The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished toward the victor.  It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.  He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood; Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang.  Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all the more.

“Impossible?” he had once said, contemptuously.  “The word ‘impossible’ is not French.”

The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite possible.  In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of the Hapsburgs to the very dust.  The conqueror’s rude hand had stripped from Francis province after province.  He had even let fall hints that the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar, who was still his ally.  It was at this psychological moment that the Czar wounded Napoleon’s pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister Anne.

The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance.  Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a fitting bride for the French conqueror.  The notion soothed the wounded vanity of Napoleon.  From that moment events moved swiftly; and before long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been Napoleon’s most persistent foe upon the Continent.  The girl was to be given—­sacrificed, if you like—­to appease an imperial adventurer.  After such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation.  The reigning dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.

But how about the girl herself?  She had always heard Napoleon spoken of as a sort of ogre—­a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy of her people.  She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on her father.  In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a coward and a liar.  Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster, outside the pale of human liking and respect.  What must have been her thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was to become the bride of such a being?