On the fifteenth of February, the exiles landed at Terracina, heavy at heart, and were escorted by a company of French dragoons to Rome, where they took up their residence in the Palazzo Farnese as guests of Pope Pius the Ninth. Maria Sophia was not a devout Catholic like her husband. She had not wished to go to Rome, and found no comfort in the Holy Father’s friendship. The dowager Queen was also living in Rome with her children, and the close companionship into which the exiles were thus forced by circumstances did not tend to improve the relations between the ex-Queen and her mother-in-law. In times of trouble we naturally turn to our kin for sympathy, and Maria Sophia was seized with desperate longing for her mother and her Bavarian home. Early in April, therefore, she set out for Possenhofen, accompanied by General Bosco. The two years she had spent in Naples had been far from happy. She returned a queen without a crown, deprived of all save honor. But the familiar scenes and faces, and above all the comfort of pouring out her heart to the strong, noble mother, who had suffered so much herself, restored her courage, and she soon became her cheerful, lively self once more, her eyes sparkling with animation, full of spirit and energy. The young Queen’s heroic behavior during the defence of Gaeta had taken Europe by storm. Her praises were on every tongue, and the beauty, the courage, the warm-heartedness of the “Heroine of Gaeta” were lauded in prose and verse. She was deluged with tokens of admiration and sympathy, among which were a gold laurel wreath from the princesses of Germany and a sword of honor from the women of Paris. The dowager Queen, Maria Theresa, had not yet given up hope that she and her children might return to Naples. Since Francis the Second had proved himself incapable of maintaining his place on Ferdinand’s throne, she was more determined than ever that her own eldest son should occupy it; and in order to prevent any opposition on the part of the Wittelsbach and Hapsburg families, she succeeded in arranging a marriage between the Count of Trani and Maria Sophia’s sister Mathilde soon after the arrival of the exiles in Rome, neither of the young people’s wishes in the matter having been consulted in the least. Maria Sophia returned to Rome after a month’s stay with her parents, and in May the bridegroom went to Munich to meet his unknown bride. This prince was far more attractive than his stepbrother in outward appearance, having a frank, winning manner and the utmost propriety of behavior. The wedding was put off for a month, that the young people might become better acquainted, the Count accompanying the ducal family to Possenhofen, where he occupied a neighboring villa on Starnberg Lake.