In vain the almoner remonstrated.  The only effect of his remonstrance was that the queen authorized him to make her gift 300 francs if he found it necessary.  When he knocked at the door of the garret of the petitioner, she opened it with agitation.  “Oh, Monsieur!” she said, “are you the Commissioner of Police come to arrest me for my outrageous letter to the queen?  I am so unhappy that at times I became deranged.  I am sorry to have written as I did to a princess who to all the poor is good and charitable.”  For answer, M. Appert showed her her own letter, with the queen’s memorandum written upon it.  “There was no lack of heartfelt gratitude then,” he says, “and no lack of poverty to need the triple benefaction.”

CHAPTER III.

LOUIS NAPOLEON’S EARLY CAREER.—­STRASBURG, BOULOGNE, HAM.

There is a theory held by some observers that the man who fails in his duty to a woman who has claims upon his love and his protection, never afterwards prospers; and perhaps the most striking illustration of this theory may be found in the career of the Emperor Napoleon.  Nothing went well with him after his divorce from Josephine.  His only son died.  The children of his brothers, with the exception of Louis Napoleon, and the Prince de Canino, the son of Lucien, were all ordinary men, inclined to the fast life of their period; while the descendants of Josephine, honored and respected, are now connected with many European thrones.

The son of Napoleon, called by his grandfather, the Austrian emperor, the Duc de Reichstadt, but by his own Bonaparte family Napoleon II., died at Vienna, July 22, 1832.  The person from whom, during his short, sad life, he had received most kindness, and to whom, during his illness, he was indebted for almost maternal care, was the young wife of his cousin Francis, the Princess Sophia of Bavaria, who in the same week that he died, became the mother of Maximilian, the unfortunate Emperor of Mexico, who, exactly thirty-five years after, on July 22, 1867, was shot at Queretaro.

The Emperor Napoleon had made a decree that if male heirs failed him, his dynasty should be continued by the sons of his brother Joseph.  Lucien, the republican, was passed over, as well as his descendants; and Joseph failing of male heirs, the throne of France was to devolve on Louis, king of Holland, and his heirs.  Joseph left only daughters, Zenaide and Charlotte.  Louis Bonaparte when he died, left but one son.

Louis Bonaparte was nine years younger than his brother Napoleon, who by no right of primogeniture, but by right of success, was early looked upon as the head of the family of Bonaparte.  He assumed the place of father to his little brother Louis, and a very unsatisfactory father he proved.  Louis was studious, poetical, solid, honorable, and unambitious.  His brother was resolved to make him a distinguished general and an able king.  He succeeded in making