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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12019 ***
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE
+
+A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+BY
+
+L. MÃœHLBACH
+
+AUTHOR OF PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES, JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,
+MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
+
+CHAPMAN COLEMAN
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--Days of Childhood.
+  II.--The Prophecy.
+ III.--Consequences of the Revolution.
+  IV.--General Bonaparte.
+   V.--The Marriage.
+  VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.
+ VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.
+VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from Egypt.
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--A First Love.
+  II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.
+ III--Consul and King.
+  IV.--The Calumny.
+   V.--King or Emperor.
+  VI.--Napoleon's Heir.
+ VII.--Premonitions.
+VIII.--The Divorce.
+  IX.--The King of Holland.
+   X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.
+  XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of Violets.
+ XII.--The Days of Misfortune.
+XIII.--The Allies in Paris.
+ XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and Louise de Cochelet.
+  XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor Alexander.
+ XVI.--The New Uncles.
+XVII.--Death of the Empress Josephine.
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Return of the Bourbons.
+  II.--The Bourbons and the Bonapartes.
+ III.--Madame de Staël.
+  IV.--Madame de Staël's Return to Paris.
+   V.--Madame de Staël's Visit to Queen Hortense.
+  VI.--The Old and New Era.
+ VII.--King Louis XVIII.
+VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his Wife.
+   X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.
+  XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and Napoleon's Arrival.
+ XII.--The Hundred Days.
+XIII.--Napoleon's Last Adieu.
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.
+ III.--The Revolution of 1830.
+  IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense.
+   V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.
+  VI.--The Flight from Italy.
+ VII.--The Pilgrimage.
+VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from Paris.
+   X.--Pilgrimage through France.
+  XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
+ XII.--The Pilgrim.
+XIII.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the Sections, _Frontispiece_.
+
+View of the Tuileries.
+
+Portrait of Queen Hortense.
+
+Portrait of Madame de Staël.
+
+
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.
+
+"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says our
+great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss purchased
+with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.
+
+And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
+Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy? Now,
+let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have tasted
+felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable
+and eternal!"
+
+Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an
+emperor to endure.
+
+In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and
+with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was
+not spared.
+
+A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was
+this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended
+from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of
+life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us
+as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen
+of Flowers.
+
+The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's beautiful
+daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she
+was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the
+daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued
+to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared
+to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his
+"_Fleurs Animées_." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of the
+Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a
+half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris. Farther in
+the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of
+the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot,
+but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial
+mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the
+train of a comet; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the
+golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a
+full-blooming branch of the crown imperial.
+
+It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming picture of
+Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant that sweeps by
+us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the
+life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her
+destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had
+seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems
+remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.
+
+When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none
+the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her poems are
+sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of
+impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds
+of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally
+melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, "_Va
+t'en, Guerrier_," which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at
+Napoleon's request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of
+France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
+march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same warlike
+harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant
+destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time
+everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had
+returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the _Invalides_ hummed it
+under their breath, while they whispered secretly to each other of the
+glory of _La Belle France_, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now
+gone forever.
+
+To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and mounts
+in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vendôme. The bronze
+visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous
+billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the
+queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews
+of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems,
+and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for
+France has won so holy a significance--holy because it is the
+master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should
+revere--the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "_Va t'en,
+Guerrier_," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the
+queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some
+brave soldier.
+
+She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable queen--but she
+ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to
+woman--the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on
+the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken
+heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged
+lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned
+kings and queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs,
+banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
+those to whom _they_ had been clement, a little spot of earth, where,
+far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in
+quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty
+sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy tale,
+which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to men and
+nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were
+eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.
+
+Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the
+mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the contrary, to
+teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the
+dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these
+wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the
+broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her
+bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but,
+even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to
+relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a
+constant charity; and when she died she could, like the Empress
+Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept much, but never have I made
+others weep."
+
+Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who, against
+the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de
+la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love
+alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy
+issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and
+jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the
+wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil
+bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not
+merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and
+cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine
+was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all
+those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her
+husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered
+in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived,
+then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter
+grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention
+and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet _blasée_ and
+hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and
+the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part
+to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she
+required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should
+not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose
+the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
+suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and both
+became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love
+they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their
+children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a
+son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy.
+Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness; and often
+when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the
+presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress
+from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and
+mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive
+attachment.
+
+But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment
+arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in
+her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had
+sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and
+little Hortense, quite disheartened by the absence of her brother, had
+no longer the means or the courage to allay the quarrels that raged
+between her parents, but would escape in terror and dismay, when they
+broke out, to some lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a
+misfortune, the extent of which her poor little childish heart could not
+yet estimate.
+
+In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young viscountess
+received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame
+Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors
+of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was
+no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and
+insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her
+with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her
+daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the
+last few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
+dazzling youth.
+
+Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a hint from
+destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and resolved to end them
+forever, she took her little daughter, Hortense, then scarcely four
+years old, and with her sailed away from France, to seek beyond the
+ocean and in her mother's arms the new happiness of undisturbed
+tranquillity.
+
+But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The mutterings
+and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A
+subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands; a dull
+thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change
+into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that would dash to atoms,
+and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and fiery cinder-showers, the
+happiness and peace of all humanity. And, finally, this terrific crater
+did, indeed, open and hurl destruction and death on all sides, over the
+whole world, uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations,
+and silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
+echoes of its awful voice!
+
+This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most fearful
+explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole world shook
+and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious masses from beneath
+overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse the order of things and
+place the lowest where the highest had been. Even away in Martinique
+this social earthquake was felt, which had already, in France, flung out
+the bloody guillotine from its relentless crater. This guillotine had
+become the altar of the so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon
+this altar the intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new
+idol those who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by
+whose death they now believed that they could purchase freedom
+for evermore.
+
+"_Egalité! fraternité! liberté!_" Such was the battle-cry of this
+howling, murdering populace. Such were the three words which burned in
+blood-red letters of fire above the guillotine, and their mocking emblem
+was the glittering axe, that flashed down, to sever from their bodies
+the heads of the aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion
+represented in those three words, they would not recognize as brethren
+and equals, or admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this
+battle-cry of the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as
+Martinique, where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience
+to the point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
+equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They, at
+last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their masters, and
+the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of the whites served
+as the bridal torches to their espousal of liberty.
+
+The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes in which
+these firebrands fell.
+
+One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames,
+which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror,
+she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the
+couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped her in the
+bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst,
+with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting
+crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of
+mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready
+to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the
+small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young
+woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with
+one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the
+deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and
+child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put
+out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.
+
+The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her
+child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed
+up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this moment all her
+thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it was only when she
+had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free
+from all danger--only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a
+mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and
+frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering
+night-clothes, without any other covering to her beautiful neck and
+bosom than her superb, luxuriant hair, which fell around her and partly
+hid them, like a thick black veil, stood the young Viscountess
+Josephine de Beauharnais, in the midst of a group of gazing men!
+
+However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so soon as
+her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine eagerly requested
+to be taken back to land, in order that she might fly to her mother's
+assistance.
+
+But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to give the
+young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins who were
+burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells could be
+distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast, so far as the
+eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea, though, of flame and
+smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in long tongues of fire far
+against the sky. It was a terrible, an appalling spectacle; and
+Josephine fled from it to the bedside of her little sleeping daughter.
+Then, kneeling there by the couch of her child, she uplifted to heaven
+her face, down which the tears were streaming, and implored God to spare
+her mother.
+
+But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and farther
+away from this blazing coast.
+
+Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's burning home,
+which gradually grew less to her sight, then glimmered only like a tiny
+star on the distant horizon, and finally vanished altogether. With that
+last ray her childhood and past life had sunk forever in the sea, and a
+new world and a new life opened for both mother and child. The past was,
+like the ships of Cortez, burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light
+far away over into her future, and as Josephine stood there with her
+little Hortense in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island
+where her early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
+mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:
+
+"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all France will
+be at your feet. You will be greater there than a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PROPHECY.
+
+It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with her little
+daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her residence in a
+small dwelling. There she soon received the intelligence of the rescue
+of her mother, and of the re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In
+France, however, the revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the
+banner of the Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody
+shadow over Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in
+the evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
+that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at every
+door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in every family.
+In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all her earlier griefs,
+all the insults and humiliations to which she had been subjected by her
+husband; the old love revived in her breast, and, as it might well be
+that on the morrow death would come knocking at her own door, she wished
+to devote the present moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a
+reunion with her son.
+
+But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The viscount had
+felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an injury, too great an
+insult, to be now willing to consent to a reconciliation with his wife.
+Sympathizing friends arranged a meeting between them, without, however,
+previously informing the viscount of their design. His anger was
+therefore great when, on entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in
+response to that gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had
+so obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
+when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in silvery
+tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was now powerless
+to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his heart, and when the
+child, with a winning smile, entreated him to kiss her mamma as he had
+kissed her; when he saw the beautiful countenance of Josephine wet with
+tears; when he heard his father's voice saying, "My son, reconcile
+yourself with my daughter! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not
+call her so if she were unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son,
+Eugene, gazing at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother's
+shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he
+stepped forward to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful
+greeting of love, Josephine sank on his bosom.
+
+Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united in a
+closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to have spent
+their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear and cloudless.
+But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the black shadow of the
+revolution.
+
+Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the new
+legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position, in order
+to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue. With the rank
+of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the North, accompanied
+by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread premonition told her that
+she would never see the general again, and this premonition did not
+deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and insurrection not only raged among
+the people of Paris, but also in the army. The aristocrats, who were
+given over to the guillotine in Paris, were also regarded with distrust
+and hatred in the army, and Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry
+on the battle-field of Soissons, had been promoted to the position of
+commanding general, was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of
+France and of the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to
+Paris, and thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
+victims of the revolution lay in confinement.
+
+The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached Josephine,
+and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf. She mentally
+vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her children, or to die
+with him. She courageously confronted all dangers, all suspicions, and
+was happy when she found him in his prison, where she visited him,
+whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.
+
+But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
+Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
+herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of an
+aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
+arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.
+
+Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
+prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only left
+their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all help,
+avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two children were
+threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger, for the estate of
+their parents had been confiscated, and, in the same hour in which
+Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances and doors of their
+dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left to find a sheltering
+roof for themselves. But yet they were not entirely helpless, not quite
+friendless, for a friend of Josephine, a Madame Ho1stein, had the
+courage to come to the rescue, and take the children into her
+own family.
+
+But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in order to
+avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who, coming from the
+scum of the people, were now the rulers of France. An imprudent word, a
+look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon, and render up to the
+guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this courageous friend of the two
+children. It was in itself a capital crime that she had taken the
+children of the accused into her house, and it was therefore necessary
+to adopt every means of conciliating the authorities. It was thought
+necessary that Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend
+the festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
+decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was never
+required to take an active part in these celebrations. She was not
+considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the people; she had
+not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a viscount, of an
+imprisoned _ci-devant._ Eugene had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and
+the son of the viscount was now often seen walking through the streets
+in a blouse, carrying a board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.
+
+While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary security,
+the future of their parents was growing darker and darker, and not only
+the life of the general, but also that of his wife, was now seriously
+endangered. Josephine had been removed from the prison of St. Pelagie to
+that of the Carmelites, and this brought her a step nearer the scaffold.
+But she did not tremble for herself, she thought only of her children
+and her husband; she wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she
+bribed her jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts
+to place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
+day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just been
+conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited for
+further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
+acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he already
+free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he were free, he
+would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead,
+his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the
+condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.
+Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
+misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
+face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.
+
+The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
+were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose
+seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the
+Marquise de Créqui, the intellectual lady who has often been called the
+last marquise of the _ancien régime_, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
+the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
+aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbé Téxier, who, when the
+revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
+to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will
+you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was
+yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his
+master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter
+full of water and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than
+seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.
+
+To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this
+day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of
+her husband.
+
+In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison
+now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an assignat of
+fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that
+his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as
+"dove," and had made all other preparations. A table stood in the middle
+of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water,
+around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as
+near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to
+see the better. The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought
+from her bed in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and
+behind her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
+the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
+ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their aristocratic
+manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly observant of
+etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the honor of the
+_tabouret_ in the Tuileries, were here accorded the same precedence, and
+all possible consideration shown them.
+
+On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her large, dark
+eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression, stood the unhappy
+Josephine, and, at some distance behind the ladies, the jailer with
+his wife.
+
+Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and cried in a
+loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"
+
+The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
+decanter.
+
+"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look into the
+prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"
+
+"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot lies a
+young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man, writing on a sheet
+of paper that lies on a large book."
+
+"Can you read?"
+
+"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the paper."
+
+"The one who sleeps?"
+
+"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing something on
+the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair; now he opens a
+little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it; they are assignats,
+he counts them and then puts them back in the pocket-book. Now he rises
+and walks softly, softly."
+
+"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest noise as
+yet, have you?"
+
+"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."
+
+"What do you see now?"
+
+"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be weeping."
+
+"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"
+
+"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in the
+pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."
+
+"Of what color is this coat?"
+
+"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk and
+covered with shining buttons."
+
+"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed, child."
+
+He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The little
+girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her parents, who
+led her from the hall.
+
+"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta, addressing
+Josephine.
+
+"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing for
+death[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
+Créqui, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol. vi.,
+p. 238.]
+
+Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received a
+package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La Force,
+named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General Beauharnais
+and had found the package and the letter, addressed to the duchess, in
+his pocket on the morning of the execution of the general.
+
+In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver to
+Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last adieus to
+wife and children.
+
+This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could bequeath
+to his Josephine and her unhappy children!
+
+Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and his
+last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of blood
+gushing from her mouth.
+
+Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her the most
+tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a physician should
+be called.
+
+"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the best
+physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will restore
+to him his wife."
+
+This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered from
+her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of Terror. This was
+the herald of certain death, and she courageously prepared for the
+grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children she must leave behind.
+
+A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
+revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as there was
+no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss which themselves
+had digged.
+
+The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty thousands
+of the already condemned victims of the revolution.
+
+Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to liberty, and
+could now hasten to her children, but she came back to them as a poor
+widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible republic" were on hers
+and her children's property as well as on that of all other aristocrats.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.
+
+France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an end, and a
+milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre over the poor
+land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death. It was no longer a
+capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to be better dressed than
+the _sans-culottes_, to wear no Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the
+emigrants. The guillotine, which had ruled over Paris during two years
+of blood and tears, now rested from its horrid work, and allowed the
+Parisians to think of something else besides making their wills and
+preparing for death.
+
+Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were disposed to
+make the most of this release from the fear of immediate death, and to
+enjoy themselves to the utmost while they could.
+
+They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once more; so
+long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently longed for
+amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris, who had been
+dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the reins had been
+torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins again, and reconquer
+the position from which the storm-wind of the revolution had
+hurled them.
+
+Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five directors who
+now swayed the destinies of France; Madame Récamier, the friend of all
+the eminent and distinguished men of that period; and Madame de Staël,
+the daughter of Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose
+government had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris
+its drawing-rooms, its reunions, its _fêtes_, its fashions, and its
+luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the Church had
+not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief in a Supreme
+Being was already re-established. Robespierre had already been bold
+enough to cause the inscription, "There is a Supreme Being," to be
+placed over the altars of the churches that had been converted into
+"Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who
+had first acknowledged its existence, was soon to experience in himself
+that such was the case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by
+them with desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the
+head of the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell
+a prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
+existence. While engaged in the Hôtel de Ville in signing
+death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the guillotine,
+he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards, who had stormed
+the gates and penetrated into the building, and the attempt to blow out
+his brains with his pistol miscarried. Bleeding, his jaw shattered by
+the bullet, he was dragged before Fouquier-Tainville to receive his
+sentence, and to be conducted thence to the scaffold. In order that the
+proceeding should be attended with all formalities, he was, however,
+first conducted to the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety
+was then sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
+bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the scaffold,
+the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged. Like a bundle of
+rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large table that stood in the
+middle of the room. But yesterday Robespierre had been enthroned at this
+table as almighty ruler over the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen;
+but yesterday he had here issued his decrees and signed the
+death-sentences, that lay on the table, unexecuted. These papers were
+now the only salve the ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in
+his face, from which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed
+by himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
+tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate _sans-culotte_, with which to
+bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat there in the
+midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding, groaning, and
+complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched arms, pointing to
+this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was right. There is a
+Supreme Being!"
+
+This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was dead;
+Théroigne de Méricourt was no longer the Goddess of Reason, and
+Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of Liberty and Virtue. Women had
+given up representing divinities, and desired to be themselves again,
+and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms of the capital, by means of their
+intellect and grace, the throne which had gone down in the revolution.
+
+Madame Tallien, Madame Récamier, and Madame de Staël, reorganized
+society, and all were anxious to obtain admission to their parlors. To
+be sure, these entertainments and reunions still wore a sufficiently
+strange and fantastic appearance. Fashion, which had so long been
+compelled to give way to the _carmagnole_ and red cap, endeavored to
+avenge its long banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in
+doing so assumed a political, reactionary aspect. _Coiffures à la
+Jacobine_ were now supplanted by _coiffures à la victime_ and _au
+repentir_. In order to exhibit one's taste for the fine arts, the
+draperies of the statues of Greece and ancient Rome were now worn.
+Grecian _fêtes_ were given, at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly
+honored, and Roman feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled
+those of Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
+palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now taken
+up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the new French
+society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud to wear the
+generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic, Madame Tallien chose
+the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and the gold-embroidered purple
+robes, and the golden tiara in her black, shining hair, gave to the
+charming and beautiful daughter of the republic the magnificence of an
+empress. She had also drawn around her a splendid court. All eagerly
+pressed forward to pay their respects to and obtain the good will of the
+mighty wife of the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of
+attraction to all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or
+aspired to such. While in the parlors of Madame Récamier, who, despite
+the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the good
+time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often sanguinary
+_bon mots_ at the expense of the republic uttered--while in Madame de
+Staël's parlors art and science had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and
+court lived for the present, and basked in the splendor with which she
+knew how to invest the palace of the dictators of France.
+
+In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been living,
+with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad memories. A day
+came, however, when she was compelled to tear herself from this last
+consolation of the unhappy, the brooding over the sorrows and losses of
+the past, or see her children become the victims of misery and want. The
+time had come when she must leave her retirement, and step, as a
+petitioner, before those who had the power to grant, as a favor, that
+which was hers by right, and restore to her, at least in part, her
+sequestered estate. Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was
+still Madame de Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might
+assist her in her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father.
+Madame Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
+admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being called
+on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished position at the
+court of King Louis. She therefore received her with great amiability,
+and endeavored to make the charming and beautiful viscountess her
+friend. But Josephine found that estates were more easily lost than
+recovered. The republic, one and indivisible, was always ready to take,
+but not to give; and, even with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien
+freely exerted in her behalf, it was some time before Josephine
+succeeded in recovering her estate. In the mean time, she really
+suffered want, and she and her children were compelled to bear the
+hardships and mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true
+friends still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
+delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with food
+and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was characteristic
+of this period that no one felt humiliated by accepting benefits of this
+kind from his friends. Those who had lost all had not done so through
+their own fault; and those who had saved their property out of the
+general wreck could not attribute their fortune to their own merit or
+wisdom, but merely to chance. They therefore considered it a sacred
+duty to divide with those who had been less fortunate; and the latter
+would point with pride to the poverty which proved that they had been
+true to themselves and principle, and accept what friendship offered.
+This was the result of a kind of community of property, to which the
+revolution had given birth. Those who had possessions considered it
+their duty to divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded
+this division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.
+
+Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends without
+blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de Montmorin to
+provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and she and Hortense
+could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to dine with her twice a
+week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were assembled, on certain days, a
+number of friends, who had been robbed of their fortunes by the storms
+of the revolution. Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor,
+gave these dinners to her friends, but each guest was expected to bring
+with him his own white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered
+one of the greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a
+law had been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain
+amount of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
+purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
+general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
+requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that no
+more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and that
+amount cost the purchaser dearly[2]. Josephine, however, had not even
+the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An exception to this
+rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and Hortense; and at
+Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always provided white bread for
+them, and for them alone of all her guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was
+soon, however, to be freed from this want. One day when she had been
+invited by Madame Tallien to dinner, and had walked to the palace with
+Hortense, Tallien informed her that the government had favorably
+considered her petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the
+widow of a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with
+his blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
+domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed from her
+furniture and other personal property, and that the republic had
+remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury for her relief,
+until the sequestration of her landed estates should be annulled, which
+he expected would soon take place.
+
+[Footnote 2: Mémoires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
+i., p. 80.]
+
+Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She pressed her
+daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in tears: "We shall
+at last be happy! My children shall no longer suffer want!" This time
+the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy, the first in long years.
+
+Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her children an
+education suitable to their rank; she could now once more assume the
+position in society to which her beauty, youth, amiability, and name
+entitled her. She no longer came to Madame Tallien's parlor as a
+suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all were eager to do homage to
+the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to the beautiful and charming
+viscountess. But Josephine preferred the quiet bliss of home-life in the
+circle of her children to the brilliant life of society; she gradually
+withdrew from the noisy circles of the outer world, in order that she
+might, in peaceful retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the
+hearts and minds of her promising children.
+
+Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal security
+no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had left his
+master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was preparing
+himself for military service under the instruction of excellent
+teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers of
+comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France filled him
+with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his teacher of the
+deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling eyes and glowing
+countenance: "I too will become a gallant general, some day!"
+
+Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who was
+scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an elder and
+younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature had given
+Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to this beauty
+grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's
+intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to
+care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition
+usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an
+insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence,
+not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls
+usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with
+the adornment of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath
+the yoke of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
+enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
+dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
+Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to
+amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if
+not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the
+brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the
+school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a
+womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet her noble and chaste
+features still wore the impress of childhood, and in her large blue eyes
+reposed a whole heaven of innocence and peace. When she sat with her
+harp at the window in the evening twilight, the last rays of the setting
+sun gilding her sweet countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her
+beautiful blond hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
+angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter portray.
+In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and melodies which
+Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with the silvery tones of
+her voice, in words composed by herself, half-childish prayer, half
+rhapsody of love, and revealing the most secret thoughts of the fair
+young being who stood on the threshold of womanhood, bidding adieu to
+childhood with a blissful smile, and dreaming of the future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GENERAL BUONAPARTE.
+
+While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long and
+stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and repose,
+the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to time in fits of
+fury, and tranquillity continued far from being permanently restored.
+The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution, still exercised their
+pestilential influence over the populace of Paris, and stirred the rude
+masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms of discontent and disorder.
+
+But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild masses in
+his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down into the dust
+with the flashing master-glance of his resistless eye.
+
+That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine years of
+age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero crowned with
+laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of victory. As
+commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of valor at the
+recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to the rank of
+general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the republic.
+Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the young general of
+five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the government, being
+still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished to remove him from
+Paris, and send him to La Vendée as a brigadier-general. Buonaparte
+declined this mission, because he preferred remaining in the artillery
+service, and, for that reason, the government of the republic relieved
+him of his duties and put him on half-pay.
+
+So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the brilliant
+star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and shed the fulness
+of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which
+whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of
+military glory, had already announced the rising of his star.
+
+So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed quiet,
+retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted friends only,
+who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted circumstances. For
+Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited means in the tempests of
+the revolution, and all that he possessed consisted of the laurels he
+had won on the battle-field, and his half pay as a brigadier-general.
+But, like the Viscountess de Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends
+who deemed it an honor to receive him as a guest at their table, and
+also, like Josephine, he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him
+to the dinners that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He
+often dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
+boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that time
+still his host, favored of the gods. The young general, instead of, like
+his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought only his ration, which
+was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned to his brother Louis, who
+was very fond of it, while Madame Bourrienne took care that he should
+invariably find his supply of white, bread at his plate. She had managed
+to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
+white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
+discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
+the scaffold.
+
+Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
+name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
+that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
+by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
+the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
+quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
+that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
+carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"
+
+He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
+little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
+when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
+and the famous 13th Vendémiaire, 1795, again summoned the famous general
+away from his meditations to stern practical activity. It was on that
+day, the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5th), that there came the outburst of
+the storm, the subterranean rumblings of which had been so long
+perceptible. The sections of Paris rose against the National Convention
+which had given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two
+thirds of the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
+legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
+accept the new constitution only when it provided that the legislative
+body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The Convention, thus
+assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was resolved to stand its
+ground, and called upon the representatives who commanded the armed
+forces, to defend the republic of their creation. Barras was appointed
+the first general commanding the Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the
+second. It was not long before a ferocious conflict broke out in the
+streets between the army and the insurgent sections. At that time the
+populace were not always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear
+up the pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
+terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the Church of
+St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but they were
+driven from them also; the struggle in the streets recommenced, and
+streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.
+
+After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras declared to
+the triumphant National Convention that the victory over the insurgents
+was chiefly due to the comprehensive and gallant conduct of General
+Bonaparte.
+
+The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon the
+latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of the
+Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on the day of
+peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from obscurity; his name had
+risen above the horizon!
+
+He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the whispering
+voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant song of his
+future career. He was now already conscious that he had a shining goal
+before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet assign a title, that
+flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale, and which he swore to make
+reality at last.
+
+One day, there came to the headquarters of the young general-in-chief a
+young man who very pressingly asked to see him. Bonaparte had him
+admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous, fiery glance, the
+noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at once prepossessed him in
+the young man's favor, and he forthwith questioned him in gentle,
+friendly tones, concerning the object of his visit.
+
+"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais, and I
+have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was denounced before
+the Committee of Public Safety as a _suspect_, and given over to the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, who had him murdered, three days before the fall
+of Robespierre."
+
+"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.
+
+"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I come now
+to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have the kindness to
+bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to induce them to give
+me back my father's sword. I will faithfully use it in fighting the
+enemies of my country and defending the cause of the republic."
+
+These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to the
+stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of his eyes
+grew softer.
+
+"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and this
+filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of General
+Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"
+
+With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the necessary
+commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the adjutant returned,
+bringing with him the sword of General Beauharnais.
+
+Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed with strong
+emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession of his father--to
+his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred emotion started into
+his eyes.
+
+Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white hand,
+which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as soft, as
+delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess, rested lightly on
+Eugene's shoulder.
+
+"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all hearts to
+him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you or
+your family."
+
+Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement. "Good
+general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will pray
+for you."
+
+This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly nod, he
+desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to call upon him
+soon again.
+
+This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the commencement of the
+acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and Josephine. The sword of the
+guillotined General Beauharnais placed an imperial crown upon the head
+of his widow, and adorned the brows of his son and his daughter with
+royal diadems.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MARRIAGE.
+
+A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene, Josephine
+met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant _soirées_ given by Barras, the
+first general-in-chief. She asked Barras to introduce her to the young
+general, and then, in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of
+all prudery, yet none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand
+to Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
+the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.
+
+The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and beautiful
+woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to manhood. Her
+enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a sea of warmth and
+passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while the gentle,
+love-enticing smile that played around her mouth revealed the tender
+feminine gentleness and amiability of her disposition. Bonaparte had
+never mastered the art of flattering women in the light, frivolous style
+of the fashionable coxcomb; and when he attempted it his compliments
+were frequently of so unusual and startling a character that they might
+just as well contain an affront as a tribute of eulogy.
+
+"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was emperor,
+to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red hair
+you have!"
+
+"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time that a
+man ever told me so."
+
+And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a very
+handsome blond[3].
+
+[Footnote 3: The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to
+Tours, because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen
+of Spain.]
+
+To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once said: "Ah,
+good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to another: "What
+beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress that is! Who could
+have put it up for you in such ridiculous style?"
+
+Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women with
+words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language that his
+eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very hour,
+conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy at the
+thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young hero had
+awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to livelier
+palpitations.
+
+From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and, ere long,
+Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing confession of his
+love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her hand. In vain her
+powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored to dissuade her from
+marrying this young, penniless general; in vain did they remind her that
+he might be killed in the very next battle, and that she might thus
+again be left a reduced widow. Josephine shook her handsome curls with
+a peculiar smile. Perhaps she was thinking of the prophecy of the
+negress at Martinique; perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of
+Bonaparte's eye, and on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the
+very man to bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved
+him ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
+any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
+friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
+determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he was.
+Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous impatience to
+make their modest little preparations for their new housekeeping
+establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to complete his dream of
+happiness; he possessed neither house nor carriage, and Josephine, too,
+was without an equipage.
+
+Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on foot
+through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their
+felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a
+scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications
+were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not
+obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting
+into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the
+promenades, he smiling proudly when the passers-by broke out in
+spontaneous exclamations of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy
+and exultant as she overheard the whispered admiration and respect with
+which the multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with
+the general through the throng.
+
+One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to Ragideau,
+the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had been the
+business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long time, and
+Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her own disposal, a
+sum of money belonging to her that had been deposited with him.
+Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while Josephine went into the
+adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's office.
+
+"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
+Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.
+
+The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do well,
+and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I am
+satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."
+
+"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with the proud
+and happy look of a person really in love. "My future husband is General
+Bonaparte!"
+
+The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm. "How?"
+said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this little
+General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has already
+deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and throw him back
+into insignificance?"
+
+Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."
+
+"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you are wrong
+in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are committing a
+folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who has nothing but his
+hat and his sword."
+
+"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then, turning
+the conversation, she began to speak of the practical matters that had
+brought her thither.
+
+When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine returned
+to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He came, smiling,
+to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the notary, who was with
+her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the latter shrank back in
+consternation. Josephine also remarked that Bonaparte's countenance was
+paler that day than usual, and that he was less communicative and less
+disposed to chat with her; but she had already learned that it was not
+advisable to question him as to the cause of his different moods. So,
+she kept silent on that score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon
+drove away the clouds that had obscured the general's brow.
+
+The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of March,
+1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense, Josephine's
+children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien, Calmelet, and Leclerq.
+The marriage-contract contained, along with the absolutely requisite
+facts of the case, a very pleasant piece of flattery for Josephine,
+since, in order to establish an equality of ages between the two
+parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a year older, and Josephine four
+years younger, than they really were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract
+states, born on the 5th of February, 1768 but on the 15th of August,
+1769; and Josephine not, as the document represents, on the 23d of July,
+1767, but on the 23d of June, 1763[4].
+
+[Footnote 4: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 350.]
+
+Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in queenly
+fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his appointment to
+the command of the Italian army, which Barras and Tallien had granted to
+her, at her own request.
+
+But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of activity,
+there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few happy weeks with
+his lovely wife and his new family, in the small residence in the Rue
+Chautereine, which he had purchased a short time before his marriage,
+and which Josephine had fitted up with that elevated and refined good
+taste that had always distinguished her.
+
+One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He had his
+house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There was now only
+a carriage to be procured in order to make the general the "happiest
+of men."
+
+But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the farther they
+advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the possession of a small
+house in Paris. He now wanted an establishment in the country also.
+
+"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the Yonne," he
+wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living on his property
+near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will buy it. Then I will
+retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not want any of the national
+domains[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 103.]
+
+As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the victorious
+General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses, which was a
+present to the general of the French Republic from the Emperor of
+Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years later, he would have
+him for a son-in-law.
+
+These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of Arcola,
+Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte brought back
+with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only gift which the
+general had not refused to accept.
+
+It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently hitched to
+a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look attached to the
+gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the first consul made his
+solemn entry into the Tuileries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BONAPARTE IN ITALY.
+
+Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few weeks in
+which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone in Paris,
+doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not only from her
+husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied his young step-father
+to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette,
+had, at that time, opened an establishment for the education of young
+ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest and most eminent families of
+newly-republicanized France liked to send their daughters to it, so that
+they might learn from the former court-lady the refined style and
+manners of old royalist times.
+
+Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and there, in the
+society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of Bonaparte, and afterward
+Queen of Naples--and the young Countess Stephanie Beauharnais, her
+cousin, passed a few happy years of work, of varied study, and of
+youthful maiden-dreams.
+
+Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm,
+to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of
+languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more
+in the mastering the so-called _bon ton_ and that aristocratic _savoir
+vivre_ of which Madame Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus
+receiving instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in
+painting from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and
+was playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
+the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating in the
+balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show off the
+talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in a word,
+Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments of a
+distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful all these
+little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time, would one day be to
+her, and how good a thing it was that she had learned to play parts at
+Madame Campan's, and to appear in society as a great lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and exulting
+triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending, brighter and
+brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the name of Bonaparte was
+echoing in louder and louder volume through the world, and filling all
+Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear and trembling, as the sea
+becomes agitated when the sun begins to rise. Victory after victory came
+joyfully heralded from Italy, as ancient states fell beneath the iron
+tread of the victor, and new ones sprang into being. The splendid old
+Republic of Venice, once the terror of the whole world, the victorious
+Queen of the Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell
+in fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
+Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the slender
+monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained to the
+shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in Candia,
+Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the old
+commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state, the
+Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the French
+Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin, laid his
+peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted away, another
+Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given Venice the
+greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to the front at the
+head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom Bonaparte had said that
+he was "a man."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how seldom one
+meets _men_ in the world! In Italy there are eighteen millions of
+inhabitants, but I have found only two _men_ among them all--Dandolo and
+Melzi[6]."
+
+[Footnote 6: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 139.]
+
+But, while Bonaparte was despairing of _men_, in the very midst of his
+victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned love for his wife,
+to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and most ardent letters, the
+answers to which he awaited with the most impatient longing.
+
+Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual and
+singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
+campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
+excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
+weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only on
+the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was more
+considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned _all_ the
+communications he received to the flames, _unread_, and--while the fire
+on his hearth was consuming the paper on which, perchance, was written
+the despairing appeal of a mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a
+disconsolate wife, beseeching pity for her husband; or the application
+of an ambitious statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with
+a sardonic smile, and say, "There's _my_ correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
+least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached him,
+indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary, Bourrienne,
+much time and labor, for, when they finally went to work on them, time
+and circumstances had already disposed of four fifths of them, and thus
+only one fifth required answers--a result that made Bonaparte laugh
+heartily, and filled him with justifiable pride in what he termed his
+"happy idea."
+
+Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to wait ere
+they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his heart bounding
+with delight, and invariably answered them, in such impassioned, glowing
+language as only his warm southern temperament could suggest, and
+contrasted with which even Josephine's missives seemed a little cool and
+passionless.
+
+Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting letters
+from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with him; and
+hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the general summoned
+his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his call with rapture, and
+hastened to Italy to join him. Now came proud days of triumph and
+gratified affection. All Italy hailed Bonaparte as the conquering hero;
+all Italy did homage to the woman who bore his name, and whose
+incomparable fascination and amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won
+all hearts. Her life now resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal
+pageant; a dazzling fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights"
+that had become reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine,
+sparkling with stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.
+
+Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte made his
+proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the front courtyard
+of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the _Corps Législatif_, was
+erected a vast amphitheatre, in which sat all the high authorities of
+France; in the centre of the amphitheatre stood the altar of the
+country, surmounted by three gigantic statues, representing Freedom,
+Equality, and Peace. As Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the
+dense crowd that occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their
+feet with uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the
+windows of the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who
+waved welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
+this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An officer of
+the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity, had clambered
+up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the palace, then
+undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the ground almost at
+Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost simultaneously from a
+thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale and shrank back,
+shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a moment before had
+exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these living flowers, now stood
+there bare, with empty, gaping casements. A perceptible thrill ran
+through the ranks of the _Corps Législatif_, and here and there the
+whisper passed that this fall of an officer portended the early
+overthrow of the Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like
+the unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies at
+the feet of General Bonaparte.
+
+But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of Arcola
+new _fêtes_ every day; and when these _fêtes_ were over, and Bonaparte,
+fatigued with the speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be
+on his way returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who
+beset his path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
+persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of the
+hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.
+
+A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
+individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on himself.
+Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation of his own
+inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him with a sort of
+reverential exultation.
+
+Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment of these
+glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely overwhelmed and
+disturbed, could have held aloof from these ovations of the people of
+Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the heart of his wife with pride
+and joy. While in the theatre, he shrank back, abashed, behind his
+wife's chair when the audience, learning his presence, filled their
+noisy plaudits and clamored to have a glimpse at him, Josephine would
+thank the crowd on his behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling
+with tears for this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a
+natural and appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero.
