Marie Louise came to Paris a frightened girl, for Napoleon had no reputation for gentleness, but she seems to have found him endurable. It is even related that at one time when he caught her experimenting with the making of an omelette he gave yet one more instance of his omniscience by playfully teaching her how to prepare it. That he dropped it on the floor would seem to prove that Jove occasionally nods. In the following March enthusiastic crowds about the Tuileries listened anxiously for the cannon which should announce by twenty-one reports the birth of a daughter to the empress, by one hundred and one the coming of a son. Their joy rose to frenzy when the twenty-second boom announced an heir who received the title of the King of Rome, and for days the city was given over to rejoicing. Napoleon himself told the news to Josephine in a letter dated Paris, March 22, 1811 My dear, I have your letter. I thank you for it. My son is fat, and in excellent health. I trust he may continue to improve. He has my chest, my mouth and my eyes. I hope he will fulfill his destiny. Josephine, who was staying at Evreux, commanded a festival to be held in the town, and when she returned to Malmaison Napoleon secretly had the baby sent to the country for her to see. Yet it soon seemed as if the loss of Josephine had, indeed, deprived Napoleon of his good fortune. He quarreled with the pope and even kept him a prisoner in the palace of Fontainebleau. This quarrel alienated Catholic Frenchmen, and they included practically all those with Bourbon leanings. To punish Russia for not agreeing to his plan for humiliating England by cutting off its trade with the continent he entered the country in the invasion which destroyed his army by a death more bitter than that encountered in battle. During his fearful retreat from Moscow two adventurers almost succeeded in bringing about a _coup d’état_ in Paris by reading to a body of the soldiers a proclamation purporting to be from the Senate, and by capturing the Prefect of Police and the City Hall. The news reached Napoleon and when he realized that so much had been accomplished without any outcry being made for a continuance of the Napoleonic line, he left the army and went post haste to the city, where he found hostile placards constantly being posted. His presence quieted the ominous disturbance, and he drove impressively with the empress to the Senate in a glassed carriage drawn by cream-colored horses, and there and elsewhere spread falsely reassuring reports minimizing the losses in Russia. Very soon, however, the truth carried mourning to almost every home in France, and with it hatred of the man who had brought it to pass. In January, 1813, the Emperor left once more for the front after appointing Marie Louise as regent and confiding her and the King of Rome to the care of the National Guard assembled before the Tuileries.