of your Majesty—I know too well what value you attach to family ties, not to feel a happy conviction that you will hasten, whatever may be the inclinations of your Cabinet and your policy, to help me in pressing forward the moment of meeting between a wife and her husband, and a child with his father."
XX.
NEIPPERG.
Marie Louise had found another man who obtained over her an ascendency which Napoleon never could attain. The intrigue which ended in making Marie Louise the mistress of Count Neipperg, is obscure; but there is a general impression that Metternich and her own father were responsible for it. Neipperg was a professional lady-killer, was brave, agreeable, a musician, and apparently an amiable man at bottom. While Napoleon was at Elba, Marie Louise was at Aixles-Bains, with Neipperg in her train. Later on they took an excursion to Switzerland together, and before Napoleon died, she had borne Neipperg at least one child.
The Powers had bestowed upon her the Duchy of Parma. Neipperg was her Prime Minister, and governed the kingdom well enough to give it prosperity, and to make himself much beloved. She did not see much of her son by Napoleon—an unhappy and interesting boy, over whose early
