lady, and who wished to control the new Empress without a rival. The Queen of Naples was a very agreeable, very charming woman; but Count Otto was mistaken when he wrote that the Austrian court was flattered by hearing that Napoleon had chosen his sister Caroline to meet the new Empress; the choice was not a happy one, and the Emperor would doubtless have done better to send some other princess of his family. Could it be forgotten that there was another woman, also a queen, and also bearing the name of Caroline, Marie Louise's grandmother, whom Marie Louise tenderly loved, and whose throne was occupied by Murat's wife? It should have been remembered that in the eyes of the court of Vienna, the true, the legitimate, queen of the Two Sicilies was not Caroline, Napoleon's sister, but another Caroline, the daughter of the great Marie Thérèse, the sister of Marie Antoinette. This is what the widow of General Durand says on the subject, in her interesting Memoirs: "Princess Caroline, Madame Murat, then Queen of Naples, had gone to Braunau to meet her sister-in-law. The Duchess of Montebello, a beautiful, sensible woman, the mother of five children, who had lost her husband in the last war, had been appointed a maid-of-honor,--a feeble compensation on the part of the Emperor for her sad bereavement. The Countess of Luçay, a gentle, kindly woman, thoroughly familiar with the customs of good society, was lady of the bedchamber. I shall speak later of the other ladies of the suite, whose functions, as established by etiquette, brought them very little into personal relations with the Empress. Each one of them had pretensions to which the presence of Madame Lazansky was an obstacle. They complained to Queen Caroline, and she decided on an act of despotism which deeply wounded her sister-in-law." This act was the dismissal of Madame Lazansky. By this course the Queen of Naples expected to add to her influence over the Empress; but, on the contrary, she only diminished it appreciably. "Madame Murat," continues Madame Durand, "was very anxious to acquire great power over Marie Louise, and she might have been successful had she taken, more precautions. Talleyrand said of her that she had the head of a Cromwell on the body of a pretty woman. Endowed by nature with a marked character, great intelligence, far-reaching ideas, a supple and crafty mind, with a grace and amiability that made her very charming, she lacked nothing but the power of hiding her love of rule; and when she missed her aim, it was because she had been too eager. The moment she saw the Austrian Princess, she imagined that she had read her character; but she was utterly mistaken. She took her timidity for weakness, her embarrassment for awkwardness; and, fancying that she needed only to give her orders, she hardened against her for all time the heart of the woman whom she expected to control."