palace near Trieste, where they received the overtures of the Mexican conspirators. For many months the Archduke hesitated over so startling a proposal; finally he decided to accept the crown which was offered him, but "on the condition that France and England should sustain him with their guaranty, moral and material, both on land and sea." England, as we have seen, early withdrew from the alliance, with a loyalty to honorable principles greatly to its credit, well aware that the United States would look upon the scheme with no favor, and less confident than the French Emperor in the success of the Southern Confederacy.
Maximilian was a dreamer. The scion of the stock of kings, he believed firmly in the "right divine," which he persuaded himself to fancy, by tortuous ways might now be hovering over him. Ardently religious, he attached the highest importance to the preservation of the Church, and believed that he was an instrument to this end. The vision of Mexico snatched from the hands of impious rebels and restored to the prestige of an ancient Empire, fascinated him, and with a vivid imagination, he pictured himself, and his Carlotta, whom he dearly loved, as the central figures of the great restoration. His expression of this thought at Naples, in 1857, so often quoted, proves how far he was carried by the vividness of his dreams.
"The monumental stairway of the palace of Caserta is worthy of majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of those marble pillars,—to fancy
