It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded up his own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less capable judges. Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following terms:--"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult; they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory they did not understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest and most perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you because it cannot." "Peace with Austria is only a truce." His diagnoses were confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed in after years. The marvel is that he did not allow himself to benefit by his shrewd observations at a moment when so much depended on strength, not vacillation and weakness. A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian princess sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty ideals (?) of the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at Schoenbrunn after she had deserted Napoleon. He said to her:--"As my daughter, all that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you." The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being that so long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all that he had was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to be at all wifely and cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the sovereign, and as readily gore her as he would Napoleon if, in his patriarchal wisdom, he judged national interests were at stake. His spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real ultra-monarchical ring about it. But it was meant for other ears and a purpose other than that of making his daughter shudder. So far as she was concerned, he might have saved himself any anxiety on that score. She bowed her head in conformity, and swiftly cast her amorous eyes on Neipperg, a man after his and her own heart. This was the culminating event that brought her destiny with Napoleon to an end, though _he_ tried to avert it, and the causes are summarised in his own pathetic language, clearly expressed from time to time. His nephew, Napoleon III., taking a lesson from his folly, refused to be buffeted into political matrimony by any of the matchmaking factions. When his turn came he acted with independence and wisdom by ignoring the blandishments of meddling advisers and royal conventionalism, and elected to marry the lady on whom he had set his affections.