A Guaranteed Care for Piles.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 1 July 1903, Page 77

A Guaranteed Care for Piles.

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By the aid of machinery one man cwn rmako 1200 line watch .=ciew s a day. Some, of these aro so smull (hat more than lOO.GOO of them are required to weigh a pound.

A certain varic-ty of Tnangold forms a kind of ".cgotable baromcK'i. If tlio da; is going to bo fine, thr- ti. « ( r.- open silx.iii 7 o'clock in i'ie mom."2. a"<l < 1< -o Icittwn 5 and 4- in ihe dfa-raioon ; 'mi it tin. hi at!. • r ie going to be wet, they liv i ot oiku pi rIL

— The cabbage is a development of a common seaweed which is to Jae found giowing wild on every coast of Eui oj,p.

—An "arithmograph" — a nc-.v cakul.ii.ing n ac-Uine of =mal! ,-i/.e and of easy manipulator—^o-, K.ently brought before the AcaiVinic (.]> , Stirnti-t, Pau.= The inventor c i,.nn-. th -t hi <ne < a;\ (raji'ny jt, without int lit il utp'n, in .ii «.ort = of arithmetical <, vi. n- H' hi- o'i!v to wnio tke ti.i.r - ,!l C ' . 100o o L i\. U l(Mi''.o,

in her trembling fingers ; there is quite a brisk tw>de in repairing her fans. The people of France suffer fiom many things, but shyness is not one of their weaknesses, and they find it diiF.culfc to understand it in other people. And thus it comes to pass that the shyness of pojr Mario Louise is quite misiindei stood; that she is regarded as stupid — which she was — and as h lughty — which she was not. She is like a statue of marble said tho^e who were polite critic-s ; she has a head of wood said less flattering observers. Napohon makes strung efforts to overcome this atmosphere of uneasiness and of failure which he feels around him ; but now and then he exhibits in the efforts to do sc an amount of tact and consideration one would not expect from a nature so masterful pr.d <-o hard. Marie Louise, it has been .snid. did not care for tragedies. One night when the jTreatest aciorx and aciies.se>> of P,uU were playing "Molierc"' before her and the Emperor and a whole cn>wd of illustrious guests, Marie Louise — djib'less having had a good dinner, and being thoroughly bored — fell asleep, and. horror of horrors, began to gently snoie. Napoleon looks around in cb.smay, but he acts with promptitude ; ho pretends to fall asleep himself, and nobody dare criticise th n Empress for imitating the example of her husband. Often when they aie in public together he tries to undo the effect ot that impassive and wooden face of hers by engaging her in conversation. This may, he hopes, bring a little animation into the glassy eyes and the set features. But she answers briefly and awkwardly; after a while he gives up the attempt, and they bath relapse into an awkward silence, which all those inquisitive eyes, concentiated with a stiro on the Master of all the legions and honours and money of Fianr-e, see quite plainly, and comment upon freely when the back of the terrible maskr is turned.

| XIV. With the Emperor alone, on the other hand, Marie Loui«c is happy. She afterwards declared that she had never loved Napoleon— which is possible ; but she was one of those weak characters that instinctively cling to what i.s ncarpst to her ; and she clings to Napoleon — especially after she becomes 1 enceinte — so clowly' that she almost becomes a burden. If he wants to go out or to leave Paris, she bursts into teai.-', and the doctors insist that the Master of the world shall pay more attention to a woman's hysterical tears than to the need of the millions whose ruling is in his hands. Liter on, after her confinement, she practises riding in the riding school at St. Cloud. She never gets on a horse unless Napoleon is by to hold her hand, and whenever he lets go his hold upon her and whips the horse into a canter she screams with fright. She writes at this period of he:- life to her parents that she is more and more attached to Napoleon every day ; and doubtless she wrote sincerely when she wrote these thing?.

