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Updated: June 25, 2025
While he was walking away with her, the Emperor Francis turned to Ludovica, and, tapping his forehead, whispered cautiously, "I was right! There is something wrong in Napoleon's head." The brilliant court ball ended, and Napoleon retired to his cabinet. He seemed more careworn than he had ever allowed any of his attendants to notice.
Let me confess to you," he whispered, standing near the door of the reception-room, "that his words almost frightened me. Ludovica smiled. "Do you believe, then, my husband, that he has really a heart?" she asked. "But as to his head, the princes and nations of Europe, I hope, will soon find an opportunity to set it right." "Hush!" said Francis again; "he is my son-in-law."
The smile was still on his face; he sat down on this chair, and, turning to the empress, his mother-in-law, asked her, almost humbly, if she would grant him the happiness of sitting by her side. Ludovica felt flattered; the gentle, suppliant voice of the emperor, his smile, and flashing eyes, exerted their wonted charm upon her.
Her majesty has ordered him to deliver his message only to the archduke himself." "Let him come in," said the archduke. Conrad opened the door, and the imperial messenger appeared on the threshold. "Her majesty the Empress Ludovica sends her respects to the archduke," said the messenger, approaching the archduke respectfully.
There was the Emperor Francis of Austria, who had arrived but a few hours before, to greet his beloved son-in-law, whom he had not seen since the battle of Austerlitz. The emperor was accompanied by his young consort, the Empress Ludovica.
At first Ludovica had submitted to this strange conduct on the part of her husband with proud indifference, and not the slightest murmur, not the mildest reproach, had escaped her lips. For it was not from love that she had chosen this husband, but from ambition and pride.
Francis had locked himself up with him in his cabinet, and conversed with him in so low a tone that Hudelist, although he had applied his ear to the keyhole, had been unable to hear a single word of importance; and the emperor was so reticent as to the subject of his conversation with Thugut, that the Empress Ludovica, although, after Thugut's departure, she had sought frequently to fathom the meaning of his presence there in her interviews with the emperor, did not receive the slightest information from her husband.
Let us speak of something else than polities; that is all that I ask of your friendship." "Well, then, let us drop the subject," said the empress, with a deep sigh. "Your majesty will be kind enough to permit me now to ask a favor of you?" "Ah, you speak as if there were anything that I could refuse you," exclaimed the emperor, smiling. Ludovica bowed slightly.
Such a proposition was welcome to Charles VIII, as we might suppose from our knowledge of his character; a magnificent prospect was opened to him as by an enchanter: what Ludovica Sforza was offering him was virtually the command of the Mediterranean, the protectorship of the whole of Italy; it was an open road, through Naples and Venice, that well might lead to the conquest of Turkey or the Holy Land, if he ever had the fancy to avenge the disasters of Nicapolis and Mansourah.
A memorial which he presented in 1618 to the Chamber of Commerce at Paris discloses his dream of what might be: a city at Quebec named Ludovica, a city equal in size to St Denis and filled with noble buildings grouped round the Church of the Redeemer.
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