more about him He absorbed everything that had any reference
to his father's history. The child, who showed a cold and disdainful indifference to all the world, who parted from the members of his household with astonishing coolness .–never afterwards asking a word about them—who did not even cry when his mother left him ; this boy, who seemed almost heartless, now occupied day and night with the thought of his father." There, of course, was the essence of the tragedy. The one subject which absorbed this boy of six was a forbidden subject, and his tutors were obliged to exercise all their ingenuity in deceit. There is a conversation quoted here between the boy and Collin concerning Napoleon which proves at once the quickness of the Duke of Reiehstadt and the terror of his tutors. The boy outwitted them all, cross- examining them concerning his father's fate with an astonishing aptitude. And his aptitude is the best measure of his tutors' enforced cruelty. Had they been frank with him, had they answered his questions with truth instead of with falsehood, they would have done no harm, and would have saved the child an infinity of unhappiness. As it was, distrusting those about him, he fell into a reserve which his household took for contentment, but which was the silence of doubt and suspicion. When Napoleon died, nobody mourned his loss as bitterly as his son. The news was broken by Captain Foresti. "I chose the quiet hour of evening," said Foresti, "and saw more tears wept than I should have expected from a child who had never seen or known his father." Foresti was here in error, for the child had both seen and known his father, and, young as he was at the moment of separation, possibly preserved a fleeting memory. Marie Louise's sorrow was more discreet. "I am greatly grieved," said she, "and although we may be glad that he ended his unhappy existence in a Christian way, I could still have wished him many years of life and prosperity —provided he kept apart from me." Truly, no Princess ever deserved her grandeur so little as this Austrian.
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