XV. I need not spend much time over the description of the birth of the King of Rome. That unfortunate child deserves a study all to himself ; lie i«- beyond the scope of these article". Pacing en to his mother, her life, after the birth of her child, resumes the tranquillity in which it was spent ; if, indeed, a life (an be called tranquil nearly every second of w hie-h was deto some public engagement, and every moment of whith was regulated almost with the same iron precision as if j she were a soldier, and the Court were a barrack. For tTii.s is the invariable result of the presence of Napoleon anywhere; everything becomes after a while leduced to the barrack room. Theie are descriptions of evenings when Mane Louise is Empress, that aie almost as bad as tho.«e whkh Tame has described. There is first a little operetta. The ladies and gentlemen are allowed to sit down while this is going on— that is to say, tho.-e who ar9 able to secure a seat. When the play is over, the party moves into another room. Tables are laid for play, but nobody plays; some of the ladies sit down, but they do not play. The men, on the other hand, ■-tand up pieced tlo-,e to each other, wondering whether the awful eye of their master will hu'ht on them ; whether he will speak to them ; and if he do, whether he will threaten 01 rtbuke, 01 insult them. Half the time Napoleon is too tired to mutter more than a few woids. He has piobably been up Mnce 5 o'clock in (he morning, has been bird at woik all day, iind at night it is remaiked th it he looks «o thoioughly done up that people think he can't li\e, a-id that his body, if not his fOlf 01 tune, has ahe.tdy begun to break up. At all events he y^wns as he speaks to his trembling courtiers. At half-past 10 he retiies to his apartments, either to work or go to bed. "Then," says a chronicler of the period, "men and women hurry to their carnage*. You might think they were a lot of school children who were going on a vacation." Tiiis is the kind of slavery th.it attendance at Court usually means — in France, in England, every time and everywhere — and yet this is the collar of seivitude which men and women, with eveiythir.g eKe the world his to give, in-

trigue, flatter, even pay to reach!

XVI. Pur t ln oe -\c.tis Napoleon If-iris this life <if eonipaiatne nuctivty. The<-e years have not been without th;ii influence upon him. both in body and in mind. In the intimacy of muiiied life, even the weakest tii women have a power of impie^ing their ldca^, and habits upon tlieii husbands. Napoleon is quite a difi'eient man as the husband of Mine Louise from what he was as husband of Josephine, ond though this giil-wife may have brought out some tenderness which did not flourish in the reign of Josephine, Napoleon is no longer the great ruler he once was 1 . His courtiers remark that lie is often absent minded and strangely silent, he wlice volcanic activity u«ed to radiate mo\enK-nt around him. Once he i-, "-epn to look for «ev*rnl minutes together at the floor wku-

out saying a word, and in the midst of his astounded and affrighted courtiers — all of whom deutnd for place, for power, for pension, for everything that makes life tolerable on the health and strength of this man. It is remarked, too, that he has been infected with that love of the good things of the tabh from which he was once so free ; and, finally, this daughter of the Cedars has almost obliterated from tiie memory of Napoleon ihe fact that he is an upaUrt Emperor, that he owes his supreme position to Revolution and to his own supreme genius, and h& gets to love ceremonial with ps much fanaticism as if he had been one of the Bourbons, and held his throne by right divine. Indeed, sometimes, half jokingly and wholly in earucbt. lie holds to Metteinich— that irreclaimable Legitimii-t who in his heart despise Napoleon and his mushroom throne— la.ngu.ige as to the divine ri^hl of Kings which "vould h.'ve sounded ridiculous even in the mouth of Lew is XVI. This then, is the .rt.ite of Napoleon when, in May. 18L2. he takes his departure for Diesden, nominally to inspect the great army that is ercnmptd about the Vistula, and' to hold consultation" with the sovereigns who aie allie* or tubjects to him— really to take the fust steps on that road which has Moscow at one end of it and St. Helena at the other.

