of Louis XVI. in Portugal, and later in Venice, who took orders after
his wife's death and became Bishop of Amiens under the Restoration.
Marie Louise, who died December 17, 1847, aged fifty-six, lived in
surroundings directly hostile to Napoleon's glory. Her ideas in
her last years grew to resemble those of her childhood, and she was
perpetually denouncing the principles of the French Revolution and of
the liberalism which pursued her even in the Duchy of Parma. France has
reproached her with abandoning Napoleon, and still more perhaps for
having given two obscure successors to the most famous man of modern
times.

If Marie Louise is not a very sympathetic figure, no story is more
touching and more melancholy than that of her son's life and death. It
is a tale of hope deceived by reality; of youth and beauty cut down
in their flower; of the innocent paying for the guilty; of the victim
marked by fate as the expiation for others. One might say that he came
into the world only to give a lasting example of the instability of
human greatness. When he was at the point of death, worn out with
suffering, he said sadly, "My birth and my death comprise my whole
history." But this short story is perhaps richer in instruction than the
longest reigns. The Emperor's son will be known for many ages by
his three titles,--the King of Rome, Napoleon II., and the Duke
of Reichstadt. He had already inspired great poets, and given to
philosophers and Christians occasion for profound thoughts. His memory
is indissolubly bound up with that of his father, and posterity will
never forget him. Even those who are most virulent against Napoleon's
memory, feel their wrath melt when they think of his son; and when at
the Church of the Capuchins, in Vienna, a monk lights with a flickering
torch the dark tomb of the great captain's son, who lies by the side
of his grandfather, Francis II., who was at once his protector and his