y another
_plebiscite_ to the people. The _plebiscite_ is a universal suffrage
vote of yes or no, in answer to some question put by the Government
to the nation. The question this time was: Shall the prince president
become emperor? There were 7,800,000 ayes, and 224,000 noes.

When the news of this overwhelming success reached the Elysee,
Louis Napoleon sat so still and unmoved, smoking his cigar, that
his cousin, Madame Baiocchi, rushing up to him, shook him, and
exclaimed: "Is it possible that you are made of stone?"

Having thus secured his elevation by the almost universal consent
of Frenchmen, the new emperor's next step was to insure his dynasty
by a marriage that might probably give heirs to the throne. He
chose the title Napoleon III. because the son of the Great Napoleon
had been Napoleon II. for a few days after his father's abdication
at Fontainebleau in 1814. The next heir to the imperial dignities
(Lucien Bonaparte having refused anything of the kind for himself
or for his family) was Jerome Napoleon, familiarly called Plon-Plon.
He was the only son of Jerome Bonaparte and the Princess Catherine
of Wuertemberg. But Prince Napoleon, though clever, was wilful and
eccentric, and made a boast of being a Red Republican; moreover,
his father's Baltimore marriage had made his legitimacy more than
doubtful,--at any rate, Louis Napoleon was by no means desirous
of passing on to him the succession to the empire; and being now
forty-four years old, he was desirous of marrying as soon as possible.

When a boy, it had been proposed to marry him to his cousin Mathilde,
and something like an attachment had sprung up between them; but
after his fiasco at Strasburg he was no longer considered an eligible
suitor either for Princess Mathilde or another cousin who had been
named for him, a princess of Baden. Princess Mathilde was married
to the Russian banker, Prince Demidorff; but when Louis Napoleon
became prince president, he requested her to preside at the Elysee.

The new emperor, or his advisers, looked round at the various
marriageable princesses belonging to the smaller courts of Germany.
The sister of that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern whose selection for
the throne of Spain led afterwards to the Franco-Prussian war, was
spoken of; but the lady most seriously considered was the Princess
Adelaide of Hohenlohe. She was daughter of Queen Victoria's half-sister
Feodora; and to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, as he