O! cherished image of my infant heir! Thy surface does his lineaments impart: But ah! thou liv'st not--on this rock so bare His living form shall never glad my heart. My second self! how would thy presence cheer The settled sadness of thy hapless sire! Thine infancy with tenderness I'd rear, And thou shouldst warm my age with youthful fire. In thee a truly glorious crown I'd find, With thee, upon this rock, a heaven should own, Thy kiss would chase past conquests from my mind Which raised me, demi-god, on Gallia's throne. Perhaps the Emperor did not wish to show all the anguish by which he was being hourly devoured, but who can read these lines now without a pang of emotion? The overpowering conviction that his much-loved boy would be destroyed haunted him. Many people to this day believe that he was right, and that his son's health was sedulously undermined. But if that be so, the Imperial House of Austria will have to answer for it through all eternity. Napoleon knew that this much-treasured bust was at Plantation House, and said to O'Meara, if it had not been given up he would have told a tale which would have made the mothers of England execrate Lowe as a monster in human shape. But the Governments of Europe, as well as individuals, were spending vast sums of money on pamphleteering, and probably those who wrote the worst libels were the most highly paid. Therefore the women of England and of other countries were continuously having their minds saturated with poisonous statements. Many of them firmly believed Napoleon to be the anti-Christ, and it is only now that the world is beginning to see through the gigantic plot. It was stated that the bust had been executed at Leghorn by order of the faithless Marie Louise. In Hooper's "Life of Wellington," the statement that "she was grateful to the Duke for winning Waterloo, because in 1815 she had a lover who afterwards became her husband, and she was not in a condition to return with safety to her Imperial spouse," is hard to believe. This mother of the son the poet-Emperor sings about was deriving pleasure in playing cards for napoleons with the Duke who was regarded by her husband as one of his most determined executioners. Her supposed connection with the statue naturally gave it a larger interest, so the Emperor expressed a desire to see the gunner, and ordered Bertrand to get permission for him to visit Longwood.