+But Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
+demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as though it
+would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their cries of "_Vive
+Bonaparte!_" while Josephine turned her face toward him, glowing with
+delight, and called out, exultingly--"See, how they love you, these good
+people of Paris!" he replied, with an almost melancholy expression
+"Bah! The crowd would be just as numerous and noisy if they were
+conducting me to the scaffold!"
+
+However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided, and his
+life resumed its more tranquil course.
+
+Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest and calm
+enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated) dwelling in the
+Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city authorities had changed to
+_Rue de la Victoire_, in honor of the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo.
+He could, after so many battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while
+in the arms of love and happiness.
+
+Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
+restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories. He
+felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of his
+conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the notes of
+the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and to other paths
+of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but could not completely
+satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning of death.
+
+"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he. "They retain
+the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one celebrity blots out
+another in this great Babylon; if I show myself much oftener to the
+public, they will cease to look at me, and if I do not soon undertake
+something new, they will forget me."
+
+And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented, that filled
+all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of France with an army
+to conquer, for the French Republic, that ancient land of Egypt, on
+whose pyramids the green moss of long-forgotten ages was flourishing.
+
+Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris; but she
+needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to sustain this
+separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to her might be just
+as likely to last six years as six months. And what could afford better
+consolation to a heart so tender as Josephine's than the presence of her
+beloved daughter? She had willingly given up her son to her husband, and
+he had accompanied the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and
+her she would not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school.
+
+Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who had come
+to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after two years'
+stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all the charms of
+innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.
+
+Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had retained
+the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a white sheet
+of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name.
+She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her
+young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his
+commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she
+reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to
+find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times the hero, the
+lord and master, the father to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she
+dared not love him; she could only look up to and honor him from
+a distance.
+
+Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of a child, upon
+the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to her, and from which
+she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling piece of good fortune
+without having any accurate idea in what it was to consist. She still
+loved all mankind, and believed in their truth and rectitude. No thorn
+had yet wounded her heart; no disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed
+to pieces, had yet left its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of
+transparent whiteness. The expression of her large blue eyes was still
+radiant and undimmed, and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it
+almost made her mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the
+last echo of some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too
+well knew that it would soon be hushed.
+
+But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling their
+melodies; the world still lay before her like an early morning dream,
+and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.
+
+Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
+boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of Plombières. But there
+it was that Hortense came near experiencing the greatest sorrow of her
+life, in nearly losing her mother.
+
+She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room of the
+house they occupied at Plombières. The doors facing the balcony were
+open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was sitting by the window
+painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she had gathered with her own
+hands on the hills of Plombières. Josephine found the atmosphere of the
+room too close, and invited some ladies to step out with her upon the
+balcony. A moment afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed
+by piercing shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate
+fright to the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her
+mother and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings
+had given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
+Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would have
+sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held back with
+the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared the young girl,
+and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded heaven of her youth.
+Her mother escaped with no other injury than the fright, and a slight
+wound on her arm, while one of the ladies had both legs broken.
+
+Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of the
+fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the
+wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet "something more than
+a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.
+
+Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had adorned
+his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the returning
+conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first time, Hortense
+was present at the festivities which the city of Paris dedicated to her
+step-father; for the first time she saw the homage that men and women,
+graybeards and children alike, paid to the hero of Italy and Egypt.
+These festivities and this homage filled her heart with a tremor of
+alarm, and yet, at the same time, with joyous exultation. In the midst
+of these triumphs and these ovations which were thus offered to her
+second father, the young girl recalled the prison in which her mother
+had once languished, the scaffold upon which the head of her own father
+had fallen; and frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered
+uniform of her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the
+time when Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice,
+through the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.
+
+These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
+Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune, preserved
+to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her from entertaining
+any overweening or domineering propensity in her day of prosperity, or
+from seeming cast down and hopeless when adversity came. She never
+lulled herself with the idea of good fortune that could not pass away,
+but her remembrances kept her eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune
+came, it did not take her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to
+confront it.
+
+Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days in full
+draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom she was so
+fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified love; and in the
+name of her murdered father she thanked General Bonaparte with double
+fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for having been the means of
+procuring for her mother, who had suffered so deeply in her first wedded
+life, so magnificent a glow of splendor and happiness in her
+second marriage.
+
+In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to dispel
+this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution convulsed
+all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two hostile camps,
+burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On one side stood the
+democratic republicans, who looked back with longing regret to the days
+of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving, as they did, that tranquillity
+and protracted peace must soon wrest the reins of power from their
+grasp, and therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the
+element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger,
+and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the _sans-culottes_ and
+the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of the
+imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the
+man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in
+the bonds of servitude.
+
+On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
+republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
+fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
+disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
+guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists and
+poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew that the
+days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic had brought not
+merely human beings, but also the arts and sciences, to the scaffold.
+With them, too, were arrayed the merchants and artisans, the bankers,
+the business-men, the property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the
+republic at least established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation,
+in order to have confidence in its durability and substantial character,
+and to commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success.
+And at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.
+
+The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was a
+fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in which
+little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were slaughtered.
+
+The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory,
+and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins
+of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate,
+rational republic of the year 1798. At its head were the three consuls,
+Bonaparte, Cambacères, and Lebrun.
+
+On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls entered the
+Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept, as conquerors,
+in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.
+
+From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the forms of
+etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic republic, had
+slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of the Luxembourg and
+the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and circumspectly, 'tis true,
+in broad daylight. People were no longer required, in accordance with
+the spirit of equality, to ignore all distinctions of condition and
+culture, by the use of the words "citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the
+name of brotherhood, to endure the close familiarities of every brawling
+street ruffian; or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal
+liberty and inclination be trampled under foot.
+
+Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners again; and
+the three consuls, who had taken possession of the Luxembourg, whispered
+the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and greeted Josephine and her
+daughter, who were installed in the apartments prepared for them in the
+palace on the next day, with the title of "madame." Yet, only a year
+earlier, the two words "monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in
+Paris, and brought about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had
+promulged the stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever
+should use the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on
+pretext whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable
+of ever again serving in the army of the republic[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.]
+
+Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry, along with
+the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg, which had been
+delivered from its democratic tyrants.
+
+Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense was
+"Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now required a
+larger retinue of servants, and a more showy establishment. Indeed,
+temerity could not yet go so far as to speak of the _court_ of Madame
+Bonaparte and the _court ladies_ of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had
+still to be content with the limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg,
+but they were soon to be compensated for all this, and, if they still
+had to call each other _monsieur_ and _madame_, they could, a few years
+later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in the
+Tuileries.
+
+The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the joint
+residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the ambition of
+Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the other two men
+who shared the supreme control of France with him. Too it was also for
+the longings that now spoke with ever louder and stronger accents in
+his breast, and pushed him farther and farther onward in this path of
+splendor and renown which, at first, had seemed to him but as the magic
+mirage of his dreams, but which now appeared as the glittering truth and
+reality of his waking hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the
+three consuls, but they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to
+work to prepare the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It
+would not do to oust the representatives of the people, who held their
+sessions there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be
+made to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
+France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed monster
+of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was necessary, before
+entering the Tuileries, to give the French people proof that men might
+still be very good republicans, even although they might wish to be
+housed in the bedchamber of a king.
+
+Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to the
+Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a residence worthy
+of the representatives of the republic. So, the first move made was to
+set up a handsome bust of the elder Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's,
+which he had brought with him from Italy--in one of the galleries of the
+Tuileries; and then David had to carve out some other statues of the
+republican heroes of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A
+number of democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the
+13th Vendémiaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of the
+death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans, arriving
+just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army should wear the
+badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were worn on the arm, and
+sable streamers waved from the standards, in honor of the deceased
+republican hero.
+
+However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army had
+sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered the
+Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which towered
+aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription of the
+republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend "August 10,
+1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France is overthrown and
+will never rise again." It was between these two significant symbols
+that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries. It was a very long and
+imposing procession of carriages which moved that day toward the palace,
+through the streets of the capital. They only lacked the outward pomp
+and magnificence which rendered the latter _fêtes_ of the empire so
+remarkable. With the exception of the splendid vehicle in which the
+three consuls rode, and which was drawn by the six grays presented by
+the Emperor of Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen.
+France of the new day had not had the opportunity to build any
+state-coaches, and those of old France had been too shamefully misused
+to admit of their ever serving again; for it would be out of the
+question to employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
+state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the vehicles
+in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs to their
+place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September days of the
+year 1793.
+
+The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at that
+time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the streets and
+slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down from the guillotine
+and dyed the ground with the purple of the new system of
+popular liberty.
+
+The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which the
+guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their original
+savage propensities, and hence those who had been so fortunate as to
+escape the murderous axe of the _sans-culottes_ had now to apprehend the
+danger of falling a victim to the sharp teeth of these wild
+blood-hounds; and as the ferocious brutes knew no difference between
+aristocrats and republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it
+became necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
+So, the Champs Elysées were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were
+driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed
+down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three
+thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they
+continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen
+among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At
+length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to
+representative Gasparin, who was shrewd enough to convert the removal of
+the dead animals into a republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the
+_ci-devants_ and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite
+proper, therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.
+
+Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the fugitive
+and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their stables, and the
+carcasses of the dogs were flung into these emblazoned and escutcheoned
+vehicles of old France. Six grand coaches that had belonged to the king
+opened the procession, and the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the
+luckless quadrupeds could be seen behind the glittering glass panels
+heaped together in wild disorder[8].
+
+[Footnote 8: Mémoires of the Marchioness de Créqui, vol. viii, p. 10.]
+
+After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and indivisible
+republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be consistently used for
+any human and less mournful occasion, and hence it was that the consular
+procession to the Tuileries was so deficient in carriages, and that
+public hacks on which the numbers were defaced had to be employed.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution was at an
+end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory, yawning chasm which
+had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and democrats; and of that sword
+he made a bridge over which society might pass from one century to the
+other, and from the republic to the empire.
+
+As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the Diana
+Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries, and was
+with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed there, both
+of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused in front of the
+statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius
+Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces;
+but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply
+raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon
+Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with
+blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts
+of both the ladies bound within their bosoms:
+
+"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there. And
+whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and conventionists
+have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how the savage Jacobins
+and cohorts of _sans-culottes_ surrounded the palace and led away the
+good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah! never mind, Josephine; have no
+fear for the future! Let them but dare to come hither once more[9]!"
+
+[Footnote 9: Bourrienne, vol. vi, p. 3.]
+
+And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the statues of
+Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry thunder through
+the long gallery, and made the figures of the heroes of the dead
+republic tremble on their pedestals.
+
+Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus, as
+though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar, challenge
+all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one he aspired to
+be, to mortal combat.
+
+The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in the
+Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and daughter of
+General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered, had now found
+another father, who was destined to avenge that murder on the
+republic itself.
+
+The revolution was over!
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A FIRST LOVE.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution closed,
+and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity followed. Josephine
+and Hortense were the cynosure of all these festivals, for they were,
+likewise, the animating centre whence the grace and beauty, the
+attractive charm, and the intellectual significance of them all,
+proceeded.
+
+Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the court of
+Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such enchanting
+delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people already began
+to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the powerful wife of the
+First Consul of France. Now, also, _audiences_ were held, and Josephine
+and Hortense already had a court retinue who approached them with the
+same subserviency and humility as though they had been princesses of
+the blood.
+
+Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets of
+Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and wherever
+the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the wife and daughter
+of the first consul with applauding shouts.
+
+Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made their
+appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons. There were
+chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid dinners and
+evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of foreign powers were
+received in solemn audience; for, now, all the European states had
+recognized the French Republic under the consulate, and, as Bonaparte
+had concluded peace with England and Austria, these two great powers
+also sent envoys to the court of the mighty consul.
+
+Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed contentions of
+the toilet, and _powder or no powder_ was one of the great questions of
+etiquette in which Josephine gave the casting vote when she said that
+"every one should dress as seemed best and most becoming to each, but
+yet endeavor to let good taste pervade the selection."
+
+For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less zest than
+formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for some time she had
+seemed to prefer being alone more than in previous years, and held
+herself aloof in the quiet retirement of her own apartments, where the
+melancholy, tender, and touching melodies which she drew from her harp
+in those lonely hours seemed to hold her better converse than all the
+gay and flattering remarks that she was accustomed to hear in her
+mother's grand saloons.
+
+Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she confide what
+was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she venture to confess that
+she was in love, and with all the innocent energy, all the warmth and
+absolute devotion of a first attachment. How blissful were those hours
+of reverie, of expectant peering into the future, which seemed to
+promise the rising of another sun of happiness to her beaming gaze! For
+this young girl's passion had the secret approbation of her mother and
+her step-father, and both of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the
+least degree, aware of the tender understanding that subsisted between
+Hortense and General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
+Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young girl's
+heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more serious meaning to
+it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea of a union between
+Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above all other things, to give
+Duroc a more important and imposing status, and therefore sent him as
+ambassador to St. Petersburg, to convey to the Emperor Alexander, who
+had just ascended his father's throne, the congratulations and good
+wishes of the First Consul of France.
+
+The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
+constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
+becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to them
+of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand, one last
+tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of each other. But
+they hoped in the future, and looked forward to Duroc's return, and to
+the precious recompense that Bonaparte had significantly promised to his
+friend. That recompense was the hand of Hortense Until then, they had to
+content themselves with that sole and sweetest solace of all parted
+lovers, the letters that they interchanged, and which Bourrienne,
+Bonaparte's secretary, faithfully and discreetly transmitted.
+
+"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his Mémoires, "I played a
+game of billiards with Mademoiselle Hortense, who was an adept at it.
+When I said, in a low tone to her, 'I have a letter,' the game would
+cease at once, and she would hasten to her room, whither I followed her,
+and took the letter to her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of
+emotion and delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she
+would go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.]
+
+Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent dreams
+of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking
+place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make
+her young heart the plaything of domestic and political intrigue.
+
+Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the beautiful
+and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first consul, as in the
+first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by separating Hortense
+from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of the strongest supports
+of her influence, and thus, by isolating Josephine, bring themselves
+nearer to their brother. They well knew the affection which Bonaparte,
+who was particularly fond of children, entertained for those of his
+wife, and they also knew that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by
+their entreaties or their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented
+Josephine and Bonaparte from separating.
+
+This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of Junot
+had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from Egypt.
+
+At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman, against
+whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply because he
+was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne implored him, at
+least, to hear Josephine before condemning her, and to see whether she
+could not clear herself, or he could not forgive her, he had replied:
+
+"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I would tear
+my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as Bonaparte spoke, his
+voice trembling the while with rage, he clutched his breast with his
+hand as though he would indeed rend it to pieces. This scene occurred in
+the evening, but, when Bourrienne came into the office next morning,
+Bonaparte stepped forward to meet him with a smile on his face, and a
+little confused.
+
+"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here! Don't
+suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I reproached her
+vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you have?--when she left
+me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she descended the stairs with her
+head drooping, I saw Eugene and Hortense, who went with her, sobbing
+violently. I have not the heart to look unmoved on any one in tears.
+Eugene had accompanied me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to
+regard him as my adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young
+man. Hortense is just coming out into the world of society, and every
+one who knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the
+sight of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
+made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims of
+their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned round and,
+along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the movement, and said
+nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal man without having his
+hours of weakness!"
+
+"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted children
+will reward you for it!"
+
+"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
+sacrifice that I have made for them[11]!"
+
+[Footnote 11: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.]
+
+This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for Josephine
+had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had joyfully become
+convinced that the accusations of his jealous brothers had been unjust.
+
+Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move Hortense, since
+they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that she, with her
+gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense, her penetrating
+and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young Mentor at the side
+of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive, somewhat vain, and very
+extravagant mother.
+
+It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first removed;
+and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because she interfered
+with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers. Since they could not
+become great and celebrated by their own merits, they desired to be so
+through their illustrious brother; and, in order that they might become
+kings, Bonaparte must, above all things, wear a crown. Josephine was
+opposed to this project; she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers
+that a usurpation of the crown must bring with it, and she had so little
+ambition as to prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the
+proud but perilous exaltation to a throne.
+
+For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and Bonaparte must
+choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there should course
+legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be content to see a
+crown upon the head of her consort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.
+
+The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above all
+things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of the
+burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they sent to each
+other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be transferred to the
+Italian army with a higher command, and that Hortense should then be
+given to him. They persuaded the unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was
+easy to deceive in these minor matters and thus easy because he was
+occupied with grand designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep
+the proposed union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early
+return to surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.
+
+But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her hostile
+brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her entire future,
+was imperilled, should she not succeed in making friends and allies in
+the family of Bonaparte itself. There was only one of Bonaparte's
+brothers who was not hostile to her, but loved her as the wife of his
+brother, to whom he was, at that time, still devoted with the most
+enthusiastic and submissive tenderness.
+
+This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious and
+sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a man of
+science than fit for the council-chamber and the drawing-room. His was
+a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character, which, notwithstanding its
+apparent gentleness, developed an inflexible determination and energy at
+the right, decisive moment, and then could not be shaken by either
+threats or entreaties. His external appearance was little calculated to
+please, nay, was even somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of
+others only in moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his
+large blue eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.
+
+Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained, undemonstrative,
+and by no means showy natures which are too rarely understood, because,
+in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the time and do not take the
+pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a mother is in a position to
+comprehend and love men of this stamp, because the confidential home
+relations of long years have revealed to them the hidden bloom of these
+sensitive plants which shrink back and close their leaves at every rude
+contact of the world. But rarely, however, do they find a loving heart
+outside, for, since their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no
+one gives himself the trouble to discover them.
+
+The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was the one
+who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a point of support
+in the Bonaparte family.
+
+Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them, next to
+her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole family of
+brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither egotistical nor
+ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly allowed them to have
+their way, and only asked that they would also leave him undisturbed to
+follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive inclinations. He was the
+confidant of his young and beautiful sisters, who were always sure to
+find in him a discreet counsellor, and never a betrayer. Finally, he was
+the one of the whole circle of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the
+sincerest and warmest inclination, because he could not help esteeming
+him for his noble qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as
+he was by his other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of
+Jerome, Joseph, and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and
+chagrin to Bonaparte.
+
+"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand fresh
+sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that I had
+consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said Bonaparte,
+one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between him and Jerome,
+which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting another draft on the
+private purse of the first consul.
+
+Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared thankfully
+content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him, unsolicited, and
+there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on his account, or any
+debts of his to pay.
+
+This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
+respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how to
+manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this was a
+quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she could never
+avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how much care and
+anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often Bonaparte had
+scolded her about them; how often she had promised to do differently,
+and make no more purchases until she should be in a condition to pay
+at once!
+
+But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
+impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing eyes
+and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she could not
+escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point precisely was it
+that the penitent sinner continually fell into fresh transgression--and
+again ran into debt!
+
+Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular as her
+own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two young,
+careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to each other,
+and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly as they did
+their purses.
+
+So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
+strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a premonitory
+distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have happened that she took
+the mighty eagle that fluttered above her head for a bird of evil omen
+whose warning cry she frequently fancied that she heard in the stillness
+of the night.
+
+The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more than a
+queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new fortune-teller, Madame
+Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to her, "You will wear a crown,
+but only for a short time."
+
+Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and too
+healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be something
+else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had no children,
+yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and his brothers
+repeated to him daily that this was for him a political necessity.
+
+Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her hands for
+help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her daughter to give
+up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure the real happiness of
+her mother.
+
+Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at the
+thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying an
+unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had scarcely
+noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked to sacrifice
+her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a cold-blooded calculation,
+an artificial family intrigue; and so, with all the enthusiasm of a
+first love, she swore rather to perish than to forego her lover.
+
+"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said Josephine.
+"What he is, he is only through the friendship of Bonaparte. He has no
+estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were Bonaparte to abandon him he
+would fall back into nothingness and obscurity again."
+
+Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and have no
+other ambition than to be his wife."
+
+"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to become
+your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own sake alone?"
+
+"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has told me
+that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal fidelity and love to
+me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to belong to each other."
+
+Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.
+
+"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is willing to
+marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that Bonaparte would
+then advance him the more rapidly?"
+
+"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing with
+honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far from all
+selfish calculation."
+
+"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine, irritated
+by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm for her
+own fortunes.
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated, so
+beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of death
+had passed over it.
+
+"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that Duroc loves
+me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give him up, and marry
+whom you will."
+
+Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey," she
+replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that he does
+not love you, but the family alliance which you present."
+
+Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc returns
+to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see him again--she
+should read consolation and love's assurance in his handsome manly face;
+not that she needed this to confirm her confidence, for she believed in
+him, and not the shadow of a doubt obscured her blissful greeting.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes of this
+intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a supporting ally
+in the family, _against_ the family itself; and for this reason Louis
+must become the husband of Hortense.
+
+Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved to
+marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake his
+resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and little
+endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to show that
+Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but wanted to make
+an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte resolved, at least,
+to put his friend to the test, and, if Josephine turned out to be right,
+to marry Hortense to his own brother.
+
+After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back into his
+office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the writing-desk.
+
+"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.
+
+"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."
+
+"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him Hortense--that
+he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days, at
+the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred thousand francs, and I
+appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth military division. On the day
+after his wedding he shall start with his wife for Toulon, and we shall
+live apart. I will not have a son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to
+see these matters brought to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether
+Duroc accepts my propositions."
+
+"I don't think that he will, general."
+
+"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother Louis."
+
+"Will she consent?"
+
+"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."
+
+Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told him, word
+for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.
+
+Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on with his
+communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.
+
+"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had got
+through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
+son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful it
+may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can remain in
+Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his hat, without a
+trace of excitement or concern, and departed.
+
+That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full consent
+to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.
+
+On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that Duroc
+had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished her,
+through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously feigned
+to love her.
+
+Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a word of
+complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely that a
+thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to atoms her love,
+her hopes, her future, and her happiness.
+
+But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the evil that
+had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to it. She had
+been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now for her future, her
+embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when _he_ had deceived her
+--_he_, the only one whom she had loved?
+
+The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling, into
+Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready to fulfil
+her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.
+
+Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight. She
+little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and of
+despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present smiling
+unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a worn-out
+heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in order that
+Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for him was dead,
+but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her tears, and
+conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too, enabled her to
+declare that she was ready to accept the husband whom her mother might
+present to her.
+
+Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one of
+Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question whether
+she should attain her other aim through that son, and whether she should
+find in him a support against the intrigues of the other brothers of the
+first consul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSUL AND KING.
+
+There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the young
+couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802, Hortense was
+married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but one of the first
+consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the civil ceremony, and
+had never given his own union with Josephine the sanction of the Church,
+was less careless and unconcerned with regard to this youthful alliance,
+which had, indeed, great need of the blessing of Heaven, in order to
+prove a source of any good fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he
+reasoned that the consciousness of the indissoluble character of their
+union would lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
+inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render their
+separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the Tuileries,
+after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow the blessing of
+God and of the Church upon the bride and bridegroom.
+
+Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged by the
+young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the ceremonies
+were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new home, in the
+same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which her mother had
+occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful union with Bonaparte.
+
+Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry into this
+dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and happiness did
+not shine in their faces, as had been the case with Bonaparte and
+Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with tears, and the
+countenance of her young husband was dark and gloomy. For, on his side,
+he, too, felt no love for this young woman; and, as she never forgave
+him for having accepted her hand, although he knew that she loved
+another, he, in like manner, could never forgive her having consented to
+be his wife, although he had not been the one to solicit it, and
+although he had never told her that he loved her. Both had bowed to the
+will of him who gave the law, not merely to all France, but also to his
+own family, and who had already become the lord and master of the
+republic. Both had married through obedience, not for love; and the
+consciousness of this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between
+these two otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the
+consciousness of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love
+one another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
+were forbidden to seek elsewhere.
+
+Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart, did
+Hortense make her appearance at the _fêtes_ which were given in honor of
+her marriage; and it was with a beclouded brow and averted face that
+Louis Bonaparte received the customary congratulations. While every one
+around them exhibited a cheerful and joyous bearing, while parties were
+given in their honor, and people danced and sang, the young couple only,
+of all present, were dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense,
+and she turned her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not
+read in it her deep and angry aversion.
+
+But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus indissolubly
+bound up with another, she had to try to live with that other. Hortense,
+externally so gentle and yielding, so full of maiden coyness and
+delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and resolute soul, and, in the
+noble pride of her wounded heart, was unwilling to give any one the
+right to pity her. Her soul wept, but she restrained her tears and still
+tried to smile, were it only that Duroc might not perceive the traces
+of her grief upon her sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her
+heart, and she rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim
+to happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted at
+the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth, and so
+she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a melancholy smile,
+"I must manage to be happy, without happiness. Let me try!"
+
+And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and again took
+part in the festivities which now were filling the halls of St. Cloud,
+Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were but the dying lay of
+the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the cradle-song of
+reviving monarchy.
+
+For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
+turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose between a
+seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already a republic but
+in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed, but a new-born,
+naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was wanting, that should
+possess the determined courage to clothe it with ermine and purple, in
+order to transform the helpless babe into a proud, triumphant man.
+
+That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher courage
+to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of monarchy, that lay
+there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver there a little longer; but,
+lest it should freeze altogether, he threw over it, for the time being,
+the mantle of his "consulship for life." Beneath it, the babe could
+slumber comfortably a few weeks longer, while waiting for its
+purple robes.
+
+Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for life. He
+stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only upon himself
+whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he
+would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his
+forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine
+implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a
+loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was
+too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every
+danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he
+would also have to think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in
+order to strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
+legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
+children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once, proposed
+to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it with the presence
+of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of royal dignity meant a
+separation from her; and Josephine still loved him too well, and too
+much with a young wife's love, to take so great a sacrifice upon her.
+
+Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the Count de
+Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had found an asylum
+at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of France.
+
+The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis XVIII.) had
+written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with emotion, and,
+with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had conjured her husband to,
+at least, give the brother of the beheaded king a mild and considerate
+answer. Yes, she had even ventured to beseech Bonaparte to comply with
+the request that Louis had made, and give him back the throne of his
+ancestors. But Bonaparte had laughed at this suggestion, as he would at
+some childish joke; for it had never entered into his head that any one
+could seriously ask him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot
+of a throne, which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom
+France had banished forever, should ascend.
+
+Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at
+Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and Egypt--would
+not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing
+precious time. _We_ can secure the glory of France; I say _we_, because
+I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot complete it
+without me."
+
+But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but "I," and
+to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille:
+"You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it
+over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to
+the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a
+grateful acknowledgment."
+
+Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position,
+and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose
+his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very
+one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself.
+
+Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could
+she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a
+diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to
+command admiration.
+
+"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said
+Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.
+
+Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any
+such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the
+first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him
+not to make himself king[12]."
+
+[Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell
+her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.
+
+One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at breakfast,
+and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered without having
+been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her husband, who sat with his
+back turned toward her, and had not yet noticed her. Lightly throwing
+her arm around his neck, and letting herself sink upon his breast, and
+then stroking his pale cheeks and glossy brown hair, with an expression
+of unutterable love and tenderness, she said:
+
+"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked brother
+Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."
+
+Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he said.
+"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La
+Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful
+stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now, don't bother me
+about them any more!"
+
+Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he
+nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate
+personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown. In the course
+of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to him:
+
+"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all Europe;
+whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be only the
+youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield precedence
+to them."
+
+Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that daring and
+imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and decisive moments,
+he responded:
+
+"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive _all_ the kings
+from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they will have to
+recognize me as the oldest prince of all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CALUMNY.
+
+The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been followed by
+such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated. She had made a
+most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was, of all the first
+consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself the least about
+politics, and was the least likely to engage in any intrigue. Besides,
+this alliance had materially diminished the affection which Louis had
+always previously manifested for Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths
+of his noble and upright heart, for having been so egotistic as to
+sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he
+blamed her, too, for having forced him into a marriage which love had
+not concluded, and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine
+had, at least, lost a friend in him.
+
+The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually strange.
+They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each other, and
+reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had been driven into
+this union against their own wishes. In this singular interchange of
+confidence, they went so far as to commiserate each other, and to
+condole with one another as friends, over the wretchedness they endured
+in their married bondage.
+
+They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that they
+detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual compassion, that
+out of that very compassion--that very hatred itself--love might
+possibly spring into being.
+
+Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife, busied with
+the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to drive away the
+clouds that obscured her brow; already, too, Hortense had come to regard
+it as her holiest and sweetest duty to endeavor to compensate her
+husband, by her kindly deportment toward him, and the delicate and
+attentive respect that distinguished her bearing, for the unhappiness he
+felt beside her; already had both, in fine, begun to console each other
+with the reflection that the child which Hortense now bore beneath her
+heart would, one day, be to them a compensation for their ill-starred
+marriage and their lost freedom.
+
+"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and when he
+calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive me for being
+his mother."
+
+"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that you love
+him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will pardon me for being
+your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at least, for I will be the
+father of your darling child."
+
+Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and innocent
+hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have overcome their
+unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last from hatred. But the
+world was pitiless to them; it had no compassion for their youth and
+their sufferings; with cruel hands it dashed away this tender blossoming
+of nascent affection, which was beginning to expand in their hearts.
+Josephine had wedded Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure
+in him an ally in the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and
+now that daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
+calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense from
+the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs by means
+of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the effect of calumny.
+
+They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had married
+his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was attached to her
+himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.
+
+These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child whose birth
+Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte than merely
+through the fact that his step-daughter was his brother's wife.
+
+This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those who
+devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such
+immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive
+it therefore would be to him to find himself made the object of such
+infamous slanders.
+
+The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these evil
+rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense away to a
+distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus isolated, could also
+be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte, being separated from his
+guardian angel, would no longer hear her whispering:
+
+"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory of the
+greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not make
+thyself a king!"
+
+In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very lightly
+whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard. Bonaparte's
+enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a weapon of it with
+which to assail him as a hero.
+
+One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had always
+been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the organ of Count
+d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued to read, a dark
+shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the paper in his clinched
+fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then as suddenly again his
+countenance cleared, and a proud smile flitted across it. He had his
+master of ceremonies summoned to his presence, and bade him issue the
+necessary invitations for a court ball to be given, on the evening of
+the next day, at St. Cloud. He then went to Josephine to inform her in
+person of the projected _fête_, and to say that he wished her to tell
+Hortense, who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly
+desired her to be present.
+
+Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
+requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch on
+which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining, busied
+with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women prepare her
+attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and seriously burdened by
+this festive attire, which harmonized so little with her feelings, and
+was so far from becoming to her figure, for she was only a few weeks
+from her confinement; but with her gentle and yielding disposition she
+did not venture, even in thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed
+upon her by her step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the
+appointed hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to
+meet her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
+at all, earnestly urged her to dance.
+
+Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto Bonaparte
+had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her condition; he had
+frequently said that he thought there was nothing more indecent than for
+a female to join in the dance under such circumstances, and now it was
+he who asked her to do that very thing.
+
+For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but Bonaparte
+grew only the more pressing and vehement in his request.
+
+"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with his
+irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take the floor
+only once, and that for but a single _contredance_."
+
+And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with shame at
+the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the gaze of all,
+obeyed and joined the dances.
+
+This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
+Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
+read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing flattery,
+and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her advanced state of
+pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure in the _contredance_, as
+a peculiar trait of amiability!
+
+Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very emphatic
+piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at once to the
+Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her how it was possible
+that, so early as the very next morning, there could be verses published
+in the newspapers concerning what had taken place at the ball on the
+preceding evening.
+
+Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came in, and
+was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an evasive and
+jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her mother, who was
+leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart
+oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but
+had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too
+full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble,
+for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.
+
+Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told
+her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses
+beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to
+dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have
+her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her
+pregnancy published in the next day's paper.
+
+Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for
+all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of
+the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and
+Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her
+participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read
+in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis
+Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some
+weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious
+statement.
+
+Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had
+not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this
+shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to
+take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of
+exertion to restore her to consciousness.
+
+A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so
+passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope
+of a better understanding between her and her husband.
+
+Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart. In those
+long, lonely days that she had passed during her confinement, she had
+the time and opportunity to meditate on many things, and keenly to
+estimate her whole present position and probable future. She had now
+become a mother, without having a child; yet the resolute energy of a
+mother remained to her. The youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl
+had now become transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman,
+that would no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would
+meet them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
+changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend to
+its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of resolution;
+and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious fireside at home was
+denied her, to at least make her house a pleasant gathering-point for
+her friends--for men of scientific and artistic attainments, for poets
+and singers, for painters and sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere
+long, all Paris was talking about Madame Louis Bonaparte's
+drawing-rooms, the agreeable and elegant entertainments that were given
+there, and the concerts there arranged, in which the first singers of
+the day executed pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited,
+with his wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written.
+Every one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which
+the participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
+themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or abuse,
+but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation; where, in
+fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists, and enjoy the
+newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.
+
+Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had resigned
+herself to accept the burden of existence, she would strive to render it
+as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of its hateful and
+repulsive features, but to turn away from them with a noble and
+disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the frightful calumnies
+which her mother had privately made known to her, nor had she deemed any
+defence or proof of her innocence at all necessary. She felt that there
+were certain accusations against which to even undertake defence is to
+admit their possibility, and which, therefore, could only be combated by
+silence. The slanders that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far
+beneath her, that they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell
+powerless at her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while
+to thrust them.
+
+But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this vile story,
+and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors were still spread
+abroad, and that his foes still bestirred themselves to keep him ever on
+the alert, and, if possible, to dim the lustre of his gloriously-won
+laurels by the shadow of an infamous crime.
+
+"There are still rumors abroad of a _liaison_ between me and Hortense,"
+said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even invented the most
+repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At the time, I thought
+that these calumnies were circulated among the public because the
+latter go earnestly desired that I might have a child to inherit my
+name. But it is still spoken of, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did not
+believe this calumny would be so long continued."
+
+"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes flashing with
+anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth there is in it. You
+have heard and seen all; not the smallest circumstance could escape you.
+You were her confidant in her love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to
+clear me of this infamous reproach if you should some day write my
+history. Posterity shall not associate my name with such infamy. I shall
+depend on you, Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have
+never believed in this abominable calumny?"
+
+"No, never, general."
+
+"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account, but for
+the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy enough, as is
+my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I love them both,
+and because this very circumstance gives color to the reports which idle
+chatterboxes have circulated regarding my relations to her. Therefore,
+bear this in mind when you write of me hereafter."
+
+"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but, unfortunately, I
+can not compel the world to believe the truth."
+
+Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the truth.
+With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it has been
+attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense, even down to
+our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the elegant and considerate
+language of the courteous diplomat, which is elsewhere always
+characteristic of his writings.
+
+"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that Bonaparte
+entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a step-father should
+entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense entertained for the first
+consul a feeling of reverential fear. She always spoke to him
+tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him with a petition. She was
+in the habit of coming to me, and I then submitted her wishes; and only
+when Bonaparte received them unfavorably did I mention the name of the
+petitioner. 'The silly thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not
+speak to me herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
+fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a father
+would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness of her
+actions in the most private relations of life, I declare that I have
+never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that would tend to
+convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider this calumny as
+belonging to the category of those which malice so willingly circulates
+about those persons whose career has been brilliant, and which credulity
+and envy so willingly believe. I declare candidly that, if I entertained
+the slightest doubt with regard to this horrible calumny, I would say
+so. But Bonaparte is no more! Impartial history must not and shall not
+give countenance to this reproach; she should not make of a father and
+friend a libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted,
+without, however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
+between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood! And
+this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
+throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
+exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession of a
+man, he can never be freed from it again?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KING OR EMPEROR.
+
+Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at least,
+only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said: "I entreat
+you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not make himself king,
+he made himself emperor. He did not take up the crown that had fallen
+from the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for himself--a crown
+which the French people and Senate had, however, offered him. The
+revolution still stood a threatening spectre behind the French people;
+its return was feared, and, since the discovery of the conspiracy of
+Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru, the people anxiously asked themselves
+what was to become of France if the conspirators should succeed in
+murdering Bonaparte; and when the republic should again be sent adrift,
+without a pilot, on the wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that
+their institutions should be securely established and maintained, and
+believed that this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a
+monarchical form of government. The consulate for life must therefore be
+changed into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One
+can be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
+terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor, because
+they flattered themselves that in so doing they should still be able to
+preserve the republic.
