ime with him. His wife
fell away and went back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the
Bonapartes only Pauline and Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.

Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two francs,
while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the
maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one
would have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great
part of her fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign
of 1815 she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he
had them with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured
by the English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her
sisters and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was
sincerely proud of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.

When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not
accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of
which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When he
died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the
particulars of that long agony."

As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her
last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince
Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she
had lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She
asked the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying
eyes; and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.

"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"

THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG

There is one famous woman whom history condems while at the same time
it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress
of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial
Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his
overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba, the
empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her
unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that
is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that
she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself
with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for
years,