Marie Louise, Empress of France | Autograph letter signed, as Duchess of Parma, on silverware, 1837

Marie Louise, Empress of the French

Autograph letter signed, as Duchess of Parma, to M. Foresti 

in French, asking him to obtain for her a tea-kettle (bouilloire), "if that is what one calls a machine for making tea", in silver and another piece for the tea set that she is collecting little by little, making sure that the pattern matches the other pieces she already has, continuing that she has had a bad summer, "having been almost continually ill with periodic headaches and a fever...I am feeling better since the cold weather but I have not yet recovered my strength. Everyone else is well and for five days there has been no case of cholera, God grant that this will last...", 3 pages, 8vo, Parma, 30 September 1837

After the fall of Napoleon, Marie Louise declined to accompany him to Elba and was later granted the Duchy of Parma. She deeply shocked devoted Bonapartists by bearing children to Count von Neipperg while Napoleon was still alive.