t, crying, "Pardon, pardon,
restore to us our mother." The Emperor raised them tenderly, took the
petition from the hands of the aunt, read every word attentively, then
questioned the physician with much interest, looked at the children,
hesitated--but just as I, with all who witnessed this touching scene,
thought he was going to pronounce her pardon, he recoiled several steps,
exclaiming, "I cannot do it!" His changing color, eyes suffused with
tears, and choking voice, gave evidence of the struggle through which he
was passing; and witnessing this, his refusal appeared to me an act of
sublime courage.

Following upon the remembrance of these violent crimes, so much the more
worthy of condemnation since they were the work of a woman, who, in order
to abandon herself to them, was forced to begin by trampling under foot
all the gentle and modest virtues of her sex, I find recorded in my notes
an act of fidelity and conjugal tenderness which well deserved a better
result. The wife of an infantry colonel, unwilling to be parted from her
husband, followed the march of his regiment in a coach, and on the days
of battle mounted a horse and kept herself as near as possible to the
line. At Friedland she saw the colonel fall, pierced by a ball, hastened
to him with her servant, carried him from the ranks, and bore him away in
an ambulance, though too late, for he was already dead. Her grief was
silent, and no one saw her shed a tear. She offered her purse to a
surgeon, and begged him to embalm her husband's corpse, which was done as
well as possible under the circumstances; and she then had the corpse
wrapped in bandages, placed in a box with a lid, and put in a carriage,
and seating herself beside it, the heart-broken widow set out on her
return to France. A grief thus repressed soon affected her mind; and at
each halt she made on the journey, she shut herself up with her precious
burden, drew the corpse from its bog, placed it on a bed, uncovered its
face, and lavished on it the most tender caresses, talking to it as if it
was living, and slept beside it. In the morning she replaced her husband
in the box, and, resuming her gloomy silence, continued her route. For
several days her secret remained unknown, and was discovered only a few
days before she reached Paris.

The body had not been embalmed in such a manner as to preserve it long
from decay; and this soon reached such a point, that, when she arrived at
an inn, the horri