their prisoner, by permitting a feeble woman to go two thousand leagues to console her brother. When I learned this wish of the Princess Borghese, I confess she grew many cubits in worth in my eyes; I understood all the greatness of this act, and saw nothing worldly in it, for indeed there was nothing of the world in it. To judge differently would be to deny all magnanimity in human hearts. We know, by long observation, that subjects of the sim. ple character of our engraving for this week, find warmer welcome in the kindly hearts and unsophisticated feelings of the many than the more gaudy and artificial subjects of most engravings. The picture now before the reader will be but the foreground of a broad and sad landscape of the heart, and in that suggestive quality, it compensates for what may be wanting in brilliant effect and effort of design. We commend it to those whose feelings will supply this back-was a beautiful trait, and doubly meritorious on account of ground. THE PRINCESS PAULINE. THE death of the Princess Borghese is one of those scenes in the world which presents the strongest motives for reflection, and, above all, serves to impress on our minds the importance of charity in the judgment we form of any individual, whoever that individual may be. For myself, I have felt keen remorse in casting on the past a look upon what I have said and thought of this extraordinary woman, who inspired me with warm friendship and painful sentiments at the same time; for I have reproached her for the blushes she caused her friends, when her name was coupled with circumstances which the most devoted friend could not excuse, and in which her frivolity banished all feelings of devotedness. She was loved; but that childishness in her life, that reckless carelessness of opinion, the result (one would suppose) of her weakness of soul, gave rise to hostile opinious among the society that judged her, until her extraordinary beauty exercised its empire and caused every knee to bend before her; but, as soon as she was gone, the spell was broken, and opinions resumed their severe accents. All at once, a voice is heard, saying: This determination of the Princess Pauline was a grand, the fearful state of her health. For several years the physicians had given up all hopes of effecting her cure, and Corvisart had given her to understand she would not live to be old. The birth of her son, of Dermid, the only child she ever had, and who was the son of General Leclerc, her first husband, condemned her to an early death. It was not, then, to assume an interesting attitude, nor for the sake of singularity, that she always went out in a palanquin. She mingled with the care she took of her health that childish frivolousness which rendered her the subject of a thousand malicious remarks; but we all know she was obliged to take every care, and pay the greatest attention to herself. Corvisart told the emperour that his sister's life depended upon following the strictest regimen. Napoleon loved Pauline dearly, loved her as a brother loves a devoted sister, and exacted from her the promise to follow the directions of Corvisart in every particular. Sometimes the princess was obedient, and at others she was not; it was thus she reached the epoch of her family's misfortunes. Then the terrible malady, of which she was the victim, and against which unceasing care had struggled for so many years, developed itself furiously, and made frightful ravages. All her friends at Rome entreated her to have You have badly judged her whom you have not well mercy on herself, and implored her to remember what the known." emperour had exacted from her. Whilst he lived the phyThe world ought not to have in its code of laws the stu-sicians never invoked his name in vain ; but, after his death, pidity of a tribunal which will not reverse its judgment, even Pauline gave up, and awaited suffering without seeking to on learning the innocence of the accused; the world should avoid it. Madame, her mother, whose remonstrances alone be equitable, and make a just distribution of its reproaches would have had some weight, overwhelmed herself by the and praises. To offer the Princess Pauline here, exempt blow which resounded throughout the world. Madame from all blame, would be as untrue as it would be unworthy || Mère became, in some sort, a stranger to all that was passof interest; but it is become the duty of her who loved hering in her family. Lucien would have spoken, but his voice, and wept over her to give to her memory the lustre it merits from the new position in which she has shown herself to us. The voice that reveals what she really was, and not what her frivolous and unemployed life would lead one to believe,|| this voice comes from a place that returns no echo to love or flattery—this voice comes from the grave. There all is truth; the mask falls, and the tapers which burn around the bier give no false light. formerly so dear, had no longer any charm for the Princess Pauline; and, whether the fraternal advice was badly given, or whether the remembrance of the dissensions between Lucien and Napoleon had any influence over her, she began to decline his authority as mentor, and ended at last by speaking with so much bitterness that she and Lucien lived more than coolly together. The Count de Survilliers was the only one who would have had any power over her, but he was far away, and all the other members of her family, although living together in Rome, had no influence over her. I have described the Princess Borghese as she was when When, after the disorders of the hundred days, the Princess Borghese saw