Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/397

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Marie Louise.
381

death sinister rumours have been secretly current ever since. I have no time to tell that poor lad's pathetic story. The scanty pictures we have of him leave a pleasant impression. He was always attached to the memory of his father, showed an early love for a soldier's life, and dreamed constantly of a great future. But his tiny life was brief-he died of consumption. The best epitaph on his career was his own. A cradle had been presented to him when he was a new-born baby by the Viennese, and it was restored to the Schatzzimmer, or Treasury, at Vienna; and the Treasury was not far from the Capuchin Church in Vienna, where the bodies of the Hapsburg family lie. This will explain the saying of the young Prince.

"My cradle and my grave will be near to each other," said the Prince, when he was lying ill. "My birth, and my death, that is my whole history."

XXI.

IL SERENISSIMO.

The memory of Napoleon seems to have made little impression on Marie Louise. She declared afterwards that she had never loved him. Years after Napoleon's death, referring to her first marriage, she said, "I was sacrificed." When somebody asked her how she felt the change from the dignity of an Empress to the poor status of a Grand Duchess, she exclaimed: