Maximilian’s generosity rendered wealth indispensable to his complete happiness, for he loved to surround himself with artists, learned men, and men of letters.  He paid them every kind of attention in his power, and did not omit those little gifts which are “the beads on memory’s rosary.”

“One feels how happy life must have been to husband and wife in this new Paradise!” cries M. Victor Tissot.  “Yet it was Paradise Lost before long, for alas! in this, as in the other Paradise, the Eve, the sweet young wife, was tempted by ambition.  She took the apple, ate, and gave it to her husband.”

On April 10, 1864, the Mexican deputies commissioned to offer Maximilian the imperial crown, arrived at Miramar.  “We come,” said Don Gutierrez de Estrada, “to beseech you to ascend the throne of Mexico, to which you have been called by the voice of a people weary of anarchy and civil war.  We are assured you have the secret of conquering the hearts of all men, and excel in the rare knowledge of the art of government.”

Maximilian replied that he was ready to accept the honor offered him by the Mexican people, and that his government would be both liberal and constitutional.  “I shall prove, I trust,” he said, “that liberty may be made compatible with law.  I shall respect your liberties, and uphold order at the same time.”

Don Gutierrez thanked the archduke in the name of the Mexican nation, and then the new emperor swore upon the Gospels to labor for the happiness and prosperity of his people, and to protect their independent nationality.  Don Gutierrez was then embraced by Maximilian, who hung around his neck the cross of the new Order of Guadeloupe, of which he was the first member.

But this acceptance of the imperial crown of Mexico was by no means a sudden thought with Maximilian.  For eight months he had been debating the matter in his own heart, urged to acceptance of the crown by his wife, but dissuaded by his family.

The history of the offer, connected as it is with one of Napoleon III.’s schemes for extending French influence, must be briefly told.

Before the Civil War broke out in America, it had already entered the head of the emperor that he would like to intermeddle in the affairs of Mexico.  That unhappy country, which the United States have been accused of doing their best to keep in a chronic state of weakness, turbulence, and revolution, had been left to recover itself after the Mexican War, which had shorn away its fairest provinces.

In 1853, Santa Ana, who had been president, dictator, exile, and conspirator by turns for thirty years, was recalled to Mexico, and a second time was made dictator.  He assumed the title of Serene Highness, and claimed the right to nominate his successor.  A popular revolution soon unseated him.  Juarez, of Indian parentage, was at its head.  The clerical party was outraged by the confiscation of the enormous possessions of the Church, and by the abolition of