+
+On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so long and
+carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th of May, the
+Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in the name of the
+people and army, to accept the imperial dignity, and exchange the Roman
+chair of a consul for the French throne of an emperor.
+
+Cambacérès, the late second consul of the republic, stood at the head of
+the Senate, and upon him devolved the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the
+wishes of the French people. Cambacérès--who, as a member of the
+Convention, had voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that
+royalty should be forever banished from French soil--this same
+Cambacérès, was now the first to salute Bonaparte with "imperial
+majesty," and with the little word, so full of significance, "sire." He
+rewarded Cambacérès, for this by writing to him on the game day, and
+appointing him high constable of the empire, as the first act of his
+imperial rule. In this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte
+signed himself merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican
+style of writing. He addressed Cambacérès, as "citizen consul," and
+followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time, his letter being
+dated "the 20th Floréal, of the year 12."
+
+The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new dignity, was
+to invest the members of his family also with new dignities, and to
+confer upon them the rank of Princes of France, with the title "imperial
+highness." Moreover, he made his brother Joseph prince elector, and his
+brother Louis connétable. On the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his
+new dignity, to present the generals and staff officers to the emperor,
+and then to conduct them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.
+
+The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled. Josephine
+was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of the splendor of
+her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious heart, of the
+prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told her, "You will wear
+a crown, but only for a short time." She felt that this wondrous fortune
+could not last long--that the new emperor would have to do as the kings
+or old had done, and sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order
+to appease the hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would,
+therefore, sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his
+fortune and dynasty.
+
+It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and made her
+shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore, with a feeling
+of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new titles and honors
+that Fate had showered upon her, as from an inexhaustible horn of
+plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost with shame, she heard herself
+addressed with the titles with which she had addressed the Queen of
+France years before, in these same halls, when she came to the Tuileries
+as Marquise de Beauharnais, to do homage to the beautiful Marie
+Antoinette. She had died on the scaffold and now Josephine was the
+"majesty" that sat enthroned in the Tuileries, her brilliant court
+assembled around her, while in a retired nook of England the legitimate
+King of France was leading a lonely and gloomy life.
+
+Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as empress, she
+still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate Bourbons, and esteemed it
+her sacred duty to assist and advise those who, true to their principles
+and duties, had followed the royal family, or had emigrated, in order
+that they might, at least, not be compelled to do homage to the new
+system. Her purse was always at the service of the emigrants; and, if
+Josephine continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly
+allowance, her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her
+kindly, generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the
+half of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
+matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her creditors,
+she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of misfortune and
+the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other purpose[13].
+
+[Footnote 13: Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, par le Baron van Schelten,
+vol. i., p. 145.]
+
+Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the High
+Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant court of
+the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now a "Princess
+of France," an "imperial highness," who must be approached with
+reverence, who had her court and her maids of honor, and whose liberty
+and personal inclinations, as was also the case with her mother, were
+confined in the fetters of the strict etiquette which Napoleon required
+to be observed at the new imperial court.
+
+But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded by this
+new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no additional
+happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance Hortense's youth and
+beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She would have been contented
+to live in retirement, at the side of a beloved husband; her proud
+position could not indemnify her for her lost woman's happiness.
+
+But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to bear
+misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered her a
+recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a new
+hope--she promised to become a mother again.
+
+Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her daughter's
+hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give birth to a son, the
+gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be banished from the head of
+the empress. With this son, the dynasty of the new imperial family would
+be assured; this son could be the heir of the imperial crown, and
+Napoleon could well adopt as his own the child who was at the same time
+his nephew and his grandson.
+
+Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would rather
+content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of the emperor
+and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to separate himself from
+her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved his wife; he still
+compared with all he thought good and beautiful, the woman who shed
+around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and loveliness.
+
+When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy and
+thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
+exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These acclamations
+and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of Josephine! How
+proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a people[14]!"
+
+[Footnote 14: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.]
+
+But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said, upon
+entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to _be_ in
+the Tuileries; one must also _remain_ there"--he now said: "It is not
+enough to have been made emperor by the French people; one must also
+have received his consecration as emperor from the Pope of Rome."
+
+And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world; not only
+to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his will.
+
+Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the Pope left
+the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new emperor the
+blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. This was a new
+halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded triumph, which he
+celebrated over France, over the whole world and its prejudices, and
+over all the dynasties by the "grace of God." The Pope came to Paris to
+crown the emperor. The German emperors had been compelled to make a
+pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the papal benediction, and now the Pope
+made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge
+the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church. All
+France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France
+adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and
+converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his
+grandeur. Napoleon's journey with Josephine through France, undertaken
+while they awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single,
+continuous triumph. It was not only the people who received him with
+shouts of joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her
+_sanctus, sanctus_, and the priests received him at the doors of their
+churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of France.
+Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal exultation,
+with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and solemn addresses
+of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a transcendental nature.
+
+"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his enthusiastic
+address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and then He rested."
+And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet won over by the
+emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial court, whispered,
+quite audibly: "God would have done better had He rested a
+little sooner!"
+
+Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder, in which
+they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and that Pope
+Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was now approaching
+the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that had now arisen
+victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was everywhere received
+by the people and authorities with the greatest honor. The old royal
+palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the emperor, been refurnished
+with imperial magnificence, and, as a peculiarly delicate attention, the
+Pope's bedchamber had been arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber
+in the Quirinal at Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now
+repaired to Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony
+had, however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
+Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity with
+this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the approach of
+the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give himself the appearance
+of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way. The equipages and the
+imperial court had taken position in the forest of Nemours. Napoleon,
+however, attired in hunting-dress, rode, with his suite, to the summit
+of a little hill, which the Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope
+at once ordered a halt, and the emperor also brought his suite to a
+stand with a gesture of his hand. A brief interval of profound silence
+followed. All felt that a great historical event was taking place, and
+the eyes of all were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief
+figures of this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in
+his simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
+robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.
+
+As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his carriage,
+hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed his foot on
+the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already touched the earth.
+Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he must make up his mind to
+step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin slippers, on the wet soil,
+softened by a shower of rain, that had fallen on the previous day. The
+emperor's hunting-boots were certainly much better adapted to this
+meeting in the mud than the Pope's white satin slippers.
+
+Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly; then,
+through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the imperial
+equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance, interrupted this
+tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest accident that the emperor
+stood on the right, and the Pope on the left side of the equipage, that
+had now been brought to a stand again. The two doors of the carriage
+were simultaneously thrown open by the lackeys; at the same time, the
+Pope entered the carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right
+side, both seating themselves side by side at the same time. This
+settled the question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but
+the emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.
+
+The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of December,
+1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris, but all
+France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of people surged
+to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the houses were filled
+with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the bells were ringing in all
+the churches, and joyous music, intermixed with the shouts of the
+people, was heard in every direction. For a moment, however, these
+shouts were changed into laughter, and that was when the papal
+procession approached, headed by an ass led by the halter, in accordance
+with an ancient custom of Rome. While the Pope, with the high
+dignitaries of the Church, repaired to the cathedral to await there the
+coming of the imperial couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial
+insignia in the Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet
+mantle, bordered with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and
+arraying himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new
+dignity. When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his
+wife, who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
+gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the palace,
+as he desired to see him at once.
+
+A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring him from
+his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little notary Ragideau
+entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the imperial pair were
+alone, awaiting him in their glittering attire.
+
+His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon stepped
+forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau," said he,
+gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether General
+Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his sword, or
+whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for having married
+me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment, and Josephine asked
+the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte related how, while standing
+in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain occasion, he had heard the notary
+advising Josephine not to marry poor little Bonaparte; not to become the
+wife of the general, who possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.
+
+The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart like a
+dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no complaint, and
+made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his supreme triumph,
+to-day the emperor remembered that moment of humiliation, and, arrayed
+with the full insignia of the highest earthly dignity, he accorded
+himself the triumph of reminding the little notary that he had once
+advised Josephine not to marry him, because of his poverty.
+
+The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the mighty
+Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and his sword,
+but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, to place
+the golden imperial crown on his head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+NAPOLEON'S HEIR.
+
+Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities of the
+coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her in the
+retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son; and in this
+child the happy mother found consolation and a new hope.
+
+Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
+foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
+grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had been
+gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
+unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured her
+mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus given a
+first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no longer a
+reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a separation, for
+there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath the imperial throne
+of France.
+
+The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's wishes, and
+to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not requested the Pope to
+delay his departure for a few days, in order to baptize the child? The
+Pope performed this sacred rite at St. Cloud, the emperor holding the
+child, and Madame Letitia standing at his side as second witness.
+Hortense now possessed an object upon which she could lavish the whole
+wealth of love that had until now lain concealed in her heart. The
+little Napoleon Charles was Hortense's first happy love; and she gave
+way to this intoxicating feeling with the most intense delight.
+
+Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the word; she
+no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now bestow her
+undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon, the
+Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of Piedmont by
+Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health, had not been
+compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to remain in her
+little house in Paris, which she could exchange when summer came for
+her husband's new estate, the castle of Saint-Leu.
+
+But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in this
+charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The brother and
+sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be permitted to lead a
+life of retirement. They were rays of the sun that now dazzled the whole
+world; they must fulfil their destiny, and contribute their light to the
+ruling sun.
+
+An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned from
+Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see his son,
+to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a brilliant destiny; the
+Constable of France was to become a king. Delegates of the Republic of
+Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived in Paris, and requested their
+mighty neighbor, the Emperor Napoleon, to give them a king, who should
+unite them with the glittering empire, through the ties of blood.
+Napoleon intended to fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king,
+in the person of his brother Louis.
+
+But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and refused to
+accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also in perfect
+harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to strengthen his
+resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was proposed to place on
+their heads would be nothing more than a golden chain of dependence;
+that the King of Holland could be nothing more than the vassal of
+France; and their personal relations to each other added another
+objection to this political consideration.
+
+In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound them
+together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and could
+avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served to
+separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
+themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary union. In
+Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in Holland they would
+live in entire dependence on each other, and hear continually the
+rattling of the chain with which each had bound the other to the galley
+of a union without love.
+
+Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor to ward
+off this new misfortune that was suspended over their heads, in the form
+of a kingly crown.
+
+But how could they resist successfully the iron will of Napoleon?
+Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon directly on the
+subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine already felt that her
+wishes no longer exercised the power of earlier days over the emperor.
+She therefore avoided interceding where she was not sure of being
+successful.
+
+At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother openly; but
+Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and his gentle,
+yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence of the deputation
+of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed for a sceptre and
+crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to accept the crown which
+had been freely tendered him, and to be to his country a king who would
+respect and protect its liberties, its laws, and its religion.
+
+With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept this
+crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.
+
+And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single and
+sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and energy. The
+people of Holland having chosen him to be their king, he was determined
+to do honor to their choice; having been compelled to give up his own
+country and nationality, he determined to belong to his new country with
+his whole heart and being--to become a thorough Hollander, as he could
+no longer remain a Frenchman.
+
+This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an entirely
+new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the emperor, was
+now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man of action, who
+had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to devote all the
+powers of his being to its attainment. As King of Holland, he desired,
+above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and to be able to contribute
+to their welfare and happiness. He studied their language with untiring
+diligence, and made himself acquainted with their manners and customs,
+for the purpose of making them his own. He investigated the sources of
+their wealth and of their wants, and sought to develop the former and
+relieve the latter. He was restless in his efforts to provide for his
+country, and to merit the love and confidence which his subjects
+bestowed on him.
+
+His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and glittering
+position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had so unwillingly
+accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together, at brilliant
+entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new nobility of Holland, and
+taught the stiff society of that country the fine, unconstrained tone,
+and the vivacious intellectual conversation of Parisian society. It was
+under Hortense's fostering hand that art and science first made their
+way into the aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social
+reunions a higher and nobler importance.
+
+And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science, but also
+the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the unhappy, whose
+tears she dried, and whose misery she alleviated--and this royal pair,
+though adored and blessed by their subjects, could not find within their
+palaces the least reflection of the happiness they so well knew how to
+confer upon others without its walls. Between these two beings, so
+gentle and yielding to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist,
+and not even the birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up
+the chasm that separated them.
+
+And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of destiny.
+Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the presumptive heir to
+his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so dearly that he often played
+with him for hours on the terraces of St. Cloud, the child Josephine
+worshipped, because its existence seemed to assure her own happiness,
+the child that had awakened the first feeling of motherly bliss in
+Hortense's bosom, the child that had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte
+for the unenjoyable present with bright hopes for the future--the little
+Napoleon Charles died in the year 1807, of the measles.
+
+This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the imperial pair
+of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled with tears when this
+intelligence was brought him, and a cry of horror escaped
+Josephine's lips.
+
+"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is decided.
+He will put me away."
+
+But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she hastened
+to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away from the
+place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense returned with
+the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had almost succumbed to
+his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health in the baths of the
+Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now stood desolate again; death
+had banished life and joy from its halls; and, though the royal pair
+were subsequently compelled to return to it, joy and happiness came back
+with them no more.
+
+King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
+ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
+irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his young
+wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices, and excuse
+his irritable disposition. They were totally different in their views,
+desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their children, instead of
+being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange them the more, for each
+insisted on considering them his or her exclusive property, and in
+having them educated according to his or her views and wishes.
+
+But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and cares, in
+the greater misery of her mother. A letter from Josephine, an agonized
+appeal to her daughter for consolation, recalled Hortense to her
+mother's side, and she left the Hague and hastened to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PREMONITIONS.
+
+Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French clairvoyante, were
+now about to be fulfilled. The crown which Josephine had reluctantly and
+sorrowfully accepted, and which she had afterward worn with so much
+grace and amiability, with such natural majesty and dignity, was about
+to fall from her head. Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the
+dreamed-of future had been realized, to put away from him the woman who
+had loved him and chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his
+hopes for the future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave
+fidelity, had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation,
+was now to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
+widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should be
+done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
+pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to sacrifice
+to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good angel;" and
+he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the thought of her
+tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating gaze.
+
+But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
+threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
+countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from Vienna,
+had caused the door that connected his room with that of his wife to be
+locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers, who dared to address
+her with less reverence, but with a touch of compassionate sympathy; she
+heard it in the low whispering that ceased when she approached a group
+of persons in her parlors; it was betrayed to her in the covert,
+mysterious insinuations of the public press, which attached a deep and
+comprehensive significance to the emperor's journey to Vienna.
+
+She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too
+weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act her part as
+wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should not flow
+outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her
+sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.
+But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and
+show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.
+
+How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were
+shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
+daughter's ear!
+
+"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
+weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
+before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
+fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
+cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
+lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"
+
+[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]
+
+Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
+bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
+own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
+union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
+might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
+sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
+bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
+was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
+on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
+stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
+this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
+with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
+in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
+want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
+now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
+down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
+empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
+illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
+one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.
+
+A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
+to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
+gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
+now bowed, almost quailed.
+
+"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
+matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
+for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
+me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
+wife who can give the country an heir to the throne. Josephine has been
+living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end. You,
+Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more
+than all else in the world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother
+for this step? You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."
+
+Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her eyes on
+the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His glance again
+quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of a pure, innocent
+woman. Hortense had the courage to positively refuse the
+emperors request.
+
+"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then refuse my
+request?"
+
+"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears, "sire, I
+have not the strength to stab my mother to the heart[16]."
+
+[Footnote 16: Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.]
+
+And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the emperor's
+cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DIVORCE.
+
+Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through a third
+person, the distressing tidings of his determination with regard to
+herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come to Paris, and
+on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of his wish. Eugene,
+like his sister, received this intelligence in silent submissiveness,
+but like his sister, he refused to impart to his mother, tidings that
+must destroy her happiness forever.
+
+The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the distressing
+tidings in person.
+
+It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress dined, as
+usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering the room made
+Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance that the fatal hour
+had come. But she repressed the tears which were rushing to her eyes,
+and looked entreatingly at her daughter, who sat on the opposite side of
+the table, a deathly pallor on her countenance.
+
+Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The sighs and
+half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving breast were
+quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled dismally, and drove
+the rain violently against the window-panes; within, an ominous,
+oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of Nature contrasted, and
+yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely with this human silence.
+Napoleon broke this silence but once, and that was when, in a harsh
+voice, he asked the lackey, who stood behind him, what time it was. Then
+all was still as before.
+
+At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and coffee was
+then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then set the cup down
+with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it touched the table. With
+an angry gesture he dismissed the attendants.
+
+"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost inaudibly.
+
+"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a profound
+obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of tender
+compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.
+
+The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this being left
+alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in which they sat
+opposite each other! How strange the glance which the emperor fastened
+on his wife!
+
+She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that moved his
+soul, but she also read in them that her hour was come!
+
+As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and Josephine
+shudderingly recoiled.
+
+Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart, regarding her
+with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.
+
+"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
+Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you alone, do
+I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in this world.
+Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My dearest desires must
+yield to the interests of France[17]."
+
+[Footnote 17: The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+344.]
+
+"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand angrily--"no,
+speak no further. I understand you, and I expected this, but the blow is
+not the less deadly."
+
+She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of despair came
+over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last broke forth. She
+wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her heaving breast, and a loud
+cry of anguish burst from her lips. She at last fainted away, and was
+thus relieved from a consciousness of her sufferings.
+
+When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and her
+physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her trembling
+arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her mother's heart,
+sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew, feeling that he could be
+of no further assistance. It had only been in his power to recall
+Josephine to a consciousness of her misery; but for her misery itself he
+had no medicine; he knew that her tears and her daughter's sympathy
+could alone give relief.
+
+Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came in to
+inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her bedside, she
+shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased to flow, and her
+usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances of anger and offended
+love at the emperor. But love soon conquered anger. She extended her
+tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet smile, peculiar to woman,
+trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle, touching voice, she said: "Was
+I not right, my friend, when I shrank back in terror from the thought of
+becoming an empress[18]?"
+
+[Footnote 18: Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+342, _et seq_.]
+
+Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these farewell
+tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the emperor had
+already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the hand of the
+Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in Vienna. Nothing
+now remained to be done but to remove Josephine from the throne, and
+elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the vacant place!
+
+The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He assembled
+about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and princes, created
+by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of the Tuileries, in the
+presence of his court and the Senate, the emperor appeared; at his side
+the empress, arrayed for the last time in all the insignia of the
+dignity she was about to lay aside forever.
+
+In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
+determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
+trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
+words. The arch-chancellor, Cambacérès, then caused the appropriate
+paragraph of the _Code Civile_ to be read, applied it to the case under
+consideration, in a short, terse address, and pronounced the union of
+the emperor and empress dissolved.
+
+This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the law.
+Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the court,
+and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the graceful,
+sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few other women.
+
+As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward
+emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his iron
+countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then walked
+through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on either side,
+and greeted all with a last soft look, a last inclination of the head,
+nothing could be heard but weeping, and even those who rejoiced over her
+downfall, because they hoped much from the new empress and the new
+dynasty, were now moved to tears by this silent and yet so eloquent
+leave-taking.
+
+The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his dearest
+possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from Josephine.
+
+On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison, her
+future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and was now
+to be the widow's seat, of her love.
+
+Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who constituted this
+court did not leave her. During the next few weeks the crowds of the
+coming and going on the road from Paris to Malmaison presented the
+appearance of a procession; the equipages of all the kings and princes
+who were sojourning in Paris, and of all the nobles and dignitaries of
+the new France, were to be seen there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain,
+that still preserved its sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the
+empress at Malmaison. And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and
+humble, as well as by the rich and great. All wished to say to the
+empress that they still loved and honored her, and that she was still
+enthroned in their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at
+an end.
+
+The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
+whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that, with
+Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future would avenge
+her tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE KING OF HOLLAND.
+
+While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison, Hortense was
+seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother lamented as a
+misfortune, because she still loved her husband, would have conferred
+happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved her husband. Once again in
+harmony with her husband, Hortense entreated the emperor to permit them
+to be divorced, and the king united his entreaties with those of
+the queen.
+
+But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear before the
+people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage bond. For state
+reasons he had separated from his wife, and for state reasons he could
+not give his consent to the dissolution of the union of his brother and
+step-daughter. They must, therefore, continue to drag the chain that
+united them; and they did, but with angry hearts.
+
+Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than ever;
+while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to Napoleon's express
+command, remained in Paris for some time. They were to attend the
+festivities that were soon to take place at the imperial court in honor
+of the marriage of the emperor with the Archduchess Marie Louise of
+Austria. The daughter of the divorced empress, with the emperor's
+sisters, had been selected to carry the train of the new empress on the
+marriage-day. Napoleon wished to prove to France and to all Europe that
+there was no other law in his family than his will, and that the
+daughter of Josephine had never ceased to be his obedient daughter also.
+Napoleon wished, moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that
+she might have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
+inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
+womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court. Hortense
+mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April, 1810, the day
+of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she, together with his
+sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She alone did this without
+making any resistance, while it was only after the most violent
+opposition to Napoleon's command that his sisters, Queen Caroline of
+Naples, the Duchess Pauline of Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of
+Tuscany, consented to undergo the humiliation of walking behind their
+new sovereign as humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not
+the only persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the
+day of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
+dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
+grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration in the
+chapel in the Tuileries.
+
+The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
+opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and he
+did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had not
+appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red robes
+thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's dress.
+
+The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
+enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy forebodings;
+and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in
+honor of the imperial marriage, a short time afterward, the fearful fire
+occurred that cost so many human lives and destroyed so much family
+happiness, the people remembered with terror that other misfortune that
+had occurred on the day of the entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and
+called this fire an earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian"
+would bring upon France and the emperor.
+
+While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in honor of
+the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering over her
+husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his crown.
+
+When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of Holland, he
+had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new people, and to
+devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too honest a man not to
+keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was to make such
+arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare and prosperity of
+Holland seemed to require, without in the least considering whether
+these laws were conducive to the interests of France or not. He would
+not regard Holland as a province dependent upon France, of which he was
+the governor, but as an independent land that had chosen him to be its
+free and independent king. But Napoleon did not view the matter in the
+same light; in his eyes it was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to
+refuse to conform itself in every respect to the interests of its
+powerful neighbor, France.
+
+When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he had
+charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same time to
+remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of France." Louis
+had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander; and when the
+interests of France and Holland came into conflict, the king took the
+side of his new country, and acted as a Hollander. He was of the opinion
+that the welfare of Holland depended on its commerce and industry only,
+and that it could only be great through its commercial importance; he
+therefore reduced the army and navy, making merchantmen of the
+men-of-war, and peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.
+
+Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and angrily
+reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole squadrons,
+discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until Holland was
+without power, both on land and water, as though warehouses and clerks
+were the material elements of power." Napoleon reproached the king still
+more bitterly, however, for having re-established commercial relations
+with England, for having raised the blockade for Holland which France
+had established against England, and for having permitted the American
+ships, that had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor
+quietly in those of Holland.
+
+The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should conform
+himself to his will and to the interests of France unconditionally; that
+he should immediately break off all commercial relations between Holland
+and England; that he should re-establish a fleet, of forty
+ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and seven brigs, and an army of
+twenty-five thousand men, and that he should abolish all the privileges
+of the nobility that were contrary to the constitution.
+
+King Louis had the courage to resist these demands, in the name of
+Holland, and to refuse to obey instructions, the execution of which must
+necessarily have affected the material interests of Holland most
+injuriously.
+
+Napoleon responded to this refusal with a declaration of war. The
+ambassador of Holland received his passport, and a French army corps was
+sent to Holland, to punish the king's insolence.
+
+But the misfortune that threatened Holland had called the king's whole
+energy into activity, and Napoleon's anger and threats were powerless to
+break his resolution. As the commander of the French troops, the Duke of
+Reggio, approached Amsterdam, to lay siege to that city and thereby
+compel the king to yield, Louis determined rather to descend from his
+throne than to submit to the unjust demands of France. He, therefore,
+issued a proclamation to his people, in which he told them that he,
+convinced that he could do nothing more to promote their welfare, and,
+on the contrary, believing that he was an obstacle in the way of the
+restoration of friendly relations between his brother and Holland, had
+determined to abdicate in favor of his two sons, Napoleon Louis and
+Charles Louis Napoleon. Until they should attain their majority the
+queen, in conformity with the constitution, was to be regent. He then
+took leave of his subjects, in a short and touching address. He now
+repaired, in disguise, and under the name of Count de St. Leu, through
+the states of his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and through Saxony
+to Töplitz.
+
+Here he learned that Napoleon, far from respecting and fulfilling the
+conditions of his abdication, had united the kingdom of Holland with the
+empire. The king published a protest against this action of the emperor,
+in which, in the name of his son and heir, Napoleon Louis, he denounced
+this act of the emperor as a totally unjustifiable act of violence, and
+demanded that the kingdom of Holland should be re-established, in all
+its integrity, declaring the annexation of Holland to France to be null
+and void, in the name of himself and his sons.
+
+Napoleon responded to this protest by causing the king to be informed by
+the French ambassador in Vienna that unless he returned to France by the
+1st of December, 1810, he should be regarded and treated as a rebel, who
+dared to resist the head of his family and violate the constitution of
+the empire.
+
+Louis neither answered nor conformed to this threat. He repaired to
+Grätz, in Styria, and lived there as a private gentleman, beloved and
+admired, not only by those who came in contact with him there, but
+enjoying the esteem of all Europe, which he had won by the noble and
+truly magnanimous manner in which he had sacrificed his own grandeur to
+the welfare of his people. Even his and Napoleon's enemies could not
+withhold from the King of Holland the tribute of their respect, and even
+Louis XVIII. said of him: "By his abdication, Louis Bonaparte has become
+a true king; in renouncing his crown, he has shown himself worthy to
+wear it. He is the first monarch who has made so great a sacrifice but
+of pure love for his people; others have also relinquished their
+thrones, but they did it when weary of power. But in this action of the
+King of Holland there is something truly sublime--something that was not
+duly appreciated at first, but which will be admired by posterity, if I
+mistake not, greatly[19]."
+
+[Footnote 19: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+In Grätz, Louis Bonaparte, Count de St. Leu, lived a few peaceful,
+tranquil years, perhaps the first years of happiness he had enjoyed in
+his short and hitherto stormy life. Occupied with work and study, he
+easily forgot his former grandeur and importance. As it had once been
+his ambition to become a good king, it was now his ambition to become a
+good writer. He published his romance Marie, and, encouraged by the
+success which it met with in his circle of friends, he also gave his
+poems to the public--poems whose tender and passionate language proved
+that this so often misunderstood, so often repulsed, and, therefore, so
+timid and distrustful heart, could warm with a tenderness of love that
+Marie Pascal, the beautiful artist of the harp, could hardly have had
+the cruelty to withstand.
+
+But a day came when Louis Bonaparte closed his ear to all these sweet
+voices of happiness, of peace, and of love, to listen only to the voice
+of duty, that appealed to him to return to France, to his brother's
+side. While the sun of fortune shone over Napoleon, the king, who had
+voluntarily descended from a throne, remained in obscurity; but when the
+days of misfortune came upon the emperor, there could be but one place
+for his brave and faithful brother, and that was at Napoleon's side.
+
+Madame de St. Elme, who was at Grätz at this time, and who witnessed the
+farewell scene between Louis Bonaparte and the inhabitants of Grätz,
+says: "On the day when Austria so unexpectedly sundered its alliance
+with France, King Louis felt the necessity of abandoning an asylum, for
+which he would henceforth have been indebted to the enemies of France,
+and hastened to claim of the great unjust man who had repulsed him, the
+only place commensurate with the dignity of his character, the place
+at his side.
+
+"This was a subject of profound sorrow and regret for the inhabitants of
+Grätz, and of all Styria, for there was not a pious or useful
+institution, or a poor family in Styria, that had not been the object of
+his beneficence, and yet it was well known that the king who had
+descended from his throne so hastily, and with so little preparation,
+had but small means, and denied himself many of the enjoyments of life,
+in order that he might lend a helping hand to others. He was entreated,
+conjured with tears, to remain, but he held firm to his resolution. And
+when the horses, that they had at first determined to withhold from him,
+were at last, at his earnest and repeated solicitation, provided, the
+people unharnessed these horses from his carriage, in order that they
+might take their places, and accompany him to the gates of the city with
+this demonstration of their love. This departure had the appearance of a
+triumphal procession; and this banished king, without a country, was
+greeted with as lively plaudits on leaving his place of exile as when he
+mounted his throne[20]."
+
+[Footnote 20: Mémoires d'une contemporaine, vol. iv., p. 377.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+JUNOT, THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.
+
+While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render assistance to
+the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother Louis, forgetting
+the mortifications and injuries he had sustained at the emperor's hands,
+hastened to his side, there was one of the most devoted kept away from
+him by fate--one upon whom the emperor could otherwise have depended in
+life and death.
+
+This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who, descended from
+an humble family, had by his merit and heroism elevated himself to the
+rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed to respond when the ominous
+roll of the war-drum recalled all Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it
+was not his will, but fate, that kept him away.
+
+Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear and
+without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present governor of
+Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a visitation of the most
+fearful of all diseases--his brain was affected! The scars that covered
+his head and forehead, and testified so eloquently to his gallantry,
+announced at the same time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed
+by sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
+his brain.
+
+The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And yet,
+this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of Istria and
+Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these provinces, had
+invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the noble disposition,
+fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms, he had conferred upon him
+sovereign power to rule in his stead. There was, therefore, no one who
+could take the sceptre from his hand, and depose him from his high
+position. Napoleon had placed this sceptre in his hand, and he alone
+could demand it of him. Even the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers
+of Istria appealed for help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford
+them no relief. He could only say to them: "Send a courier to the
+emperor, and await his reply."
+
+But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a distance
+of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no telegraphs. The
+Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the emperor, with an entreaty
+for their relief, but the Russian proverb, "Heaven is high, and the
+emperor distant," applied to them also! Weeks must elapse before the
+courier could return with the emperor's reply; until then, there was no
+relief; and until then, there was no authority to obey but the Duke
+d'Abrantes, the poor madman!
+
+No other authority, no institution, had the right to place itself in his
+stead, or to assume his prerogatives for an instant even, without
+violating the seal of sovereignty that Napoleon had impressed on the
+brow of his governor!
+
+Napoleon, whose crown was already trembling on his head, who was
+already so near his own fall, still possessed such gigantic power that
+its reflection sufficed to protect, at a distance of a thousand miles
+from the boundaries of France, the inviolability of a man who had lost
+his reason, and no longer had the power of reflection and volition.
+
+How handsome, how amiable, how chivalrous, had Junot been in his earlier
+days! How well he had known how to charm beautiful women in the
+drawing-rooms, soldiers on the battle-field, and knights at the tourney!
+In all knightly accomplishments he was the master--always and everywhere
+the undisputed victor and hero. These accomplishments had won the heart
+of Mademoiselle de Premont. The daughter of the proud baroness of the
+Faubourg St. Germain had joyfully determined, in spite of her mother's
+dismay, to become the wife of the soldier of the republic, of Napoleon's
+comrade-in-arms. Although Junot had no possession but his pay, and no
+nobility but his sword and his renown, this nevertheless sufficed to win
+him the favor of the daughter of this aristocratic mother--of the
+daughter who was yet so proud of being the last descendant of the
+Comneni. Napoleon, who loved to see matrimonial alliances consummated
+between his generals and his nobility and the old legitimist nobility of
+France, rewarded the daughter of the Faubourg St. Germain richly for the
+sacrifice she had made for his comrade-in-arms, in giving up her
+illustrious name, and her coat-of-arms, to become the wife of a general
+without ancestors and without fortune. He made his friend a duke, and
+the Duchess d'Abrantes had no longer cause to be ashamed of her title;
+the descendant of the Comneni could content herself with the homage done
+her as the wife of the governor of Lisbon, contented with the laurels
+that adorned her husband's brow--laurels to which he added a new branch,
+but also new wounds, on every battle-field.
+
+The consequences of these wounds had veiled the hero's laurels with
+mourning-crape, and destroyed the domestic happiness of the poor duchess
+forever. She had first discovered her husband's sad condition, but she
+had known how to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. She had,
+however, refused to accompany the duke to Illyria, and had remained in
+Paris, still hoping that the change of climate and associations might
+restore him to health.
+
+But her hopes were not to be realized. The attacks of madness, that had
+hitherto occurred at long intervals only, now became more frequent, and
+were soon no longer a secret. All Illyria knew that its governor was a
+madman, and yet no one dared to oppose his will, or to refuse to obey
+his commands; all still bowed to his will, in humility and silent
+submissiveness, hopefully awaiting the return of the courier who had
+been dispatched to Napoleon at Paris.
+
+"But heaven is high, and the emperor distant!" And much evil could
+happen, and did happen, before the courier returned to Trieste, where
+Junot resided. The poor duke's condition grew worse daily; his attacks
+of madness became more frequent and more dangerous, and broke out on the
+slightest provocation.
+
+On one occasion a nightingale, singing in the bushes beneath his window,
+had disturbed his rest; on the following morning he caused the general
+alarm to be sounded, and two battalions of Croats to be drawn up in the
+park, to begin a campaign against the poor nightingale, who had dared to
+disturb his repose.
+
+On another occasion, Junot fancied he had discovered a grand conspiracy
+of all the sheep of Illyria; against this conspiracy he brought the
+vigilance of the police, all the means of the administration, and the
+whole severity of the law, into requisition for its suppression.
+
+At another time, he suddenly became desperately enamoured of a beautiful
+Greek girl, who belonged to his household. Upon her refusal to meet his
+advances favorably, a passionate desperation took possession of Junot,
+and he determined to set fire to his palace, and perish with his love in
+the flames. Fortunately, his purpose was discovered, and the fire he had
+kindled stifled at once.
+
+He would suddenly be overcome with a passionate distaste for the
+grandeur and splendor that surrounded him, and long to lay aside his
+brilliant position, and fly to the retirement of an humble and
+obscure life.
+
+It was his dearest wish to become a peasant, and be able to live in a
+hut; and, as there was no one who had the right to divest him of his
+high dignities and grant his desire, he formed the resolution to divest
+himself of this oppressive grandeur, by the exercise of his own fulness
+of power, and to withdraw himself from the annoyances imposed upon him
+by his high position.
+
+Under the pretence of visiting the provinces, he left Trieste, to lead
+for a few weeks an entirely new life--a life that seemed, for a brief
+period, to soothe his excited mind. He arrived, almost incognito, in the
+little city of Gorizia, and demanded to be conducted to the most
+unpretending establishment to which humble and honest laborers were in
+the habit of resorting for refreshment and relaxation. He was directed
+to an establishment called the Ice-house, a place to which poor daily
+laborers resorted, to repose after the labors of the day, and refresh
+themselves with a glass of beer or wine.
+
+In this Ice-house the governor of Illyria now took up his abode. He
+seldom quitted it, either by day or night; and here, like
+Haroun-al-Raschid, he took part in the harmless merriment of happy and
+contented poverty. And here this poor man was to find a last delight, a
+last consolation; here he was to find a last friend.
+
+This last friend of the Duke d'Abrantes--this Pylades of the poor
+Orestes--was--a madman!--a poor simpleton, of good family, who was so
+good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at large, and free
+scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however, possessed a kind of
+droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought to bear most effectively,
+sparing neither rank nor position. The half-biting, half-droll remarks
+of this Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the
+broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the
+social grandeur and distinctions that had cost him so dear made
+ridiculous by this half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to
+jeer at the pomp that surrounded the governor, and imitate French
+elegance in a highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor
+princely friend's delight knew no bounds.
+
+On one occasion, after the poor fellow had been entertaining him in this
+manner, the Duke d'Abrantes threw himself, in his enthusiasm, in his
+friend's arms, and invested him with the insignia of the Legion of
+Honor, by hanging around his neck the grand-cross of this order hitherto
+worn by himself. The emperor had given Junot authority to distribute
+this order to the deserving throughout the provinces of Illyria and
+Istria, and the governor himself having invested this mad Diogenes with
+the decoration, there was no one who was competent to deprive him of it.
