fever, herself recovering of an attack at the same time. She cut off her hair and buried it in his coffin. This was thought a wonderful instance of wifely devotion, until the cynical Emperor remarked: “Quite so; quite so; of course, she knows it will grow again better than ever for cutting it off, and that it would have fallen off anyhow after the fever.” Yet when he was sent to Elba, this frivolous sister followed him, and she sold every jewel she possessed to make life comfortable for him at St. Helena. She was a very human and beautiful woman, this Pauline; she detested Marie Louise, and once in 1810 at a grand fête she saucily poked out her tongue at the young Empress in full view of all the nobles. Unhappily Napoleon saw her, and cast upon her a dreadful look; Pauline picked up her skirts and ran headlong from the room. When she heard of his death she wept bitterly; she died four years afterwards of cancer. Her last action was to call for a mirror, looking into which she died, saying, “I am still beautiful; I am not afraid to die.” In attempting to judge Marie Louise it must be remembered that there is a horrid story told of Napoleon’s first meeting with her in France after the civil marriage had been performed by proxy in Vienna. It is said that the fury of his lust did her physical injury, and that that is the true reason why she never forgave him and deserted him at the first opportunity. She bore him a son, of whom he was passionately fond, but after his downfall the son--the poor little King of Rome immortalized by Rostand in “_l’Aiglon_”--fell into the hands of Metternich, the Austrian, who is said to have deliberately contrived to have him taught improper practices, lest he should grow up to be as terrible a menace to the world as his father. But all these are rumours, and show how difficult it is to ascertain the truth of anything connected with Napoleon. When Napoleon fell to the dust after Leipzig, Marie Louise became too friendly with Count von Neipperg, whom she morganatically married after Napoleon’s death. Although he heard of her infidelity, he forgave her, and mentioned her affectionately in his will, thereby showing, to borrow a famous phrase of Gibbon about Belisarius, “Either less or more than the character of a man.”