"Ah, my God, I am happier here; and that period of my life only lives in my memory as a miserable dream."
She herself gave the best explanation of the kind of character which the training of a Court produces in its women.
"We Princesses," she said, "are not brought up as other women, nor with the same family sentiments. We are always prepared for events which may transport us from our relatives and give us new and sometimes antagonistic interests. Look at my poor sister who went to live in Brazil, unhappy and far from all belonging to her."
It was, perhaps, this training that enabled her to so easily change her allegiance, to so calmly bear her transformations of fortune. Even the death of Napoleon seems to have made little impression on her.
"According to a letter written by Count Neipperg to Prince Metternich, and quoted by M. Saint-Amand, she puts on mourning (but not widow's weeds), while the members of her household were ordered to wear it for three months. Two funeral services were celebrated in honour of the man who had once stood in the relation of husband to the Duchess of Parma, while a notice of his death was at the same time inserted in the Gazette de Parme. The astute and diplomatic Neipperg actually wrote to inform Prince Metternich that this insertion had appeared without any
