Empress of the French changed captors; she was the prisoner no longer of
the Czar's soldiers, but of her own father. Her conjugal affection was
not yet wholly extinct, and she reproached herself with not having
joined Napoleon at Fontainebleau; but her scruples were soon allayed by
the promise that she should soon see her husband again at Elba. She was
told that the treaty which had just been signed gave her, and after her,
her son, the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla; that the King of
Rome was henceforth the hereditary Duke of Parma; that if she had duties
as a wife, she also had duties as a mother; that she ought to gain the
good-will of the powers, and assure her child's future. They added that
she ought to give her husband time to establish himself at Elba, and
that meanwhile she would find in Vienna, near her loving parents, a few
weeks of moral and physical rest, which must be very necessary after so
many emotions and sufferings. Marie Louise, who had been brought up to
give her father strict obedience, regarded the advice of the Emperor of
Austria as commands which were not to be questioned, and April 23 she
left Rambouillet with her son for Vienna.

Did the dethroned Empress carry away with her a pleasant memory of
France and the French people? We do not think so; and, to be frank,
was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the
country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who
were fastening a rope to pull down the statue of the hero of Austerlitz
from its pedestal, the Vendome column? When her father, the Emperor
Francis I., had been defeated, driven from his capital, overwhelmed with
the blows of fate, his misfortunes had only augmented his popularity;
the more he suffered, the more he was loved. But for Napoleon, who was
so adored in the day of triumph, how was he treated in adversity? What
was the language of the Senate, lately so obsequious and servile? The
men on whom the Emperor had literally showered favors, called him