My being at St. M----, and my letter, threw a very different light on everything. Thenceforth, Louis, dismissed by her father, and calumniated by her mother and Albert, was, in Eugénie's eyes, a victim. And he had risked his own life to save that of his friend. It is said that noble hearts, especially those of women, regard the _rôle_ of victim as an attractive one. When Eugénie left Louis, there was in the expression of her eyes, and in the tone of her voice, something so friendly and compassionate that he felt happier than he had for a long time.... To obtain this interview, Eugénie had been obliged to evade not only her mother's active vigilance, but that of her cousin and Fanny. This vigilance, suspended for a moment, became more active than ever during the following days. It was impossible to speak to Louis; but she saw him sometimes, and their eyes spoke intelligibly.... The water receded in the course of a week. Louis profited thereby to come and see me, and make me a sharer in his joy. I was then somewhat better. I passed the night of the inundation in fearful suffering, but felt relieved the following day. My dreadful attack of paralysis did not occur till some weeks afterwards. I little thought then I had symptoms of the seizure that has rendered my life so painful. The refugees were still living at the manufactory, the Vinceneau family among them. Louis had scarcely returned to his room that night, when he heard a low knock at his door, and Madeleine Vinceneau presented herself before him. TO BE CONTINUED. THE NAPOLEONIC IDEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA. I. For several weeks past, we have heard much of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.[17] Nothing less than his mournful physical death, on the 9th of January, 1873, was needed to draw him from the oblivion to which Italian liberals consigned him after his political death of September 2, 1870. It would seem that from the imperial grave opened at Chiselhurst went forth a bitter reproach against the unexampled ingratitude of those who saw the tombstone of Sedan close over his empire with mute impassibility and secret joy. Now to the cowardly silence of two years succeeds an uproar of elegies and praises. Remorse for having left the conqueror of Solferino in the mire of the Meuse is lulled to sleep by the wailing of hired mourners; as if the shame of basely forsaking him could be masked behind a block of unblushing marble. No man was ever more fatal to himself than Napoleon III. All which was his by usurpation or right turned against him in the end. His worst humiliations were the work of his own hands. He destroyed himself, and the words of the Christian Demosthenes were truer of him than of others: _Nemo nisi a se ipso læditur_.