+For weeks this mad fool was to be seen in the streets of Gorizia,
+parading himself like a peacock, with the grand-cross of the honorable
+order of the Emperor Napoleon, and, at the same time, uttering the most
+pointed and biting _bon mots_ at the expense of his own decoration. The
+duke often accompanied him in his wanderings through the town, sometimes
+laughing loudly at the fool's jests, sometimes listening with earnest
+attention, as though his utterances were oracles. Thus this strange
+couple passed the time, either lounging through the streets together, or
+seated side by side on a stone by the way, engaged in curious
+reflections on the passers-by, or philosophizing over the emptiness of
+all glory and grandeur, and over the littleness and malice of the world,
+realizing the heart-rending, impressive scenes between Lear and his
+fool, which Shakespeare's genius has depicted.
+
+After weeks of anxious suspense, the imperial message, relieving Junot
+of his authority, and placing the Duke of Otranto in his place, at last
+arrived. The poor Duke d'Abrantes left Illyria, and returned to France,
+where, in the little town of Maitbart, after long and painful struggles,
+he ended, in sadness and solitude, a life of renown, heroism, and
+irreproachable integrity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A VENDER OF VIOLETS.
+
+Gradually, the brilliancy of the sun that had so long dazzled the eyes
+of all Europe began to wax pale, and the luminous star of Napoleon to
+grow dim among the dark clouds that were gathering around him. Fortune
+had accorded him all that it could bestow upon a mortal. It had laid all
+the crowns of Europe at his feet, and made him master of all the
+monarchies and peoples. Napoleon's antechamber in Erfurt and in Dresden
+had been the rendezvous of the emperors, kings, and princes of Europe,
+and England alone had never disguised its hostility beneath the mask of
+friendship, and bent the knee to a hated and feared neighbor. Napoleon,
+the master of Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother,"
+could now proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no
+longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had now
+become a new triumph of his grandeur.
+
+On one occasion, during the congress at Erfurt, all the emperors, kings,
+and princes, were assembled around Napoleon's table. He occupied the
+seat between his enthusiastic friend the Emperor of Russia, and his
+father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria. Opposite them sat the King of
+Prussia, his ally, although Napoleon had deprived him of the Rhine
+provinces; and the Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg, to whom Napoleon had
+given crowns, whose electorate and duchy he had converted into kingdoms,
+and of whom the first had given his daughter in marriage to Napoleon's
+adopted son, Eugene, and the second his daughter to Napoleon's brother
+Jerome. There were, further, at the table, the King of Saxony and the
+Grand-duke of Baden, to the latter of whom Napoleon had given the hand
+of Josephine's niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais. All these were princes,
+"by the grace of God," of brilliant and haughty dynasties; and in their
+midst sat the son of the advocate of Corsica--he, the Emperor of
+France--he, upon whom the gaze of all these emperors and kings was
+fastened in admiration and respect. Napoleon's extraordinary memory had
+just been the topic of conversation, and the emperor was about to
+explain how he had brought it to such a state of perfection.
+
+"While I was still a sub-lieutenant," began Napoleon, and instantly his
+hearers let fall their gaze, and looked down in shame at their plates,
+while a cloud of displeasure passed over the brow of the emperor of
+Austria at this mention of the low origin of his son-in-law. Napoleon
+observed this, and for an instant his eagle glance rested on the
+embarrassed countenances that surrounded him; he then paused for a
+moment. He began again, speaking with sharp emphasis: "When I still had
+the honor of being a sub-lieutenant," said he, and the Emperor Alexander
+of Russia, the only one of the princes who had remained unembarrassed,
+laid his hand on the emperor's shoulder, smiled approvingly, and
+listened with interest and pleasure to the emperor's narrative of the
+time when he "still had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant[21]."
+
+[Footnote 21: Bossuet, Mémoires, vol. V.]
+
+Napoleon, as we have said, had already mounted so high that for him
+there was no longer a summit to be attained, and now his heart's last
+and dearest wish had been granted by destiny. His wife, Marie Louise,
+had given birth to a son on the 20th of May, 1811, and the advent of the
+little King of Rome had fulfilled the warmest desires of Napoleon and of
+France. The emperor now had an heir; Napoleon's dynasty was assured.
+
+Festivities were therefore held in honor of this event, in the
+Tuileries, at the courts, of the Queen of Naples, of the Grand-duchess
+de Guastalla, of all the dukes of the empire, and of the Queen
+of Holland.
+
+Hortense was ill and in pain; a nervous headache, that she had been
+suffering from for some time, betrayed the secret of the pain and grief
+she had so long concealed from observation. Her cheeks had grown pale,
+and her eyes had lost their lustre. Her mother wept over her lost
+happiness in Malmaison, and, when Hortense had wept with and consoled
+her mother, she was compelled to dry her eyes and hasten to the
+Tuileries, and appear, with a smiling countenance, before her who was
+now her empress and her mother's happy rival.
+
+But Hortense had accepted her destiny, and was determined to demean
+herself as became her own and her mother's dignity. She endeavored to be
+a true and sincere friend to the young empress, and fulfil the emperor's
+wishes, and to give brilliant entertainments in honor of the King of
+Rome, in spite of the pain it must cost her. "The emperor wills it, the
+emperor requires it;" that was sufficient for all who were about him,
+and it was sufficient for her. Her mother had gone because it was his
+will, she had remained because it was his will, and she now gave these
+entertainments for the same reason. But there was an element of sadness
+and gloom even in these festivities of the carnival of 1813; the
+presence of so many cripples and invalids recalled the memory of the
+reverses of the past year. At the balls there was a great scarcity of
+young men who could dance; incessant wars had made the youth of France
+old before their time, and had converted vigorous men into cripples.
+
+Her heart filled with dark forebodings, Hortense silently prepared
+herself against the days of misfortune which she knew must inevitably
+come. When these days should come, she wished to be ready to meet them
+with a brave heart and a resolute soul, and she also endeavored to
+impress on the minds of her two beloved sons the inconstancy of fortune,
+in order that they might look misfortune boldly in the face. She had no
+compassion with the tender youth of these boys, who were now eight and
+six years old; no compassion, because she loved them too well not to
+strive to prepare them for adversity.
+
+One day the Duchess of Bassano gave a ball in honor of the queen, and
+Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned her resolution
+to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion. Her blond hair, that
+reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed in the ancient Greek
+style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers, not natural flowers,
+however, but consisting of Hortensias in diamonds. Her dress was of
+pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias in silver. The hem of her dress
+and its train was encircled with a garland of flowers composed of roses
+and violets. A bouquet of Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom,
+and her necklace and bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias.
+In this rich and tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress
+Josephine the day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies
+and gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for
+the occasion.
+
+The parlor, filled with these ladies glittering with diamonds, and with
+these cavaliers in their rich, gold-embroidered uniforms, presented a
+brilliant spectacle. The queen's two sons, who came running into the
+room at this moment to bid their "bonne petite maman" adieu, stood still
+for an instant, dazzled by this magnificence, and then timidly
+approached the mother who seemed to them a queen from the fairy-realm
+floating in rosy clouds. The queen divined the thoughts of her boys,
+whose countenances were for her an open book in which she read
+every emotion.
+
+She extended a hand to each of her children, and led them to a sofa, on
+which she seated herself, taking the youngest, Louis Napoleon, who was
+scarcely six years old, in her lap, while his elder brother, Napoleon
+Louis, stood at her side, his curly head resting on Hortense's shoulder,
+gazing tenderly into the pale, expressive face of his beautiful mother.
+
+"I am very prettily dressed to-day, am I not, Napoleon?" said Hortense,
+laying her little hand, that sparkled with diamonds, on the head of her
+eldest son. "Would you like me less if I were poor, and wore no
+diamonds, but merely a plain black dress? Would you love me less then?"
+
+"No, _maman_!" exclaimed the boy, almost angrily, and little Louis
+Napoleon, who sat in his mother's lap, repeated in his shrill little
+voice: "No, _maman_!"
+
+The queen smiled. "Diamonds and dress do not constitute happiness, and
+we three would love each other just as much if we had no jewelry, and
+were poor. But tell me, Napoleon, if you had nothing, and were entirely
+alone in the world, what would you do for yourself?"
+
+"I would become a soldier," cried Napoleon, with sparkling eyes, "and I
+would fight so bravely that I should soon be made an officer."
+
+"And you, Louis, what would you do to earn your daily bread?"
+
+The little fellow had listened earnestly to his brother's words, and
+seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the knapsack
+and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and that he was, as
+yet, too weak to become a soldier.
+
+"I," said he, after a pause, "I would sell bouquets of violets, like the
+little boy who stands at the gates of the Tuileries, and from whom we
+buy our flowers every day."
+
+The ladies and cavaliers, who had listened to this curious conversation
+in silence, now laughed loudly at this naive reply of the little prince.
+
+"Do not laugh, ladies," said the queen, earnestly, as she now arose; "it
+was no jest, but a lesson that I gave my children, who were so dazzled
+by jewelry. It is the misfortune of princes that they believe that
+everything is subject to them, that they are made of another stuff than
+other men, and have no duties to perform. They know nothing of human
+suffering and want, and do not believe that they can ever be affected by
+anything of the kind. And this is why they are so astounded, and remain
+so helpless, when the hand of misfortune does strike them. I wish to
+preserve my sons from this[22]."
+
+[Footnote 22: The queen's own words.]
+
+She then stooped and kissed her boys, who, while she and her brilliant
+suite were driving to the Tuileries, busied their little heads,
+considering whether it was easier to earn one's bread as a soldier, or
+by selling violets at the gates of the Tuileries, like the little
+beggar-boy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE DAYS OF MISFORTUNE.
+
+The round of festivities with which the people of France endeavored to
+banish the shadow of impending misfortune, was soon to be abruptly
+terminated. The thunder of the cannon on the battle-fields of Hanau and
+Leipsic silenced the dancing-music in the Tuileries; and in the
+drawing-rooms of Queen Hortense, hitherto devoted to music and
+literature, the ladies were now busily engaged in picking lint for the
+wounded who were daily arriving at the hospitals of Paris from the army.
+The declaration of war of Austria and Russia had aroused France from its
+haughty sense of invincibility. All felt that a crisis was at hand. All
+were preparing for the ominous events that were gathering like
+storm-clouds over France. Each of the faithful hastened to assume the
+position to which honor and duty called him. And it was in response to
+such an appeal that Louis Bonaparte now returned from Grätz to Paris; he
+had heard the ominous tones of the voice that threatened the emperor,
+and wished to be at his side in the hour of danger.
+
+It was not as the wife, but in the spirit of a Frenchwoman and a queen,
+that Hortense received the intelligence of her husband's return. "I am
+delighted to hear it," said she; "my husband is a good Frenchman, and he
+proves it by returning at the moment when all Europe has declared
+against France. He is a man of honor, and if our characters could not be
+made to harmonize, it was probably because we both had defects that were
+irreconcilable.
+
+"I," added she, with a gentle smile, "I was too proud, I had been
+spoiled, and was probably too deeply impressed with a sense of my own
+worth; and this defect is not conducive to pleasant relations with one
+who is distrustful and low-spirited. But our interests were always the
+same, and his hastening to France, to enroll himself with all his
+brother Frenchmen, for the defence of his country, is worthy of the
+king's character. It is only by doing thus that we can testify our
+gratitude for the benefits the people have conferred upon our
+family[23]."
+
+[Footnote 23: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, vol. i., p.
+167.]
+
+In the first days of January, 1814, the news that the enemy had crossed
+the boundaries of France, and that the Austrians, Russians, and
+Prussians, were marching on Paris, created a panic throughout the entire
+city. For the first time, after so many years of triumph, France
+trembled for its proud army, and believed in the possibility of defeat.
+
+In the Tuileries, also, gloom and dejection ruled the hour for the first
+time; and while, when the army had heretofore gone forth, the question
+had been, "When shall we receive the first intelligence of victory?"
+there were now only mute, inquiring glances bent on the emperor's
+clouded countenance.
+
+On the 24th of January, Napoleon left Paris, in order to repair to the
+army. The empress, whom he had made regent, giving her a council,
+consisting of his brothers and the ministers, as a support--the empress
+had taken leave of him in a flood of tears, and Queen Hortense, who had
+alone been present on this occasion, had been compelled to remain for
+some time with the empress, in order to console and encourage her.
+
+But Hortense was far from feeling the confidence which she exhibited in
+the presence of the empress and of her own court. She had never believed
+in the duration of these triumphs and of this fortune; she had always
+awaited the coming evil in silent expectation, and she was therefore now
+ready to face it bravely, and to defend herself and her children against
+its attacks. She therefore was calm and self-possessed, while the entire
+imperial family was terror-stricken, while all Paris was in a panic,
+while the fearful intelligence, "The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks
+are marching on Paris!" was overrunning the city. "The Grand-duke
+Constantine has promised his troops that they shall warm themselves at
+the burning ruins of Paris, and the Emperor Alexander has sworn that he
+will sleep in the Tuileries."
+
+Nothing was now dreamed of but plundering, murder, and rapine; people
+trembled not only for their lives, but also for their property, and
+hastened to bury their treasures, their jewelry, their gold and silver,
+to secure it from the rapacious hands of the terrible Cossacks.
+Treasures were buried in cellars, or hid away in the walls of houses.
+The Duchess de Bassano caused all her valuable effects to be put in a
+hidden recess, and the entrance to the same to be walled up and covered
+with paper. There were among these valuable effects several large
+clocks, in golden cases, that were richly studded with precious stones,
+but it had unfortunately been forgotten to stop them, so that for the
+next week they continued to strike the hours regularly, and thereby
+betrayed to the neighbors the secret the duchess had so anxiously
+endeavored to conceal.
+
+But the cry, "The Cossacks are coming!" was not the only alarm-cry of
+the Parisians. Another, and a long-silent cry, was now heard in Paris--a
+strange cry, that had no music for the ear of the imperialist, but one
+that, to the royalist, had a sweet and familiar sound. This cry was,
+"The Count de Lille!" or, as the royalists said, "King Louis XVIII." The
+royalists no longer whispered this name, but proclaimed it loudly and
+with enthusiasm, and even those of them who had attached themselves to
+the imperial court, and played a part at the same, now dared to remove
+their masks a little, and show their true countenance.
+
+Madame Ducayla, one of the most zealous royalists, although attached to
+the court society of the Tuileries, had gone to Hartwell, to convey to
+him messages of love and respect in the name of all the royalists of
+Paris, and to tell him that they had now begun to smooth the way for his
+return to France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with
+authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them
+the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the
+glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in
+disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when
+Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from
+Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come from
+Hartwell, I have seen the king, and he has instructed me--" he
+interrupted her in loud and angry tones, exclaiming: "Are you mad,
+madame? You dare to confess such a crime to me?" He had, however, then
+added in a low voice: "You have seen him, then? Well, I am his most
+devoted servant[24]."
+
+[Footnote 24: Mémoires d'une femme de qualité, vol. i., p. 133.]
+
+The royalists held meetings and formed conspiracies with but little
+attempt at concealment, and the minister of police, Fouché, whose eyes
+and ears were always on the alert, and who knew of everything that
+occurred in Paris, also knew of these conspiracies of the royalists; he
+did not prevent them, however, but advised caution, endeavoring to
+prove to them thereby the deep reverence which he himself experienced
+for the unfortunate royal family.
+
+In the midst of all this confusion and anxiety, Queen Hortense alone
+preserved her composure and courage, and far from endeavoring, like
+others, to conceal and secure her treasures, jewelry, and other
+valuables, she determined to make no change or reduction whatever in her
+manner of living; she wished to show the Parisians that the confidence
+of the imperial family in the emperor and his invincibility was not to
+be shaken. She therefore continued to conduct her household in truly
+royal style, although she had received from the exhausted state treasury
+no payment of the appanage set apart for herself and children for a
+period of three months. But she thought little of this; her generous
+heart was occupied with entirely different interests than those of her
+own pecuniary affairs.
+
+She wished to inspire Marie Louise, whom the emperor had constituted
+empress-regent on his departure for the army, with the courage which she
+herself possessed. She conjured her to show herself worthy of the
+confidence the emperor had reposed in her at this critical time, and to
+adopt firm and energetic measures. When, on the 28th of March, the
+terror-inspiring news was circulated that the hostile armies were only
+five leagues from Paris, and while the people were flying from the city
+in troops, Hortense hastened to the Tuileries to conjure the empress to
+be firm, and not to leave Paris. She entreated Marie Louise, in the
+name of the emperor, her husband, and the King of Rome, her son, not to
+heed the voice of the state council, who, after a long sitting, had
+unanimously declared that Paris could not be held, and that the empress,
+with her son and her council, should therefore leave the capital.
+
+But Marie Louise had remained deaf to all these pressing and energetic
+representations, and the queen had not been able to inspire her young
+and weak sister-in-law with her own resolution.
+
+"My sister," Hortense had said to her, "you will at least understand
+that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and thereby endanger
+your crown, but I see that you are resigned to this sacrifice."
+
+"It is true," Marie Louise had sadly replied. "I well know that I should
+act differently, but it is too late. The state council has decided, and
+I can do nothing!"
+
+In sadness and dejection Hortense had then returned to her dwelling,
+where Lavalette, Madame Ney, and the ladies of her court, awaited her.
+
+"All is lost," said she, sadly. "Yes, all is lost. The empress has
+determined to leave Paris. She lightly abandons France and the emperor.
+She is about to depart."
+
+"If she does that," exclaimed General Lavalette, in despair, "then all
+is really lost, and yet her firmness and courage might now save the
+emperor, who is advancing toward Paris by forced marches. After all this
+weighing and deliberating, they have elected to take the worst course
+they could choose! But, as this has finally been determined on, what
+course will your majesty now pursue?"
+
+"I remain in Paris," said the queen, resolutely; "as I am permitted to
+be mistress of my own actions, I am resolved to remain here and share
+the fortunes of the Parisians, be they good or evil! This is at least a
+better and worthier course than to incur the risk of being made a
+prisoner on the public highway."
+
+Now that she had come to a decision, the queen exhibited a joyous
+determination, and her mind recovered from its depression. She hastened
+to dispatch a courier to Malmaison to the Empress Josephine, now
+forgotten and neglected by all, to conjure her to leave for Novara at
+once. She then retired to her bedchamber to seek the rest she so much
+needed after so many hours of excitement.
+
+But at midnight she was aroused from her repose to a sad awakening. Her
+husband, with whom she had held no kind of intercourse since his return,
+had now, in the hour of danger, determined to assert his marital
+authority over his wife and children. He wrote the queen a letter,
+requiring her to leave Paris with her children, and follow the empress.
+
+Hortense replied with a decided refusal. A second categoric message from
+her husband was the response. He declared that if she should not at once
+conform to his will, and follow the empress with her children, he would
+immediately take his children into his own custody, by virtue of his
+authority as husband and father.
+
+At this threat, the queen sprang up like an enraged lioness from her
+lair. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes she commanded that her
+children should be at once brought to her, and then, pressing her two
+boys to her heart with passionate tenderness, she exclaimed: "Tell the
+king that I shall leave the city within the hour!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ALLIES IN PARIS.
+
+The anxiety of motherly love had effected what neither the departure of
+the empress nor the news of the approach of the Cossacks could do.
+Hortense had taken her departure. She had quitted Paris, with her
+children and suite, which had already begun to grow sensibly smaller,
+and arrived, after a hurried flight, endangered by bands of marauding
+Cossacks, in Novara, where the Empress Josephine, with tears of sorrow
+and of joy alike, pressed her daughter to her heart. Although her own
+happiness and grandeur were gone, and although the misfortunes of the
+Emperor Napoleon--whom she still dearly loved--oppressed her heart,
+Josephine now had her daughter and dearest friend at her side, and that
+was a sweet consolation in the midst of all these misfortunes and cares.
+
+At Novara, Hortense received the intelligence of the fall of the empire,
+of the capitulation of Paris, of the entrance of the allies, and of the
+abdication of Napoleon.
+
+When the courier sent by the Duke of Bassano with this intelligence
+further informed the Empress Josephine that the island of Elba had been
+assigned Napoleon as a domicile, and that he was on the point of leaving
+France to go into exile, Josephine fell, amid tears of anguish, into her
+daughter's arms, crying: "Hortense, he is unhappy, and I am not with
+him! He is banished to Elba! Alas! but for his wife, I would hasten to
+his side, to share his exile!"
+
+While the empress was weeping and lamenting, Hortense had silently
+withdrawn to her apartments. She saw and fully appreciated the
+consequences that must ensue to the emperor's entire family, from his
+fall; she already felt the mortifications and insults to which the
+Bonapartes would now be exposed from all quarters, and she wished to
+withdraw herself and children from their influence. She formed a quick
+resolve, and determined to carry it out at once. She caused Mademoiselle
+de Cochelet, one of the few ladies of her court who had remained
+faithful, to be called, in order that she might impart to her her
+resolution.
+
+"Louise," said she, "I intend to emigrate. I am alone and defenceless,
+and ever threatened by a misfortune that would be more cruel than the
+loss of crown and grandeur--the misfortune of seeing my children torn
+from me by my husband. My mother can remain in France--her divorce has
+made her free and independent; but I bear a name that will no longer be
+gladly heard in France, now that the Bourbons are returning. I have no
+other fortune than my diamonds. These I shall sell, and then go, with my
+children, to my mother's estate in Martinique. I lived there when a
+child, and have retained a pleasant remembrance of the place. It is
+undoubtedly hard to be compelled to give up country, mother, and
+friends; but one must face these great strokes of destiny courageously.
+I will give my children a good education, and that shall be my
+consolation."
+
+Mademoiselle de Cochelet burst into tears, kissed the queen's extended
+hand, and begged so earnestly that she might be permitted to accompany
+her, that Hortense at last gave a reluctant consent. It was arranged
+between them that Louise should hasten to Paris, in order to make the
+necessary preparations for the queen's long journey; and she departed on
+this mission, under the protection of the courier, on the
+following morning.
+
+How changed and terrible was the aspect Paris presented on her arrival!
+At the gate through which they entered Cossacks stood on guard; the
+streets were filled with Russian, Austrian, and Prussian soldiery, at
+whose side the proud ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were to be seen
+walking, in joyous triumph, bestowing upon the vanquishers of France as
+great a devotion as they could have lavished upon the beloved Bourbons
+themselves, whose return was expected in a few days.
+
+A Swedish regiment was quartered in the queen's dwelling; her servants
+had fled; her glittering drawing-rooms now sheltered the conquerors of
+France; and in the Tuileries preparations were already being made for
+the reception of the Bourbons.
+
+No one dared to pronounce the name of Napoleon. Those who were formerly
+his most zealous flatterers were now the most ready to condemn him.
+Those upon whom he had conferred the greatest benefits were now the
+first to deny him, hoping thereby to wipe out the remembrance of the
+benefits they had received. The most zealous Napoleonists now became the
+most ardent royalists, and placed the largest white cockades in their
+hats, in order that they might the sooner attract the attention of the
+new rulers.
+
+But there was still one man who pronounced the name of Napoleon loudly,
+and with affectionate admiration, and publicly accorded him the tribute
+of his respect.
+
+This one was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. He had loved Napoleon so
+dearly, that even the position of hostility which policy compelled him
+to assume could not banish from his heart friendship for the hero who
+had so long ruled Europe.
+
+Napoleon's fate was decided; and it was attributable to the zealous
+efforts of the czar that the allies had consented to the emperor's
+demands, and appointed him sovereign of the island of Elba. Now that
+Alexander could do nothing more for Napoleon, he desired to make himself
+useful to his family, at least, and thereby testify the admiration which
+he still felt for the fallen Titan.
+
+The Empress Marie Louise and the little King of Rome had no need of his
+assistance. The empress had not availed herself of the permission of the
+allies to accompany her husband to Elba, but had placed herself and son
+under the protection of her father, the Emperor of Austria.
+
+The Emperor Alexander therefore bestowed his whole sympathy upon
+Napoleon's divorced wife and her children, the Viceroy of Italy and the
+Queen of Holland. He took so great an interest in the queen, that he
+declared his intention, in case Hortense should not come to Paris, of
+going to Novara to see her, in order to learn from her own lips in what
+manner he could serve her, and how she desired that her future should
+be shaped.
+
+Count Nesselrode, the emperor's minister, was also zealous in his
+endeavors to serve the queen. The count had long been the intimate
+friend of Louise de Cochelet; and, desirous of giving her a further
+proof of his friendship, he knew of no better way of doing so than by
+rendering a service to Queen Hortense and her children. Louise informed
+the count of the queen's intended departure for Martinique. Count
+Nesselrode smiled sadly over this desperate resolve of a brave mother's
+heart, and instructed Louise to beg the queen to impart to him, through
+her confidante, all her wishes and demands, in order that he might lay
+them before the emperor.
+
+The queen's fate was the subject of great sympathy in all quarters.
+When, in one of the sessions of the ministers of the allies, in which
+the fate of France, of the Bourbons, and of the Bonapartes, was to be
+the subject of deliberation, the question of making some provision for
+the emperor's family came up for consideration, the prince of Benevento
+exclaimed: "I plead for Queen Hortense alone; for she is the only one
+for whom I have any esteem." Count Nesselrode added: "Who would not be
+proud to claim her as a countrywoman? She is the pearl of her France!"
+And Metternich united with the rest in her praise[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: Cochelet, vol. i., p 279.]
+
+But it was in vain that Louise de Cochelet imparted this intelligence to
+the queen; the entreaties and representations of her friends were
+powerless to persuade Hortense to leave her retirement and come
+to Paris.
+
+The following letter of the queen, written to Louise, concerning her
+affairs, will testify to her beautiful and womanly sentiments. This
+letter is as follows:
+
+"My dear Louise,--You and all my friends write me the same questions:
+'What do you want? What do you demand?' I reply to all of you: I want
+nothing whatever! What should I desire? Is not my fate already
+determined? When one has the strength to form a great resolution, and
+when one can firmly and calmly contemplate the idea of making a journey
+to India or America, it is unnecessary to demand any thing of any one. I
+entreat you to take no steps that I should be compelled to disavow; I
+know that you love me, and this might induce you to do so. I am really
+not to be pitied; it was in the midst of grandeur and splendor that I
+have suffered! I shall now, perhaps, learn the happiness of retirement,
+and prefer it to all the magnificence that once surrounded me. I do not
+believe I can remain in France; the lively interest now shown in my
+behalf might eventually occasion mistrust. This idea is annihilating; I
+feel it, but I shall not willingly occasion sorrow to any one. My
+brother will be happy; my mother can remain in her country, and retain
+her estates. I, with my children, shall go to a foreign land, and, as
+the happiness of those I love is assured, I shall be able to bear the
+misfortune that strikes only at my material interests, but not at my
+heart. I am still deeply moved and confounded by the fate that has
+overtaken the Emperor Napoleon and his family. Is it true? Has all been
+finally determined? Write me on this subject. I hope that my children
+will not be taken from me; in that case I should lose all courage. I
+will so educate them that they shall be happy in any station of life. I
+shall teach them to bear fortune and misfortune with equal dignity, and
+to seek true happiness in contentment with themselves. This is worth
+more than crowns. Fortunately, they are healthy. Thank Count Nesselrode
+for his sympathy. I assure you there are days that are properly called
+days of misfortune, and that are yet not without a charm; such are those
+that enable us to discern the true sentiments people hold toward us. I
+rejoice over the affection which you show me, and it will always afford
+me gratification to tell you that I return it. HORTENSE[26]."
+
+[Footnote 26: Cochelet, vol. i., pp. 275-277.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND LOUISE DE COCHELET.
+
+In the meanwhile, Hortense was still living with her mother in Novara,
+firmly resolved to remain in her retirement, sorrowing over the fate of
+the imperial house, but quite indifferent as to her own fate.
+
+But her friends--and even in misfortune Hortense still had friends--and
+above all her truest friend, Louise de Cochelet, busied themselves all
+the more about her future, endeavoring to rescue out of the general
+wreck of the imperial house at least a few fragments for the queen.
+
+Louise de Cochelet was still sojourning in Paris, and the letters which
+she daily wrote to the queen at Novara, and in which she informed her of
+all that was taking place in the city, are so true a picture of that
+strange and confused era, that we cannot refrain from here inserting
+some of them.
+
+In one of her first letters Louise de Cochelet relates a conversation
+which she had had with Count Nesselrode, in relation to the
+queen's future.
+
+"The Bourbons," she writes, "have now been finally accepted. I asked
+Count Nesselrode, whom I have just left: 'Do you believe that the queen
+will be permitted to remain in France? Will the new rulers consider this
+proper?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'I am sure of it, for we will make it
+a condition with them, and without us they would never have come to the
+throne at all! It is not the Bourbons, but it is we, it is all Europe,
+that arranges and regulates these matters. I therefore trust that they
+will never violate the agreement. Rest assured that the Emperor
+Alexander will always support the right.'
+
+"All of these strangers here speak of you, madame, with great
+enthusiasm. Metternich, who doubtlessly recollects your great kindness
+to his wife and children, inquired after you with lively interest.
+Prince Leopold is devotedly attached to yourself and the Empress
+Josephine, and ardently desires to be able to serve you both. Count
+Nesselrode thinks it would be well for you to write to the Emperor
+Alexander, as he takes so warm an interest in your affairs.
+
+"The old nobility is already much discontented; it considers itself
+debased, because it sees itself mixed with so many new elements."
+
+"Come to Malmaison with the empress," she writes a few days later, "the
+Emperor Alexander will then go there at once to meet you; he is anxious
+to make your acquaintance, and you already owe him some thanks, as he
+devotes himself to your interests as though they were his own. The Duke
+of Vicenza, who demeans himself so worthily with regard to the Emperor
+Napoleon, requests me to inform you that the future of your children
+depends on your coming to Malmaison.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon has signed an agreement, that secures the future
+of all the members of his family; you can remain in France, and retain
+your titles. You are to have for yourself and children an income of four
+hundred thousand francs.
+
+"It is said here that the Faubourg St. Germain is furious over the
+brilliant positions provided for the imperial family and the empress.
+This is their gratitude for all her goodness to them.
+
+"You wish to make Switzerland your home. Count Nesselrode thinks you may
+be right, that it is a good retreat; but you should not give up the one
+you have here, and should in any event retain the right to return
+to France.
+
+"Fancy, madame, Count Nesselrode insists on my seeing his emperor! I
+have not yet consented, because I do not like to do any thing without
+your assent; but I confess I long to make his acquaintance. I am made
+quite happy by hearing you so well spoken of here.
+
+"Count Nesselrode said to me yesterday: 'Tell the queen that I shall be
+happy to fulfil all her wishes, and that I can do so, that I have the
+power.' For great security he wishes to have a future assured you that
+shall be independent of the treaty. I do not know what to say to him.
+Write to me, and demand something, I conjure you!"
+
+The queen's only response to this appeal was a letter addressed to the
+Emperor Napoleon, and sent to Count Nesselrode, with the request that it
+should be forwarded to its destination.
+
+"It is strange," wrote Louise de Cochelet in relation to this
+matter--"strange that all my efforts to serve you here have had no other
+result than your sending a commission to Count Nesselrode to forward to
+Fontainebleau a letter addressed to the Emperor Napoleon. He at first
+thought I was bringing him the letter he had solicited for his emperor;
+but he well knows how to appreciate all that is noble and great, and as
+he possesses the most admirable tact, he thinks the letter cannot well
+reach the emperor through him, and will therefore send it to the Duke of
+Vicenza, at Fontainebleau, to be delivered by him to the Emperor
+Napoleon."
+
+Another letter of Louise de Cochelet is as follows: "I have just seen
+Count Nesselrode again; he makes many inquiries concerning you; the
+Emperor of Russia now resides on the Elysée Bourbon. The count tells me
+a story that is in circulation here, and has reference to the Empress
+Marie Louise and the kings her brothers-in-law. They were about to force
+her to enter a carriage, in which they were to continue their journey
+with her; when she refused to enter, it is said the King of Westphalia
+became so violent that he gave her a little beating. She cried for help,
+and General Caffarelli[27], who commanded the guards, came to her
+rescue. On the following day she and her son were made prisoners, and
+all the crown diamonds in her possession seized by the authorities; but
+it seems as though capture was precisely what she wished.
+
+[Footnote 27: According to Napoleon's instructions, his brothers were to
+prevent the empress and the King of Rome from falling into the hands of
+the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene in his memoirs, and it is
+self-evident that it was not so stormy as the gossip of Paris
+portrayed it.]
+
+"The Queen of Westphalia has just arrived in Paris; the Emperor
+Alexander, her cousin, called on her immediately. It is supposed that
+she will return to her father.
+
+"Your brothers future is not yet determined on, but it will certainly be
+a desirable and worthy one. There are many intrigues going on in
+connection with it, as Count Nesselrode informs me. As for the kingdom
+of Naples, it is no longer spoken of. By the details of the last war
+with us, narrated to me by the count, I see that he despises many of our
+ministers and marshals, and that these must be very culpable; and yet he
+tells me that they considered the result uncertain a week before our
+overthrow; as late as the 10th of March they believed that peace had
+been made with Prussia at least.
+
+"Do not grieve over the fate of the emperor on the island of Elba. The
+emperor selected it himself; the allies would have preferred any
+other place.
+
+"All the mails arriving at Paris have been seized by the allies. Among
+the letters there was one from the Empress Marie Louise to her husband.
+She writes that her son is well, but that on awakening from a good
+night's rest he had cried and told her he had dreamed of his father;
+notwithstanding all her coaxing and promises of playthings, he had,
+however, refused to tell what he had dreamed of his father, and that
+this circumstance had made her uneasy in spite of her will.
+
+"Prince Leopold resides in the same house with Countess Tascher; he is
+incessantly busied with yours and your mother's affairs; he at least is
+not oblivious of the kindness you have both shown him. I know that it is
+his intention to speak to the Emperor of Russia, and then write to you.
+
+"All your friends say that you must consider the interest of your
+children, and accept the future offered you. M. de Lavalette and the
+Duke of Vicenza are also of this opinion. You lose enough without this,
+and you may well permit the victors to return a small portion of that
+which they have taken from you, and which is rightfully yours.
+
+"In short, all your friends demand that you shall repair to Malmaison as
+soon as the Emperor Napoleon shall have departed from Fontainebleau. I
+am assured that the Emperor Alexander intends to hunt you up in Novara
+if you should not come to Malmaison. It will therefore be impossible to
+avoid him. Consider that the fate of your children lies in his hands! In
+the treaty of Fontainebleau you and your children were provided for
+together; this is a great point for you, and proves how highly you are
+thought of.
+
+"It is to the Emperor of Russia alone that you owe this; and when the
+Duke of Vicenza submitted this article of the treaty to the Emperor
+Napoleon for his signature, it met with his entire approval. Your sole
+and undivided authority over your children is thereby acknowledged. You
+should, therefore, not reject the good offered you for your children. I
+do not think it would require much persuasion to induce others to accept
+that which is tendered you.
+
+"Madame Tascher, who has proved herself to be your true friend and
+relative, has just had her first interview with the Duke of Dalberg, the
+member of the provisional government. She spoke of you, and I will here
+give you his response, word for word: 'She is considered as being
+altogether foreign to the Bonaparte family, because she has separated
+herself from her husband. She will be the refuge of her children, who
+are left to her. She is so dearly beloved and highly esteemed, that she
+can be very happy. She can remain in France, and do whatever she
+pleases; but she must now return to Paris.' Countess Tascher came to me
+immediately after leaving the duke, in order to acquaint me with what
+he had said.
+
+"Friends and foes alike say this about you: 'Those who are not delighted
+with what is being done for the queen are bad people! And as for her,
+what has she to regret in all this? Only the good she has done! Now, the
+world will dare to love her, and to express their love; she has so few
+wishes, she is so perfect!'
+
+"In short, it would seem almost that the people are pleased with the
+misfortune that places you in the right light, and they say, 'She is far
+more worthy in herself than when surrounded by a glittering court!'
+
+"Yesterday I saw the new arrivals from Fontainebleau, M. de Lascour and
+M. de Lavoestine. They came to me to learn where you were to be found,
+and intend visiting you at once, either at Novara or at Malmaison, as
+the case may be. These two gentlemen are true knights. 'No matter what
+she is to become,' said they; 'we can now show our devotion, without
+incurring the risk of being considered flatterers.'
