The Ambassador thus concluded his despatch: "The tumultuous joy which has prevailed in Vienna during this last week, which has gratified Her Majesty as much as any one, has been dimmed for a moment by a feeling which does honor to the kindness of her heart, and can only endear her the more to us. She has a great affection for her parents, and this feeling they return. She has been called Louise the Pious, and it has been said to be only right that she should share the throne of Saint Louis. The Emperor started an hour before Her Majesty for Linz, where he will embrace his beloved daughter for the last time. During these last few days it has been very obvious that his feelings as a father have had more weight with him than his position as a sovereign. This monarch's amiable disposition has appeared in the most favorable light on this occasion, and everything promises the happiest results from this alliance." On leaving Vienna, Marie Louise doubtless thought that she would never see it again; but she was to return to it very soon and in very different circumstances. In four years the Viennese were to see her again, but how changed the condition of things! Events cruelly disappointed the hopes of peace and happiness evoked by her marriage. It was a bitter deception. The hatred of the Austrians for Napoleon, whom in 1810 they had so much admired, became once more as intense as in the days of Austerlitz and Wagram. They ceased to greet Marie Louise with applause; they simply pitied her. Her father himself ceased to regard her as a sovereign. "As my daughter," he said to her, "everything that I possess is yours, my blood and my life; I do not know you as a sovereign." The time seemed very remote when she had precedence of the Empress of Austria, and her father, the head of the house of Hapsburg, respectfully gave her place at his right hand. After losing the double Imperial and Royal crown, that of France and that of Italy, she was obliged to beg of the implacable Coalition a petty duchy, the possession of which had been promised her by a treaty signed after the fall of the great Empire. There were again festivities in Vienna, but not for her, the dethroned sovereign. Once she was curious to see one, and she watched it hiding behind a curtain. On the evening of a court ball given by her father in honor of the members of the Congress of Vienna, she concealed herself near an opening made in the attic of the great hall of the palace,--where the festivities of her wedding had been celebrated,--and from there the wife of the prisoner of Elba watched the men dancing who were condemning her to widowhood even in the lifetime of her husband. IX. THE TRANSFER.