The withdrawal of the French troops from Rome in 1870 to take part in the war against Germany, put an end to the temporal power of the Popes. Pius the Ninth was forced to relinquish the Quirinal to the same bold conqueror who had deprived Francis and Maria Sophia of their kingdom, and thereafter they had no permanent residence in Rome. As long as the Duke and Duchess Max lived, they spent the summers in Bavaria, travelling about from place to place during the Winter. The greater part of Francis the Second’s property, some twenty million lire, had been confiscated by the new Italian Government, which offered to refund it on condition of his formally renouncing all rights to the crown he had already lost; but this he refused to do. “A man does not sell his honor,” was his unfailing reply. Eventually he was paid back his mother’s dowry; but the immense sum that King Ferdinand had settled on his eldest son at the time of his marriage to Maria Sophia was appropriated by Victor Emanuel, as were the contents of the royal palace. Many of the paintings and works of art are still shown at “Capo di Monte” in Naples, to the indignation of many of the sovereigns of Europe. Although the climate of Rome had never agreed with Maria Sophia, both she and her husband often declared that they had never really known the terrors of exile till they were forced to leave Italy. Francis never quite gave up hope that some turn of events would pave the way for his return to his own and his father’s throne; but the heroine of Gaeta never looked backward. The pomp and show of royalty had never appealed to her, and she indulged in no vain regrets. The lives of the Wittelsbach sisters had proved a source of grief and anxiety to their parents. Hélène, left a widow in 1867, after ten years of unhappy married life, had managed the vast estates of the Thurn and Taxis family with great ability during the minority of her eldest son, Maximilian. This prince, a most promising youth, died in 1885, at the early age of twenty-three, and the blow almost cost his despairing mother her reason, while the following year, Count Ludwig of Trani drowned himself in one of the Swiss lakes.