g was ever more beloved than this daughter
of Sweden. Even the Elector's mother, a pattern of the most rigid
propriety, had ever a kind word and a caress for her; his neglected wife
made a friend and confidante of the woman of whom she said, "Since I
must have a rival, I am glad she should be one so sweet and lovable."

We must hasten over the years that followed--years during which Augustus
had no eyes for any other woman than his "uncrowned Queen," and during
which she bore him a son who, as Maurice of Saxony, was to win many
laurels in the years to come. It must suffice to say that never was
Royal liaison conducted with so much propriety, or was marked by so much
mutual devotion and loyalty.

But it was not in the nature of Augustus the Strong to remain always
true to any woman, however charming; and although Aurora's reign lasted
longer than that of any half-dozen of her rivals, it, too, had its
ending. Within a month of the birth of her son, Augustus, now King of
Poland, was caught in the toils of another enslaver, the beautiful
Countess Esterle. Aurora realised that her sun had set, and
relinquishing her sceptre without a murmur, she retired to the convent
of Quedlinburg, of which Augustus had appointed her Abbess.

Thus in an atmosphere of peace and piety, beloved of all for her
sweetness and charity, Aurora of Koenigsmarck spent her last years until
the end came one day in the year 1728; and in the crypt of the convent
she loved so well she sleeps her last sleep.

CHAPTER X

THE SISTER OF AN EMPEROR

When Napoleon Bonaparte, the shabby, sallow-faced, out-of-work captain
of artillery, was kicking his heels in morose idleness at Marseilles,
and whiling away the dull hours in making love to Desiree Clary, the
pretty daughter of the silk-merchant in the Rue des Phoceens, his
sisters were living with their mother, the Signora Letizia, in a sordid
fourth-floor apartment in a slum near the Cannebiere, and running wild
in the Marseilles streets.

Strange tales are told of those early years of the sisters of an
Emperor-to-be--Elisa Bonaparte, future Grand Duchess of Tuscany;
Pauline, embryo Princess Borghese; and Caroline, who was to wear a crown
as Queen of Naples--high-spirited, beautiful girls, brimful of frolic
and fun, laughing at their poverty, decking themselves out in cheap,
home-made finery, and flirting outrageously with every good-looking
young man who was willing to pay homage to their _beaux