lawyer. Napoleon frowned darkly, and answered
with an air of embarrassment, "Go; our destinies are about to be
fulfilled." Bernadotte said he had not heard his words distinctly:
Napoleon repeated them; and they parted. Bernadotte was received with an
enthusiastic welcome in Stockholm; and, notwithstanding the unpleasant
circumstances under which Napoleon had dismissed him, the French
alliance continued to be maintained. The private history of the
transaction was not likely to be divulged at the time; and the natural
as well as universal notion was, that Sweden, governed in effect by
Marshal Bernadotte as crown prince, had become almost as mere a
dependence of France as Naples under King Joachim Murat, or Westphalia
under King Jerome Buonaparte.

The war, meanwhile, continued without interruption in the Peninsula;
whither, but for his marriage, Napoleon would certainly have repaired in
person after the peace of Schoenbrunn left him at ease on his German
frontier. Although the new alliance had charms enough to detain him in
France, it by no means withdrew his attention from the state of that
fair kingdom which still mocked Joseph with the shadow of a crown. In
the open field, indeed, the French appeared everywhere triumphant,
except only where the British force from Portugal interfered, and in
almost every district of Spain the fortresses were in their hands; yet
the spirit of the people remained wholly unsubdued. The invaders could
not count an inch of soil their own beyond their outposts. Their troops
continued to be harassed and thinned by the indomitable _guerillas_ or
partisan companies; and, even in the immediate neighbourhood of their
strongest garrisons, the people assembled to vote for representatives in
the Cortes, which had at last been summoned to meet in Cadiz, there to
settle the national government, during the King's absence, on a regular
footing.

The battle of Ocana left the central part of Spain wholly undefended;
and Soult, Victor and Mortier, forcing the passes of the Sierra Morena,
made themselves masters, early in the year of Jaen, Cordova, Grenada,
Malaga, and Seville itself. Cadiz, to which the Central Junta had ere
this retired, was now garrisoned by a large Spanish force, including the
army of Estremadura, under the Duke D'Albuquerque, and a considerable
detachment of English troops from Gibraltar; and Soult sat down before
the place in form. Could he have taken Cadiz, no fortress of importance