to be able to move her ear without stirring a muscle of her face. Poor trick! At present she plays at billiards, for which she has conceived a great liking, and provokes the Emperor, who makes such bad shots that—in order to show his superiority—he seeks lessons from one of his chamberlains.
"And always, when she wishes to draw a profile of her husband, for which he poses himself to please her, as he would never do for any painter when she sits at the piano and plays for him German sonatas, which he likes a little; or when she shows him her needlework, the sash or belt which she has embroidered—as a matter of fact, her sewing mistress has done the most of it—he is there attentive, absorbed in her, trying to enlighten her, to amuse her, 'his good Louise Marie,' and by his middle-class 'theeing' and 'thouing' astonishes his stiff-necked Court, for the husbands of the Faubourg Saint-Germain take care not to use the second person singular to their wives."
XVI.
DELICACY.
Another story from Metternich reveals another example of Napoleon's curious delicacy in remonstrating with his wife, as well as that morbid suspicion by which he was constantly haunted. Napoleon had appointed the Duchess of Mon-