I XVIT. One of the objects of Napoleon in going to Dresden was to secure the alliance of his father-in-law in his war against Russia. And it was at Dresden that he found himself in collision with another female member of the House of Austria who was destined to exercise a very sinister influence on his subsequent career. The Emperor <n Austria was married to his third wife. She was a Bouibon with all the ineradicable memories, hatreds, and pride of her race _one of the generation who, as Napoleon himself said, forgave nothing and forgot nothing. Napoleon set himself to work to win this woman, for it was part of the genius and of the success of this wondrous man that though he was afflicted in the end by meglomania, he had that perfect mastery of the art of governing men which insists on taking into account small opponents as well as great— the meanest as well as the mightiest of enemies. Where Napoleon makes a mistake with regard to Marie Ludovica, as with regard to so many others, is that he does not quite understand the ground of her hatred nor the best means of overcoming it. Vanity is to him with men, and still more with women, the £TP.it motive spring ef action, and it is to the vanity of Marie Ludovic that he makes appeal. He tells his wife to invite her step-mother to her wardrobe every day. '"She rummaged in the magnificence of Marie Louise,"' said Napoleon afterwards, when he was fighting all his battles over again at St. Helena, aud paying back some old scores, "and she never left emptyhanded." Fancy trying to gain the alliance of a great empire in one of the most momentous and gigantic of wars by playing upon the love of one woman or cadging in the wardrobe of another!

I don't know whether one is to take quite seriously the dome«tic drama which M. Masson, after the manner of his chivalrous race, weaves out of the rencontre between Napoleon and Marie Ludovica. His theory, however, is that it was Marie Ludovica who ultimatly was the chief cause of the ruin of Napo'eon. It is certain that Napoleon's ruin was largely brought about by the fact that in his great hour of trial — when his star of uninterrupted splendour first began to wane in the awful failure of his expedition against Russia — that his ruin was largely brought about by the desertion of the man whose daughter he had married ; and it is quite probable that it was the influence of Marie Ludovica — the third wife, the young wife cf the Austrian Emperor — which finally won the day in the divided soul of Napoleon's father-in-law. This woman, who is credited with having played so large a part in one of the world's greatest tragedies, in the destruction of, perhaps, the world's greatest man, is worth study. She certainly does not create the impression on Napoleon which she does on posterity. Whether it was his vanity of her cleverness, it is certain that Napoleon is convinced that she dick her best to have a serious flirtation with him ; she certainly did put heiself out to be agreeable to the mighty man who then had everybody's fortune and life in Europe dependent on his Imperial nod. But M. Masson asks why Napoleon did not .study more carefully the face of tin? woman, with its lipless mouth, its hatchet like piofile, its ei-es that burned from out the surrounding thinness, and the energy that radiated from every nerve of her lithe, slight body — for "she was," says a contemporary, '"as thin as a bit of asparagus.' Napoleon, it is certain, did not read all this into her soul ; it is very difficult to read into any woman's soul, even for a man of the almost miraculous penetration of Napoleon ; especially when .she sets out to conquer, and shows only that side of her character which i.° where the smiles hide the purpose and the hatred.

xvin. Marie Ludovica learns that her husband is not only going to supply Napoleon with an aimy against Russia, but also that he talks of taking command of it, and serving along with Napoleon. At once she puts forth all the weapons In her woman's armoury of ttars and reproaches ; she goes to Mettertuch in fear and tiembling, for s-he believes that he ha*, been g.uned over to the side of Napoleon ; to her delight she finds that he hdtes Napoleon aKo ; and the two in combination — the powerful old Minister and the subtle young wife — ■ are iire'-Ktible ; the Austrian Emptier does not crots the Eiussian frontier ; Napoleon h.f» to enter upon his greatest and haidest entei prise without him.

Napoleon at last leaves for Russia, and the army — most of which is to pensh in hunger, cold, and all the other agonies of th.it awful campaign; and Mane Louise le-

turns to Paris. Htr father pays her ceremonious regard; an army of chunberlains and maids of honour follow her everywhere; the smaller Icings of Germany almost kneel in the dust before her : and finally, tired out with these honours, she arrives ; and the cannon at (he Invalides make the announcement to the Parisians that the wife of their Empeior is once more back among them.