+
+"The last two weeks at Fontainebleau have been a period of the greatest
+interest. All these young men, together with M. de Labédoyère and M. de
+Montesquieu, wished to accompany the emperor; but he forbade their doing
+so, and, in taking leave of them, appealed to them to remain, and to
+continue to serve their country zealously.
+
+"Lascour and Lavoestine, together with many other officers of the army,
+are much displeased with the generals who left Fontainebleau without
+taking leave of the emperor.
+
+"Upon taking leave of the Empress Josephine, the emperor is reported to
+have said: 'She was right; my separation from her has brought misfortune
+upon my head.'
+
+"It is said that the Duchess of Montebello will leave the Empress Marie
+Louise."
+
+But all these entreaties and flatteries, and these appeals to a mother's
+heart, were, as yet, powerless to break the queen's pride. She still
+considered it more worthy and becoming to remain away from the city in
+which the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were celebrating the orgies
+of their victorious royalism with the soldiers of the allied armies.
+Instead of yielding to Louise de Cochelet's entreaties, the queen wrote
+her the following letter:
+
+"My dear Louise,--My resolution gives you pain! You all accuse me of
+childish waywardness. You are unjust! My mother can follow the Duke de
+Vicenza's counsel; she will go to Malmaison, but _I remain here,_ and I
+have good reasons for doing so. I cannot separate my interests from
+those of my children. It is they, it is their nearest relatives, who are
+being sacrificed by all that is taking place, and I am, therefore,
+determined not to approach those who are working our ruin. I must be
+saddened by our great misfortune, and I will appear so, and abstain from
+approaching those who would still consider me a supplicant, even though
+I should demand nothing of them.
+
+"I can readily believe that the Emperor Alexander is kindly disposed
+toward me; I have heard much good of him, even from the Emperor
+Napoleon. Although I was once anxious to make his acquaintance, I at
+this moment have no desire to see him. Is he not our vanquisher? In
+their hearts, your friends must all approve of my determination,
+whatever they may say. I find retirement congenial. When you have seen
+enough of your friends, you will return to me. I am suffering in my
+breast, and shall perhaps go to some watering-place. I do not know
+whether it is due to the air of Novara, but since I have been here I
+cannot breathe. My friends maintain that it is due to the mental shocks
+resulting from the great events that have transpired; but they are in
+error; death has spared us all, and the loss of a glittering position is
+not the greatest loss one can sustain. What personal happiness do I
+lose? My brother will, I trust, be well and suitably provided for, and
+he will be no longer exposed to danger. He must be very uneasy on our
+account, and yet I dare not write to him, as my letters would probably
+never reach him; if an opportunity should present itself, please let him
+know that we are no longer surrounded by dangers. Adieu. I entreat you
+once more to undertake nothing in my behalf. I fear your impetuosity and
+friendship, and yet I love to be able to count on you. My children are
+well. My mother opposes all my plans; she asserts that she has need of
+me; but I shall, nevertheless, go to her who must now be more unhappy
+than all of us.
+
+HORTENSE."
+
+She of whom Hortense thought that she must be more unhappy than all of
+them, was the wife of Napoleon, Marie Louise, who had now left Blois, to
+which place she had gone as empress-regent, and repaired to Rambouillet,
+to await the decision of the allies with regard to the future of herself
+and son. It was certainly one of the most peculiar features of this
+period, so rich in extraordinary occurrences, to see the sovereigns of
+Europe, the overthrown rulers of France, and those who were about to
+grasp the sceptre once more, thrown confusedly together in Paris, and
+within a circuit of some fifty miles around that city: a Bourbon in the
+Tuileries, Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, his wife and his son at
+Rambouillet, the divorced empress at Novara, the Emperors of Russia and
+Austria, and the King of Prussia, at Paris; moreover, a whole train of
+little German potentates and princes, and the Napoleonic kings and
+princes, who were all sojourning in Paris or its vicinity.
+
+The Queen of Holland considered it her duty, in these days of misfortune
+and danger, to stand at the side of her whom Napoleon had commanded them
+to consider the head of the family, and to serve faithfully in life and
+death. Hortense therefore determined to go to the Empress Marie Louise
+at Rambouillet, in accordance with the emperor's commands.
+
+This determination filled the hearts of the queen's friends with sorrow;
+and Louise had no sooner received the letter in which the queen
+announced her impending departure, than she hastened to reply, imploring
+her to abandon this intention. M. de Marmold, the queen's equerry,
+departed with all speed to bring this letter to the queen at Louis,
+where she was to pass the night, and to add his entreaties to those
+of Louise.
+
+"M. de Marmold, the bearer of this letter, will deliver it to you at
+Louis, if he arrives there in good time," wrote Louise de Cochelet. "If
+you go to Rambouillet, you will destroy your own position, and also that
+of your children; this is the conviction of all your friends. I was so
+happy, for Prince Leopold had written you, in the name of the Emperor
+Alexander, and begged you to come to Malmaison. You could not have
+avoided seeing him, as he would even have gone to Novara. Instead,
+however, of returning with the Empress Josephine, you are on the point
+of uniting yourself with a family that has never loved you. With them
+you will experience nothing but distress, and they will not be thankful
+for the sacrifice you are about to make. You will regret this step when
+it is too late. I conjure you, do not go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Your course will touch those to whom you are going but little, and will
+displease the allies, who take so much interest in you.
+
+"The empress is a thorough Austrian at heart, and the visits of members
+of her husband's family are regarded with disfavor. I tell you this at
+the request of Prince Leopold and Madame de Caulaincourt. The latter, if
+you do not come here soon, will go to you, in spite of her great age.
+She conjures you not to go to Rambouillet, as your lady of honor, and
+the friend of your mother; she even forbids your doing so.
+
+"When I informed Prince Leopold of your intention to go to the Empress
+Marie Louise at Rambouillet, his eyes filled with tears. 'It is
+beautiful to be proud,' said he, 'but she can no longer retreat; she is
+already under obligations to the Emperor of Russia, who effected the
+treaty of the 11th of April. I await her reply, to deliver it to the
+emperor: she owes him a reply.'
+
+"I passed an hour with our good friend Lavalette this morning. This
+excellent man knew nothing of the measures we have been taking to
+persuade you to return, and said to me: 'How fortunate it would be for
+her and her children, if the emperor should desire to see her!' Do come,
+do come; show your friends this favor; we shall all be in despair if you
+go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Prince Leopold will write you a few lines. He could not be more devoted
+to yourself and the Empress Josephine if you were his mother and his
+sister. Count Tschernitscheff has been to see me. The Emperor of Austria
+arrives here to-morrow, and the new French princes and the king will
+soon follow. What a change!
+
+"You must see the Emperor of Russia, because he so much desires it. I
+conjure you, on my knees, to do me this favor! The emperor conducts
+himself so handsomely that every one is constrained to respect him; one
+forgets that he is the conqueror, and can only remember him as the
+protector. He seems to be the refuge of all those who have lost all, and
+are in distress. His conduct is admirable; he receives none but business
+calls, and such others as are absolutely necessary. The fair ladies of
+the Faubourg St. Germain cannot boast of his attention to them, and this
+does him all the more credit, he being, as it is said, very susceptible
+to the fair sex. He told Prince Leopold that he intended going to
+Novara, adding: 'You know that I love and esteem this family; Prince
+Eugene is the prince of knights; I esteem the Empress Josephine, Queen
+Hortense, and Prince Eugene, all the more from the fact that her
+demeanor toward the Emperor Napoleon has been so much more noble than
+that of so many others, who should have shown him more devotion.' How
+could it be possible not to respect a man of such nobility of character?
+I trust you will soon have an opportunity of judging of this yourself.
+For God's sake, return!
+
+LOUISE."
+
+But these entreaties were all in vain. M. de Marmold arrived at Louis in
+time to see the queen; he delivered the letters of her friends, and did
+all that lay in his power to persuade her not to go to Rambouillet.
+
+But Hortense held firmly to her intention. "You are right," said she.
+"All this is true; but I shall, nevertheless, go to the Empress Marie
+Louise, for it is my duty to do so. If unpleasant consequences should
+result from this step for me, I shall pay no attention to them, but
+merely continue to do my duty. Of all of us, the Empress Marie Louise
+must be the most unhappy, and must stand most in need of consolation; it
+is, therefore, at her side that I can be of most use, and nothing can
+alter my determination."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.
+
+Queen Hortense had gone to Rambouillet, in spite of the entreaties and
+exhortations of her friends. The Empress Marie Louise had, however,
+received her with an air of embarrassment. She had told the queen that
+she was expecting her father, the Emperor of Austria, and that she
+feared the queen's presence might make him feel ill at ease. Moreover,
+the young empress, although dejected and grave, was by no means so
+sorrowful and miserable as Hortense expected. The fate of her husband
+had not wounded the heart of Marie Louise as deeply as that of the
+Empress Josephine.
+
+Hortense felt that she was not needed there; that the presence of the
+Emperor of Austria would suffice to console the Empress of France for
+her husband's overthrow. She thought of Josephine, who was so deeply
+saddened by Napoleon's fate; and finding that, instead of consoling, she
+only embarrassed the Empress Marie Louise, she hastened to relieve her
+of her presence.
+
+And now, at last, Hortense bowed her proud, pure heart beneath the yoke
+of necessity; now, at last, she listened to the prayers and
+representations of her mother, who had returned to Malmaison, and of her
+friends, and went to Paris. It had been too often urged upon her that
+she owed it to her sons to secure their fortune and future, not to
+overcome her personal repugnance, and conform herself to this new
+command of duty.
+
+She had, therefore, returned to Paris for a few days, and taken up her
+abode in her dwelling, whose present dreariness recalled, with sorrowful
+eloquence, the grandeur of the past.
+
+These drawing-rooms, once the rendezvous of so many kings and princes,
+were now desolate, and bore on their soiled floors the footprints of the
+hostile soldiers who had recently been quartered there. At the czar's
+solicitation, they had now been removed; but the queen's household
+servants had also left it. Faithless and ungrateful, they had turned
+their backs on the setting sun, and fled from the storm that had burst
+over the head of their mistress.
+
+The Emperor Alexander hastened to the queen's dwelling as soon as her
+arrival in Paris was announced, the queen advancing to meet him as far
+as the outermost antechamber.
+
+"Sire," said she, with a soft smile, "I have no means of receiving you
+with due ceremony; my antechambers are deserted."
+
+The appearance of this solitary woman, this queen without a crown,
+without fortune, and without protection and support, who nevertheless
+stood before him in all the charms of beauty and womanhood, a soft smile
+on her lips, made a deep impression on the emperor, and his eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+The queen observed this, and hastened to say, "But what of that? I do
+not think that antechambers filled with gold-embroidered liveries would
+make those who come to see me happier, and I esteem myself happy in
+being able to do you the honors of my house alone. I have, therefore,
+only won."
+
+The emperor took her hand, and, while conducting the queen to her room,
+conversed with her, with that soft, sad expression peculiar to him,
+lamenting with bitter self-reproaches almost that he was himself, in
+part, to blame for the misfortunes that had overtaken the emperor and
+his family. He then conjured her to abandon her intention of leaving
+France, and to preserve herself for her mother and friends. He told her
+that, in abandoning her country, her friends, and her rights, she would
+be guilty of a crime against her own children, against her two sons, who
+were entitled to demand a country and a fortune at her hands.
+
+The queen, overcome at last by these earnest and eloquent
+representations, declared her readiness to remain in France, if the
+welfare of her sons should require it.
+
+"Until now," said she, "I had formed all my resolutions with reference
+to misfortune. I was entirely resigned, and I never thought of the
+possibility of any thing fortunate happening for me; and even yet, I do
+not know what I can desire and demand. I am, however, determined to
+accept nothing for myself and children that would be unworthy of us, and
+I do not know what that could be."
+
+With an assuring smile, the emperor extended his hand to the queen.
+"Leave that to me," said he. "It is, then, understood, you are to remain
+in France?"
+
+"Sire, you have convinced me that the future of my sons requires it. I
+shall therefore remain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE NEW UNCLES.
+
+Malmaison, to which place Hortense had returned after a short stay in
+Paris, and where the Empress Josephine was also sojourning, was a kind
+of focus for social amusement and relaxation for the sovereigns
+assembled in Paris. Each of these kings and princes wished to pay his
+homage to the Empress Josephine and her daughter, and thereby, in a
+measure, show the last honors to the dethroned emperor.
+
+On one occasion, when the King of Prussia, with his two sons, Prince
+Frederick William (the late king) and William, had come to Malmaison,
+and announced their desire to call on the empress, she sent them an
+invitation to a family dinner, at which she also invited the Emperor of
+Russia and his two brothers to attend.
+
+The emperor accepted this invitation, and on entering, with the young
+archdukes, the parlor in which the Duchess de St. Leu was sitting, he
+took his two brothers by the hand and conducted them to Hortense.
+
+"Madame," said he, "I confide my brothers to your keeping. They are now
+making their _début_ in society. My mother fears their heads may be
+turned by the beauties of France; and in bringing them to Malmaison,
+where so many charming persons are assembled, I am certainly fulfilling
+my promise to preserve them from such a fate but poorly."
+
+"Reassure yourself, sire," replied the queen, gravely; "I will be their
+mentor, and I promise you a motherly surveillance."
+
+The emperor laughed, and, pointing to Hortense's two sons, who had just
+been brought in, he said: "Ah, madame, it would be much less dangerous
+for my brothers if they were of the age of these boys."
+
+He approached the two boys with extended hands, and while conversing
+with them in a kindly and affectionate manner, addressed them with the
+titles "monseigneur" and "imperial highness."
+
+The children regarded him wonderingly, for the Russian emperor was the
+first to address the little Napoleon and his younger brother, Louis
+Napoleon, with these imposing titles. The queen had never allowed them
+to be called by any but their own names. She wished to preserve them
+from vain pride, and teach them to depend on their own intrinsic merit.
+
+Shortly afterward the King of Prussia and his sons were announced, and
+the emperor and his brothers left the young princes, and advanced to
+meet the king.
+
+While the emperor and the king were exchanging salutations, Hortense's
+two sons inquired of their governess the names of the gentlemen who had
+just entered.
+
+"It is the King of Prussia," whispered the governess; "and the gentleman
+who has just spoken with you is the Emperor of Russia."
+
+The little Louis Napoleon regarded the tall figures of those princes
+thoughtfully for a moment, by no means impressed by their imposing
+titles. He was so accustomed to see his mother surrounded by kings, and
+these kings had always been his uncles.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said the little Louis Napoleon, after a short pause,
+"are these two new gentlemen, the emperor and the king, also our uncles,
+like all the others and must we call them so?"
+
+"No, Louis, you must simply call them 'sire.'"
+
+"But," said the boy, after a moment's reflection, "why is it that they
+are not our uncles?"
+
+The governess withdrew with the two children to the back of the parlor,
+and explained to them, in a low voice, that the emperors and kings then
+in Paris, far from being their uncles, were their vanquishers.
+
+"Then," exclaimed the elder boy, Napoleon Louis, his face flushing with
+anger, "then they are the enemies of my uncle, the emperor! Why did this
+Emperor of Russia embrace us?"
+
+"Because he is a noble and generous enemy, who is endeavoring to serve
+you and your mother in your present misfortune. Without him you would
+possess nothing more in the world, and the fate of your uncle, the
+emperor, would be much sadder than it already is."
+
+"Then we ought to love this emperor very dearly?" said the little Louis
+Napoleon.
+
+"Certainly; for you owe him many thanks."
+
+The young prince regarded the emperor, who was conversing with the
+empress Josephine, long and thoughtfully.
+
+When the emperor returned to Malmaison on the following day, and while
+he was sitting at his mother's side in the garden-house, little Louis
+Napoleon, walking on tiptoe, noiselessly approached the emperor from
+behind, laid a small glittering object in his hand, and ran away.
+
+The queen called him back, and demanded with earnest severity to know
+what he had done.
+
+The little prince returned reluctantly, hanging his head with
+embarrassment, and said, blushing deeply: "Ah, _maman,_ it is the ring
+Uncle Eugene gave me. I wished to give it to the emperor, because he is
+so good to my _maman_!"
+
+Deeply touched, the emperor took the boy in his arms, seated him on his
+knees, and kissed him tenderly.
+
+Then, in order to give the little prince an immediate reward, he
+attached the ring to his watch-chain, and swore that he would wear the
+token as long as he lived[28].
+
+[Footnote 28: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEATH OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
+
+Since Napoleon's star had grown pale, and himself compelled to leave
+France as an exile, life seemed to Josephine also to be enveloped in a
+gloomy mourning-veil; she felt that her sun had set, and night come upon
+her. But she kept this feeling a profound secret, and never allowed a
+complaint or sigh to betray her grief to her tenderly-beloved daughter.
+Her complaints were for the emperor, her sighs for the fate of her
+children and grandchildren. She seemed to have forgotten herself; her
+wishes were all for others. With the pleasing address and grace of which
+age could not deprive her, she did the honors of her house to the
+foreign sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a forced composure, in
+which her soul had no share. She would have preferred to withdraw with
+her grief to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought it her duty
+to make this sacrifice for the welfare of her daughter and
+grandchildren; and she, the loving mother, could do what Hortense's
+pride would not permit--she could entreat the Emperor Alexander to take
+pity on her daughter's fate.
+
+When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in establishing her
+future, and had received the letters-patent which secured to the queen
+the duchy of St. Leu Alexander hastened to Malmaison, to communicate
+this good news to the Empress Josephine.
+
+She did not reward him with words, but with gushing tears, as she
+extended to the emperor both hands. She then begged him, with touching
+earnestness, to accept from her a remembrance of this hour.
+
+The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait of Josephine was
+painted, and begged her to give him that.
+
+"_No_, sire," said she; "such a cup can be bought anywhere. But I wish
+to give you something that cannot be had anywhere else in the world,
+and that will sometimes remind you of me. It is a present that I
+received from Pope Pius VII., on the day of my coronation. I present you
+with this token in commemoration of the day on which you bring my
+daughter the ducal crown, in order that it may remind you of mother and
+daughter alike--of the dethroned empress and of the dethroned queen."
+
+This present, which she now extended to the emperor with a charming
+smile, was an antique cameo, of immense size, and so wondrously-well
+executed that the empress could well say its equal was nowhere to be
+found in the world. On this cameo the heads of Alexander the Great and
+of his father, Philip of Macedonia, were portrayed, side by side; and
+the beauty of the workmanship, as well as the size of the stone, made
+this cameo a gem of inestimable value. And for this reason the emperor
+at first refused to accept this truly imperial present, and he yielded
+only when he perceived that his refusal would offend the empress, who
+seemed to be more pale and irritable than usual.
+
+Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for the royal family of
+the Bourbons had on this day caused her heart to bleed anew. Josephine
+had read an article in the journals, in which, in the most contemptuous
+and cruel terms, attention was called to the fact that the eldest son of
+the Queen of Holland had been interred in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame,
+and that the Minister Blacas had now issued an order to have the coffin
+removed from its resting-place, and buried in an ordinary grave-yard.
+
+Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in order
+that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of her
+beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the Church of
+St. Leu.
+
+While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine's whole
+figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her countenance.
+Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her sufferings to-day, for the
+first time; Hortense was not present, and she might therefore, for once,
+allow herself the sad consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and
+its paint, the pale countenance, which death had already
+lightly touched.
+
+"Your majesty is ill!" exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.
+
+With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander's eyes, Josephine pointed
+to her breast, and whispered: "Sire, I have received the
+death-wound here!"
+
+Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her heart was
+bleeding to death.
+
+Terrified by Josephine's condition, the emperor hurried to Paris, and
+sent his own physician to inquire after her condition. When the latter
+returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine was dangerously ill,
+and that he did not believe her recovery possible.
+
+He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense and
+Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's bedside
+throughout the night. The best physicians were called in, but these
+only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the condition of the
+empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With strong hands, she had
+held it together as long as her children's welfare seemed to require.
+Now that Hortense's future was also assured--now that she knew that her
+grandchildren would, at least, not be compelled to wander about the
+world as exiled beggars--now Josephine withdrew her hands from her
+heart, and suffered it to bleed to death.
+
+On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an illness
+which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not heard her
+mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with Eugene, after her
+mother had received the sacrament from Abbé Bertrand--when she saw her
+mother, with outstretched arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to
+them--Hortense fainted away at her mother's bedside, and the empress
+breathed her last sigh in Eugene's arms.
+
+The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris profoundly.
+It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a day that Napoleon
+was no longer the ruler of France, and that the Bourbons had reascended
+the throne of their fathers. All Paris mourned; for the hearts of the
+French people had not forgotten this woman, who had so long been their
+benefactress, and of whom each could relate the most touching traits of
+goodness, of generosity, and of gentleness.
+
+Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as empress in
+the hearts of the French people and thousands poured into Malmaison, to
+pay their last homage to their deceased empress. Even the Faubourg St.
+Germain mourned with the Parisians; these haughty and insolent
+royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons, may, perhaps, for a
+moment, have recalled the benefits which the empress had shown them,
+when, as the mighty Empress of France, she employed the half of her
+allowance for the relief of the emigrants. They had returned without
+thinking of the thanks they owed their forgotten benefactress; now that
+she was dead, they no longer withheld the tribute of their admiration.
+
+"Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how
+interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness! How
+well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and good
+taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"
+
+Immediately after the death of the empress, Eugene had conducted the
+queen from the death-chamber, almost violently, and had taken her and
+her children to St. Leu. The body of the empress was interred in
+Malmaison, and followed to the grave by her two grandchildren only.
+Grief had made both of her children severely ill, and the little princes
+were followed, not by her relatives, but by the Russian General Von
+Sacken, who represented the emperor, and by the equipages of all those
+kings and princes who had helped to hurl the Bonapartes from their
+thrones and restore the Bourbons.
+
+The emperor passed his last night in France, before leaving for
+England, at St. Leu; and, on taking leave of Eugene and Hortense, who,
+at the earnest solicitation of her brother, had left her room for the
+first time since her mother's death, for the purpose of seeing the
+emperor, he assured them of his unchangeable friendship and attachment.
+As he knew that, among those whom he strongly suspected, Pozzo di
+Borgo[29], the ambassador he left behind him in Paris, was an
+irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon and his family, he had assigned to duty
+at the embassy as _attaché_, a gentleman selected for this purpose by
+Louise de Cochelet--M. de Boutiakin--and it was through him that the
+emperor directed that the letters and wishes of the queen and of her
+faithful young lady friend should be received and answered.
+
+[Footnote 29: Upon receiving the intelligence of the death of the
+emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill him, but I
+threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order that he might
+never rise again."]
+
+A few days later Eugene also left St. Leu and his sister Hortense, to
+return, with the King of Bavaria, to his new home in Germany. It was not
+until his departure that Hortense felt to its full extent the gloomy
+loneliness and dreary solitude by which she was surrounded. She had not
+wept over the downfall of all the grandeur and magnificence by which she
+had formerly been surrounded; she had not complained when the whirlwind
+of fate hurled to the ground the crowns of all her relations, but had
+bowed her head to the storm with resignation, and smiled at the loss of
+her royal titles; but now, as she stood in her parlor at St. Leu and saw
+none about her but her two little boys and the few ladies who still
+remained faithful--now, Hortense wept.
+
+"Alas!" she cried, bursting into tears, as she extended her hand to
+Louise de Cochelet, "alas! my courage is at an end! My mother is dead,
+my brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon forget his
+promised protection, and I alone must contend, with my two children,
+against all the annoyances and enmities to which the name I bear will
+subject me! I fear I shall live to regret that I allowed myself to be
+persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will the love I bear my country
+recompense me for the torments which are in store for me?"
+
+The queen's dark forebodings were to be only too fully realized. In the
+great and solemn hour of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal vision the
+veil that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan prophetess, we see
+the impending evil, powerless to avert it.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.
+
+On the 12th of April, Count d'Artois, whom Louis XVIII. had sent in
+advance, and invested with the dignity of a lieutenant-general of
+France, made his triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the city,
+he was received by the newly-formed provisional government, Talleyrand
+at its head; and here it was that Count d'Artois replied to the address
+of that gentleman in the following words: "Nothing is changed in France,
+except that from to-day there will be one Frenchman more in the land."
+The people received him with cold curiosity, and the allied troops
+formed a double line for his passage to the Tuileries, at which the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, adorned with white lilies and white
+cockades, received him with glowing enthusiasm. Countess Ducayla,
+afterward the well-known friend of Louis XVIII., had been one of the
+most active instruments of the restoration, and she it was who had first
+unfolded again in France the banner of the Bourbons--the white flag. A
+few days before the entrance of the prince, she had gone, with a number
+of her royalist friends, into the streets, in order to excite the people
+to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty. But the people and the
+army had still preserved their old love for the emperor, and the
+proclamation of Prince Schwartzenberg, read by Bauvineux in the streets,
+was listened to in silence. True, the royalists cried, _"Vive le roi!"_
+at the end of this reading, but the people remained indifferent
+and mute.
+
+This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed to indicate a
+secret discontent with the new order of things. She felt that this
+sullen people must be inflamed, and made to speak with energy and
+distinctness. To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and proclamations
+had been attempted in vain; now the countess determined to attempt to
+arouse them by another means--to astonish them by the display of a
+striking symbol--to show them the white flag of the Bourbons!
+
+She gave her companion, Count de Montmorency, her handkerchief, that he
+might wave it aloft, fastening it to the end of his cane, in order that
+it should be more conspicuous. This handkerchief of Countess Ducayla,
+fastened to the cane of a Montmorency, was the first royalist banner
+that fluttered over Paris, after a banishment of twenty years. The
+Parisians looked at this banner with a kind of reverence and shuddering
+wonder; they did not greet it with applause; they still remained silent,
+but they nevertheless followed the procession of royalists, who marched
+to the boulevards, shouting, _"Vive le roi!"_ They took no part in their
+joyful demonstration, but neither did they attempt to prevent it.
+
+This demonstration of the royalists, and particularly of the royalist
+ladies, transcended the bounds of propriety, and of their own dignity.
+In their fanaticism for the legitimate dynasty, they gave the allies a
+reception, which almost assumed the character of a declaration of love,
+on the part of the fair ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, for all the
+soldiers and officers of the allied army. In a strange confusion of
+ideas, these warriors, who had certainly entered France as enemies,
+seemed to these fair ones to be a part of the beloved Bourbons; and they
+loved them with almost the same love they lavished upon the royal family
+itself. During several days they were, in their hearts, the daughters of
+all countries except their own!
+
+Louis XVIII. was himself much displeased with this enthusiasm of the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and openly avowed to Countess
+Ducayla his dissatisfaction with the ridiculous and contemptible
+behavior of these ladies at that time. He was even of the opinion that
+it was calculated to injure his cause, as the nation had then not yet
+pronounced in his favor.
+
+"They should," said he, "have received the allies with a dignified
+reserve, without frivolous demonstrations, and without this
+inconsiderate devotion. Such a demeanor would have inspired them with
+respect for the nation, whereas they now leave Paris with the conviction
+that we are still--as we were fifty years ago--the most giddy and
+frivolous people of Europe. You particularly, ladies--you have
+compromised yourselves in an incomprehensible manner. The allies seemed
+to you so lovable _en masse,_ that you gave yourselves the appearance of
+also loving them _en détail_; and this has occasioned reports concerning
+you which do little honor to French ladies!"
+
+"But, _mon Dieu!_" replied Countess Ducayla to her royal friend, "we
+wished to show them a well-earned gratitude for the benefit they
+conferred in restoring to us your majesty; we wished to offer them
+freely what we, tired of resistance, were at last compelled to accord to
+the tyrants of the republic and the sabre-heroes of the empire! None of
+us can regret what we have done for our good friends the allies!"
+
+Nevertheless, that which the ladies "had done for their good friends the
+allies" was the occasion of many annoying family scenes, and the
+husbands who did not fully participate in the enthusiasm of their wives
+were of the opinion that they had good cause to complain of their
+inordinate zeal.
+
+Count G----, among others, had married a young and beautiful lady a few
+days before the restoration. She, in her youthful innocence, was
+entirely indifferent to political matters; but her step-father, her
+step-mother, and her husband, Count G----, were royalists of the
+first water.
+
+On the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris, step-father,
+step-mother, and husband, in common with all good legitimists, hurried
+forward to welcome "their good friends," and each of them returned to
+their dwelling with a stranger--the husband with an Englishman, the
+step-mother with a Prussian, and the step-father with an Austrian. The
+three endeavored to outdo each other in the attentions which they
+showered upon the guests they had the good fortune to possess. The
+little countess alone remained indifferent, in the midst of the joy of
+her family. They reproached her with having too little attachment for
+the good cause, and exhorted her to do everything in her power to
+entertain the gallant men who had restored to France her king.
+
+The husband requested the Englishman to instruct the young countess in
+riding; the marquise begged the Prussian to escort her daughter to the
+ball, and teach her the German waltz; and, finally, the marquis, who had
+discovered a fine taste for paintings in the Austrian, appealed to this
+gentleman to conduct the young wife through the picture-galleries.
+
+In short, every opportunity was given the young countess to commit a
+folly, or rather three follies, for she did not like to give the
+preference to any one of the three strangers. She was young, and
+inexperienced in matters of this kind. Her triple intrigue was,
+therefore, soon discovered, and betrayed to her family; and now husband,
+step-father, and step-mother, were exasperated. This exceeded even the
+demands of their royalism; and they showered reproaches on the head of
+the young wife.
+
+"It is not my fault!" cried she, sobbing. "I only did what you
+commanded. You ordered me to do everything in my power to entertain
+these gentlemen, and I could therefore refuse them nothing."
+
+But there were also cases in which the advances of the enthusiastic
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were repelled. Even the high-born and
+haughty Marquise M---- was to experience this mortification. She stepped
+before the sullen, sombre veterans of the Old Guard of the empire, who
+had just allowed Count d'Artois to pass before their ranks in dead
+silence. She ardently appealed to their love for the dynasty of their
+fathers, and, in her enthusiasm for royalism, went so far as to offer
+herself as a reward to him who should first cry _"Vive le roi!"_ But the
+faithful soldiers of the emperor stood unmoved by this generous offer,
+and the silence remained unbroken by the lowest cry!
+
+The princes who stood at the head of the allied armies were, of course,
+the objects of the most ardent enthusiasm of the royalist ladies; but it
+was, above all, with them that they found the least encouragement. The
+Emperor of Austria was too much occupied with the future of his daughter
+and grandson, and the King of Prussia was too grave and severe, to find
+any pleasure in the coquetries of women. The young Emperor Alexander of
+Russia, therefore, became the chief object of their enthusiasm and love.
+But their enthusiasm also met with a poor recompense in this quarter.
+Almost distrustfully, the czar held himself aloof from the ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain; and yet it was they who had decided the fate of
+France with him, and induced him to give his vote for the Bourbons; for
+until then it had remained undetermined whom the allies should call to
+the throne of France.
+
+In his inmost heart, the Emperor of Russia desired to see the
+universally-beloved Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, elevated to
+the vacant throne. The letter with which Eugene replied to the
+proposition of the allies, tendering him the ducal crown of Genoa, had
+won for Josephine's son the love and esteem of the czar for all time.
+Alexander had himself written to Eugene, and proffered him, in the name
+of the allies, a duchy of Genoa, if he would desert Napoleon, and take
+sides with the allies. Eugene Beauharnais had replied to him in the
+following letter:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"SIRE,--I have received your majesty's propositions. They are
+undoubtedly very favorable, but they are powerless to change my
+resolution. I must have known how to express my thoughts but poorly when
+I had the honor of seeing you, if your majesty can believe that I could
+sully my honor for any, even the highest, reward. Neither the prospect
+of possessing the crown of the duchy of Genoa, nor that of the kingdom
+of Italy, can induce me to become a traitor. The example of the King of
+Naples cannot mislead me; I will rather be a plain soldier than a
+traitorous prince.
+
+"The emperor, you say, has done me injustice; I have forgotten it; I
+only remember his benefits. I owe all to him--my rank, my titles, and
+my fortune, and I owe to him that which I prefer to all else--that which
+your indulgence calls my renown. I shall, therefore, serve him as long
+as I live; my person is his, as is my heart. May my sword break in my
+hands, if it could ever turn against the emperor, or against France! I
+trust that my well-grounded refusal will at least secure to me the
+respect of your imperial majesty. I am, etc."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor of Austria, on the other hand, ardently desired to secure
+the throne of France to his grandson, the King of Rome, under the
+regency of the Empress Marie Louise; but he did not venture to make this
+demand openly and without reservation of his allies, whose action he had
+promised to approve and ratify. The appeals of the Duke of Cadore, who
+had been sent to her father by Marie Louise from Blois, urging the
+emperor to look after her interests, and to demand of the allies that
+they should assure the crown to herself and son, were, therefore,
+fruitless.
+
+The emperor assured his daughter's ambassador that he had reason to hope
+for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist on any action
+in her behalf.
+
+"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my son-in-law,
+and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."
+
+"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice is
+required at your hands."
+
+"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor, "to
+sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised the allies
+to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to consent to all
+they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count Metternich, is at this
+moment with them, and I shall ratify everything which he has
+signed[30]."
+
+[Footnote 30: Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.]
+
+But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should sign for
+him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome was to be the
+King of France.
+
+But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this hope.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in Talleyrand's
+house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd French diplomat,
+who well knew how much easier it would be to bend the will of the
+Agamemnon of the holy alliance[31] to his wishes, when he should have
+him in hand, as it were, day and night. In offering the emperor his
+hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention to make him his prisoner,
+body and soul, and to use him to his own advantage.
+
+[Footnote 31: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité.]
+
+It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to concert
+measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had transformed himself
+into the zealous legitimist of to-day.
+
+Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the Russian
+emperor, and he succeeded.
+
+While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet,
+Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de Lemallé--endeavor
+to make a great stroke. The emperor is gallant, and what he denies to
+diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to the ladies."
+
+He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's cabinet
+alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees, and stretched
+out her arms.
+
+With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened forward to
+assist her to rise.
+
+"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A noble lady never has
+occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."
+
+"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it is my
+purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you alone can
+restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess Louis XVIII. once
+more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to us!"
+
+"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the Bourbon
+family?"
+
+"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole love!"
+
+"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies filled
+with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"
+
+"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis XVIII.,
+and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back. Let the
+legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be done[32]."
+
+[Footnote 32: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 179.]
+
+And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the legislative
+bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to communicate the hopes
+with which the emperor had inspired her to all Paris; on the evening
+after her interview with the emperor, she gave a grand _soirée_, to
+which she invited the most beautiful ladies of her party, and a number
+of senators.
+
+"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap the
+gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not know
+that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen vows?"
+
+On the following day the senate assembled, and elected a provisional
+government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of Dalberg, the Marquis
+of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the Abbé Montesquieu. The senate
+and the new provisional government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed
+from the throne, and recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus
+publicly and solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name
+of the French people, it at the same time testified to its own
+unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with its
+recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the salary
+which they had hitherto received, should be continued to them for life."
+While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took care to pay themselves
+for their trouble, and to secure their own future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.
+
+The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate and
+provisional government as the declaration of the people, and recalled to
+the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count de Lille, had so
+long languished in exile at Hartwell.
+
+The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to the
+decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of Rome, to be
+robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to fall from his
+daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as much astonished at
+this result as Marie Louise, for, until their entrance into Paris, the
+allies had flattered the Austrian emperor with the hope that the crown
+of France would be secured to his daughter and grandson. The emperor's
+astonishment at this turn of affairs was made the subject of a
+caricature, which, on the day of the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was
+affixed to the same walls on which Chateaubriand's enthusiastic
+_brochure_ concerning the Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of
+which thousands of copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the
+Emperor of Austria was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage;
+the Emperor Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England
+as postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up behind
+as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the carriage,
+holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of Austria,
+"Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And _taken me in_," was the
+reply of Francis I.
+
+The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was great, now
+that their king was at last restored to them, and they eagerly embraced
+every means of showing their gratitude to the Emperor of Russia. But
+Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to their homage; he even went
+so far as to avoid attending the entertainments given by the new king at
+the Tuileries, and society was shocked at seeing the emperor openly
+displaying his sympathy for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and
+repairing to Malmaison, instead of appearing at the Tuileries.
+
+Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet to
+inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the Faubourg St.
+Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's maid-of-honor, as he
+was in the habit of doing from time to time, for the purpose of
+discussing the queen's interests with her.
