and the suburbs.' I told His Majesty, in reply, that these disturbances of the public peace were doubtless the last efforts of a few foreign intriguers who are always on hand in this city; that since the escorts were changed at Braunau, nothing was simpler or more natural than Madame Lazansky's return; and that to allay the excitement, nothing more was necessary than to spread abroad the rumor that orders had been received from here recalling that lady as soon as the Empress was accustomed to her new court. 'That's just what I have already done,' resumed the Emperor, 'and it is to be hoped that the same things will be said in France, as the best way of silencing discontent.'" A few hours later Prince Metternich, the father of the celebrated minister, who in his son's absence had charge of the Ministry, had an interview with the Ambassador about this painful incident. "Prince Metternich," Count Otto adds in the same despatch, "came to see me to give me some fuller details about the events of the previous night. He had been kept up until three in the morning, receiving the reports of the police, and having the ringleaders arrested. They had gone about in the coffee-houses, and had carried their effrontery so far as to say that the French army was again in motion, and that Napoleon's sole aim had been to distract the attention of this court." Meanwhile Marie Louise was continuing her triumphal journey. At Stuttgart she found the court and the population as enthusiastic as at Munich; there, too, even illuminations, a state dinner, a levee, a theatrical representation. At Stuttgart the Empress received a letter from Napoleon, brought by the Count of Beauvau. Another letter from the Emperor was delivered to her by the Count of Bondy at Carlsruhe, where her reception was no less brilliant than at Munich and Stuttgart. March 23, Marie Louise was at Rastadt, where the Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, who had married Stéphanie de Beauharnais, Napoleon's adopted daughter, gave her a breakfast. At the bridge over the Rhine, which the Empress reached at five in the evening, she was met by twenty French generals and several divisions under arms. The bridge was decorated with flags; bells were pealing; salvos of artillery were roaring. At the entrance of the bridge the sovereign was welcomed by the Prefect of the Lower Rhine, and at the city gates by the Mayor. "It was at Strasbourg," says General de Ségur, "that France, in its turn, greeted Marie Louise. The enthusiasm on this German and military frontier was all the more lively, sincere, and wide-spread, because the Archduchess was regarded as the most brilliant trophy of the success of our arms, and it was thought that after eighteen years of warfare they had in her a pledge of certain peace."