herself separated from her brother, she was very ill for a long time; and, notwithstanding her sufferings, ardently solicited permission to go and join the un-in her role of woman, of a woman of superiour beauty. She fortunate victim on his desolate rock. Much as the emperour desired to have her with him, knowing the deplorable state of her health, he wrote to her several times to dissuade her from the project; but the fraternal contest was terminated by his jailers, who really thought of everything else rather than that of giving a few hours of calm happiness to appeared upon the stage of the world, on which we are all of us playing, and hissed or applauded according to our want or wealth of talent. I have not exaggerated when speaking of her; every member of her household is still living, and can confirm or affirm what I have said; but, in recounting her levity, that silly importance with which she did and said nothings, I have never attacked either the qualities of her heart or soul. Indeed I never left them in doubt; but, with the exception of her devotion to her brother, I little knew her, perhaps because I did not try to discover her better qualities; then, too, she helped to fling them into the shade by that apathy into which she seemed plunged. Suddenly a vivid light irradiates the tomb, sealed in the oblivion of death; the stone rises, and, by the light of this luminary, the woman who was so long a time for us, a type of moral nullity, or rather of weak frivolity, appears to us grand, strong, clad in a robe of immortality, whose lustre in grief and agony can neither be contested, altered or effaced. The death of the emperour gave a terrible blow to the already failing health of the Princess Pauline. We know all the devotion she showed him in 1814, in his first exile on the iron rocks of the isle of Elba, when that woman, whom the hatred and contempt of the whole French nation should forever pursue, disgraced everything of the wife, of the mother, by abandoning her husband, the father of her child, to a solitary fate, to drag out without dignity an existence which she herself doomed to present and future shame! At this same time the Princess Borghese, after having shown in Provence a firmness and a nobleness of character, of which the emperour should be proud, for she abandoned smiling Italy, her marble palaces, her voluptuous villas, and went to speak to her unfortunate brother the only heartfelt words he heard since he had no more kingdoms, endowments, epaulettes, and high liveries to bestow. At the same time another of Napoleon's sisters was at Naples, where she not only forgot her benefactor, but where she endeavoured, by her intrigues, to hinder for ever his entrance to France, in case he attempted to do so by passing through Italy. What folly! As if the power of everything that bore the name of Napoleon came not from himself! As if she was something! She had but one part to take-that was to let Murat promote the independence of Italy, declare it free, and allow the banners of the people to float joyously on the ramparts of twenty cities, subject to the tomahawks of twenty tyrants. True, Murat wished it also, but he had been master, yet not what she wished him to be, the husband of the queen! And then the liege hommage paid to Austria totally changed everything. Thus it was that the queen of Naples, in 1814, took the role of an enemy to her unfortunate brother in the tragedy played there to destroy the greatest of destinies. Pauline awaited at Elba the result of her brother's attempt. Her joy was extreme on learning the astonishing success he met with on his descent from the vessel; but all these agitations hastened her death; joy, like grief, wastes the soul which struggles under its palpitations. She felt the effects of this; her sufferings grew more frequent, more intense; sometimes they made her paler; and when, in 1818, I had the honour of seeing her at Rome, her alteration struck me to the heart. She was no more to me than a beautiful woman. She was ill. She was a sister of Napoleon, and presented with all these titles a right to admiration and interest. Everything I could experience of heart-treasured souvenirs was felt when I saw her, heard one of her expressions, and received one of her caresses. Thus my eye perceived much sooner than another's the ravages which disease had made on this ravishing creature. She read my thoughts. She the least since her departure from Paris. In saying so, I did not speak truly, but I said it with so much apparent sincerity that she gently shook her head, and smiled sweetly yet sadly. My compliment flattered her, however, and she drew me towards her and embraced me. She was on a couch, and almost in the attitude of her statue by Canova, still in the Borghese palace at Rome. It was warm. had on a robe of India muslin, trimmed with Brussels lace, and lined with pale rose taffeta. She wore an enormous cord of fine pearls of admirable water, about the size of a small gooseberry. This cord, or rather this mass of pearls, had at least ten rows, and fell as low as her girdle, having at the end an enormous pear of pearl, equally fine. This profusion of pearls concealed, in a measure, the thinness of her neck. Her arms were also loaded with pearls; a large comb, of the same material, confined her hair. In this costume she was still charming. Her statue, one of the most beautiful works, without doubt, that ever came from the hand of Canova,* was in this same Borghese palace, where at last she lived as the wife of one of the first Roman princes, but into which her husband had, for a long time, disputed her