What comfort she expected to find at Rome it might be difficult to say. The Pope, so far as his temporal power went, was the mere creature of Napoleon; even more dependent on the support of Napoleon’s bayonets than Maximilian himself. Perhaps Charlotte expected him to intercede with Napoleon; perhaps she expected him to work a miracle—she was quite mad enough by this time to take the pastoral staff for a magician’s wand. At Miramar, as at Puebla, her proceedings betokened irresponsible frivolity. She paused there to give a _fête_ in celebration of the anniversary of Mexican independence: that independence for which the Mexicans were, at that very hour, fighting against her husband. She told the President of the Trieste Chamber of Commerce that Maximilian might, in the course of the next year, “take a little trip to Europe,” in which case he would not fail to pay a visit to Trieste. Francis Joseph sent his brother, the Archduke Louis Victor, to see her there; but sympathy was all that he could offer. He lay at the proud foot of the Prussian conqueror, and was helpless. So Charlotte at last went on to Rome, and there the crisis came. There was no lack of ceremony, no lack of consideration. The Pope received her in a manner befitting her rank, and went to her hotel to return her visit. She went to see him again, and then, in a Vatican ante-chamber, broke out into a violence of word and action which permitted of no doubt as to her mental state, though the attempt was made to mask the truth:— “The words ‘mental alienation,’” wrote an official, “have been pronounced. The truth is that the Empress is in a state of excitement which indicates serious nervous agitation, but does not preclude the exercise of her reasoning faculties. This excitement is specially remarked whenever Mexico and the Mexicans are mentioned in her presence.” [Illustration: CHARLOTTE, WIFE OF MAXIMILIAN, EMPEROR OF MEXICO.] “The crisis demands rest—mental as well as bodily; and the Pope has, for that reason, assigned the Empress an apartment in the Vatican, close to his own, while awaiting the arrival of the Comte de Flandre, who will conduct his august sister to Miramar.” But rest was of no avail. Charlotte was not only mad, but a monomaniac. She had the delusion that there was a conspiracy to poison her; she was insisting upon trying all her food on the cat before she would touch it. A telegram had to be sent to Maximilian:— “Her Majesty the Empress Charlotte was seized, on October 4th, at Rome, by a cerebral congestion of the gravest character. The august Princess has been taken back to Miramar.”