Louis XVI. had a favorite spaniel, playful and intelligent, like all its race. It accompanied him to the prison which he was only to exchange for the scaffold, and was bequeathed by him as a last remembrance to his daughter. Through four years of imprisonment it was her only friend and companion, and when upon her release “Madame Royale” went to her relatives in Austria, it was not left behind. But when, in 1801, the royal exiles were in Warsaw, the poor little favorite fell from a balcony in the Poniatowsky Palace, and was instantly killed. The first Napoleon cared little for any animal--except his war-horses. Cats, indeed, he detested; and of Fortune (a pet dog of the Empress Josephine) he was always jealous, and could not bear to see his wife caress it. But age, they say, brings wisdom; and in his case, it certainly brought toleration--of one dog at least. Here is the story: The seventeen-year-old Marie Louise, who was to be his second wife, had a favorite Italian greyhound which accompanied her on her way into France. Her Austrian suite was replaced at the frontier by a French one; and at Munich her last Austrian attendant was dismissed, together with the dog--a thing never intended by Napoleon, and only effected by intrigue. We can imagine the young girl’s grief, and can readily believe, as the historian says, that “the acquisition of a colossal empire did not console her for the loss of a little dog.” [Illustration: PET SPANIEL OF LOUIS XVI., COMPANION OF HIS DAUGHTER “MADAME ROYALE,” IN PRISON.] Fortunately for all concerned, the story found its way to Napoleon. At once he rubbed his Aladdin’s lamp (an article all emperors possess), and when he met his bride a few days later at Compiègne, he led her--not to a grand state-chamber, but to a cosey room, with a strangely familiar look. Her husband was a stranger; it was a new land, a new language, and new faces everywhere. But--what was that hysterical bark and scramble that greeted her on the threshold? What was that frantic little figure bounding up into her arms? What but her own little greyhound brought there with other familiar objects from her old home, by Napoleon’s thoughtful care! She welcomed her pet with a cry of delight; then turning, thanked, with wet eyes, the husband who was no longer a stranger.