had never seen, and at the same time to demand an enlargement of her
territory in return for the sacrifices of the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies in behalf of the common cause of the crowned heads and the
Pope. She set sail from Palermo, June 9, 1800, with her second son, the
Prince of Salerno, and her three unmarried daughters, Marie Christine,
Marie Amelie, and Marie Antoinette.

The ideas, the feelings, the principles, the prejudices, the hates, the
hopes, the interests, of Queen Marie Caroline were the same as those of
her son-in-law, the Emperor, of her daughter, the Empress, and of her
other daughter, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. At Vienna she found the
same political feelings as at Naples. On her way thither she had a great
joy,--the news of the surrender of the French at Genoa, which caused
her to utter cries of delight; and a great sorrow,--the tidings of
the Austrian defeat at Marengo, which was such a blow that she fell
unconscious and narrowly escaped dying of apoplexy. We may readily
understand the influence which a woman of this character must have
had on the mind of her daughter, the Empress of Germany, and of her
granddaughter, the future Empress of the French. Doubtless the young
Marie Louise would have been much astonished if any one had prophesied
to her that she would marry this Bonaparte who was represented to her as
a monster. Marie Caroline did not leave Schoenbrunn to return to her own
kingdom until July 29, 1802. For two years she had worked persistently
and not without success, to augment, if that was possible, the
detestation which the court, the aristocracy, and the whole Austrian
people felt for France and French ideas. When Marie Louise was a child,
and with her little brothers and sisters used to play with toy-soldiers,
the ugliest, blackest, and most repulsive of them was always picked out
and called Bonaparte, and this one they used to prick with pins and
denounce in every way.