At Alessandria, the next day, he had an interview with his brother Jerome, which in fact was a reconciliation. In 1808, after the breaking of the Peace of Amiens, Jerome Bonaparte, who then, a young man of twenty, was in the naval service, happened to be forced by an English cruiser to land in the United States. There he had fallen in love with the young and charming daughter of a rich merchant of Baltimore, Miss Elisabeth Paterson, and he married her. Napoleon was unwilling to recognize this marriage. No sooner had he ascended the throne than he at once exhibited all the feeling and prejudices of a monarch who belonged to a dynasty of the most venerable antiquity. He really believed that his brothers could marry only princesses, and that any other marriage was an unpardonable mesalliance. If, possibly, Napoleon was able to condemn Lucien's wife for her past conduct, no such criticism could apply to the wife of Jerome, who was a young woman of conspicuous morality, intelligence, and amiability. But she was the daughter of a ship-owner, a merchant, and thus was not a proper match, he thought, for the brother of the powerful monarch who was already dreaming of restoring the vassal kingdoms and the whole vast imperial edifice of Charlemagne. He, the Emperor of the French, the King of Italy, did not like to remember that he had wedded a simple subject, and that he had been very proud of his marriage. He could not pardon his brother Jerome for making a love-match. He would not even listen to his defence of his young wife, soon to be a mother, and who deserved only respect and pity, and who, humiliated, abandoned, and brokenhearted, was about to be treated as a concubine, and driven away forever. Ambition had destroyed Napoleon's natural kindliness. Yet, if he had seen Jerome's wife, a devoted and interesting woman, warmly attached to her husband, and alive to her duties, probably he would have taken pity on her. Possibly he was himself aware of this, for he forbade the unhappy young woman to enter any part of the Empire, and compelled this innocent victim of political considerations to take refuge in England, as if she were a criminal.