r predecessor; and,
at length, found it necessary to give up his own visits to Malmaison,
which for a time were not unfrequent.

Napoleon, in his exile, said that "the Spanish ulcer" and the Austrian
match were the two main causes of his ruin;--and they both contributed
to it largely, though by no means equally. His alliance with the
haughtiest of the old sovereign houses gave deep offence indeed to that
great party in France, who, though willing to submit to a Dictator,
still loathed the name of hereditary monarchy. Nothing, perhaps, could
have shocked those men more grievously than to see the victorious heir
and representative of their revolution seeking to mix his blood with
that of its inveterate enemies, and making himself free, as it were, of
what they had been accustomed to call the old-established "corporation
of tyrants." Another, and, it is to be hoped, as large a class of his
subjects, were disgusted with his abandonment of the wife of his youth,
for the sake of gratifying his vanity and ambition. There were also, we
may easily believe, not a few royalists of the old school who had
hitherto acquiesced in his sway the more easily, because he seemed
destined to die childless, and in a contest for the throne of France,
they flattered themselves the legitimate heir of the monarchy might
outweigh any of his remoter kindred. And, lastly, it is not improvable
that some of Napoleon's marshals had accustomed themselves to dream of
events such as occurred on the death of Alexander the Great. But making
all allowance for these exceptions, it is hardly possible to doubt that
a vast proportion of the upper classes of society in France must have
been disposed to hail the Emperor's alliance with the house of Austria,
as a pledge of his desire to adopt, henceforth, a more moderate line of
policy as to his foreign relations; or that his throne must have been
strengthened in the eyes of the nation at large by the prospect--soon
realised--of a son of his own blood to fill it after him. Napoleon's own
opinion was, that the error lay, not in seeking a bride of imperial
birth, but in choosing her at Vienna. Had he persisted in his demands,
the Czar, he doubted not, would have granted him his sister; the proud
dreams of Tilsit would have been realised, and Paris and St. Petersburg
become the only two capitals of Europe.

The Emperor's new marriage was speedily followed by another event, which
showed how little the ordinary ties an