stones, valued at 900,000 fr. (£36,000), some earrings which had cost 400,000 fr. (£16,000), and the portrait of Napoleon set in a circle of sixteen single diamonds, valued at 600,000 fr. (£24,000). Napoleon, we see, could be lavish on behalf of a betrothed whose dowry was, after all, a modest one, amounting only to 500,000 fr. (£20,000).
VII.
THE GILDED CAGE.
If I had the space I might give a good many other details from the extraordinarily minute and laborious pages of M. Masson with regard to the gilding of Marie Louise's cage. With the same deadly and appalling quantity of detail which I observed when quoting from him with regard to Josephine, M. Masson has counted up the number of Marie Louise's chemises, dressing-gowns, stockings, etc.; for her toilet alone the new Empress was to have an allowance of 30,000 fr. (£1,200) a month, or 360,000 fr. (£14,400) a year.
"In Vienna she had nothing but a few poor jewels, which the wife of a bourgeois in Paris would have despised: a few ornaments for her hair, a few small pearls, a few in paste—in short, the jewel-case of a ruined Princess. She will have in Paris diamonds such as no Princess ever had before. In Austria she had modest rooms; in France she will occupy apartments the decoration of which the
