He was usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it was his “having married a princess of Austria that ruined him, and that his marriage with Marie Louise was the cause of the expedition into Russia,” and that “he might not have been at St. Helena had he married a Frenchwoman.”  It is said that he seriously thought of doing this, and had some available ladies put before him with that object.  These dreamy utterances reveal that his mind was centred on the causes of his misfortunes, and that he held definite views on the marriage tragedy, and perhaps his sense of pride, the interests of his son (the King of Rome), and the reluctance to admit that he knew he was going wrong at the time, constrained him to withhold much that he thought and knew.  The impression we get is that he could not bring himself to utter the whole of the unutterable canker which haunted him.

It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded up his own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less capable judges.  Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following terms:—­“When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult; they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better chance to stick a knife into him.”  He told the Directory they did not understand the Cabinet of Vienna; “it is the meanest and most perfidious to be found.”  “It will not make war with you because it cannot.”  “Peace with Austria is only a truce.”  His diagnoses were confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed in after years.  The marvel is that he did not allow himself to benefit by his shrewd observations at a moment when so much depended on strength, not vacillation and weakness.

A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian princess sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty ideals (?) of the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at Schoenbrunn after she had deserted Napoleon.  He said to her:—­“As my daughter, all that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you.”

The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being that so long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all that he had was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been so merciful to Francis himself.  If she elected to be at all wifely and cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the sovereign, and as readily gore her as he