In the night of July 22, 1832, he awoke from a feverish sleep crying
out, 'I am dying,' and directly after he added, 'Call my mother.' He was
past speaking when she came, followed by her brother, but he looked at
her and feebly moved his head. Then the prayers for the dying were said,
and at five o'clock his sufferings were over.
In the chapel of the Capuchins at Vienna his body lies amongst the tombs
of the Hapsburgs, parted from his father in death as he had been in
life. Yet, faithless and cold-hearted as she was, his mother did not
dare refuse him at the last the name she had so hated and disgraced, and
he stands forth to the world, not as the 'son of Marie Louise' alone, as
he had been called hitherto, but as the 'Son of Napoleon.'
_THE PRINCESS JEANNE_
IT was a cold day in January 1528 when Jeanne de Navarre was born in the
royal castle of Fontainebleau. Most of her relations were remarkable
people, famous even then for their cleverness and strong wills, and her
mother, Marguérite d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I., was distinguished
above them all for her learning. But Marguérite was better than learned,
she was wise, and she thought that her little daughter would be much
happier away from Court, with other children to play with, than in
travelling about the rough roads and small mountain towns that formed a
large part of the kingdom of Navarre, or in crossing the wide rivers
that lay between the Pyrenees and the city of Paris. For Paris was the
home of Francis I., whom Marguérite loved better than her husband, her
mother, or her little girl. So in a few days the baby was quietly
christened in the private chapel of the château, and when she was a
month old was very warmly wrapped up, and taken in a big heavy carriage
drawn by eight horses to a place near Alençon where lived her mother's
great friend, Madame de Silly, wife of the Bailiff of Caen. Here, in
company with Madame de Silly's own children, Jeanne left her babyhood
behind her. She was very strong, and very lively and mischievous
besides; it was she who led the others into mischief, who would tuck up
the long silk frock worn by little girls in those days, and climb trees
after rosy apples, or persuade one of the boys to get up very early and
go with her for hours into the woods on the hills, till Madame de Silly
and everybody else were frightened out of their wits. Nothing ever
frightened Jeanne, and she only laughed at the punishments dealt out to
her.
'Oh, yes, I promise not to do it again—not till next time,' she would
say; and her eyes looked up so merrily into the eyes of Madame de Silly
that the scolding suddenly stopped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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