"I wish and I ought to thank your eminence for all you have done in our favor since the burden of exile has fallen on my children and myself. My brother, Cardinal Fesch, did not leave me ignorant of the generous way in which you received the request of _mom grand et malheureux proscrit de St. Hélène_. He said that on learning the emperor's prayer, so just and so Christian, you had hastened to interpose with the English government, and to seek out priests both worthy and able. I am truly the mother of sorrows; and the only consolation left me is to know that the Holy Father forgets the past, and remembers solely his affection for us, which he testifies to all the members of my family. "My sons, Lucian and Louis, who are proud of your unchanging friendship toward them, have been much touched likewise by all that the Pope and your eminence have done, unknown to us, to preserve our tranquillity when menaced by the different powers of Europe. We find support and an asylum in the pontifical states only; and our gratitude is as great as the benefit. I beg your eminence to place the expression of it at the feet of the holy pontiff, Pius VII. I speak in the name of all my proscribed family and especially in the name of him now dying by inches on a desert rock. His holiness and your eminence are the only persons in Europe who endeavor to soften his misfortunes, or who would abridge their duration. I thank you both with a mother's heart,--and remain always, eminence, yours very devotedly and most gratefully, "Madame." Another letter, from the ex-king of Holland, father of the present emperor of the French, addressed to Cardinal Consalvi, still further demonstrates the charity shown by Rome, and suggests many reflections. With these extracts from Consalvi's {26} correspondence as a sequel, we shall close our episode of the imperial marriage; the circumstances they recall form a not uninstructive commentary on an event that seemed to place Napoleon at such a high point of worldly greatness. "Eminence,--Following the advice of the Holy Father and of your eminence, I have seen Mgr. Bernetti, who is specially charged with the affair in question; and he, with his usual frankness, explained the nature of the complaints made by foreign powers against the family of the Emperor Napoleon. The great powers, and principally England, reproach us with always conspiring. They accuse us of being mixed up, implicitly or explicitly, with all the plots in existence; they even pretend that we abuse the hospitality granted us by the Pope to foment divisions in the pontifical states, and stir up hatred against the august person of the sovereign.