Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
In 1814, while Napoleon was banished in the island of Elba, the EmpressMarie Louise and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples,happened to meet at Vienna. The one, who had been deprived of the Frenchcrown, was seeking to be put in possession of her new realm, the Duchyof Parma; the other, who had fled from Sicily to escape the yoke of herpretended protectors, the English, had come to demand the restitution ofher kingdom of Naples, where Murat continued to rule with the connivanceof Austria. This Queen, Marie Caroline, the daughter of the greatEmpress, Maria Theresa, and the sister of the unfortunate MarieAntoinette, had passed her life in detestation of the French Revolutionand 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 tomake Marie Louise forget that she was Napoleon's wife and to separateher from him forever, Marie Caroline was pained to see her granddaughterlend too ready an ear to their suggestions. She said to the Baron deMéneval, who had accompanied Marie Louise to Vienna: "I have had, in mytime, very good cause for complaining of your Emperor; he has persecutedme and wounded my pride,—I was then at least fifteen years old,—butnow I remember only one thing,—that he is unfortunate." Then she wenton to say that if they tried to keep husband and wife apart, MarieLouise would have to tie her bedclothes to her window and run away indisguise. "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, aqueen driven from her throne by Napoleo