nes of royalty
are concerned, as one of the most cataclysmic periods in the annals of
mankind.

HUMILIATION IMMEDIATE AND COMPLETE

Of all the monarchs of the earth, at the time when Baha'u'llah,
proclaiming His Message to them, revealed the Suriy-i-Muluk in Adrianople,
the most august and influential were the French Emperor and the Supreme
Pontiff. In the political and religious spheres they respectively held the
foremost rank, and the humiliation both suffered was alike immediate and
complete.

Napoleon III, son of Louis Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I), was, few
historians will deny, the most outstanding monarch of his day in the West.
"The Emperor," it was said of him, "was the state." The French capital was
the most attractive capital in Europe, the French court "the most
brilliant and luxurious of the XIX century." Possessed of a fixed and
indestructible ambition, he aspired to emulate the example, and finish the
interrupted work, of his imperial uncle. A dreamer, a conspirator, of a
shifting nature, hypocritical and reckless, he, the heir to the Napoleonic
throne, taking advantage of the policy which sought to foster the reviving
interest in the career of his great prototype, had sought to overthrow the
monarchy. Failing in his attempt, he was deported to America, was later
captured in the course of an attempted invasion of France, was condemned
to perpetual captivity, and escaped to London, until, in 1848, the
Revolution brought about his return, and enabled him to overthrow the
constitution, after which he was proclaimed emperor. Though able to
initiate far-reaching movements, he possessed neither the sagacity nor the
courage required to control them.

To this man, the last emperor of the French, who, through foreign
conquest, had striven to endear his dynasty to the people, who even
cherished the ideal of making France the center of a revived Roman
Empire--to such a man the Exile of Akka, already thrice banished by Sultan
'Abdu'l-'Aziz, had transmitted, from behind the walls of the barracks in
which He lay imprisoned, an Epistle which bore this indubitably clear
arraignment and ominous prophecy: "We testify that that which wakened thee
was not their cry [Turks drowned in the Black Sea], but the promptings of
thine own passions, for We tested thee, and found thee wanting.... Hadst
thou been sincere in thy words, thou wouldst not have cast behind thy back
the Book of God [previous Tablet], when it