o 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 free
and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.

Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful
mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the
Emperor of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles
themselves to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant
soldiers, who believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting
for the final independence of their native land.

Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among
the Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something
like adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift
what all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards.
Princ