+
+"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards your
+majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It has even
+caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said he to me,
+recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high circles of
+society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay about it; it is
+feared that he is there subjected to influences to which policy
+requires he should not be exposed.'"
+
+"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor,
+laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the Faubourg
+St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that they have not
+made a conquest of me! I prefer the noble qualities of the soul to all
+outward appearances; and I find united in the Empress Josephine, in the
+Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene, all that is admirable and
+lovable. I am better pleased to be here with you in quiet, confidential
+intercourse, than with those who really demean themselves as though they
+were crazed, and who, instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared
+for them, are only intent on destroying their enemies, and have
+commenced with those who formerly accorded them such generous
+protection; they really weary one with their extravagances.
+
+"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of the
+conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew how far
+their amiability could extend; but their heart is undoubtedly no longer
+their own. I am therefore on my guard against being deceived by it, and
+I fancy these ladies love to please so well, that they are even angry
+with those who respond to the attentions which are so lavishly showered
+on them, with conventional politeness only."
+
+Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against the
+emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by the
+manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it was but
+natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm for a young
+emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light, and that they must
+necessarily, even without being coquettish, ardently desire to be
+noticed by him.
+
+"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these ladies
+only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart palpitate? I seek
+mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those who display a desire to
+exercise a control over my heart; in this I see nothing but self-love,
+and I hold myself aloof from such contact."
+
+While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
+lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the returned king of
+the boundless delight of his people, this people was already beginning
+to grumble. The allies had now completed their task, they had restored
+to France its legitimate king, and they now put the finishing-touch to
+their work by providing in the treaty, that France should be narrowed
+down to the boundaries it had had before the revolution.
+
+France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers. From the
+weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which they had been
+compelled to accord to the strength of the empire.
+
+All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much French
+blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be given up, and
+the great, extended France was to shrink back into the France it had
+been thirty years before! It was this that made the people murmur. The
+Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they had grown weary of endless
+wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the conquests they had made under
+their emperor. The surrender of these conquests wounded the national
+pride, and they were angry with their king for being so ready to put
+this shame upon France--for holding the crown of France in higher
+estimation than the honor of France!
+
+It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most bitterly felt
+the disgrace that attached to him in this re-establishment of France
+within its ancient boundaries, and he had endeavored to protest in every
+way against this demand of the allies. But his representative had been
+made to understand that if Louis XVIII. could not content himself with
+the France the allies were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to
+relinquish it to Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to
+yield to necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while
+his courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
+he was heard to whisper, "_Nos chers amis les ennemis_[33]!"
+
+[Footnote 33: "Our dear friends the enemies!"]
+
+Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great reluctance,
+and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII. consented to the
+demands made by the allies in behalf of the family of Napoleon. But the
+Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended the rights of the Queen of
+Holland and her children against the ill-will of the Bourbons, the
+dislike of the royalists, and the disinclination of the allies, alike.
+The family of the emperor owed it to him and to his firmness alone that
+the article of the treaty of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII.
+agreed "that the titles and dignities of all the members of the family
+of the Emperor Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not
+be deprived of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.
+
+It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last succeeded in
+obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate and a title, that
+secured her position. King Louis finally yielded to his urgent
+solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the title of Duchess of St.
+Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.
+
+But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under the
+pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given him his
+throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have forgotten as
+willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of the empire.
+
+For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep, and were
+not a little surprised to find that the world had progressed in the
+meanwhile.
+
+According to their ideas, every thing must have remained standing at the
+point where they had left it twenty years before; and they were at least
+determined to ignore all that had happened in the interval. King Louis
+therefore signed his first act as in "the nineteenth" year of his reign,
+and endeavored in all things to keep up a semblance of the continuation
+of his reign since the year 1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which
+King Louis appointed Hortense Duchess of St. Leu were drawn up in a
+manner offensive to the queen, for they contained the following: "The
+king appoints Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais Duchess of St. Leu."
+
+The queen refused to accept this title, under the circumstances, and
+rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had angrily
+demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier, consented to draw up
+the letters-patent in a different style. They read: "The king appoints
+Hortense Eugénie, included in the treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess
+of St. Leu." This was, to be sure, merely a negative and disguised
+recognition of the former rank of the queen; but it was, at least no
+longer a degradation to accept it.
+
+The Viceroy of Italy, the noble Eugene--who was universally beloved, and
+who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the czar, to secure his
+future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much annoyance and perplexity.
+
+The king could not refuse to recognize the brave hero of the empire and
+the son-in-law of the King of Bavaria, who was one of the allies; and,
+as Eugene desired an audience of the king, it was accorded him at once.
+
+But how was he to be received? With what title was Napoleon's step-son,
+the Viceroy of Italy, to be addressed? It would have been altogether too
+ridiculous to repeat the absurdity contained in Hortense's
+letters-patent, and call Eugene "Viscount de Beauharnais;" but to accord
+him the royal title would have compromised the dignity of the
+legitimate dynasty. A brilliant solution of this difficult question
+suggested itself to King Louis. When the Duke d'Aumont conducted Prince
+Eugene to the royal presence, the king advanced, with a cordial smile,
+and saluted him with the words, "M. Marshal of France, I am happy to
+see you."
+
+Eugene, who was on the point of making his salutation, remained silent,
+and looked over his shoulder to see whom the king was speaking with.
+Louis XVIII. smiled, and continued: "You, my dear sir, are a marshal of
+France. I appoint you to this dignity."
+
+"Sire," said Eugene, bowing profoundly, "I am much obliged to your
+majesty for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the rank to
+which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the high title
+with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I must
+decline it[34]."
+
+[Footnote 34: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 267.]
+
+The king's stratagem had thus come to grief, and Eugene left the royal
+presence with flying colors. He was not under the necessity of accepting
+benefits from the King of France, for his step-father, the King of
+Bavaria, made Eugene a prince of the royal house of Bavaria, and created
+for him the duchy of Leuchtenberg. Hither Eugene retired, and lived
+there, surrounded by his wife and children, in peace and tranquillity,
+until death tore him from the arms of his sorrowing family, in the
+year 1824.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL.
+
+The restoration, that had overthrown so many of the great, and that was
+destined to restore to the light so many names that had lain buried in
+obscurity, now brought back to Paris a person who had been banished by
+Napoleon, and who had been adding new lustre and renown to her name in a
+foreign land. This personage was Madame de Staël, the daughter of
+Necker, the renowned poetess of "Corinne" and "Delphine."
+
+It had been a long and bitter struggle between Madame de Staël and the
+mighty Emperor of the French; and Madame de Staël, with her genius and
+her impassioned eloquence, and adorned with the laurel-wreath of her
+exile, had perhaps done Napoleon more harm than a whole army of his
+enemies. Intense hatred existed on both sides, and yet it had depended
+on Napoleon alone to transform this hatred into love. For Madame de
+Staël had been disposed to lavish the whole impassioned enthusiasm of
+her heart upon the young hero of Marengo and Arcola--quite disposed to
+become the Egeria of this Numa Pompilius. In the warm impulse of her
+stormy imagination, Madame de Staël, in reference to Bonaparte, had
+even, in a slight measure, been regardless of her position as a lady,
+and had only remembered that she was a poetess, and that, as such, it
+became her well to celebrate the hero, and to bestow on the luminous
+constellation that was rising over France the glowing dithyrambic of her
+greetings.
+
+Madame de Staël had, therefore, not waited for Napoleon to seek her, but
+had made the first advances, and sought him.
+
+To the returning victor of Italy she wrote letters filled with
+impassioned enthusiasm; but these letters afforded the youthful general
+but little pleasure. In the midst of the din of battle and the grand
+schemes with which he was continually engaged, Bonaparte found but
+little time to occupy himself with the poetical works of Madame de
+Staël. He knew of her nothing more than that she was the daughter of the
+minister Necker, and that was no recommendation in Napoleon's eyes, for
+he felt little respect for Necker's genius, and even went so far as to
+call him the instigator of the great revolution. It was, therefore, with
+astonishment that the young general received the enthusiastic letter of
+the poetess; and, while showing it to some of his intimate friends, he
+said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "Do you understand these
+extravagances? This woman is foolish!"
+
+But Madame de Staël did not allow herself to be dismayed by Bonaparte's
+coldness and silence--she continued to write new and more
+glowing letters.
+
+In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate enthusiasm
+as to say, that it was a great error in human institutions that the
+gentle and quiet Josephine had united her faith with his; that she,
+Madame de Staël, and Bonaparte, were born for each other, and that
+Nature seemed to have created a soul of fire like hers, in order that it
+might worship a hero such as he was.
+
+Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he threw it
+in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of sentiment, should
+dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not answer these letters!"
+
+He did not answer them, but Madame de Staël did not, or rather would
+not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give up a resolution
+once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame de Staël was now also
+determined to have her way, and to approach Bonaparte despite his
+resistance.
+
+And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all obstacles, and
+the interview, so long wished for by her, and so long avoided by him, at
+last took place. Madame de Staël was introduced at the Tuileries, and
+received by Bonaparte and his wife. The personal appearance of this
+intellectual woman was, however, but little calculated to overcome
+Bonaparte's prejudice. The costume of Madame de Staël was on this
+occasion, as it always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and
+Napoleon loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired.
+In this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Staël gave free scope to her
+wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do, she only
+succeeded in depressing him.
+
+It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de Staël, in her
+ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay her a compliment, that
+Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat indiscreet question: "Who is
+in your eyes the greatest woman?" with the sarcastic reply, "She who
+bears the most children to the state."
+
+Madame de Staël had come with a heart full of enthusiasm; in her address
+to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to earth;" she had come
+an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an offended woman. Her wounded
+vanity never forgave the answer which seemed to make her ridiculous. She
+avenged herself, in her drawing-room, by the biting _bon mots_ which she
+hurled at Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully
+repeated to the first consul.
+
+But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded against the
+hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely than weapons of
+steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame de Staël was his
+superior, and the consciousness of this embittered Bonaparte all the
+more against the lady, who dared prick the heel of Achilles with the
+needle of her wit, and strike at the very point where he was most
+sensitive.
+
+A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest geniuses
+of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both with equal
+bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side, and could punish
+the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.
+
+He banished Madame de Staël from Paris, and soon afterward even from
+France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the praises of her
+"god descended from heaven," now went into exile his enemy and a
+royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius, in making
+proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the minds of men an
+invisible but none the less formidable army against her enemy the
+great Napoleon.
+
+Madame de Staël soon gave still greater weight to the flaming eruptions
+of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing renown and greatness;
+and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon became as redoubtable an
+opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia, or Austria, could be.
+
+But in the midst of the triumphs she was celebrating in her exile,
+Madame de Staël soon began to long ardently to return to France, which
+she loved all the more for having been compelled to leave it. She
+therefore used all the influence she possessed in Paris, to obtain from
+Napoleon permission to return to her home, but the emperor remained
+inexorable, even after having read Delphine.
+
+"I love," said he, "women who make men of themselves just as little as I
+love effeminate men. There is an appropriate _rôle_ for every one in the
+world. Of what use is this vagabondizing of fantasy? What does it
+accomplish? Nothing! All this is nothing but do rangement of mind and
+feeling. I dislike women who throw themselves in my arms, and for this
+reason, if for no other, I dislike this woman, who is certainly one of
+that number."
+
+Madame de Staël's petitions to be permitted to return to Paris were
+therefore rejected, but she was as little disposed to abandon her
+purpose now as she was at the time she sought to gain Bonaparte's
+good-will. She continued to make attempts to achieve her aim, for it was
+not only her country that she wished to reconquer, but also a million
+francs which she wished to have paid to her out of the French treasury.
+
+Her father, Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a million
+francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy bread for the
+starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in writing, that this
+"national debt of France" should be returned.
+
+But the revolution that shattered the throne of the unfortunate king,
+also buried beneath the ruins of the olden time the promises and oaths
+that had been written on parchment and paper.
+
+Madame de Staël now demanded that the emperor should fulfil the promises
+of the overthrown king, and that the heir of the throne of the Bourbons
+should assume the obligations into which a Bourbon had entered with
+her father.
+
+She had once called Napoleon a god descended from heaven; and she even
+now wished that he might still prove a god for her, namely, the god
+Pluto, who should pour out a million upon her from his horn of plenty.
+
+As she could not go to France herself, she sent her son to plead with
+the emperor, for herself and her children.
+
+Well knowing, however, how difficult it would be, even for her son to
+secure an audience of the emperor, she addressed herself to Queen
+Hortense in eloquent letters imploring her to exert her influence in her
+son's behalf.
+
+Hortense, ever full of pity for misfortune, felt the warmest sympathy
+and admiration for the genius of the great poetess, and interceded for
+Madame de Staël with great courage and eloquence. She alone ventured,
+regardless of Napoleon's frowns and displeasure, to plead the cause of
+the poor exile again and again, and to solicit her recall to France, as
+a simple act of justice; she even went so far in her generosity as to
+extend the hospitalities of her drawing-rooms to the poetess's son, who
+was avoided and fled from by every one else.
+
+Hortense's soft entreaties and representations were at last successful
+in soothing the emperor's anger. He allowed Madame de Staël to return to
+France, on the condition that she should never come to Paris or its
+vicinity; he then also accorded Madame de Staël's son the long-sought
+favor of an audience.
+
+This interview of Napoleon with Madame de Staël's son is as remarkable
+as it is original. On this occasion, Napoleon openly expressed his
+dislike and even his hatred as well of Madame de Staël as of her father,
+although he listened with generous composure to the warm defence of the
+son and grandson.
+
+Young Staël told the emperor of his mother's longing to return to her
+home, and touchingly portrayed the sadness and unhappiness of her exile.
+
+"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the emperor, "your mother is in a state of
+exaltation. I do not say that she is a bad woman. She has wit, and much
+intellect, perhaps too much, but hers is an inconsiderate, an
+insubordinate spirit. She has grown up in the chaos of a falling
+monarchy, and of a revolution, and she has amalgamized the two in her
+mind. This is all a source of danger; she would make proselytes, she
+must be watched; she does not love me. The interests of those whom she
+might compromise, require that I should not permit her to return to
+Paris. If I should allow her to do so, she would place me under the
+necessity of sending her to Bicétre, or of imprisoning her in the
+Temple, before six months elapsed; that would be extremely disagreeable,
+for it would cause a sensation, and injure me in the public opinion.
+Inform your mother that my resolution is irrevocable. While I live, she
+shall not return to Paris."
+
+It was in vain that young Staël assured him in his mother's name, that
+she would avoid giving him the least occasion for displeasure, and that
+she would live in complete retirement if permitted to return to Paris.
+
+"Ah, yes! I know the value of fine promises!" exclaimed the emperor. "I
+know what the result would be, and I repeat it, it cannot be! She would
+be the rallying-point of the whole Faubourg St. Germain. She live in
+retirement! Visits would be made her, and she would return them; she
+would commit a thousand indiscretions, and say a thousand humorous
+things, to which she attaches no importance, but which annoy me. My
+government is no jest, I take every thing seriously; I wish this to be
+understood, and you may proclaim it to the whole world!"
+
+Young Staël had, however, the courage to continue his entreaties; he
+even went so far as to inquire in all humility for the grounds of the
+emperor's ill-will against his mother. He said he had been assured that
+Necker's last work was more particularly the cause of the emperor's
+displeasure, and that he believed Madame de Staël had assisted in
+writing it. This was, however, not so, and he could solemnly assure the
+emperor that his mother had taken no part in it whatever. Besides,
+Necker had also done full justice to the emperor in this work.
+
+"Justice, indeed! He calls me the 'necessary man.' The necessary man!
+and yet, according to his book, the first step necessary to be taken,
+was to take off this necessary man's head! Yes, I was necessary to
+repair all that your grandfather had destroyed! It is he who overthrew
+the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold!"
+
+"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then not
+aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he defended
+the king!"
+
+"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when he lies
+in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then maintain that
+I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that M. Necker defended
+Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak prove nothing.
+Robespierre's property was also confiscated. Not even Robespierre,
+Marat, and Danton, have brought such misery upon France as Necker; he it
+is who made the revolution. You did not see it, but I was present in
+those days of horror and public distress; but I give you my word that
+they shall return no more while I live! Your schemers write out their
+utopias, the simple-minded read these dreams, they are printed and
+believed in; the common welfare is in everybody's mouth, and soon there
+is no more bread for the people; it revolts, and that is the usual
+result of all these fine theories! Your grandfather is to blame for the
+orgies that brought France to desperation."
+
+Then lowering his voice, from the excited, almost angry tone in which he
+had been speaking, to a milder one, the emperor approached the young
+man, who stood before him, pale, and visibly agitated. With that
+charming air of friendly intimacy that no one knew so well how to assume
+as Napoleon, he gently pinched the tip of the young man's ear, the
+emperor's usual way of making peace with any one to whom he wished well,
+after a little difficulty.
+
+"You are still young," said he; "if you possessed my age and experience,
+you would judge of these matters differently. Your candor has not
+offended, but pleased me; I like to see a son defend his mother's cause!
+Your mother has entrusted you with a very difficult commission, and you
+have executed it with much spirit. It gives me pleasure to have
+conversed with you, for I love the young when they are straightforward
+and not too 'argumentative.' But I can nevertheless give you no false
+hopes! You will accomplish nothing! If your mother were in prison, I
+should not hesitate to grant you her release. But she is in exile, and
+nothing can induce me to recall her."
+
+"But, sire, is one not quite as unhappy far from home and friends, as in
+prison?"
+
+"Ah, bah! those are romantic notions! You have heard that said about
+your mother. She is truly greatly to be pitied. With the exception of
+Paris, she has the whole of Europe for her prison!"
+
+"But, sire, all her friends are in Paris!"
+
+"With her intellect, she will be able to acquire new ones everywhere.
+Moreover, I cannot understand why she should desire to be in Paris. Why
+does she so long to place herself in the immediate reach of tyranny? You
+see I pronounce the decisive word! I am really unable to comprehend it.
+Can she not go to Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London
+would be the right place! There she can perpetrate libels whenever she
+pleases. At all of these places I will leave her undisturbed with the
+greatest pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate
+those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what would
+happen, if I should permit your mother to return to Paris. She would
+commit new follies; she would corrupt those who surround me; she would
+corrupt Garat, as she once corrupted the tribunal; of course, she would
+promise all things, but she would, nevertheless, not avoid engaging in
+politics."
+
+"Sire," I can assure you that my mother does not occupy herself with
+politics at all; she devotes herself exclusively to the society of her
+friends, and to literature."
+
+"That is the right word, and I fully understand it. One talks politics
+while talking of literature, of morals, of the fine arts, and of every
+conceivable thing! If your mother were in Paris, her latest _bon mots_
+and phrases would be recited to me daily; perhaps they would be only
+invented; but I tell you I will have nothing of the kind in the city in
+which I reside! It would be best for her to go to London; advise her to
+do so. As far as your grandfather is concerned, I have certainly not
+said too much; M. Necker had no administrative ability. Once more,
+inform your mother that I shall never permit her to return to Paris."
+
+"But if sacred interests should require her presence here for a few
+days, your majesty would at least--"
+
+"What? Sacred interests? What does that mean?"
+
+"Sire," the presence of my mother will be necessary, in order to procure
+from your majesty's government the return of a sacred debt."
+
+"Ah, bah! sacred! Are not all the debts of the state sacred?"
+
+"Without doubt, sire; but ours is accompanied by peculiar
+circumstances."
+
+"Peculiar circumstances!" exclaimed the emperor, rising to terminate
+the long interview, that began to weary him. "What creditor of the state
+does not say the same of his debt? Moreover, I know too little of your
+relations toward my government. This matter does not concern me, and I
+will not be mixed up in it. If the laws are for you, all will go well
+without my interference; but if it requires influence, I shall have
+nothing to do with it, for I should be rather against than for you!"
+
+"Sire," said young Staël, venturing to speak once more, as the emperor
+was on the point of leaving, "sire, my brother and I were anxious to
+settle in France; but how could we live in a land in which our mother
+would not be allowed to live with us everywhere?"
+
+Already standing on the threshold of the door, the emperor turned to him
+hastily. "I have no desire whatever to have you settle here," said he;
+"on the contrary. I advise you not to do so. Go to England. There they
+have a _penchant_ for Genevese, parlor-politicians, etc.; therefore, go
+to England; for I must say, I should be rather ill than well disposed
+toward you[35]!"
+
+[Footnote 35: Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL'S RETURN TO PARIS.
+
+Madame de Staël returned to her cherished France with the restoration.
+She came back thirsting for new honor and renown, and determined, above
+all, to have her work republished in Germany, its publication having
+been once suppressed by the imperial police. She entertained the
+pleasing hope that the new court would forget that she was Necker's
+daughter, receive her with open arms, and accord her the influence to
+which her active mind and genius entitled her.
+
+But she was laboring under an error, by which she was not destined to be
+long deceived. She was received at court with the cold politeness which
+is more terrible than insult. The king, while speaking of her with his
+friends, called Madame de Staël "a Chateaubriand in petticoats." The
+Duchess d'Angoulême seemed never to see the celebrated poetess, and
+never addressed a word to her; the rest of the court met Madame de Staël
+armed to the teeth with all the hatred and prejudices of the olden time.
+
+It was also in vain that Madame de Staël endeavored to act an important
+part at the new court; they refused to regard her as an authority or
+power, but treated her as a mere authoress; her counsel was ridiculed,
+and they dared even to question the renown of M. Necker.
+
+"I am unfortunate," said Madame de Staël to Countess Ducayla; "Napoleon
+hated me because he believed me to possess intellect; these people repel
+me because I at least possess ordinary human understanding! I can
+certainly get on very well without them; but, as my presence displeases
+them, I shall, at least, endeavor to get my money from them."
+
+The "sacred debt" had not been paid under the empire, and it was now
+Madame de Staël's intention to obtain from the king what the emperor
+had refused.
+
+She was well aware of the influence which Countess Ducayla exercised
+over Louis XVIII., and she now hastened to call on the beautiful
+countess--whose acquaintance she had made under peculiar circumstances,
+in a romantic love intrigue--in order to renew the friendship they had
+then vowed to each other.
+
+The countess had not forgotten this friendship, and she was now grateful
+for the service Madame de Staël had then shown her. She helped to secure
+the liquidation of the sacred debt, and, upon the order of King Louis,
+the million was paid over to Madame de Staël. "But," says the countess,
+in her memoirs, "I believe the recovery of this million cost Madame de
+Staël four hundred thousand francs, besides a set of jewelry that was
+worth at least one hundred thousand."
+
+The countess's purse and the jewelry case, however, doubtlessly bore
+evidence that she might as well have said "I know" as "I believe."
+
+Besides the four hundred thousand francs and the jewelry, Madame de
+Staël also gave the countess a piece of advice. "Make the most of the
+favor you now enjoy," said she to her; "but do so quickly, for, as
+matters are now conducted, I fear that the restoration will soon have to
+be restored."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked the countess, smiling.
+
+"I mean that, with the exception of the king, who perhaps does not say
+all he thinks, the others are still doing precisely as they always have
+done, and Heaven knows to what extremities their folly is destined to
+bring them! They mock at the old soldiers and assist the young priests,
+and this is the best means of ruining France."
+
+Countess Ducayla considered this prediction of her intellectual friend
+as a mere cloud with which discontent and disappointed ambition had
+obscured the otherwise clear vision of Madame de Staël, and ridiculed
+the idea, little dreaming how soon her words were to be fulfilled.
+
+Madame de Staël consoled herself for her cold reception at court, by
+receiving the best society of Paris in her parlors, and entertaining
+them with biting _bon mots_ and witty _persiflage_, at the expense of
+the grand notabilities, who had suddenly arisen with their imposing
+genealogical trees out of the ruins and oblivion of the past.
+
+Madame de Staël now also remembered the kindness Queen Hortense had
+shown her during her exile; and not to her only, but also to her friend,
+Madame Récamier, who had also been exiled by Napoleon, not, however, as
+his enemies said, "because she was Madame de Staël's friend," but
+simply because she patronized and belonged to the so-called "little
+church." The "little church" was an organization born of the spirit of
+opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a portion of the Catholic
+clergy, and was one of those things appertaining to the internal
+relations of France that were most annoying and disagreeable to
+the emperor.
+
+Queen Hortense had espoused the cause of Madame de Staël and of Madame
+Récamier with generous warmth. She had eloquently interceded for the
+recall of both from their exile; and, now that the course of events had
+restored them to their home, both ladies came to the queen to thank her
+for her kindness and generosity.
+
+Louise de Cochelet has described this visit of Madame de Staël so
+wittily, with so much _naïveté_, and with such peculiar local coloring,
+that we cannot refrain from laying a literal translation of the same
+before the reader.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL'S VISIT TO QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+Louise de Cochelet relates as follows: "Madame de Staël and Madame
+Récamier had begged permission of the queen to visit her, for the
+purpose of tendering their thanks. The queen invited them to visit her
+at St. Leu, on the following day.
+
+"She asked my advice as to which of the members of her social circle
+were best qualified to cope with Madame de Staël.
+
+"'I, for my part,' said the queen, 'have not the courage to take the
+lead in the conversation; one cannot be very intellectual when sad at
+heart, and I fear my dullness will infect the others.'
+
+"We let quite a number of amiable persons pass before us in review, and
+I amused myself at the mention of each new name, by saying, 'He is too
+dull for Madame de Staël.'
+
+"The queen laughed, and the list of those who were to be invited was at
+last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two ladies in great
+suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the queen, of being
+intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of conjuring up a somewhat
+embarrassed and stupid expression to our faces. We presented the
+appearance of actors on the stage looking at each other, while awaiting
+the rise of the curtain. Jests and _bon mots_ followed each other in
+rapid succession until the arrival of the carriage recalled to our faces
+an expression of official earnestness.
+
+"Madame Récamier, still young, and very handsome, and with an expression
+of _naïveté_ in her charming countenance, made the impression on me of
+being a young lady in love, carefully watched over by too severe a
+_duenna,_ her timid, gentle manner contrasted so strongly with the
+somewhat too masculine self-consciousness of her companion. Madame de
+Staël is, however, generally admitted to have been good and kind,
+particularly to this friend, and I only speak of the impression she made
+on one to whom she was a stranger, at first sight.
+
+"Madame de Staël's extremely dark complexion, her original toilet, her
+perfectly bare shoulders, of which either might have been very
+beautiful, but which harmonized very poorly with each other; her whole
+_ensemble_ was far from approximating to the standard of the ideal I had
+formed of the authoress of Delphine and Corinne. I had almost hoped to
+find in her one of the heroines she had so beautifully portrayed, and I
+was therefore struck dumb with astonishment. But, after the first shock,
+I was at least compelled to acknowledge that she possessed very
+beautiful and expressive eyes; and yet it seemed impossible for me to
+find anything in her countenance on which love could fasten, although I
+have been told that she has often inspired that sentiment.
+
+"When I afterward expressed my astonishment to the queen, she replied:
+'It is, perhaps, because she is capable of such great love herself, that
+she succeeds in inspiring others with love; moreover, it flatters a
+man's self-love to be noticed by such a woman, and, in the end, one can
+dispense with beauty, when one has Madame de Staël's intellect.'
+
+"The queen inquired after Madame de Staël's daughter, who had not come
+with her, and who was said to be truly charming. I believe the young
+gentlemen of our party could have confronted the beautiful eyes of the
+daughter with still greater amiability than those of the mother, but an
+attack of toothache had prevented her coming.
+
+"After the first compliments and salutations, the queen proposed to the
+ladies to take a look at her park. They seated themselves on the
+cushions of the queen's large _char à banc_, which has become historic
+on account of the many high and celebrated personages who have been
+driven in it at different times. The Emperor Napoleon was, however, not
+one of this number, as he never visited St. Leu; but, with this
+exception, there are few of the great and celebrated who have not been
+seated in it at one time or another.
+
+"As they drove through the park and the forest of Montmorency, in a walk
+only, the conversation was kept up as in the parlor, and the consumption
+of intellectuality was continued. The beautiful neighborhood, that
+reminded one of Switzerland, as it was remarked, was duly admired. Then
+Italy was spoken of. The queen, who had been somewhat _distraite_, and
+had good cause to be somewhat sad, and disposed to commune with herself,
+addressed Madame de Staël with the question, 'You have been in
+Italy, then?'
+
+"Madame de Staël was, as it were, transfixed with dismay, and the
+gentlemen exclaimed with one accord: 'And Corinne? and Corinne?'
+
+"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarrassment, awakening, as it
+were, from her dreams.
+
+"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not read
+Corinne?'
+
+"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it again,'
+and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could understand, she
+abruptly changed the topic of conversation.
+
+"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that the book
+had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in Holland. The
+king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up to her grief,
+believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that it was necessary
+to arouse her from this state of mental dejection at all hazards. It was
+determined that I should read 'Corinne' to her. She was not in a
+condition to pay much attention to it, but she had involuntarily
+retained some remembrance of this romance. Since then, I had several
+times asked permission of the queen to read Corinne to her, but she had
+always refused. 'No, no,' said she, 'not yet; this romance has
+identified itself with my sorrow. Its name alone recalls the most
+fearful period of my whole life. I have not yet the courage to renew
+these painful impressions.'
+
+"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had embarrassed and
+moved the queen so much when she replied to the question addressed to
+her concerning Corinne. But the authoress could, of course, only
+interpret it as indicating indifference for her master-work, and I told
+the queen on the following day that it would have been better to have
+confessed the cause of her confusion to Madame de Staël.
+
+"'Madame de Staël would not have understood me,' said she; 'now, I am
+lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a simpleton, but it was
+not the time to speak of myself, and of my painful reminiscences.'
+
+"The large _char à banc_ was always preferred to the handsomest
+carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of two wooden
+benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each other), because it
+was more favorable for conversation. But it afforded no security against
+inclement weather, and this we were soon to experience. The rain poured
+in streams, and we all returned to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was
+there prepared and offered the ladies, in which they might repair the
+disarrangement of their toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them
+long, kept there by the questions of Madame de Staël concerning the
+queen and her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There
+was now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing,
+hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the display
+of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to admire but a
+moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face to face, like the
+rest of the world, with material life, these two celebrated women, who
+are everywhere sought after, and received with such marked
+consideration. There they are, as wet as myself, and as little poetic.'
+We were really behind the curtain, but it was shortly to rise again.
+
+"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a German accent
+was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed: 'Ah, that is
+Prince Augustus of Prussia!'
+
+"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two ladies had
+therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had come merely to pay
+the queen a visit, and it was so near dinner-time, that politeness
+required that he should be invited to remain. And this was doubtless
+what he wished.
+
+"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Staël on his left.
+The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig on her napkin,
+which she twisted between her fingers while speaking, as was her habit.
+The conversation was animated, and it was amusing to observe Madame de
+Staël gesticulating with the little twig in her fingers. One might have
+supposed that some fairy had given her this talisman, and that her
+genius was dependent upon this little twig.
+
+"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were well
+acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de Staël thought
+it would be a delightful task for an intellectual woman, to turn the
+sultan's head, and then to compel him to give his Turks a constitution.
+After dinner, freedom of the press was also a topic of conversation.
+
+"Madame de Staël astonished me, not only by the brilliancy of her
+genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she treated
+questions of that kind, for until then custom had not allowed women to
+discuss such matters. At entertainments, philosophy, morals, sentiment,
+heroism, and the like, had been the subjects of conversation, but the
+emperor monopolized politics. His era was that of actions, and, we may
+say it with pride, of great actions, while the era that followed was
+essentially that of great words, and of political and literary
+controversies.
+
+"Madame de Staël spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that which is
+right, happen what may.'
+
+"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,' said she,
+'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while doing so.'
+
+"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the reflection of
+inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no longer the woman
+of mind only, but also the woman of heart and feeling, and I
+comprehended at this moment how charming she could be.
+
+"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching the
+emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could not have
+known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go to Elba! Do you
+think he would receive me well? I was born to worship this man, and he
+has repelled me.'
+
+'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor say
+that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could compare his
+labors with the exertions of a man who, having the summit of a steep
+mountain ever before his eyes, strains every nerve to attain it, ever
+toiling painfully upward, and allowing his progress to be arrested by no
+obstacle whatever. "All the worse for those," said he, "who meet me on
+my course--I can show them no consideration."'
+
+"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have extended you
+a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his mountain.'
+
+"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Staël; 'I have been injured in
+his opinion.'
+
+"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him ill, if
+you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed you to be his
+enemy, and he feared you, which was something very unusual for him,'
+added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is unfortunate, you will show
+yourself his friend, and prove yourself to be such, and I am satisfied
+that he will receive you well.'
+
+"Madame de Staël also occupied herself a great deal with the young
+princes, but she met with worse success with them than with us. It was
+perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity, that she showered
+unsuitable questions upon them.
+
+"'Do you love your uncle?'
+
+"'Very much, madame!'
+
+"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'
+
+"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'
+
+'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing with the
+words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'
+
+"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not oftener than
+any other.'
+
+"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and
+precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest
+composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me and
+said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is that what
+you call being intellectual?'
+
+"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all indulged in
+an expression of opinion concerning them, and young Prince Napoleon was
+the one upon whom the ladies had made the least flattering impression,
+but he only ventured to intimate as much in a low voice.
+
+"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this visit. One
+could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its inconsiderateness,
+and its wanderings, but there was nothing pleasing, nothing graceful and
+womanly, in Madame de Staël's manner[36]."
+
+[Footnote 36: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. i., pp.
+429-440.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.
+
+The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last withdrawn from
+the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the independent ruler of France.
+In him, in the returned members of his family, and in the emigrants who
+were pouring into the country from all quarters, was represented the
+old era of France, the era of despotic royal power, of brilliant
+manners, of intrigues, of aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury.
+Opposed to them stood the France of the new era, the generation formed
+by Napoleon and the revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no
+other ancestors than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had
+nothing to relate of the _oeil de boeuf_ and the _petites maisons_, but
+an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the hospitals
+in which their wounds had been healed.
+
+These two parties stood opposed to each other.
+
+Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous warfare at the
+court of Louis XVIII., with this difference, however, that young France,
+hitherto ever victorious, now experienced a continuous series of
+reverses and humiliations. Old France was now victorious. Not victorious
+through its gallantry and merit, but through its past, which it
+endeavored to connect with the present, without considering the chasm
+which lay between.
+
+True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April, that
+none of his subjects should be deprived of their titles and dignities;
+and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and barons, could
+therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad and humiliating
+_rôle_, and they were made to feel that they were only tolerated, and
+not welcome.
+
+The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been entitled to seats in
+the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but the doors of
+these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of the new Napoleonic
+nobility. "The ladies of the old era still retained their _tabouret,_ as
+well as their grand and little _entrée_ to the Tuileries and the Louvre,
+and it would have been considered very arrogant if the duchesses of the
+new era had made claim to similar honors."
+
+It was the Duchess d'Angoulême who took the lead and set the Faubourg
+St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant pretensions in
+ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting enemy of the new era,
+born of the revolution, and of its representatives; it is true, however,
+that she, who was the daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had
+herself so long languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the
+horrors of the revolution in their saddest and most painful features.
+She now determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget
+this era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.
+
+At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the Duchess
+d'Angoulême, who sat next to the King of Bavaria, pointed to the
+Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the prince who married a
+princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness to ally one's self in
+such a manner with that general!"
+
+The duchess did not or would not remember that the King of Bavaria, as
+well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other side, and could
+well hear her words, had also allied themselves with General Bonaparte.
+
+After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had formerly
+occupied in the Tuileries, the duchess asked old Dubois, who had
+formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office under the empire,
+and who now showed her the new and elegant instruments provided by
+Josephine--she asked him: "What has become of my piano?"
+
+This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the duchess was
+surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty years had not
+passed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th of August, 1792,
+the day on which the populace demolished the Tuileries, had never been!
+
+But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and the
+Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than one night
+lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the levee of to-day of
+King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that persons they had known as
+children had grown up since they last saw them, and insisted on treating
+every one as they had done in 1789.
+
+After the Empress Josephine's death, Count d'Artois paid a visit to
+Malmaison, a place that had hardly existed before the revolution, and
+which owed its creation to Josephine's love and taste for art.
+
+The empress, who had a great fondness for botany, had caused magnificent
+greenhouses to be erected at Malmaison; in these all the plants and
+flowers of the world had been collected. Knowing her taste, all the
+princes of Europe had sent her, in the days of her grandeur, in order
+to afford her a moment's gratification, the rarest exotics. The Prince
+Regent of England had even found means, during the war with France, to
+send her a number of rare West-Indian plants. In this manner her
+collection had become the richest and most complete in all Europe.
