The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it, half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark, alone. Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess, her future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased to think of anything except his own desires. He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton hands. At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust. ... At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed by the ladies of her household. These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention, or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles had described.