and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of
bastards."

Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care to
dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its
greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian
wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare
fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,
her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to
crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad
of history ignore it with averted eyes.

In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does
it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in
literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the
theme in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of
Thirty."

As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the case,
giving them in such order that their full significance may be
understood.

In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself
free from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of
his marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she
had been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life
together she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her
from habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the
wrong which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost
repulsive. And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and
without a son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements
which he had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble
into nothingness when he should die.

No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who
in his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost
declassee widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that