There were,

pression of his manner and himself." nevertheless, in the Hapsburg Kingdom plenty of patriots, men and women who were inconsolable. The Princess Charles of Schwarzenberg-wife of the brilliant General who had just fought so heroically, and who in the following year conducted, as Ambassador of Austria at the Court of the Tuileries, the negotiations for the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise-the Princess Charles of Schwarzenberg wrote a despairing letter to her husband, in which she said: "I shall shut myself up in the far-distant past, so as to break off all relations with the present and the future. They tell me that the negotiations for this so-called peace are to be entrusted to you. There has been something supernatural in the way you have escaped with your name unsullied. I have but one wish on this earth-it is that this annihilation, which, through cowardice, we call peace, may become complete annihilation. No more political existence. I wish to be allowed the repose of the dead.”

Napoleon was on the point of leaving Schönbrunn on his return to France when, on the 12th of October, 1809, just as he was to hold a review, he saw approaching him a young German whose suspicious appearance aroused his attention, and who was at once arrested. Underneath the coat of this youth, whose name was Staaps, and who was the son of a Protestant clergyman of Erfürt, was found a large, sharp knife, and the

owner of it unhesitatingly declared that his intention had been to kill the Emperor and deliver Germany. The cool, calm replies of this resolute fanatic, whom Napoleon himself examined, made a deep impression on the mind of the conqueror. Was not the German youth the precursor of those countless volunteers who were on the eve of organising in France a struggle which they considered a holy war? Face to face with this young man, Napoleon-who dared not pardon him, albeit he had not even attempted to put his crime into execution-experienced a painful feeling, a feeling in which pity mingled with surprise. He who had caused so many tears and so much blood to flow in Germany, was quite astonished to find that Germans did not love him. There is nothing so inopportune to the great ones of the world, and conquerors especially, as the thought of death-death, the sole enemy who is invincible. What! This chance passer-by, an ignorant fellow, a fool, a vulgar fanatic, to be able with a kitchen knife to put an end to the mightiest of heroes, the most illustrious of warriors, the most powerful of sovereigns! At Ratisbon, where he was wounded for the first time in his military career, the victor in so many fights discovered, not without vexation, that he was not invulnerable. At Erling, in presence of the corpse of the intrepid Marshal Lannes, both of whose legs had just been carried away by a cannon ball, he wrote very sadly to the Empress Josephine, the companion of his

happy days, "So ends everything!" And now he had been in danger of death at the hands of a poor, obscure student! As the Duchess d'Abrantés said, "This death which hovered round the Emperor in various forms, without, however, daring to touch him, but whose attempts seemed to say to him, take care of yourself!-all this was a presage, a direful presage." Napoleon then reflected seriously. To audacity and a love of adventure suddenly succeeded prudence and the desire of self-preservation. The all-powerful Emperor said to himself in the midst of his triumph that if he died without a direct heir, his gigantic Empire would certainly be dismembered, like that of Alexander the Great, and that this incomparable structure, built up with such labour and at such sacrifice, would crumble to the dust.

The national historian has said of him: "In proportion as public opinion deserted him, Napoleon consoled himself with the idea that it was the fault of the future, and not his fault, that his throne was menaced by premature decay. The thought of consolidating what he felt was trembling beneath his feet was his ruling preoccupation, and his idea seemed to be that if he could choose and obtain a new wife, and establish her at the Tuileries, and if she became the mother of an heir male, the mistakes which had brought the weight of the whole world upon him would only be causes without effects." M. Thiers adds this reflec

tion: "It would have been useful, no doubt, to have had an undisputed heir, but it would have been better, a hundred times better, to have been prudent and wise. However, Napoleon who, despite this necessity of having a son, could not, after Tilsit, when at the zenith of his glory and power, make up his mind to sacrifice Josephine, brought himself at last to resolve upon it for the reason that he felt his Empire giving way, and he intended seeking in marriage the solidity which he ought to have secured by clever and moderate conduct."

Possibly, as he slept in the Castle of Schönbrunn, the victor was already thinking of asking the hand of the young Archduchess who habitually resided there. In any case he had no idea that in that very room where he formulated so many proud dreams and so many grand projects, his heir would die so sadly, the child whom the daughter of the German Cæsars was destined to bear him. When he appeared once more victorious in the Castle of Fontainebleau, on the 26th of October, 1809, the Empress Josephine knew that she was irrevocably condemned. The immediate result of the battle of Wagram was to be divorce.

CHAPTER III.

PRELIMINARIES OF MARRIAGE.

AUSTRIA had been in deadly fear during the Wagram campaign. She anxiously asked herself if the Hapsburgs, like the Bourbons of Spain, were not on the eve of disappearing from the list of Sovereigns, or if, like the Bourbons of Naples, they would not be reduced to the possession of merely a small portion of their States. The peace concluded at Vienna on the 14th of October, 1809, had somewhat diminished these serious apprehensions. But none the less did the situation of Austria remain most painful and distressing. As the Prince de Metternich says in his curious Memoirs: "The so-called peace of Vienna enclosed the Empire in a circle of iron, took away its communication with the Adriatic, and enveloped it from Brodz, a point on the extreme north-east on the Russian side, to the frontiers on the south-east in the direction of the Ottoman Empire, with a line of States placed either