ch her wandering thoughts were focused--the
journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!

What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
fearful with a shuddering fear.

At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into
a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian,
while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French.
Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her--the
representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and
children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time
Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of
France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant
one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance.
But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike.
They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.

Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.
Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not
allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose
to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which
she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was
surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only
by salvos of French artillery.

In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but
that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor
of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had
never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess
flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his
whole being with a thrill of novelty. The p