indisposed. Finally he concluded to see her. She eloquently demanded, on the part of Maximilian, continued aid, in money and troops. The interview was long and violent, it is said, and full of recrimination. The Empress, as all the fair structure of hopes she had raised since her departure from Chapultepec crumbled before her, gave way to bitter emotion. She declared that she, a king's daughter, of the blood of Orleans, had made a terrible mistake to accept a throne from the self-made Emperor of the French, a Bonaparte.
From this scene at Saint Cloud the madness of the new Empress is thought to have begun. She had scarcely the force left to continue her course to the Vatican, where she found no more redress than she had done at the Tuileries. The whole of Europe had soon to shudder at the news that she had lost her reason. She never returned to Mexico.
It was by way of the United States that Maximilian first heard of the failure of the interview at Saint Cloud. He kept silent, still hoping better success from the negotiations of the Empress with the Pope; but meanwhile he quietly made preparations for his departure from Mexico, giving out that it was his intention to meet the Empress at Vera Cruz on her return. Much household baggage had been already transferred thither, and the rumor spread abroad, of the probable departure of the royal household, producing a lively sensation throughout the country.
The time was drawing near. Maximilian, at Chapultepec, under the melancholy boughs of the