entrance. The Prince Borghese was not bad; but he was something else, which amounted to the same; and the princess, little accustomed to use a supplicating tone, had augmented the misunderstanding that had existed between them. At last the Pope interfered. Lucien, who felt the dignity of his family compromised by all these dissensions, with which the public amused themselves without feeling any interest or attachment, spoke likewise to Cardinal Gonsalvi, who, in his turn, spoke to the Prince Borghese, whose habitual resi dence was then at Florence. Cardinal Spada, Cardinal La Samoglia, and Gonsalvi, as I have said, formed a kind of conclave, and the result was that the Princess Pauline took up her abode in her husband's palace, as it was right she should. Her fortune was not large, but it sufficed for her to maintain an honourable state at Rome.† Prince Borghese, compelled to be her guest at the palace Borghese, in order to have it understood that he had been forced to it, made a great separation in the palace, and when the curious went to visit it, the concierge said, as a phrase added to his repertory: “ Ecco la parte del principe; ecco la parte della principessa." It is an admirable creation of genius, this statue of Canova. After examining it a long time, I could not help returning again and again to admire it, and every time discovered new beauties. The attitude of the statue is grace itself. She is reclining on a sofa covered with cushions, in which the weight of the body makes an impression like that of a woman reposing on a bed of down. As to the flesh, the skin, it is nature. The morbidezza, so much recom. mended to sculptors, is here in all its voluptuous perfection. The princess is represented as Venus just receiving the apple from the hands of Paris. She is half reclining, and bending forward a little; the left arm falls naturally at her side, and the right, half-raised, holds the apple; behind the figure is a pillow, as wonderfully elastic as the cushions of the sofa; the elbow of the right arm particularly presses down the pillow while leaning on it, and would seem like *It can be said with certainty that the statue of the Princess Pauline and that of Madam mere are the most admirable "You find me much changed, do you not?" she asked, works that ever came from the chisel of Canova. Some one while her looks seemed to penetrate my soul. She had then a very strong resemblance to the emperour. I answered her as one always answers a sick person when they ask with anxiety. I told her she had not changed in reproached him for having represented her as Agrippina. "Why choose the mother of Nero?" said they. "It was the daugh ter of Germanicus and not the mother of Nero that I wished to make," he replied. She had then nearly one hundred and eighty thousand pounds income. life if the skin was coloured. There is the Prometheus in she embarked, for she was too feeble and was suffering too this work. I was with her one morning, when leaving the hall in which this real treasure is kept: "I wish it to be seen no longer," said she to me. "I am going to write to Prince Camille, and ask him to give no more permissions to strangers to visit it until I have left them. And then," she added, with a more serious and melancholy expression than I had ever before seen in her, "they will come afterwards and judge of the ravages illness has made on me. It is not enough to add poison to the sufferings of my poor brother at St. Helena, but I must show here likewise the effects of it." I had never heard her speak with so much energy. What I had learned in a short time explained what, until then, had appeared extraordinary to me, and I ought to say, to my shame, that I was culpable for not having divined that her soul had been purified and ennobled by grief and injustice. Lessons of misfortune and necessity produce two effects entirely different from each other-they either make man better or render him cruel. The suffering dog is more submissive, the wounded tiger is furious. For myself, I think that the soul, which endures the deep, the terrible trial of misfortune, is grand and beautiful; it is then that the disciple becomes the master, and in his turn triumphs over fate. At this time she gave a proof of generosity; another virtue not much developed in her before the disasters of her house. I was at Rome when the famous expedition of brigands took place at Tusculum, the residence of Lucien. This mysterious and terrible adventure, on which a great personage could, perhaps, fling much light, had for its principal hero a friend of Lucien, who had followed him into exile, and lived in his house with him. M. le Comte de Chatillon was taken by Decésaris, chief of the brigands, famous in the Abruzes and the mountains of Tusculum, and kept for ransom. The Princess Borghese immediately offered to pay this ransom, were it even five thousand piastres, Lucien did not leave her time to do it; but she proposed it, and her intention should be recognized as good and generous. The terrour this awful adventure threw among Lucien's family affected her more than any. Her feeble health received a dangerous shock, keeping her in perpetual agitation and continual fear in regard to those she loved. Then came the news of the emperour's death. This blow was really mortal. From the day this fatal intelligence reached her she languished, and at last acute suffering hastened to finish her days, which ought not to have been cut off so soon. much to go to Florence by land. She descended the Tiber as far as Nettuno, and there embarked on board a vessel I which took her to Livourne. The voyage was painful