XIX. Marie Louise resumes her usual life, doin" the duties which are laid down for her by her husband ; but with no great gusto." and with no great desire to put herself out. A few days, for instance, after her return the great dignit iries of the Em-p.ie-thc men who have helped to make Napoleon, and who can, by-and-bye, every one of them, help to save or to ruin him— call in solemn deputation to offer their congratulations on her safe arrival ; she sends them woid that she is indisposed, and that they must come the next day. This is not the stuff of which the wives of gieat ruleis and adventurers oujrht to be made ; as M. Masson puts it, "the 'other one,' even if she were dying, would have risen fiom her bed and leeeived each one of these friends of her husband with asmi'e and a word of gratitude." However, Marie Louise, if she be not exuberant or brave, ii at least docile. It throws a curious light on the character of Napoleon that he insists, during all the horrors and terrors of that campaign in Russia, on receiving every day a full and detailed account of every single act of the woman ho has kft behind. Here are some of the entiies in the courier that is sent to him:

"Her Majesty went out riding at halfpast 4. In the evening there was a State performance in the Grand Theatre. The Italian comedians played the first act of ' Camilla.' ''

"Friday, 4. — Her Majesty went out in a caleche at half-past 3. In the evening her Imperial Highness Madame Mere dined with her Majesty. There was a concert and some play in the Imperial apartments." "Smidav, o. — Her Majesty did not go out in the afternoon. Queen Hortense dined with her Majesty." It is significant of Napoleon that ho scores in this bulletin the words, "Her Majesty did not go out in the afternoon." Here was something evidently which disquieted him. and which he probably asked to have exp'ained by a despatch, going, noc. by telegraph, as it would to-day, but by rourif-r-i on hois,es that flew across the hundred* of miles tint lay between the comfortable chateau at S>t. Cloud and the tent or the half-burnt louse in Russia where NapoW fought on in his desperate battle with Russia and her winter?

Marie Louise at this epoch in-v>i~! <-ertainlv to love Napoleon. All her letters are full of expressions of grief at his .absence ; she does not sleep well ; is haunted by feverish dreams ; grows thin ; is anxious-. But it is characteristic of her that her anxiety is purely about the person of the Emperor ; it never seems even to have occurred to her that there was any possibility of his being conquered. Thia woman, though brought up in courts and in some instinctive knowledge, one would expect, of what politics are and what they meant, does not seom to have had even a glimmering idea that all around her, beneath her very fef-t, the mighty Empire, which her husband had so wondronsly built up til 1 its pinnacles reached the stars, was crumbling; — rushing to the abyss. There are plots in Paris to dethrone the Emperor. She writes of them, not as signs of the coming end, but as mere mob riots. There ore defeats ; she apparently does not realise them. She continues to live her simple life in St. Cloud, taking drives, dining only with the relatives of the Emperor, seeing only small pirties. On the day when the historic bulletin was published which ra\eaW to the bewildered and horrified people of Paris that the great army had! been practica'ly annihilated, Marie Louise goes as u«nial to the Salon : remains thera looking at the pictures for two hours and a-half, and in the evening goes to the theatre. Ju.st as midnight is about to strike one night there is a tumult outside her rooms ; her waiting maid, alarmed still by the terrors of the conspiracy against; the Emperor which has just been discovered, shrieks, and the rest of them bar the- doors of the Empress against a. niud-stainpd man who is running past her. Tt is the Emperor ; he has come back from Russia.