+
+Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view this
+celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being conducted
+through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he recognized his old
+flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of Trianon!"
+
+And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also returned to
+France with the same ideas with which they had fled the country. They
+endeavored, in all their manners, habits, and pretensions, to begin
+again precisely where they had left off in 1789. They had so lively an
+appreciation of their own merit, that they took no notice whatever of
+other people's, and yet their greatest merit consisted in having
+emigrated.
+
+For this merit they now demanded a reward.
+
+All of these returned emigrants demanded rewards, positions, and
+pensions, and considered it incomprehensible that those who were already
+in possession were not at once deprived of them. Intrigues were the
+order of the day, and in general the representatives of the old era
+succeeded in supplanting those of the new era in offices and pensions as
+well as in court honors. All the high positions in the army were filled
+by the marquises, dukes, and counts, of the old era, who had sewed
+tapestry and picked silk in Coblentz, while the France of the new era
+was fighting on the battle-field, and they now began to teach the
+soldiers of the empire the old drill of 1780.
+
+The etiquette of the olden time was restored, and the same luxurious and
+lascivious disposition prevailed among these cavaliers of the former
+century which had been approved in the _oeil de boeuf_ and in the
+_petites maisons_ of the old era.
+
+These old cavaliers felt contempt for the young Frenchmen of the new era
+on account of their pedantic morality; they scornfully regarded men who
+perhaps had not more than one mistress, and to whom the wife of a friend
+was so sacred, that they never dared to approach her with a
+disrespectful thought even.
+
+These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
+reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of the
+many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which they
+unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their sweetest
+relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the remembrance of the old
+_régime_, and when they spoke of this era, they forgot their age and
+debility, and were once more the young _roués_ of the _oeil de boeuf_.
+
+Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis de
+Chimène and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the frivolous era,
+in which the boudoir and the _petites maisons_ were the battle-field,
+and the myrtle instead of the laurel the reward of victory, while these
+gentlemen were conversing of some occurrence under the old government,
+the Duke de Lauraguais, in order to more nearly fix the date of the
+occurrence of which they were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was
+in the year in which I had my _liaison_ with your wife."
+
+"Ah, yes," replied the marquis, with perfect composure, "that was in the
+year 1776."
+
+Neither of the gentlemen found anything strange in this allusion to the
+past. The _liaison_ in question had been a perfectly commonplace matter,
+and it would have been as ridiculous in the duke to deny it as for the
+marquis to have shown any indignation.
+
+The wisest and most enlightened of all these gentlemen was their head,
+King Louis XVIII. himself.
+
+He was well aware of the errors of those who surrounded him, and placed
+but little confidence in the representatives of the old court. But he
+was nevertheless powerless to withdraw himself from their influence, and
+after he had accorded the people the charter, in opposition to the will
+and opinion of the whole royal family, of his whole court and of his
+ministers, and had sworn to support it in spite of the opposition of
+"Monsieur" and the Prince de Condé, who was in the habit of calling the
+charter "_Mademoiselle la Constitution de 1791,_" Louis withdrew to the
+retirement of his apartments in the Tuileries, and left his minister
+Blacas to attend to the little details of government, the king deeming
+the great ones only worthy of his attention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KING LOUIS XVIII.
+
+King Louis XVIII. was, however, in the retirement of his palace, still
+the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the representatives of the old
+era; he clearly saw many things to which his advisers purposely closed
+their eyes. To his astonishment, he observed that the men who had risen
+to greatness under Bonaparte, and who had fallen to the king along with
+the rest of his inheritance, were not so ridiculous, awkward, and
+foolish, as they had been represented to be.
+
+"I had been made to suppose," said Louis XVIII., "that these generals of
+Bonaparte were peasants and ruffians, but such is not the case. He
+schooled these men well. They are polite, and quite as shrewd as the
+representatives of the old court. We must conduct ourselves very
+cautiously toward them."
+
+This kind of recognition of the past which sometimes escaped Louis
+XVIII., was a subject of bitter displeasure to the gentlemen of the old
+era, and they let the king perceive it.
+
+King Louis felt this, and, in order to conciliate his court, he often
+saw himself compelled to humiliate "the _parvenus_" who had forced
+themselves among the former.
+
+Incessant quarrelling and intriguing within the Tuileries was the
+consequence, and Louis was often dejected, uneasy, and angry, in the
+midst of the splendor that surrounded him.
+
+"I am angry with myself and the others," said he on one occasion to an
+intimate friend. "An invisible and secret power is ever working in
+opposition to my will, frustrating my plans, and paralyzing my
+authority."
+
+"And yet you are king!"
+
+"Undoubtedly I am king!" exclaimed Louis, angrily; "but am I also
+master? The king is he who all his life long receives ambassadors, gives
+tiresome audiences, listens to annihilating discourses, goes in state to
+Notre-Dame, dines in public once a year, and is pompously buried in St.
+Denis when he dies. The master is he who commands and can enforce
+obedience, who puts an end to intriguing, and can silence old women as
+well as priests. Bonaparte was king and master at the same time! His
+ministers were his clerks, the kings his brothers merely his agents, and
+his courtiers nothing more than his servants. His ministers vied with
+his senate in servility, and his _Corps Législatif_ sought to outdo his
+senate and the church in subserviency. He was an extraordinary and an
+enviable man, for he had not only devoted servants and faithful friends,
+but also an accommodating church[37]."
+
+[Footnote 37: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. v., p. 35.]
+
+King Louis XVIII., weary of the incessant intrigues with which his
+courtiers occupied themselves, withdrew himself more and more into the
+retirement of his palace, and left the affairs of state to the care of
+M. de Blacas, who, with all his arrogance and egotism, knew very little
+about governing.
+
+The king preferred to entertain himself with his friends, to read them
+portions of his memoirs, to afford them an opportunity of admiring his
+verses, and to regale them with his witty and not always chaste
+anecdotes; he preferred all these things to tedious and useless disputes
+with his ministers. He had given his people the charter, and his
+ministers might now govern in accordance with this instrument.
+
+"The people demand liberty," said the king. "I give them enough of it to
+protect them against despotism, without according them unbridled
+license. Formerly, the taxes appointed by my mere will would have made
+me odious; now the people tax themselves. Hereafter, I have nothing to
+do but to confer benefits and show mercy, for the responsibility for all
+the evil that is done will rest entirely with my ministers[38]."
+
+[Footnote 38: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 410.]
+
+While his ministers were thus governing according to the charter, and
+"doing evil," the king, who now had nothing but "good" to do, was
+busying himself in settling the weighty questions of the old etiquette.
+
+One of the most important features of this etiquette was the question of
+the fashions that should now be introduced at court; for it was, of
+course, absurd to think of adopting the fashions of the empire, and
+thereby recognize at court that there had really been a change
+since 1789.
+
+They desired to effect a counter-revolution, not only in politics, but
+also in fashions; and this important matter occupied the attention of
+the grand dignitaries of the court for weeks before the first grand
+levee that the king was to hold in the Tuilerics. But, as nothing was
+accomplished by their united wisdom, the king finally held a private
+consultation with his most intimate gentleman and lady friends on this
+important matter, that had, unfortunately, not been determined by
+the charter.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies, M. de Bregé, declared to the king that
+it was altogether improper to continue the fashions of the empire at the
+court of the legitimate King of France.
+
+"We are, therefore, to have powder, coats-of-mail, etc.," observed the
+king.
+
+M. de Bregé replied, with all gravity, that he had given this subject
+his earnest consideration day and night, but that he had not yet arrived
+at a conclusion worthy of the grand-master of ceremonies of the
+legitimate king.
+
+"Sire," said the Duke de Chartres, smiling, "I, for my part, demand
+knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and the cue."
+
+"But I," exclaimed the Prince de Poir, who had remained in France during
+the empire, "I demand damages, if we are to be compelled to return to
+the old fashions and clothing before the new ones are worn out!"
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies replied to this jest at his expense with
+a profound sigh only; and the king at last put an end to this great
+question, by deciding that every one should be permitted to follow the
+old or new fashions, according to his individual taste and inclination.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this royal
+decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness: "Your
+majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man; uniformity of
+attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads directly to an
+agrarian law."
+
+"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as Figaro. Many
+a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles before a
+procurator in a long gown[39]."
+
+[Footnote 39: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 384.]
+
+But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in fashions, he
+allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce the entire
+etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this etiquette, the king
+could not rise from his couch in the morning until the doors had been
+opened to all those who had the _grande entrée_--that is to say, to the
+officers of his household, the marshals of France, several favored
+ladies; further, to his _cafetier_, his tailor, the bearer of his
+slippers, his barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
+apothecaries.
+
+The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored individuals,
+etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie himself, but
+requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their contents of the
+previous day.
+
+The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal family," was
+also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies not only found it
+necessary to make preparations for this dinner weeks beforehand, but the
+king was also compelled to occupy himself with this matter, and to
+appoint for this great ceremony the necessary "officers of
+provisions"--that is to say, the wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand
+doorkeepers, and the cook-in-chief.
+
+At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and indispensable
+"ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in front of the king's
+seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an antique work of art which
+the city of Paris had once presented to a King of France, had also been
+lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792, and the grand-master of ceremonies
+had been compelled to have a new one made by the court jeweller for the
+occasion. This "ship" was a work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel
+deprived of its masts and rigging; and in the same, between two golden
+plates, were contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance
+with the old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and princesses,
+could pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
+were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.
+
+The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the fashion of the
+"royal lady-friends."
+
+Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
+lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess Ducayla
+occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the king, and
+dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be seen on the
+brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by ill-health,
+weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him the _chronique
+scandaleuse_ of the imperial court; she reminded him of the old affairs
+of his youth, which the king knew how to relate with so much wit and
+humor, and which he so loved to relate; it devolved upon her to examine
+the letters of the "black cabinet," and to read the more interesting
+ones to the king.
+
+King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he rewarded her
+in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing _ennui_ from his
+apartments. Finding that the countess had no intimate acquaintance with
+the contents of the Bible, he gave her the splendid Bible of Royaumont,
+ornamented with one hundred and fifty magnificent engravings, after
+paintings of Raphael. Instead of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note
+covered each of these engravings[40].
+
+[Footnote 40: Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France, par St. Edme,
+vol. ii., p. 383. Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 409.]
+
+On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;" and in
+this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note, as in
+the Bible.
+
+For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful countess,
+perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal snuff-box," which
+appellation had its origin in the habit which the king fondly indulged
+in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely shoulder, and then
+snuffing it up with his nose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being introduced
+anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was governing in
+complacent recklessness, time was progressing, notwithstanding his
+endeavors to turn it backward in his flight.
+
+While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new France,
+a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor of Elba, was
+forming great plans of conquest, and preparing in secret understanding
+with the faithful, to leave his place of exile and return to France.
+
+He well knew that he could rely on his old army--on the army who loudly
+cried, "_Vive le roi!_" and then added, _sotto voce_, "_de Rome, et son
+petit papa_[41]!"
+
+[Footnote 41: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. iii, p.
+121.]
+
+Hortense, the new Duchess of St. Leu, took but little part in all these
+things. She had, notwithstanding her youth and beauty, in a measure
+taken leave of the world. She felt herself to be no longer the woman,
+but only the mother; her sons were the objects of all her tenderness and
+love, and she lived for them only. In her retirement at St. Leu, her
+time was devoted to the arts, to reading, and to study; and, after
+having been thus occupied throughout the day, she passed the evening in
+her drawing-room, in unrestrained intellectual conversation with
+her friends.
+
+For she had friends who had remained true, notwithstanding the obscurity
+into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although they filled
+important positions at the new court, had retained their friendship for
+the solitary dethroned queen.
+
+With these friends the Duchess of St. Leu conversed, in the evening, in
+her parlor, of the grand and beautiful past, giving themselves up
+entirely to these recollections, little dreaming that this harmless
+relaxation could awaken suspicion.
+
+For the Duke of Otranto, who had succeeded in his shrewdness in
+retaining his position of minister of police, as well under Louis XVIII.
+as under Napoleon, had his spies everywhere; he knew of all that was
+said in every parlor of Paris; he knew also that it was the custom, in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu, to look from the dark present
+back at the brilliant past, and to console one's self for the littleness
+of the present, with the recollection of the grandeur of departed days!
+And Fouché, or rather the Duke of Otranto, knew how to utilize
+everything.
+
+In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of security,
+to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking place, Fouché
+told him that a conspiracy against the government was being formed in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu; that all those who were secret
+adherents of Bonaparte were in the habit of assembling there, and
+planning the deliverance of the emperor from Elba. In order, however, on
+the other hand, to provide against the possibility of Napoleon's return,
+the Duke of Otranto hastened to the Duchess of St. Leu, to warn her and
+conjure her to be on her guard against the spies by whom she was
+surrounded, as suspicion might be easily excited against her at court.
+
+Hortense paid no attention to this warning; she considered precaution
+unnecessary, and was not willing to deprive herself of her one
+happiness--that of seeing her friends, and of conversing with them in a
+free and unconstrained manner.
+
+The parlors of the duchess, therefore, continued to be thrown open to
+her faithful friends, who had also been the faithful servants of the
+emperor; and the Dukes of Bassano, of Friaul, of Ragusa, of the Moskwa,
+and their wives, as well as the gallant Charles de Labedoyère, and the
+acute Count Renault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, still continued to meet in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The voice of hostility was raised against them with ever-increasing
+hostility; the reunions that took place at St. Leu were day by day
+portrayed at the Tuileries in more hateful colors; and the poor duchess,
+who lived in sorrow and retirement in her apartments, became an object
+of hatred and envy to these proud ladies of the old aristocracy, who
+were unable to comprehend how this woman could be thought of while they
+were near, although she had been the ornament of the imperial court, and
+who was considered amiable, intellectual, and beautiful, even under the
+legitimate dynasty.
+
+Hortense heard of the ridiculous and malicious reports which had been
+circulated concerning her, and, for the sake of her friends and sons,
+she resolved to put an end to them.
+
+"I must leave my dear St. Leu and go to Paris," said she. "There they
+can better observe all my actions. Reason demands that I should conform
+myself to circumstances."
+
+She therefore abandoned her quiet home at St. Leu, and repaired with her
+children and her court to Paris, to again take up her abode in her
+dwelling in the Rue de la Victoire.
+
+But this step gave fresh fuel to the calumnies of her enemies, who saw
+in her the embodied remembrance of the empire which they hated and at
+the same time feared.
+
+The Bonapartists still continued their visits to her parlors, as before;
+and no appeals, no representations could induce Hortense to close her
+doors against her faithful friends, for fear that their fidelity might
+excite suspicion against herself.
+
+In order, however, to contradict the report that adherents of Napoleon
+only were in the habit of frequenting her parlors, the duchess also
+extended the hospitalities of her parlors to the strangers who brought
+letters of recommendation, and who desired to be introduced to her.
+Great numbers hastened to avail themselves of this permission.
+
+The most brilliant and select circle was soon assembled around the
+duchess. There, were to be found the great men of the empire, who came
+out of attachment; distinguished strangers, who came out of admiration;
+and, finally, the aristocrats of the old era, who came out of curiosity,
+who came to see if the Duchess of St. Leu was really so intelligent,
+amiable, and graceful, as she was said to be.
+
+The parlors of the duchess were therefore more talked of in Paris than
+they had been at St. Leu. The old duchesses and princesses of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, with all their ancestors, prejudices, and
+pretensions, were enraged at hearing this everlasting praise of the
+charming queen, and endeavored to appease their wrath by renewed
+hostilities against its object.
+
+It was not enough that she was calumniated, at court and in society, as
+a dangerous person; the arm of the press was also wielded against her.
+
+As we have said, Hortense was the embodied remembrance of the empire,
+and it was therefore determined that she should be destroyed.
+_Brochures_ and pamphlets were published, in which the king was appealed
+to, to banish from Paris, and even from France, the dangerous woman who
+was conspiring publicly, and even under the very eyes of the government,
+for Napoleon, and to banish with her the two children also, the two
+Napoleons; "for," said these odious accusers, "to leave these two
+princes here, means to raise in France wolves that would one day ravage
+their country[42]."
+
+[Footnote 42: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reins Hortense, vol. ii., p.
+330.]
+
+Hortense paid but little attention to these reports and calumnies. She
+was too much accustomed to being misunderstood and wrongly judged, to
+allow herself to be disquieted thereby. She knew that calumnies were
+never refuted by contradiction, and that it was therefore better to meet
+them with proud silence, and to conquer them by contempt, instead of
+giving them new life by combating and contradicting them.
+
+She herself entertained such contempt for calumny that she never allowed
+anything abusive to be said in her presence that would injure any one in
+her estimation. When, on one occasion, while she was still Queen of
+Holland, a lady of Holland took occasion to speak ill of another lady,
+on account of her political opinions, the queen interrupted her, and
+said: "Madame, here I am a stranger to all parties, and receive all
+persons with the same consideration, for I love to hear every one well
+spoken of; and I generally receive an unfavorable impression of those
+only who speak ill of others[43]."
+
+[Footnote 43: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+And, strange to say, she herself was ever the object of calumny and
+accusation.
+
+"During twenty-five years, I have never been separated from Princess
+Hortense," says Louise de Cochelet, "and I have never observed in her
+the slightest feeling of bitterness against any one; ever good and
+gentle, she never failed to take an interest in those who were unhappy;
+and she endeavored to help them whenever and wherever they presented
+themselves. And this noble and gentle woman was always the object of
+hatred and absurd calumnies, and against all this she was armed with the
+integrity and purity of her actions and intentions only[44]."
+
+[Footnote 44: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+Nor did Hortense now think of contradicting the calumnies that had been
+circulated concerning her. Her mind was occupied with other and far more
+important matters.
+
+An ambassador of her husband, who resided in Florence, had come to Paris
+in order to demand of Hortense, in the name of Louis Bonaparte, his
+two sons.
+
+After much discussion, he had finally declared that he would be
+satisfied, if his wife would send him his eldest son, Napoleon
+Louis, only.
+
+But the loving mother could not and would not consent to a separation
+from either of her children; and as, in spite of her entreaties, her
+husband persisted in refusing to allow her to retain both of them, she
+resolved, in the anguish of maternal love, to resort to the most extreme
+means to retain the possession of her sons.
+
+She informed her husband's ambassador that it was her fixed purpose to
+retain possession of her children, and appealed to the law to recognize
+and protect them, and not allow her sons to be deprived of their rights
+as Frenchmen, by going into a compulsory exile.
+
+While the Duchess of St. Leu was being accused of conspiring in favor of
+Napoleon, her whole soul was occupied with the one question, which was
+to decide whether one of her sons could be torn from her side or not;
+and, if she conspired at all, it was only with her lawyer in order to
+frustrate her husband's plans.
+
+But the calumnies and accusations of the press were nevertheless
+continued; and at last her friends thought it necessary to lay before
+the queen a journal that contained a violent and abusive article against
+her, and to request that they might be permitted to reply to it.
+
+"With a sad smile, Hortense read the article and returned the newspaper.
+
+"It is extremely mortifying to be scorned by one's countrymen," said
+she, "but it would be useless to make any reply. I can afford to
+disregard such attacks--they are powerless to harm me."
+
+But when on the following morning the same journal contained a venomous
+and odious article levelled at her husband, Louis Bonaparte, her
+generous indignation was aroused, and, oblivious of all their
+disagreements, and even of the process now pending between them, she
+remembered only that it was the father of her children whom they had
+dared to attack, and that he was not present to defend himself. It
+therefore devolved upon her to defend him.
+
+"I am enraged, and I desire that M. Després shall reply to this article
+at once," said Hortense. "Although paternal love on the one side, and
+maternal love on the other, has involved us in a painful process, it
+nevertheless concerns no one else, and it disgraces neither of us. I
+should be in despair, if this sad controversy were made the pretext for
+insulting the father of my children and the honored name he bears. For
+the very reason that I stand alone, am I called on to defend the absent
+to the best of my ability. Therefore let M. Després come to me; I will
+instruct him how to answer this disgraceful article!"
+
+On the following day, an able and eloquent article in defence of Louis
+Bonaparte appeared in the journal--an article that shamed and silenced
+his accusers--an article which the prince, whose cause it so warmly
+espoused, probably never thought of attributing to the wife to whose
+maternal heart be had caused such anguish[45].
+
+[Footnote 45: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 303.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE BURIAL OF LOUIS XVI. AND HIS WIFE.
+
+The earnest endeavors of the Bourbon court to find the resting-place of
+the remains of the royal couple who had died on the scaffold, and who
+had expiated the crimes of their predecessors rather than their own,
+were at last successful. The remains of the illustrious martyrs had
+been sought for in accordance with the directions of persons who had
+witnessed their sorrowful and contemptuous burial, and the body of Louis
+XVI. was found in a desolate corner of the grave-yard of St. Roch, and
+in another place also that of Queen Marie Antoinette.
+
+It was the king's wish, and a perfectly natural and just one, to inter
+these bodies in the royal vault at St. Denis, but he wished to do it
+quietly and without pomp; his acute political tact taught him that these
+sad remains should not be made the occasion of a political
+demonstration, and that it was unwise to permit the bones of Louis XVI.
+to become a new apple of discord.
+
+But the king's court, even his nearest relatives, his ministers, and the
+whole troop of arrogant courtiers, who desired, by means of an
+ostentatious interment, not only to show a proper respect for the
+beheaded royal pair, but also to punish those whom they covertly called
+"regicides," and whom they were nevertheless now compelled to
+tolerate--the king's entire court demanded a solemn and ceremonious
+interment; and Louis, who, as he himself had said, "was king, but not
+master," was compelled to yield to this demand.
+
+Preparations were therefore made for an ostentatious interment of the
+royal remains, and it was determined that the melancholy rites should
+take place on the 21st of January, 1815, the anniversary of painful
+memories and unending regret for the royal family.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand, the noble and intelligent eulogist and friend of
+the Bourbons, caused an article to be inserted in the _Journal des
+Débats_, in which he announced the impending ceremony. This article was
+then republished in pamphlet form; and so great was the sympathy of the
+Parisians in the approaching event, that thirty thousand copies were
+disposed of, in Paris alone, in one day.
+
+On the 20th of January the graves of the martyrs were opened, and all
+the princes of the royal house who were present, knelt down at the edge
+of the grave to mingle their prayers with those of the thousands who had
+accompanied them to the church-yard.
+
+But the king was right. This act, that appeared to some to be a mere act
+of justice, seemed an insult to others, and reminded them of the dark
+days of error and fanaticism, in which they had allowed themselves to be
+drawn into the vortex of the general delirium. Many of those who in the
+Assembly had voted for the death of the king, were now residing at
+Paris, and even at court, as for instance Fouché, and to them the
+approaching ceremony seemed an insult.
+
+"Are you aware," exclaimed Descourtis, as he rushed into the apartment
+of Cambacérès, who was at that moment conversing with the Count de Pere,
+"have you already been informed that this ceremony is really to take
+place to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, to-morrow is the fated day. To-morrow we are to be delivered over
+to the daggers of fanatics."
+
+"Is this the pardon that was promised us?"
+
+"As for that," exclaimed the Count de Pere (a good royalist), "I was
+not aware that there was an article in the constitution forbidding the
+reinterment of the mortal remains of the royal pair. The proceeding will
+be perfectly lawful."
+
+"It is their purpose to infuriate the populace," exclaimed Descourtis,
+pale with inward agitation. "Old recollections are to be recalled and a
+mute accusation hurled at us. But we shall some day be restored to power
+again, and then we will remember also!"
+
+Cambacérès, who had listened to this conversation in silence, now
+stepped forward, and, taking Descourtis's hand in his own, pressed
+it tenderly.
+
+"Ah, my friend," said he, in sad and solemn tones, "I would we were
+permitted to march behind the funeral-car in mourning-robes to-morrow!
+We owe this proof of repentance to France and to ourselves!"
+
+The solemn funeral celebration took place on the following day. All
+Paris took part in it. Every one, even the old republicans, the
+Bonapartists as well as the royalists, joined the funeral procession, in
+order to testify that they had abandoned the past and were repentant.
+
+Slowly and solemnly, amid the ringing of all the bells, the roll of the
+drum, the thunders of artillery, and the chants of the clergy, the
+procession moved onward.
+
+The golden crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, shone
+lustrously in the sunlight. It had fallen from the heads of the royal
+pair while they still lived; it now adorned them in death.
+
+Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived at the
+Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre. Suddenly a
+terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the air.
+
+The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen down,
+touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into fragments
+on the glittering snow of the street.
+
+This occurred on the 21st of January; two months later, at the same
+hour, and on the same day, the crown of Louis XVIII. fell from his head,
+and Napoleon placed it on his own!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.
+
+A cry of tremendous import reverberated through Paris, all France, and
+all Europe, in the first days of March, 1815. Napoleon, it was said, had
+quitted Elba, and would soon arrive in France!
+
+The royalists heard it with dismay, the Bonapartists with a delight that
+they hardly took the pains to conceal.
+
+Hortense alone took no part in the universal delight of the
+imperialists. Her soul was filled with profound sadness and dark
+forebodings. "I lament this step," said she; "I would have sacrificed
+every thing to prevent his return to France, because I am of the belief
+that no good can come of it. Many will declare for, and many against
+him, and we shall have a civil war, of which the emperor himself may be
+the victim[46]."
+
+[Footnote 46: Cochelet, vol. ii., p. 348.]
+
+In the meanwhile the general excitement was continually increasing; it
+took possession of every one, and at this time none would have been
+capable of giving cool and sensible advice.
+
+Great numbers of the emperor's friends came to the Duchess of St. Leu,
+and demanded of her counsel, assistance, and encouragement, accusing her
+of indifference and want of sympathy, because she did not share their
+hopes, and was sad instead of rejoicing with them.
+
+But the spies of the still ruling government, who lay in wait around the
+queen's dwelling, did not hear her words; they only saw that the
+emperor's former generals and advisers were in the habit of repairing to
+her parlors, and that was sufficient to stamp Hortense as the head of
+the conspiracy which had for its object the return of Napoleon
+to France.
+
+The queen perceived the danger of her situation, but she bowed her head
+to receive the blows of Fate in silent resignation. "I am environed by
+torments and perplexities," said she, "but I see no means of avoiding
+them. There is no resource for me but to arm myself with courage, and
+that I will do."
+
+The royal government, however, still hoped to be able to stem the
+advancing tide, and compel the waves of insurrection to surge backward
+and destroy those who had set them in motion.
+
+They proposed to treat the great event which made France glow with new
+pulsations, as a mere insurrection, that had been discovered in good
+time, and could therefore be easily repressed. They therefore
+determined, above all, to seize and render harmless the "conspirators,"
+that is to say, all those of whom it was known that they had remained
+faithful to the emperor in their hearts.
+
+Spies surrounded the houses of all the generals, dukes, and princes of
+the empire, and it was only in disguise and by the greatest dexterity
+that they could evade the vigilance of the police.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was at last also compelled to yield to the urgent
+entreaties of her friends, and seek an asylum during these days of
+uncertainty and danger. She quitted her dwelling in disguise, and,
+penetrating through the army of spies who lay in wait around the house
+and in the street in which she resided, she happily succeeded in
+reaching the hiding-place prepared for her by a faithful servant of her
+mother. She had already confided her children to another servant who had
+remained true to her in her time of trouble.
+
+The Duke of Otranto, now once more the faithful Fouché of the empire,
+was also to have been arrested, but he managed to effect his escape.
+General Lavalette--who was aware that the dwelling of the Duchess of St.
+Leu was no longer watched by the police, who had discovered that the
+duchess was no longer there--Lavalette took advantage of this
+circumstance, and concealed himself in her dwelling, and M. de Dandré,
+the chief of police, who had vainly endeavored to catch the so-called
+conspirators, exclaimed in anguish: "It is impossible to find any one;
+it has been so much noised about that these Bonapartists were to be
+arrested, that they are now all hidden away."
+
+Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and doubting
+capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in Grenoble with
+exultation, and the troops that were to have been led against him have,
+together with their chieftain, Charles de Labedoyère, gone over to the
+emperor. The gates of the city were thrown open, and the people advanced
+to meet him with shouts of welcome and applause; and now Napoleon stood
+no longer at the head of a little body of troops, but at the head of a
+small army that was increasing with every hour."
+
+The government still endeavored, through its officials and through the
+public press, to make the Parisians disbelieve this intelligence.
+
+But the government had lost faith in itself. It heard the old, the hated
+cry, "Vive l'empereur!" resounding through the air; it heard the
+fluttering of the victorious battle-flags of Marengo, Arcola, Jena, and
+Austerlitz! The Emperor Napoleon was still the conquering hero, who
+swayed destiny and compelled it to declare for him.
+
+A perfect frenzy of dismay took possession of the royalists; and when
+they learned that Napoleon had already arrived in Lyons, that its
+inhabitants had received him with enthusiasm, and that its garrison had
+also declared for him, their panic knew no bounds.
+
+The royalist leaders assembled at the house of Count de la Pere, for the
+purpose of holding a last great discussion and consultation. The most
+eminent persons, men and women, differing widely on other subjects, but
+a unit on this point, assembled here with the same feelings of patriotic
+horror, and with the same desire to promote the general welfare. There
+were Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Count Lainé, and Chateaubriand;
+there were the Duke de Némours, and Count de la Pere, and around them
+gathered the whole troop of anxious royalists, expecting and hoping that
+the eloquent lips of these celebrated personages who stood in their
+midst would give them consolation and new life.
+
+Benjamin Constant spoke first. He said that, to Napoleon, that is, to
+force, force must be opposed. Bonaparte was armed with the love of the
+soldiers, they must arm themselves with the love of the citizens. His
+appearance was imposing, like the visage of Caesar; it would be
+necessary to oppose to him an equally sublime countenance. Lafayette
+should, therefore, be made commander-in-chief of the French army.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand exclaimed, with noble indignation, that the first
+step to be taken by the government was to punish severely a ministry
+that was so short-sighted, and had committed so many faults. Lainé
+declared, with a voice tremulous with emotion, that all was lost, and
+that but one means of confounding tyranny remained; a scene, portraying
+the whole terror, dismay and grief of the capital at the approach of the
+hated enemy, should be arranged. In accordance with this plan, the whole
+population of Paris--the entire National Guard, the mothers, the young
+girls, the children, the old and the young--were to pass out of the
+city, and await the tyrant; and this aspect of a million of men fleeing
+from the face of a single human being was to move or terrify him who
+came to rob them of their peace!
+
+In her enthusiastic and energetic manner, Madame de Staël pronounced an
+anathema against the usurper who was about to kindle anew, in weeping,
+shivering France, the flames of war.
+
+All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do nothing
+but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent lips of
+these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were, nothing more
+than a bulletin concerning the condition of the patient, and concerning
+the mortal wounds which he had received. This patient was France; and
+the royalists, who were assembled in the house of Count de la Pere, now
+felt that the patient's case was hopeless, and that nothing remained to
+them but to go into exile, and bemoan his sad fate[47]!
+
+[Footnote 47: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 99.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.
+
+While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and despairing,
+King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and sense of
+security. That is to say, they had taken care not to inform him of the
+real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had been informed that
+Bonaparte had been everywhere received with coldness and silence, and
+that the army would not respond to his appeal, but would remain true to
+the king. The exultation with which the people everywhere received the
+advancing emperor found, therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the
+crowd who pressed around the king when he repaired to the hall of the
+_Corps Législatif_ to hold an encouraging address, was not the people,
+but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and gentlemen of
+the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the first entrance, acted
+the part to which the people were not disposed to adapt themselves, and
+transformed themselves for a moment into the people, in order to show to
+the king the demonstrations of his people's love.
+
+The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
+continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance was
+in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this deception so far
+that they had informed the king that Lyons had closed its gates to
+Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet him, vowing that he would
+bring the emperor back to Paris in an iron cage.
+
+The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute, when
+suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of Orleans, who,
+according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a victor, arrived in
+Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their soldiers and servants, and
+informed Louis that Lyons had received the emperor with open arms, and
+that no resource had been left them but to betake themselves to flight.
+
+And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence followed the
+first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his tottering throne,
+Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile position toward his old
+companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the emperor, and his army had
+followed him with exultation.
+
+The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and learned how
+greatly he had been deceived.
+
+"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not listen to
+the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell me the truth!"
+
+At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to his
+brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who surrounded
+him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and the Minister
+Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of victory, now stepped
+in pale and trembling.
+
+The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now plainly
+impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had desired to
+hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling minister.
+
+A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all were
+fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general silence, he was
+heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion: "Sire, all is lost; the
+army, as well as the people, betray your majesty. It will be necessary
+for your majesty to leave Paris."
+
+The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an
+inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared to
+return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down sorrowfully.
+
+The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his breast.
+
+"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile; "heretofore it
+has been your purpose to make me govern for you, hereafter I shall
+govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to the throne of my
+fathers once more, you will be made to understand that I will profit by
+the experience you have given me[48]!"
+
+[Footnote 48: The king's own words. Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité,
+vol. i. p. 156.]
+
+A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count Blacas,
+without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing a torch, the
+king left the once more desolate and solitary Tuileries, and fled
+to Holland.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon
+entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts of the
+people, and the thundering "_Vive l'empereur_" of the troops. On the
+same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had but yesterday
+fluttered, the _tricolore_ of the empire now flung out its folds to
+the breeze.
+
+In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his generals,
+and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing and greeting
+him. An immense concourse of people surged around the entrance on the
+stair-ways and in the halls.
+
+Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor was
+carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while shouts of
+joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined the more
+fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his apartments, and rent the
+air with exulting cries of "_Vive l'empereur_!"
+
+In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was received
+by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen Hortense, who had
+abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried to the Tuileries to
+salute the emperor.
+
+Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the health
+of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have placed my
+nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain in the midst
+of my enemies."
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The emperor seemed
+not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship of my enemies," said
+he, "and have placed yourself under obligations to the Bourbons. I
+depend on Eugene; I hope he will soon be here. I wrote to him
+from Lyons."
+
+This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He was angry
+with her for having remained in France, and at the same time the flying
+Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of her: "The Duchess of
+St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues alone have brought Napoleon
+back to Paris."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE HUNDRED DAYS.
+
+The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a myth of
+the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds
+with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp
+of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within the
+space of a minute.
+
+These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these hundred
+days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth can offer of
+fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as well as of all
+that the earth contains that is disgraceful, miserable, traitorous, and
+perfidious.
+
+Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed to hail
+the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to assure him
+of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that they had only
+obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.
+
+The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the Tuileries,
+where the emperor now held his glittering court again. There was,
+however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the honors of the
+court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who had not returned
+with her husband; and the emperor could not now show the people his own
+son, but could only point to his two nephews, the sons of Hortense.
+
+The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had been
+compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations; he had
+comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her children, in
+continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her reluctance. After
+this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon extended his hand to
+Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and begged her to name a wish, in
+order that he might fulfil it.
+
+Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned by the
+royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing Bourbons to be
+the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now entreated the emperor
+to permit the Duchess d'Orleans, who had not been able to leave Paris on
+account of a broken limb, to remain, and to accord her a pension
+besides. She told the emperor that she had received a letter from the
+duchess, in which she begged for her intercession in obtaining some
+assistance from the emperor, assuring her that it was urgently Deeded,
+in her depressed circumstances.
+
+The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter Hortense;
+and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon accorded a pension
+of four hundred thousand francs to the Duchess d'Orleans, the mother of
+King Louis Philippe[49].
+
+[Footnote 49: La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et en Angleterre.
+Ecrit par elle-même, p. 185.]
+
+A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two hundred
+thousand francs was also accorded to the Duchess of Bourbon, who had
+also besought the queen to exert her influence in her behalf; and both
+ladies now hastened to assure Hortense of their everlasting gratitude.
+The fulfilment of her wish filled Hortense with delight; she was as
+proud of it as of a victory achieved.
+
+"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for these
+ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a few clays
+before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a state!"
+
+But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was now no
+longer the Duchess of St. Leu, but the queen and the ornament of the
+court once more; all heads now bowed before her again, and the high-born
+ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her existence during the past year,
+now hastened to do homage to the queen.
+
+"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen, "unfortunately, you
+were always absent in the country when I called to pay my respects
+during the past winter."