to the princess; the sufferings of the unhappy woman assumed a character more severe, and which it seemed impossible for her to support from hour to hour. She had a charming and amiable person with her, whose care and attachment softened her terrible moments. Madame d'Hautmenil, who was attached to her as a lady of honour, filled at the same time the place of mother, sister, brother and friends, and all who should have surrounded her in her last hours, but who were far from her. Gifted in intellect, and with charming talents, Madame d'Hautmenil paid the princess all those attentions and cares which art renders so agreeable; and the poor invalid, smiling sometimes in the midst of her sufferings, said to her: 'Silvie, I thank you. You are good to the dying. God will bless you for it." The sad convoy arrived at Livourne. It was necessary to reach Florence. The passage, although very short, came very near proving fatal to the unhappy traveller, who attained, at the same time, the end of both her pilgrimages. At last she arrived at Florence, where the Prince Camille received her as he ought; that is to say, with kindness, for he was in no wise bad, and in the last hours there is no balance in which to weigh wrongs. The next day after her arrival she was so much worse that it was thought necessary to hold a consultation; the result was, the princess must leave Florence, to breathe a purer air; and, two days after, she was established in a delightful country-seat, belonging to her hus band, and situated at a little distance from the city. The Princess Pauline did not yet know that there was no hope for her. A singular expression animated her looks when she saw her bed surrounded by her friends; she appeared seeking, in their moistened eyes and altered features, what she had to fear or hope. One day she took the hand of Madame d'Hautmenil, and, pressing it with friendship, said: "Tell me the truth, Silvie, what they have decided about me?" Madame d'Hautmenil assured her she did not know. "Well, I wish to know myself; I wish to know my fate. I wish to leave this world with the consoling thought of having fulfilled all my duties. I do not want death to surprise me. Let my physicians be told this." When her physicians came in she asked them, in a firm voice, how much longer she might have to suffer? They at first hesitated; it seemed cruel to them to condemn the soul of a body so beautiful; for, in spite of pain and anguish, she was still a beautiful work of the Creator. But their silence enlightened the princess more than any words could have done. It was in the month of September, 1823, when the physician of the princess, el Signor Bomba, and the Corsican surgeon, Sisco, declared to Madame mere and Cardinal Fesch that the state of the princess was most alarming, and that she must think of leaving Rome, where the chiroco would be fatal to her. She was then at the villa Paulina, a charm-ed heavy to me this long time." ing villa of hers, situated near the porta Pia; but this was not leaving Rome. The physicians insisted upon it. The Pope, Leo the twelfth, wrote to the Prince Borghese, who was at Florence, indicating his intention of removing the Princess Pauline, and requesting him, as a proof of his friendship, to forget all the causes of disagreement that might exist between them; adding, that in case the Princess should recover, he entreated him to consider her as his companion, and to live with her like a good husband. The princess made immediate preparations for her departure. A bark, comfortably fitted up, received her at Ripetta, where || "So, then," said she, with a slight tremour in her voice, "it is all over with me! Ah, well! after all, life has seem She turned away, saying something in a low tone, among which they could only distinguish the name of Napoleon. "But have you not a time more precise than that which you leave me to conjecture myself?" said she, turning again to the physicians. "I have told you I have many things to do." One of the physicians approached her, and said, with much address, that now the danger was permanent, and every hour might prove fatal. "You now see that I was right to urge you," she replied, with a smile, in which there was an expression altogether worthy of his name. The Prince Camille approached her Napoleonienne. bed, but dared not advance; yet his sobs betrayed him. Letters were immediately despatched by her orders, ad- The princess pushed back the curtains, and saw him kneel. dressed to those of her relatives who were then in Italy, re-ing, his face bathed in tears. She held out her hand to him, questing them to come and bid her a last adieu. The Duke || and said to him, in an encouraging tone: de Montfort was the only one who came in time to see her. In the meantime, every day, every hour increased her sufferings, and rendered the danger more imminent. One morning, after having passed one of those nights which give to the tortured body an idea of infernal torments, she fell fainting on her cushions, and comprehended then that between her and God a short distance only remained for her to travel. She made them lift her into a small white bed, similar to that in which her brother at last found repose, which the tigers, whom he had taken for men, had for eight years denied him; and there, near a window, she exposed her icy forehead to the warm and perfumed breeze of the Florentine campagne. There was then in the air those treasures of life with which Italy is so rich at all seasons of the year, and especially just at that time. Flowers were growing everywhere, an abundant and luxurious vegetation inundated the country; and