NAPOLEON'S SON.
Napoleon's Son. By Clara. Tschudi. Translated by E. M. Cope. (George Allen and Co. 7s. 6d.)—It was one of history's most cruel ironies that the son for whom Napoleon longed so fiercely, and in his harsh ambition sacrificed so much, should have been so intimate a factor in the causes of his downfall. Had he retained Josephine as his consort, who knows whether he might not also have kept to the end the luck in which they both so firmly believed? As it was, the birth of an heir, only just snatched from death, was its last ambiguous manifestation, a fulfilment destined to prove a source of anguish and baulked affection beside which the ruin of his hopes must have seemed insignificant. The tragedy of the caged prince, who clung so passionately to his ideal of the father whom be fancied he could remember, is re-told by Mme. Tschudi with sympathy and discrimination, and 'without the bias and sentimentalism to which the subject lends itself. The absence of any special literary distinction may or may not be due to the translation, which at all events has the considerable merit of being straightforward and unpretentious.
Previous page
