Reichstadt. He was the author of a poem on the deeds of the great Napoleon, and wished to present it to his son. He waited upon the Grand Chamberlain to the Emperor, making known the object of his visit, and was referred to Count Diebechstein, whose especial care it was to guard the young prince from what might be considered dangerous intrusions, so very properly M. Mery did not obtain the desired interview, his poem being of a political and exciting nature. Yet it has been surmised that, notwithstanding the seclusion in which his boyhood was passed, some indirect communication had, however, been made to the lad; for he appeared absorbed with some idea that seemed to have taken possession of his mind; he did not attend to the accustomed duties of his studies; when on a sudden, striking his forehead with vehemence, at the same time testifying a degree of impatience, he suffered these words to escape him :— "But what do they intend to do with me, then? Do they imagine that I possess the genius of my father?" From this it was inferred by his governors that some letter or indiscreet slip of paper had reached him, and that for a moment he had been made acquainted with the strict tutelage under which he had been placed; or perhaps of the desire of the French people, then so dissatisfied with the rule of Charles X., for him to take the place of his father upon the throne of France. He was strictly interrogated. At first he refused to answer; but being at length in pressed by his preceptors with the dread of the many evils that would follow his action upon such unauthorised communications, without the sanction of his grandfather, he at once, of his own free will, made a promise that he would never afterwards read any similar written paper that he might receive, but hand it over unperused to his governors. Various attempts of a like nature were made to hold communication with him, but from this time all were in vain, for he most honourably kept his promise. His honour was pledged and he would not violate the sacredness of that pledge. His word was his bond, and truth was to him a brighter glory than any that could have been conferred by even an imperial diadem. Hence it is that those who are endowed with true nobility of soul and character do not require the force of armies or the splendour of courts to give them scope. Honour lives as freely in the bare walls of a cottage as in the splendour of a palace, and truth loses none of its brightness although fixed in the bonnet of the humblest clown. Without the exercise of these high qualities the young Napoleon would have hardly been a man; with them, not all the walls which surrounded him, and shut him out from the world, could have made him less than a prince with the inheritance of his father. This love of honour and truth was at once recognised by his grandfather, the Emperor Francis, who had him trained up to the military profession. After passing through various subordinate grades, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in June, 1831, having command of a battalion of Hungarian infantry, then in garrison at Vienna. Here he was most assiduous in his military duties, and became a great favourite with the court and the garrison; but he had outgrown his strength, being extremely tall and slender. His constitution gave way, and the symptoms of rapid consumption could no longer be doubted. He was removed to Schönbrun by the advice of his medical attendants; but though he rallied for a time he never finally recovered. The following touching remarks occur in a letter from Vienna, inserted in a Paris paper some few weeks before his death. "Young Napoleon is certainly dying. Malpetti, his physician, has no hopes of him. It is a pulmonary consumption that is destroying him. The poor young man said a few days since, 'So young, is there no remedy? My birth and my death will be the only points of remembrance.' Some time since his mother sent to him the superb cradle presented to him at his birth by the city of Paris. He placed it aside, saying, 'My tomb will be near my cradle.' was at Paris," observes the writer, "at the time of his birth, and present at the grand review which Napoleon gave upon the occasion, in order to present to the troops the infant already decorated with a crown. Who would then have anticipated that, proscribed like him through civil discords, I should see him die at Vienna ! I His loss will be much regretted, for he is good, true, and kind-hearted." And so the young prince passed away from earth, on the 22nd of July, 1832, aged 21, without knowing either much of its pleasures or its pains, and less of its wickedness. How great was his triumph in death! How great through innocence and nobility of mind and the inward conviction of truth and right! It is true that man is born to live in the world, to fight the battles of the world, and to spurn the world's temptations to sin, but there is no state in which man is not responsible to his Maker, or not called upon to do his duty in that state of life in which he may be placed-firmly, resolutely, and nobly. The example of the young Napoleon teaches us to submit ourselves cheerfully to that destiny which Providence has decreed, and never, for the sake of our self-aggrandisement, to jeopardise the well-being of others. |