the tufts of flowers, daughters of that other spring, intoxicated the senses. There was an air de fete about this nature, illuminated by a beautiful sun, whose warm mild rays had nothing of that devouring heat which sometimes withers everything during an Italian summer. It gave an attractive force, which held life together by all the powers of the soul, and all the more material links of the body. The dying person felt its effects; but this effect was only one agony more for her, swelling the number of those which were hurrying her to the last hour. Her eye glided slowly over the variegated carpet, the beautiful waters, the thick shades, ravishing picture whose perspective unfolded itself still more or less, as her looks were raised or cast down. All at once she veils her eyes. An expression less dignified and less mistress envelopes her beautiful countenance. It was because in this vague and sorrowful adieu she had just perceived the blue chain of the Appenines, and beyond them was the holy city, the hospitable city, the noble refuge always open to the exile, whether he wears a crown or is girded with a haircloth. It was there Pauline knew grief, the grief that is given to man that he may groan and weep, and not those pains which a bouquet of roses can efface. It was there Pauline buried her child, aged eight years her only son-beautiful, loved, loving. Oh! how she wept over the tomb of this young flower, whose stem seemed so full of hopes! Poor Dermid ! his mother is going to repose near him; and his grandmother, whose dry and burning eyes can weep no longer, is going to find tears for her well-beloved daughter. There is a terrible magic in the grief of the aged, a fascination which constrains every knee to bend before the whitened locks which, one by one, have lost their colour from successive troubles. Youth, doubtless, feels grief, but it is like joy, unforeseen and fleeting. That which wounds to death is the sufferings of one day followed by those of the next. This thought presented itself to the dying princess in all its sad truth. Whatever consolation she might feel in the certainty of being lamented, she recoiled before the image of her aged mother, overwhelmed by the tempest in the evening of her life, and struck, in her last refuge of consolation, by the death of her dearly-loved Paulette. How ever, she did not weep. She was going to die! Her eyes rested on the portrait of the emperour, placed opposite to her, seeming to say to her that she would do nothing un "Camille, I pray you not to weep. This is the most important hour of my life. I have need of all my strength. Do not afflict me. I wish to die worthy of my name. Napoleon is looking at me!" And her eyes appeared to follow in the distance some ob. ject that was calling to her, and to which she seemed to reply. She appeared in a kind of ecstasy. Of all her relations the Duke de Montfort was the only one that saw her. The Duke de Saint-Leu arrived too late. The interview between her and her brother was touching; the king of Westphalia had always loved her tenderly, and she returned his affection. When she saw him approaching her bed, his eyes filled with large tears, she said to him in a supplicating tone: "Jerome, I pray you spare me. Do not let me see your tears. My heart is breaking, and I have need of all my reason." Still the malady made rapid progress, and attacks of pain followed each other with a violence sufficient to cut off the life which for a long time had hung only by a slender thread. She conversed with her physicians a few moments, took a potion, and a cordial to sustain her, and then told Madame d'Hautmenil to send for all her women to come to her, and place themselves round her bed. "I want some one yet," said the princess, looking round to see if her attendants were all there; and she asked for her valet-de-chambre-coiffeur. Prepare everything for my toilette," said she, then, to her first waiting-woman, and let everything be done as if I were going to the Tuilleries on reception-day. You," she continued, addressing the astonished valet, "you must dress my hair." And, flinging off her cap, she was in a moment covered with dark hair, soft, fine and lustrous, whose curls had been so often admired when, on those same reception-days at the Tuilleries, she had appeared there resplendent in the èclat of incomparable beauty, still more than in the spark. ling diamonds with which that same hair was ornamented. At the time of her death she was, doubtless, emaciated, but little changed. Her countenance showed little of the ravages of disease. She was always ravishing. Lines so perfect could not be altered even by death. To have seen her you would have said: "It is an angel suffering." The type of perfection hardly felt the touch of the icy hand of death, yet it was already suspended over her charming head, and a few hours only were between her and eternity. It was a long and painful operation that of clothing sump. tuously and elegantly a woman whose next habiliments would be the winding-sheet. While discharging their du ties the women of the princess wept and sobbed; but she was calm, and often repeated to them: “Mes enfans, have more courage. Do not weep. And why should you? Think that I am only going to meet him." And with her thin hand, but whose form was still perfect, she pointed to the emperour's portrait. Then only her eyes grew dim with tears, and she appeared affected; but she soon turned away from it. When she was entirely dressed a cry of admiration was heard around her. The beautiful Pauline was going to rise again. It was she yet, when women as well as men pro |