The beauty and fascination of Napoleon's youngest sister Pauline, "the
enfant terrible of Europe," are commonly taken for granted. Mr. Chattin Canton's frank and entertaining biography, Pauline (Thornton Butterworth, 15s.), while reasserting, fails to prove the latter assumption. Possibly it is erroneous. The lovely sister of the most famous man in the world could not but occupy the world's attention. Napoleon as an advertisement was irresistible ; preoccupation and passion are closely allied. However that may be Napoleon himself was very fond of his sister from the first day that he saw her when she was six and he was seventeen. Her character never changed. When she married General de Clere and went to Haiti she danced through plague and revolution with the flawless courage of a heartless woman. A peg for every scandalous tale, the idol and laughing-stock of Paris, she had never any political importance. Why the Powers refused to allow her to join Napoleon on St. Helena it is not easy to say. Frustrated in the one act of altruism to which she ever aspired, she returned to the cultivation of the ego and died in character, with a looking-glass in her hand.
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