Marie Louise did not have the character of her great-grandmother Marie Thérèse, or that of her great-aunt Marie Antoinette. She rather resembled the wife of Louis XIV. or that of Louis XV. She would have led a calm, modest, harmless life, like those two queens, if her fate had not placed her amid unforeseen and terrible events, the shock of which she could not endure. In 1812 we see her a loving mother, a faithful wife, a worthy sovereign. If Napoleon had adopted a less imprudent policy, all that would have lasted. Doubtless that is what he said to himself when, at Saint Helena, he impartially examined his career, and he had no angry thought, no bitter word, for the woman who has been so severely judged by others. XXVI. THE EMPRESS'S HOUSEHOLD. We have just tried to draw a picture of the appearance and character of Marie Louise in 1812, when at the summit of her fortune; let us turn our attention to the organization of her household at this epoch, and to the details of her daily life. Her first almoner was Count Ferdinand de Rohan, formerly Archbishop of Cambrai; her knight-of-honor was the Count of Beauharnais, who had held the same position to the Empress Josephine, a relative of his. Napoleon had at first meant to appoint the Count of Narbonne to this place, but Marie Louise had dissuaded him. M. Villemain says in his _Life_ of M. de Narbonne: "The Empress Marie Louise, generally so yielding to her husband, on this occasion manifested great opposition. Whether through womanly kindness or through her pride as a sovereign, possibly through some superstitious scruple as a second wife, she insisted on the retention in this post of the Count of Beauharnais; she was unwilling on any terms to seem to exclude, in the person of this relative of Josephine, the first name of the Princess whom she succeeded on the French throne. On the other hand, it is fair to suppose that in the dashing and attractive Count of Narbonne she was willing to keep away certain things which were unfamiliar and so alarming to her, such as the lighter graces, the jesting spirit of the old court, and doubtless too the melancholy presentiments attached, in her mind, to everything that recalled Versailles and the daughters of Louis XV., who had become the aunts of Marie Antoinette. In a word, Marie Louise, cold and calm, was inflexible in her opposition to the choice which the Emperor announced to her. He at once yielded the point, and smoothed matters over by appointing M. de Narbonne one of his aides, an odd favor for a man fifty-five years old, a relic of the former court, suddenly made a member of the most warlike and most active staff in Europe." For first equerry Marie Louise had Prince Aldobrandini, and for master of ceremonies, the Count de Seyssel d'Aix.