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[Illustration: THE GREAT ROUND WORLD And WHAT IS GOING ON IN IT.]
It is said that the unfortunate Princess Charlotte of Belgium is to be taken over to Mexico, in the hope that a visit to the scenes of her former happiness may restore her reason.
Her story brings back to memory a very sad and interesting page of our modern history.
Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Leopold I., King of the Belgians, was the most accomplished and beautiful princess of her time. She was the only daughter of the king. While she was still quite young he found she had a great talent for statecraft, and so he had her admitted to all the councils of state, and from her earliest childhood she was familiar with the ways and arts of diplomacy.
A brilliant future was expected for her, but when she was seventeen she married, for love, the young Archduke Maximilian, brother of the Emperor of Austria.
There was no expectation that Maximilian would ever come to a throne, and so it seemed as if the young princess' talents were to be thrown away when she settled down with her husband, and became the happiest young wife in Europe.
For seven years these two young folks were a model happy couple; then, one fatal day, Napoleon III. of France offered Maximilian the crown of Mexico.
Europe thought that Mexico needed a wise and clever ruler to straighten out the tangle into which its affairs had fallen, and it was supposed that Maximilian, backed by his beautiful and clever wife, would be just the man for the post. As Mexican affairs were in a very turbulent state, Napoleon promised Maximilian that he would keep a number of French troops in the country, and support him with an armed force, until the people of Mexico had learned to love and trust him, and he could rule them without danger.