e Louise bade her father a sad
farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage,
while cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful
peal.

She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had
never seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station
in the outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father,
which are a commentary upon her state of mind:

I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He
will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my
duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.

There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl
going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically
to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as
her father wished.

One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She
was surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every
town the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared
at her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on.
Each morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great
cluster of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown
husband who was to meet her at her journey's end.

There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the
journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!

What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
fearful with a shuddering fear.

At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed
into a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which