When she deserted him, he was more ready to excuse and pity her than to
cast blame upon her. He looked upon her as the slave and victim of the
Viennese court. Moreover, he was in perfect ignorance of her love for
the Count of Neipperg, and no shadow of jealousy tormented him at Saint
Helena. "You may be sure," he said a few days before his death, "that if
the Empress makes no effort to ease my woes, it is because she is kept
surrounded by spies, who never let my sufferings come to her ears; for
Marie Louise is virtue itself." A pleasant delusion, which consoled the
final moments of the great man, whose last thoughts were for his wife
and son.

We fancy that the Emperor of Austria was sincere in the protestations
of affection and friendship which he made to Napoleon shortly after the
wedding. He then entertained no thoughts of dethroning or fighting him.
He had hopes of securing great advantage from the French alliance, and
he would have been much surprised if any one had foretold to him how
soon he would become one of the most active agents in the overthrow of
this son-in-law to whom he expressed such affectionate feelings. In 1811
he was sincerely desirous that the King of Rome should one day succeed
Napoleon on the throne of the vast empire. At that time hatred of France
had almost died out in Austria; it was only renewed by the disastrous
Russian campaign. The Austrians, who could not wholly forget the past,
did not love Napoleon well enough to remain faithful to him in
disaster. Had he been fortunate, the hero of Wagram would have preserved
his father-in-law's sympathy and the Austrian alliance; but being
unfortunate, he lost both at once. Unlike the rulers of the old
dynasties, he was condemned either to perpetual victory or to ruin. He
needed triumphs instead of ancestors, and the slightest loss of glory
was for him the token of irremediable decay; incessant victory was the
only condition on which he could keep his throne, his wife, his son,