wounded, embraced Napoleon in public with tears streaming down her face, and implored him hereafter to listen more attentively to her warnings. Napoleon, however, though superstitious enough firmly to believe in what he called his "star," and even to see it shining in the heavens when no one else beheld it, never would admit the value of his wife's forebodings. Presentiments of this kind are most frequently felt before death, and it is now almost universally believed that the impending dissolution of the body relieves the spirit in many cases fully enough from its bondage to endow it with a clear and distinct anticipation of the coming event. A large number of historical personages have thus been enabled to predict the day, and many even the hour of their own death. The Connétable de Bourbon, who was besieging Rome, addressed, according to Brantôme (_Vies des gr. capitaines_, ch. 28), on the day of the final assault, his troops, and told them he would certainly fall before the Eternal City, but without regret if they but proved victorious. Henry IV. of France, felt his death coming, according to the unanimous evidence of Sully, L'Etoile, and Bassompierre, and said, before he entered his coach on the fatal day: "My friend, I would rather not go out to-day; I know I shall meet with misfortune." On the 16th of May, 1813, four days before the battle of Bautzen, two of Napoleon's great officers, the Duke of Vicenza and Marshal Duroc, were in attendance at Dresden while the emperor was holding a protracted conference with the Austrian ambassador. The clock was striking midnight, when suddenly Duroc seized his companion by the arm and with frightfully altered features, looking intently at him, said in trembling tones: "My friend, this lasts too long; we shall all of us perish, and he last of all. A secret voice tells me that I shall never see France again." It is well known that on the day of the battle a cannon-ball which had already killed General Kirchner, wounded Duroc also mortally, and when he lay on his deathbed he once more turned to the Duke of Vicenza and reminded him of the words he had spoken in Dresden.