eeing from her
husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and
letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.

Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him
into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when
her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave
him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,
perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She
would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been
permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring
to secure his freedom.

But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.
Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican
superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing
here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on
the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.

On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of
Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with
his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he
seemed a very demigod of battle.

True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and
overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically
driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had
speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and
most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and
Russia humbled to the very ground before him.

Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put
into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great;
but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the
decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in
the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the
Prussian forces to the Russian border.

As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands
to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down
to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a