In 1814, while Napoleon was banished in the island of Elba, the Empress
Marie Louise and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples,
happened to meet at Vienna. The one, who had been deprived of the French
crown, was seeking to be put in possession of her new realm, the Duchy
of Parma; the other, who had fled from Sicily to escape the yoke of her
pretended protectors, the English, had come to demand the restitution of
her kingdom of Naples, where Murat continued to rule with the connivance
of Austria. This Queen, Marie Caroline, the daughter of the great
Empress, Maria Theresa, and the sister of the unfortunate Marie
Antoinette, had passed her life in detestation of the French Revolution
and of Napoleon, of whom she had been one of the most eminent victims.
Well, at the very moment when the Austrian court was doing its best to
make Marie Louise forget that she was Napoleon's wife and to separate
her from him forever, Marie Caroline was pained to see her granddaughter
lend too ready an ear to their suggestions. She said to the Baron de
Meneval, who had accompanied Marie Louise to Vienna: "I have had, in my
time, very good cause for complaining of your Emperor; he has persecuted
me and wounded my pride,--I was then at least fifteen years old,--but
now I remember only one thing,--that he is unfortunate." Then she went
on to say that if they tried to keep husband and wife apart, Marie
Louise would have to tie her bedclothes to her window and run away in
disguise. "That," she exclaimed, "that's what I should do in her place;
for when people are married, they are married for their whole life!"

If a woman like Queen Marie Caroline, a sister of Marie Antoinette, a
queen driven from her throne by Napoleon, could feel in this way, it is
easy to understand the severity with which those of the French who were
devoted to the Emperor, regarded the conduct of his ungrateful wife. In
the same way, Josephine, in spite of her occasionally frivolous conduct,