XX. From flu's <ime forward Napoleon begins to think a little less, of himself and a little moie of the future of his child. He foresees that his run of luck is nearing perhaps the ond, and that his one hope left no.v is to secure for his dynasty what he may have to lose for himself. This begins the third epoch in the life of Marie Louise and Napoleon ; the epoch in which he tries to transform this dull, glass-eyed, shy, timid woman into a political personage. Napoleon, in the midst of all his other preoccupations — armies to raise out of the ground — a whole Europe in alliance, and created into one vast armed camp against him — Napoleon sets about teaching this young woman the art of governing. He takes her everywhere — especially to the places where soldiers meet, and are to be won to or retained on the side that no longer can be regarded as always bound; to win. But the task of teaching her is not easy. They go together, for instance, to the Invalided. He conducts her all over the place — to the refectory, to the hospit.il, 1o the kitchen, where he makes her ta.ste the soup the soldiers take. But '•he ha.-n"fc a, woid to «ay to the men ; not even to the warriors who had figured in the. lists of the bravest <jn the battlefield ; not to the pcor ciipp'es who hobbled round, having If ft ihoir limbs in <-r,mo battle fought under Napoleon's o« n < ye. It is Napoleon him-<-df who li ii to nnnoum c on th<- part of t lie Empio-> tl.it "-he is dt-lu'lil'd to '■end the Mlditis a. ]nf--eiit Tff .1 1 r i ibntes to her *''c bii_'^'st:<n — whi'.h was of coui^e, his

own — that the tin plates on which the soldiers ate should be changed for plates of common earthenware.

When Napoleon -was again to depart for the wars he makes Mane Louise Regent, and it is she who actually goes to the Houses of Parliament to open them; it is fehe who is supposed to read the Imperial Speech from the Throne ; it is she who is supposed to direct the politics of the Empire in the absence «f her husband. Napoleon is still too powerful, still too dreaded, for people to laugh at anything she commands ; but Parisians find it hard to keep their countenances while this Austrian woman speaks of the love she has learned to feel for France at tbe very moment when her father, the Emperor of Austiia, is making war upon France ; and they turn aside to hide their smiles when she reads out the speech from the Throne in an accent wlveli makes every lover of good French shudder.

XXI. Marie Louise, meantime, after her docile fashion, does everything she is told with dog-like fidelity — with simian closeness of mimicry. Every word she utters in public is, of course, written for her, usually at the dictation of the Emperor himself. Shs is told everything she has to do, down to the smallest details— to the list of ladies-in-waiting she is to employ and the different days for their employment. When the final disasters come, she is, of course, unequal to them. Her mind, never very strong, is puzzled and helpless in the face of the tremendous events and the conflicting counsels in the midst of which she lives : and in the end, by sheer force of natural drift, she goes over to the side of her father and to the enemies of her husband.

The remainder of the story I must hurriedly tell. When once more she was under Austrian influences, she was at once beset by every art that could make her forget Napoleon and France. Among the influences is Count Neipperg, a professional lady-killer, a brave soldier, a duellist, handsome still, though blind of one eye. Neipperg apparently has very little trouble in gaining the easily-transferred affections of a weak character ; and from his appearance on the scene must be dated the end of all Napoleon's influence over either the love or the life of Marie Louise.

XXII. It is one of the few pathetic things in Napoleon's life — the one instance, perhaps, since in his hot and romantic youth he loved Josephine of any sign of the usual illusions of mortality — that he seemed to love and trust Marie Louise to the very end of his days. Not her desertion of him in the Island of Elba ; not her refusal to join him in exile at St. Helena ; not the reports of her notorious liaison with Neipperg; nothing seemed to be able to disturb his faith — or his pretence of faith — in her. "I have always had reason, to praise my -dearest wife Marie Louise," he said, a few days before his death. "I preserve the tenderest feelings for her up to my last hour. I leave my lace to Marie Louise," he says in his will. To one of his intimates he said when he saw death approach : "I wish you would put my heart in spirits of wine and carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise. Tell her I have always tenderly loved her ; that I never ceased to love her." But Napoleon could never conquer any woman's heart. It is one of the lacunae in his mighty career. — "T. P." in T. P.'s Weekly.