cast into gaol without even a form of trial. Napoleon wished to know everything that was going on; not the least stray fragment of tittle-tattle came amiss to him. Consequently his regular police developed an organization which spread its tentacles into every avenue of life. Fouch?, Minister of Police, could boast of having an agent in every drawing-room and kitchen in the Empire. But then Napoleon feared that Fouch? would distort for his own purposes the reports of the agents when making his own report to Napoleon. Since Fouch? was Fouch? such a thing was not unlikely. So Napoleon had a second and independent police system making similar reports to another minister. Yet even when Fouch? was at last got rid of, and packed off as His Excellency the Governor of Rome ; even when Savary, "the man who would kill his own father if Napoleon ordered it," was in charge of the police affairs the dual police system was still adhered to. And besides these, Napoleon had spies of his own, working quite independently, reporting direct to himself, and he placed these not only in the two original police systems, but everywhere where they could keep an eye on those in high places. His royal brothers were surrounded with them; they were to be found in the secretariats of all the ministers; and since payment was largely by results, and they had to justify their existence somehow, it is not surprising that they brought forward trumped-up charges, suborned perjury, and generally acted as typical Continental agents-provocateurs. But all this elaborate system failed to gain the least hint of the Mallet conspiracy, which came so near to pulling down the Empire in the autumn of 1812.

There were opportunities enough for conspiracy, goodness knows. Bourbonists and Republicans, Bonapartists and anarchists, all sought to keep or to acquire power. The Murats, the Beauharnais, the various Bonaparte brothers and even Bernadotte, were all scheming for the succession or the regency, while intertwining among all this was the more legitimate scheming of the various European powers, whose secret agents were equally active throughout the Empire. There is small room for wonder that after a dozen years of this frantic merry-go-round the French people accepted the Bourbon restoration quietly, lest worse befall.

Yet all this does not excuse Napoleon for spying on his wife; for that the only justification lies in the event. How many times has Napoleon been rated for saying that adultery is a matter of opportunity? But his wife apparently did her best to prove him right. In 1814 the Empire was falling, and Napoleon's abdication was evidently inevitable. One thing alone raised him to an equality with hereditary monarchs, and that was the fact that he had married the daughter of the greatest of them all. They might exile General Bonaparte, but would they dare to exile along with him the Emperor of Austria's daughter? Besides, in Marie Louise's keeping was the young Napoleon. To allow him to accompany his mother into exile with his father was simply to court disaster.

At first the prospect seemed dark for the Allies. Marie Louise stood firm, refused to be parted either from her son or from her husband, and generally acted the devoted wife to the life. In this dilemma the Allies appealed to the most cunning and cold-hearted of all their agents--Metternich, who for thirty years was to hold Europe in the hollow of his hand. Metternich was the cynic magnificent, without belief in the constancy of any man or woman born. In that self-seeking age his opinions were largely justified. Metternich plunged adroitly into the affair. He must have known a great deal about the mentality of feeble-minded women, seeing that one of his boasts was that he never had fewer than three mistresses at a time. He selected an agent whom no one at first sight would have believed to be of any use, but who turned out to be extremely valuable. If Neipperg was a knave, he was at least the knave of trumps. He was an elderly one-eyed diplomat, a count and a general in the Austrian army, with a good record behind him. He justified Metternich's choice remarkably quickly, and while His Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty looked on and applauded this prostitution of his daughter, he wormed his way into Marie Louise's affections, so that by the time Napoleon was deposited in Elba, Marie Louise's second child was expected in a few months' time, while her first was under lock and key at Sch?nbrunn, deprived of all his French friends and attendants, and started on the unhappy life which was to end sixteen years later in consumption, despair and death.

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