"Am too busy to go throne-hunting. Send my brother Joseph down to
Naples as my agent. There's a crown there. Let him put it on, and
tell Paris that he is my proxy. Joseph may not want to go because of
the cholera scare, but tell him We wish it, and if he still demurs
whisper the word 'Alp' in his ear. He'll go when he hears that word,
particularly if you say it in that short, sharp, and decisive manner
to which it so readily lends itself."
These instructions were carried out, and Paris was for the time being
satisfied; but to clinch matters, as it were, the Emperor went still
further, and married Eugene de Beauharnais to the daughter of the
King of Bavaria, conferred a few choice principalities upon his
sister Eliza, and, sending for Prince Borghese, one of the most
aristocratic gentlemen of Italy, gave him in marriage to his sister
Pauline.
"We're getting into good society by degrees," wrote the Emperor to
the Empress, "and now that you are the mother-in-law of a real
prince, kindly see that your manner is imperious to the extreme
degree, and stop serving pie at state banquets."
The succeeding two years were but repetitions of the first year of
the Empire.
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