“I give you leave,” said Napoleon, “to have a private interview with the empress.  Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions.  Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me.”

Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while.  When he returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a pair of interrogation-points.

“I am sure,” he said, “that the empress told you that I was kind to her?”

Metternich bowed and made no answer.

“Well,” said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, “at least I am sure that she is happy.  Tell me, did she not say so?”

The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.

“Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer,” he returned with another bow.

We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted herself to her surroundings, was never really happy.  Napoleon became infatuated with her.  He surrounded her with every possible mark of honor.  He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her.  But the memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it all.  He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle Josephine.  Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.

Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.  Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined.  His shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new costumes.  He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in despair.  Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals, he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a character which it had never had.  Never before had he sacrificed either his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman.  Even in the first ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements for the following day.  Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether.  He had founded a dynasty.  He was the head of a reigning house.  He forgot the principles of the Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the grace of God.

As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well.  Somewhat haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied Napoleon’s every wish.  She seemed even to be loving; but one can scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into subjection.