+
+The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which she
+accompanied with a smile.
+
+Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point of
+attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public officials
+now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in order to pay
+their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each day beheld new
+_fêtes_ and ceremonies.
+
+The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of the
+_Champ de Mai_, that took place on the first of June, and at which the
+emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace, presented to his
+army the new eagles and flags, which they were henceforth to carry into
+battle instead of the lilies of the Bourbons.
+
+It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of human
+beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made the welkin
+ring with their "_Vive l'empereur_!"--to behold the proud, triumphant
+soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles consecrated by the priests
+at the altar that stood before the emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle
+to behold the hundreds of richly-attired ladies glittering with
+diamonds, who occupied the tiers of seats that stood immediately behind
+the emperor's chair, and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the
+first seats.
+
+The air was so balmy, the sun shone so lustriously over all this
+splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and the
+strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while all were
+applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the emperor's chair
+covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay before her, the grand
+ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her, "might perhaps be the last
+of the empire[50]."
+
+[Footnote 50: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.]
+
+Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this universal
+delight and contentment.
+
+The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she already
+perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the mutterings of the
+storm that was soon, and this time forever, to hurl the emperor's throne
+to the ground. She knew that a day would suddenly come when all this
+brightness would grow dim, and when all those who now bowed so humbly
+before him, would turn from him again--a day when they would deny and
+desert the emperor as they had already done once before, and that, from
+that day on, the present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as
+a debt. But this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarrassment.
+
+The emperor was once more there; he was the lord and father left her by
+her mother Josephine, and it was her duty and desire to be true and
+obedient to him as long as she lived.
+
+The sun still shone lustrously over the restored empire, and in the
+parlors of Queen Hortense, where the diplomats, statesmen, artists, and
+all the notables of the empire were in the habit of assembling, gayety
+reigned supreme. There music and literature were discussed, and homage
+done to all the fine arts.
+
+Benjamin Constant, who had with great rapidity transformed himself from
+an enthusiastic royalist into an imperial state-councillor, came to the
+queen's parlors and regaled her guests by reading to them his romance
+Adolphe; and Metternich, the Austrian ambassador seemed to have no other
+destiny than to amuse the queen and the circle of ladies assembled
+around them, and to invent new social games for their entertainment.
+
+Metternich knew how to bring thousands of charming little frivolities
+into fashion; he taught the ladies the charming and poetic language of
+flowers, and made it a symbolic means of conversation and correspondence
+in the queen's circle. He also, to the great delight of the court,
+invented the alphabet of gems; in this alphabet each gem represented its
+initial letter, and, by combinations, names and devices were formed,
+which were worn in necklaces, bracelets, and rings.
+
+The little games with which the diplomatic Metternich occupied himself
+during the hundred days at the imperial court at Paris, were, it
+appears, of the most innocent and harmless nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+NAPOLEON'S LAST ADIEU.
+
+The storm, of the approach of which Queen Hortense had so long had a
+foreboding, was preparing to burst over France. All the princes of
+Europe who had once been Napoleon's allies had now declared against him.
+They all refused to acknowledge Napoleon as emperor, or to treat with
+him as one having any authority.
+
+"No peace, no reconciliation with this man," wrote the Emperor Alexander
+to Pozzo di Borgo; "all Europe is of the same opinion concerning him.
+With the exception of this man, any thing they may demand; no preference
+for any one; no war after this man shall have been set aside[51]."
+
+[Footnote 51: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 90.]
+
+But, in order to "set this man aside," war was necessary. The allied
+armies therefore advanced toward the boundaries of France; the great
+powers declared war against France, or rather against the Emperor
+Napoleon; and France, which had so long desired peace, and had only
+accepted the Bourbons because it hoped to obtain it of them, France was
+now compelled to take up the gauntlet.
+
+On the 12th of June the emperor left Paris with his army, in order to
+meet the advancing enemy. Napoleon himself, who had hitherto gone into
+battle, his countenance beaming with an assurance of victory, now looked
+gloomy and dejected, for he well knew that on the fate of his army now
+depended his own, and the fate of France.
+
+This time it was not a question of making conquests, but of saving the
+national independence, and it was the mother-earth, red with the blood
+of her children, that was now to be defended.
+
+Paris, that for eighty days had been the scene of splendor and
+festivity, now put on its mourning attire. All rejoicings were at an
+end, and every one listened hopefully to catch the first tones of the
+thunder of a victorious battle.
+
+But the days of victory were over; the cannon thundered, the battle was
+fought, but instead of a triumph it was an overthrow.
+
+At Waterloo, the eagles that had been consecrated on the first of June,
+on the _Champ de Mai_, sank in the dust; the emperor returned to Paris,
+a fugitive, and broken down in spirit, while the victorious allies were
+approaching the capital.
+
+At the first intelligence of his return, Hortense hastened to the
+Elysée, where he had taken up his residence, to greet him. During the
+last few days she had been a prey to gloomy thoughts; now that the
+danger had come, now when all were despairing, she was composed,
+resolute, and ready to stand at the emperor's side to the last.
+
+Napoleon was lost, and Hortense knew it; but he now had most need of
+friends, and she remained true, while so many of his nearest friends and
+relatives were deserting him.
+
+On the twenty-second day of June the emperor sent in his abdication in
+favor of his son, the King of Rome, to the chambers; and a week later
+the chambers proclaimed Napoleon's son Emperor of France, under the name
+of Napoleon II.
+
+But this emperor was a child of four years, and was, moreover, not in
+France, but in the custody of the Emperor of Austria, whose army was now
+marching on Paris with hostile intent!
+
+Napoleon, now no longer Emperor of France, had been compelled to take
+the crown from his head a second time; and for the second time he
+quitted Paris to await the destiny to be appointed him by the allies.
+
+This time he did not repair to Fontainebleau, but to Malmaison--to
+Malmaison, that had once been Josephine's paradise, and where her heart
+had at last bled to death. This charming resort had passed into the
+possession of Queen Hortense; and Napoleon, who but yesterday had ruled
+over a whole empire, and to-day could call nothing, not even the space
+of ground on which he stood, his own, Napoleon asked Hortense to receive
+him at Malmaison.
+
+Hortense accorded his request joyfully, and, when her friends learned
+this, and in their dismay and anxiety conjured her not to identify in
+this manner herself and children with the fate of the emperor, but to
+consider well the danger that would result from such a course, the queen
+replied resolutely: "That is an additional reason for holding firm to my
+determination. I consider it my sacred duty to remain true to the
+emperor to the last, and the greater the danger that threatens the
+emperor, the happier I shall be in having it in my power to show him my
+entire devotion and gratitude."
+
+And when, in this decision, when her whole future hung in the balance,
+one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind the queen of
+the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once been put in
+circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon, and suggested that
+she would give new strength to them by now receiving the emperor at
+Malmaison, Hortense replied with dignity: "What do I care for these
+calumnies? I fulfil the duty imposed on me by feeling and principle. The
+emperor has always treated me as his child; I shall therefore ever
+remain his devoted and grateful daughter; it is my first and greatest
+necessity to be at peace with myself[52]."
+
+[Footnote 52: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 149.]
+
+Hortense therefore repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and the
+faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune, gathered
+around him, watched over his life, and gave to his residence a fleeting
+reflection of the old grandeur and magnificence. For they who now stood
+around Napoleon, guarding his person from any immediate danger that
+threatened him at the hands of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were
+marshals, generals, dukes, and princes.
+
+But Napoleon's fate was already decided--it was an inevitable one, and
+when the intelligence reached Malmaison that the enemy was approaching
+nearer and nearer, and that resistance was no longer made anywhere, and
+when Napoleon saw that all was lost, his throne, his crown, and even the
+love which he imagined he had for ever built up for himself in the
+hearts of the French people by his great deeds and victories--when he
+saw this he determined to fly, no matter whither, but away from the
+France that would no longer rally to his call, the France that had
+abandoned him.
+
+The emperor resolved to fly to Rochefort, and to embark there in order
+to return to Elba. The provisional government that had established
+itself in Paris, and had sent an ambassador to Napoleon at Malmaison
+with the demand that he should depart at once, now instructed this
+ambassador to accompany the emperor on his journey, and not to leave him
+until he should have embarked.
+
+Napoleon was ready to comply with this demand. He determined to depart
+on the afternoon of the 30th of June. He had nothing more to do but to
+take leave of his friends and family. He did this with cold, tearless
+composure, with an immovable, iron countenance; no muscle of his face
+quivered, and his glance was severe and imperious.
+
+But, when Hortense brought in her two sons, when he had clasped them in
+his arms for the last time, then a shadow passed over his countenance;
+then his pale compressed lips quivered, and he turned away to conceal
+the tears that stood in his eyes.
+
+But Hortense had seen them, and in her heart she preserved the
+remembrance of these tears as the most precious gem of her departed
+fortune. As the emperor then turned to her to bid her adieu in his
+former cold and immovable manner, Hortense, who well knew that a volcano
+of torments must be glowing under this cold lava, entreated him to grant
+her a last favor.
+
+A painful smile illumined the emperor's countenance for a moment. There
+was, it seemed, still something that he could grant; he was not
+altogether powerless! With a mute inclination of the head he signified
+his assent. Hortense handed him a broad black belt.
+
+"Sire," said she, "wear this belt around your body and beneath your
+clothing. Conceal it carefully, but in the time of necessity remember it
+and open it."
+
+The emperor took the belt in his hand, and its weight startled him.
+
+"What does it contain?" asked he: "I must know what it contains!"
+
+"Sire," said Hortense, blushing and hesitating: "Sire, it is my large
+diamond necklace that I have taken apart and sewed in this belt. Your
+majesty may need money in a critical moment, and you will not deny me
+this last happiness, your acceptance of this token."
+
+The emperor refused, but Hortense entreated him so earnestly that he was
+at last compelled to yield, and accept this love-offering.
+
+They then took a hasty and mute leave of each other, and Hortense, in
+order to hide her tears, hastened with her children from the room.
+
+The emperor summoned a servant, and ordered that no one else should be
+admitted; but at this moment the door was hastily thrown open, and a
+national guard entered the room.
+
+"Talma!" exclaimed the emperor, almost gayly, as he extended his hand.
+
+"Yes, Talma, sire," said he, pressing the emperor's hand to his lips.
+"I disguised myself in this dress, in order that I might get here to
+take leave of your majesty."
+
+"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor, sadly.
+"I shall never be able to admire you in your great _rôles_ again, Talma.
+I am about to depart, never to return again. You will play the emperor
+on many an evening, but not I, Talma! My part is at an end!"
+
+"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma, with
+generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown and the
+purple robe."
+
+"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.
+
+"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a throne that
+is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected for yourself on
+the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the books of history. And
+every one, no matter to what nation he may belong, who reads of your
+great deeds, will be inspired by them, and will acknowledge himself to
+be one of your people, and bow down before the emperor in reverence."
+
+"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
+deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"
+
+"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will also one
+day regret, having deserted the great man he once called brother!" And,
+in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind Napoleon of one of his
+moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your majesty perhaps remembers
+that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor of Russia made you so tender a
+declaration of his love, publicly and before the whole world? But no,
+you cannot remember it; for you it was a matter of no moment; but I--I
+shall never forget it! It was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.'
+I looked up at the box in which your majesty sat, between the King of
+Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second
+Alexander of Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft
+and saw you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship
+of a great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
+Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears
+choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this applause
+was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor Alexander[53]!"
+
+[Footnote 53: This scene is entirely historical. See Bossuet, Mémoires;
+Bourrienne, Mémoires; Cochelet and Une Femme de Qualité.]
+
+While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes flashing, a
+rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for an instant, he
+smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised up the humiliated
+emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.
+
+Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand to bid
+him adieu.
+
+As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up in
+front of the house. It was Letitia, the emperor's mother, who had come
+to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless suspense; in
+his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to witness this
+leave-taking.
+
+"Madame mère" walked past Talma in silence, and without observing him.
+She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the room, his sombre
+and flashing glance fastened on her with an unutterable expression. Now
+they stood face to face, mother and son. The emperor's countenance
+remained immovable as though hewn out of marble.
+
+They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly trickled
+down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background, weeping
+bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Letitia now raised both hands and
+extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said she, in full and
+sonorous tones.
+
+Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and
+fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother, adieu!"
+
+Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her hand fall.
+Letitia turned to go, and at this moment General Bertrand appeared at
+the door to announce that all was prepared for the journey[54].
+
+[Footnote 54: This leave-taking was exactly as above described, and
+Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See her Mémoires, vol.
+iii, P. 173.]
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE BANISHMENT OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the protection
+of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of France. But this
+time he did not return with his former mild and conciliatory
+disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came unaccompanied by
+mercy. The old generals and marshals of the empire, who had not been
+able to resist their chieftain's call, were now banished, degraded, or
+executed. Ney and Labédoyère paid for their fidelity to the emperor with
+their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the Bonapartes
+were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been circulated in
+1814 against the Duchess of St. Leu were now to bear bitter fruit. These
+were the dragon's teeth from which the armed warriors had sprung, who
+now levelled their swords at the breast of a defenceless woman.
+
+King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had not
+forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The Duchess of St. Leu
+is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon back!" Now that
+he was again king, he thought of it, and determined to punish her. He
+requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he should this time not call
+on the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation concerning
+Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering web with which
+Madame de Krüdener had enveloped him, and separated from the reality of
+the world, acceded to the wishes of the Bourbons, and abandoned the
+queen. This was the signal that let loose the general wrath of the
+royalists; they could now freely utter their scorn and malice. By low
+calumnies they could now compensate themselves for their humiliation of
+the past, for having been compelled to approach the daughter of
+Viscountess de Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.
+
+They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with boundless fury,
+for this very fury proved their royalism, and to hate and calumniate
+Bonaparte and his family was to love and flatter the Bourbons.
+
+Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the duchess,
+whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of the empire,
+and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as well as the column
+on the _Place Vendôme_.
+
+While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her apartments, in
+sadness and desolation, the report was circulated that she was again
+conspiring, and that she was in the habit of leaving her house every
+evening at twilight, in order to incite the populace to rise and demand
+the emperor's return, or at least the instalment of the little King of
+Rome on the throne instead of Louis de Bourbon.
+
+When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet, informed her of
+these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and indifferent.
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure as if I
+were reciting a story of the last century!"
+
+"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we have lost
+all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us, with the
+composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it natural that they
+should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear a name that has made
+the whole world tremble, and that will still be great, though we all be
+trodden in the dust. But I will shield myself and children from this
+hatred. We will leave France and go to Switzerland, where I possess a
+little estate on the Lake of Geneva."
+
+But time was not allowed the duchess to prepare for her departure. The
+dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her to drive her from the
+city. A defenceless woman with two young children seemed to be an object
+of anxiety and terror to the government, and it made haste to get rid
+of her.
+
+On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian General
+de Müffling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to the dwelling of the
+Duchess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant, M. Deveaux, that the
+duchess must leave Paris within two hours, and it was only at the urgent
+solicitation of the intendant, that a further sojourn of four hours was
+allowed her.
+
+Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and depart
+without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for her
+journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she of
+course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a troop of
+enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching departure, had quitted
+Paris to lie in wait for her on her road, "in order to rob her of the
+millions in her custody."
+
+The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with her, but
+only that which was absolutely necessary.
+
+General de Müffling offered her an escort of his soldiers; Hortense
+declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian officer might be
+allowed to accompany her for the protection of herself and children on
+the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of Prince Schwartzenberg, was
+selected for this purpose.
+
+On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the Duchess of St. Leu took
+her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet in Paris
+to arrange her affairs, and assure the safe-keeping of her jewelry.
+Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count Boyna, her
+children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been a queen left
+Paris to go into exile.
+
+It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her beloved
+France, that she could no longer call her country, and that now seemed
+as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it had once
+passionately loved them.
+
+In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had everywhere
+hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their real disposition
+beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom Hortense met on her journey
+were therefore all royalists, who thought they could give no better
+testimony to their patriotism than by persecuting with cries of scorn,
+with gestures of hatred, and with loud curses, the woman whose only
+crime was that she bore the name of him whom France had once adored, and
+whom the royalists hated.
+
+Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and her
+children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger against
+her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it necessary to call
+on the Austrian military stationed there for assistance in protecting
+the duchess and her children from the attacks of an infuriated crowd,
+led by royal guards and beautiful ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned
+with the lilies of the Bourbons[55].
+
+[Footnote 55: Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.]
+
+Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced,
+Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being able to
+retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the storms of
+life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The French ambassador
+in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed the authorities of that
+city that his government would not tolerate the queen's sojourn so near
+the French boundary, and demanded that she should depart. The
+authorities of Geneva complied with this demand, and ordered the Duchess
+of St. Leu to leave the city immediately.
+
+When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the duchess, and asked
+her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed despair found
+utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into the lake, then we
+shall all be at rest!"
+
+But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly
+submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last possession,
+the charming little Pregny, from her "_rêve de chalet_."
+
+In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in Aix, where
+she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen, and where she was
+at least permitted to live in retirement with her children and a few
+faithful adherents.
+
+But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her fell
+upon her!
+
+Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814, shortly
+before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that she should
+deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody of his father.
+Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him, Louis demanded that
+this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron von Zuyten to Aix to bring
+back the prince to his father then residing in Florence.
+
+The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard command; she
+was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms to a father who
+was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore could not love.
+
+It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his mother,
+and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before been
+separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his neck,
+tearfully entreating him to stay with him.
+
+But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two weeping
+children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while Napoleon Louis
+followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as though his heart would
+break. When Hortense heard the carriage driving off, she uttered a cry
+of anguish and fell to the ground in a swoon, and a long and painful
+attack of illness was the consequence of this sorrowful separation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose in Aix;
+the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still fearing the
+name whose first and greatest representative was now languishing on a
+solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons considered it dangerous
+that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter, and her son, whose name of
+Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living monument of the past, should be
+permitted to sojourn so near the French boundary. They therefore
+instructed their ambassador to the government of Savoy to protest
+against the further sojourn of the queen in Aix, and Hortense was
+compelled to undertake a new pilgrimage, and to start out into the world
+again in search of a home.
+
+She first turned to Baden, whose duchess, Stephanie, was so nearly
+related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore well expect a
+kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify his cousin's hopes;
+he had not the courage to defy the jealous fears of France, and it was
+only at the earnest solicitation of his wife that he at last consented
+that Hortense should take up her residence at the extreme end of the
+grand-duchy, at Constance, on the Lake of Constance; and this permission
+was only accorded her on the express condition that neither the duchess
+nor her son should ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife,
+Stephanie, should never visit her cousin at Constance.
+
+Hortense accepted this offer with its conditions, contented to find a
+place where she could rest after her long wanderings, and let the
+bleeding wounds of her heart heal in the stillness and peace of
+beautiful natural scenery. She passed a few quiet, happy years in
+Constance desiring and demanding nothing but a little rest and peace,
+aspiring to but one thing--to make of the son whom Providence had given
+her as a compensation for all her sufferings, a strong, a resolute, and
+an intelligent man.
+
+Her most tender care and closest attention were devoted to the education
+of this son. An excellent teacher, Prof. Lebas, of Paris, officiated as
+instructor to the young prince. She herself gave him instruction in
+drawing, in music, and in dancing; she read with him, sang with him, and
+made herself a child, in order to replace to her lonely boy the playmate
+Fate had torn from his side.
+
+While reposing on her _chaise-longue_ on the long quiet evenings, her
+boy seated on a cushion at her feet, she would speak to him of his great
+uncle, and of his heroic deeds, and of his country, of France that had
+discarded them, to be able to return to which was, however, her most
+ardent wish, and would continue to be while life lasted. She would then
+inspire the boy's soul with the description of the great battles which
+his uncle had won in Italy, on the Nile, on the Rhine, and on the
+Danube; and the quiet, pale boy, with the dark, thoughtful eyes, would
+listen in breathless suspense, his weak, slender body quivering with
+emotion when his mother told him how dearly his uncle had loved France,
+and that all his great and glorious deeds had been done for the honor
+and renown of France alone.
+
+One day, while he was sitting before her, pale and trembling with
+agitation, his mother pointed to David's splendid painting, representing
+Napoleon on the heights of the Alps, the genial conception of which
+painting is due to Napoleon's own suggestions.
+
+"Paint me tranquilly seated on a wild horse," Napoleon had said to
+David, and David had so painted him--on a rearing steed, on the summit
+of a rock which bears the inscription "Hannibal" and "Caesar." The
+emperor's countenance is calm, his large eyes full of a mysterious
+brilliancy, his hair fluttering in the wind, the whole expression
+thoughtful and earnest; the rider heedless of the rearing steed, which
+he holds firmly in check with the reins.
+
+A beautiful copy of this great painting hung in the parlor of the
+duchess; and to this she now pointed while narrating the history of the
+emperor's passage over the Great St. Bernard with an army, a feat never
+before performed except by Hannibal and Caesar, and perhaps never to be
+performed again.
+
+As she concluded her narrative, an almost angry expression flitted
+across the young prince's countenance. Rising from his seat, and holding
+himself perfectly erect, he exclaimed: "Oh, mamma, I shall also cross
+the Alps some day, as the emperor did!"
+
+And while thus speaking, a glowing color suffused his face; his lips
+trembled, and the feverish beating of his heart was quite audible.
+
+Hortense turned in some anxiety to her friend Louise de Cochelet, and
+begged her in a low voice to soothe the child with the recital of some
+merry narrative. As Louise looked around the room thoughtfully and
+searchingly, a cup that stood on the mantel-piece arrested her gaze. She
+hastened to the mantel, took the cup, and returned with it to little
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+"Mamma has been explaining a very grave picture to you, Louis," said
+she; "I will now show you a merry one. Look at it--isn't it charming?"
+
+The prince cast a hasty, absent-minded look at the cup, and nodded
+gravely. Louise laughed gayly.
+
+"You see, Louis," said she, "that this is the exact counterpart of the
+picture of the Emperor Napoleon, who, while riding over the Alps,
+encounters on their summit the great spirits of Hannibal and Caesar.
+Here is a little Napoleon, who is not climbing up the Alps, but climbing
+down from his bed, and who, on this occasion, meets a black spirit, in
+the person of a chimney-sweep. This is the history of the great and of
+the little Napoleon; the great meets Hannibal, the little the
+chimney-sweep."
+
+"Am I the little Napoleon?" asked the boy, gravely.
+
+"Yes, Louis, you are, and I will now tell you the story of this cup.
+One day, when we were all still in Paris, and while your great uncle was
+still Emperor of France--one day, you met in your room a little Savoyard
+who had just crept out of the chimney in his black dress, his black
+broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and were about to run
+away, but I held you back and told you that these chimney-sweeps were
+poor boys, and that their parents were so poor that they could not
+support their children, but were compelled to send them to Paris to earn
+their bread by creeping into and cleaning our hot and dirty chimneys,
+with great trouble, and at the risk of their lives. My story touched
+you, and you promised me never to be afraid of the little chimney-sweeps
+again. A short time afterward, you were awakened early in the morning by
+a strange noise, your brother still lay asleep at your side, and your
+nurse was absent from the room. This noise was made by a chimney-sweep
+who had just come down the chimney and now stood in your room. As soon
+as you saw him, you remembered his poverty, jumped out of bed in your
+night-clothes, and ran to the chair on which your clothes lay. You took
+out of your pocket the purse you were compelled to carry with you on
+your walks to give money to the poor, and you emptied its entire
+contents into the black, sooty hand of the young Savoyard. You then
+tried to get back to bed, but it was too high for you; you could not
+climb over the railing. Seeing this, the chimney-sweep came to your
+assistance, and took the little prince in his arms to help him into bed.
+At this moment, your nurse entered the room, and your brother who had
+just awakened, cried loudly when he saw Louis in the arms of a
+chimney-sweep.
+
+"This is the story of little Napoleon and the chimney-sweep! Your
+grandmother, the Empress Josephine was so much pleased with this story,
+that your mother had the scene painted on a cup, and presented it to the
+empress, in order to afford her a gratification. And what do you think,
+Louis--this cup was also the cause of a punishment being remitted your
+cousin, the King of Rome, who now lives in Vienna!"
+
+"Tell me all about it, Louise," said the prince, smiling.
+
+"You shall hear it! Your mother had instructed me to take the cup to
+Malmaison to the empress. But before going, I endeavored to obtain some
+news about the little King of Rome for the empress. Your good
+grandmother loved him as though he had been her own child, although she
+had never seen him. I therefore went to the Tuileries to see the little
+King of Rome, with whose governess, Madame de Montesquieu, I was
+intimately acquainted. On entering the apartment, I saw the king
+cowering behind a chair in a corner of the room; Madame de Montesquieu
+intimated by a look that he was undergoing a punishment; I understood
+it, and first conversed with his governess for a short time. When I then
+turned and approached him, he concealed the tearful, flushed face, that
+his long blond curls covered as with a golden veil, whenever he moved
+behind the chair.
+
+"'Sire,' said Madame de Montesquieu to him, 'sire, do you not intend to
+bid Mademoiselle de Cochelet good-morning? She came here expressly
+to see you.'
+
+"'Your majesty does not recognize me,' said I, attempting to take his
+small hand in mine. He tore it from me, and cried in a voice almost
+choked with sobbing: 'She will not let me look at the soldiers of
+my papa!'
+
+"Madame de Montesquieu told me that it was the little prince's greatest
+pleasure to see the Guards exercising on the _Place de Carrousel_, but
+that she had deprived Mm of this pleasure to-day, because he had been
+naughty and disobedient; that, when he heard the music and drums, his
+despair and anger had become so great that she had been forced to resort
+to severe means, and make him stand in the corner behind a chair. I
+begged for the young king's pardon; I showed him the cup, and explained
+the scene that was painted on it. The king laughed, and Madame de
+Montesquieu pardoned him for the sake of his little cousin, Louis
+Napoleon, who was so well behaved, and who was always held up to him as
+a model[56]. Now you have heard the whole story, are you pleased with
+it, Louis?"
+
+[Footnote 56: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 212.]
+
+"I like it very much," said the grave boy, "but I do not like my
+cousin's governess, for having intended to prevent him from looking at
+his father's soldiers. Oh, how handsome they must have been, the
+soldiers of the emperor! Mamma, I wish I were also an emperor, and had
+ever so many handsome soldiers."
+
+Hortense smiled sadly, and laid her hand on the boy's head as if to
+bless him. "Oh, my son," said she, "it is no enviable fortune to wear a
+crown. It is almost always fastened on our head with thorns!"
+
+From this day on, Prince Louis Napoleon would stand before his uncle's
+portrait, lost in thought, and after looking at it to his satisfaction,
+he would run out and call the boys of the neighborhood together, in
+order to play soldier and emperor with them in the large garden that
+surrounded his mother's house, and teach the boys the first exercise.
+
+One day, in the zeal of play, he had entirely forgotten his mother's
+command, not to go out of the garden, and had inarched into the open
+field with his soldiers. When his absence from the garden was noticed,
+all the servants were sent out to look for him, and the anxious duchess,
+together with her ladies, assisted in this search, walking about in
+every direction through the cold and the slush of the thawing snow.
+Suddenly they came upon the boy barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves,
+wading toward them through the mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused
+at this unexpected meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he
+had been playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor
+and ragged that it was painful to look at them. As he had no money to
+give them, he had put his shoes on one child, and his coat on
+another[57].
+
+[Footnote 57: Cochelet, vol. iv., p. 303.]
+
+The duchess did not have the courage to scold him; she stooped down and
+kissed her son; but when her ladies commenced to praise him, she
+motioned to them to be silent, and said in a loud voice that what her
+son had done was quite a matter of course, and therefore deserved
+no praise.
+
+An ardent desire to gladden others and make them presents was
+characteristic of little Louis Napoleon. One day, Hortense had given him
+three beautiful studs for his shirt, and on the same day the prince
+transferred them to one of his friends who admired them.
+
+When Hortense reproached her son for doing so, and threatened to make
+him no more presents, as he always gave them away again directly, Louis
+Napoleon replied, "Ah, mamma, this is why your presents give me double
+pleasure--once when you give them to me, and the second time when I make
+others happy with them[58]."
+
+[Footnote 58: Cochelet, vol. i, p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.
+
+Fate seemed at last weary of persecuting the poor Duchess of St. Leu. It
+at least accorded her a few peaceful years of repose and comfort; it at
+least permitted her to rest from the weariness of the past on the bosom
+of Nature, and to forget her disappointments and sorrows. The Canton of
+Thurgau had had the courage to extend permission to the duchess to take
+up her residence within its borders, at the very moment when the
+Grand-duke of Baden, who had been urged to the step by Germany and
+France, had peremptorily ordered Hortense to leave Constance and his
+grand-duchy without delay.
+
+Hortense had thankfully accepted the offer of the Swiss canton, and had
+purchased, on the Swiss side of the Lake of Constance, an estate, whose
+beautiful situation on the summit of a mountain, immediately on the
+banks of the lake, with its magnificent view of the surrounding country,
+and its glittering glaciers on the distant horizon, made it a most
+delightful place of sojourn. Hortense now caused the furniture of her
+dwelling in Paris, that had been sold, to be sent to her. The sight of
+these evidences of her former grandeur awakened sweet and bitter
+emotions in her heart, as they were one after another taken out of the
+cases in which they had been packed--these sofas, chairs, divans,
+carpets, chandeliers, mirrors, and all the other ornaments of the
+parlors in which Hortense had been accustomed to receive kings and
+emperors, and which were now to adorn the Swiss villa that was outwardly
+so beautiful because of the vicinity, and inwardly so plain and simple.
+
+But Hortense knew how to make an elegant and tasteful disposition of all
+these articles; she herself arranged every thing in her house, and took
+true feminine delight in her task. And when all was at last
+arranged--when she walked, with her son at her side, through the suite
+of rooms, in which every ornament and piece of furniture reminded her
+of the past--when these things recalled the proud days of state when so
+many friends, relatives, and servants, had surrounded her--a feeling of
+unutterable loneliness, of painful desolation, came over her, and she
+sank down on a sofa and wept bitterly. But there was nevertheless a
+consolation in having these familiar articles in her possession once
+more; these mute friends often awakened in the solitary queen's heart
+memories that served to entertain and console her. Arenenberg was a
+perfect temple of memory; every chair, every table, every article of
+furniture, had its history, and this history spoke of Napoleon, of
+Josephine, and the great days of the empire.
+
+In Arenenberg Hortense had at last found a permanent home, and there she
+passed the greater part of the year; and it was only when the autumnal
+storms began to howl through her open and lightly-constructed villa,
+that Hortense repaired to Rome, to pass the winter months in a more
+genial climate, while her son Louis Napoleon was pursuing his studies at
+the artillery school at Thun.
+
+And thus the years passed on, quiet and peaceful, though sometimes
+interrupted by new losses and sorrows. In the year 1821 the hero, the
+emperor, to whose laurel-crown the halo of a martyr had now also been
+added, died on the island-rock, St. Helena.
+
+In the year 1824 Hortense lost her only brother, Eugene, the Duke of
+Leuchtenberg.
+
+The only objects of Hortense's love were now her two sons, who were
+prospering in mind and body, and were the pride and joy of their mother,
+and an object of annoyance and suspicion to all the princes of Europe.
+For these children bore in their countenance, in their name, and in
+their disposition, too plain an impress of the great past, which they
+could never entirely ignore while Bonaparte still lived to testify
+to it.
+
+And they lived and prospered in spite of the Bourbons; they lived and
+prospered, although banished from their country, and compelled to lead
+an inactive life.
+
+But at last it seemed as though the hour of fortune and freedom had come
+for these Bonapartes--as though they, too, were to be permitted to have
+a country to which they might give their devotion and services.
+
+The thundering voice of the revolution of 1830 resounded throughout
+trembling Europe. France, on whom the allies had imposed the Bourbons,
+arose and shook its mane; with its lion's paw it overthrew the Bourbon
+throne, drove out the Jesuits who had stood behind it, and whom Charles
+X. had advised to tear the charter to pieces, to destroy the freedom of
+the press, and to reintroduce the _autos da fé_ of the olden time.
+
+France had been treated as a child in 1815, and was now determined to
+assert its manhood; it resolved to break entirely with the past, and
+with its own strength to build up a future for itself.
+
+The lilies of the Bourbons were to bloom no more; these last years of
+fanatical Jesuit tyranny had deprived them of life, and France tore the
+faded lily from her bosom in order to replace it with a young and
+vigorous plant. The throne of the Bourbons was overthrown, but the
+people, shuddering at the recollection of the sanguinary republic,
+selected a king in preference. It stretched out its hand after him it
+held dearest; after him who in the past few years had succeeded in
+winning the sympathy of France. It selected the Duke of Orleans, the son
+of Philippe Égalité, for its king.
+
+Louis Philippe, the enthusiastic republican of 1790, who at that time
+had caused the three words "_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_" and the
+inscription "_Vive la République,"_ to be burnt on his arm, in order to
+prove his republicanism; the proscribed Louis Philippe, who had wandered
+through Europe a fugitive, earning his bread by teaching writing and
+languages--the same Louis Philippe now became King of France.
+
+The people called him to the throne; they tore the white flag from the
+roof of the Tuileries, but they knew no other or better one with which
+to replace it than the _tricolore_ of the empire.
+
+Under the shadow of this _tricolore_ Louis Philippe mounted the throne,
+and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the glorious era of
+the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in order to indulge
+their sympathies they demanded for France--not the son of Napoleon, not
+Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and the emperor's statue on the
+Palace Vendôme. Louis Philippe accorded them both, but with these
+concessions he thought he had done enough. He had accepted the
+_tricolore_ of the empire; he had promised that the emperor should watch
+over Paris from the summit of the Vendôme monument, and to cause his
+ashes to be brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.
+
+They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it would be
+worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course might easily
+shake the new throne, and recall the allies to Paris.
+
+The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still continued
+against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich said, "a
+principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the throne."
+
+The European powers had signified to the King of France, through their
+diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but they exacted
+one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe should confirm or renew
+the decree of exile fulminated by the Bourbons against the Bonapartes.
+
+Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes, whose
+only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of the deceased
+emperor, before whom not only France, but all the princes of Europe, had
+once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once more declared strangers to
+their country, and condemned to exile!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.
+
+It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of banishment!
+Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts, annihilating their
+holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their joy over the glorious
+and heroic revolution of July gave place to a bitter sense of
+disappointment.
+
+Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life to which
+they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console themselves, for
+their new disappointment, with the arts and sciences.
+
+At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to leave
+Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the habit of doing
+every year.
+
+But this time she first went to Florence, where her elder son, Napoleon
+Louis, recently married to his cousin, the second daughter of King
+Joseph, was now living with his young wife. The heart of the tender
+mother was filled with anxiety and care; she felt and saw that this new
+French Revolution was likely to infect all Europe, and that Italy, above
+all, would be unable to avoid this infection. Italy was diseased to the
+core, and it was to be feared that it would grasp at desperate means in
+its agony, and proceed to the blood-letting of a revolution, in order to
+restore itself to health. Hortense felt this, and feared for her sons.
+
+She feared that the exiled, the homeless ones who had been driven from
+their country, and were not permitted to serve it, would devote their
+services to those who were unhappy and who suffered like themselves. She
+feared the enthusiasm, the generous courage, the energy of her sons, and
+she knew that, if a revolution should break out in Italy, it would
+gladly adorn itself with the name of Napoleon.
+
+Hortense, therefore, conjured her sons to hold themselves aloof from all
+dangerous undertakings, and not to follow those who might appeal to them
+with the old word of magic power, "liberty;" that, in spite of the tears
+and blood it has already caused mankind, can never lose its
+wondrous power.
+
+Her two sons promised compliance; and, much relieved, Hortense left
+Florence, and went, with her younger son, Louis Napoleon, to Rome.
+
+But Rome, otherwise so aristocratic and solemn, assumed an unusual, an
+entirely new, physiognomy this winter. In society the topics of
+conversation were no longer art and poetry, the Pantheon and St. Peter,
+or what the newest amusement should be; but politics and the French
+Revolution were the all-engrossing topics, and the populace listened
+anxiously for the signal that should announce that the revolution in
+Italy had at last begun.
+
+Even the populace of Rome, usually addicted to lying so harmlessly in
+the sunshine, now assembled in dense groups on the streets, and strange
+words were heard when the police cautiously approached these groups for
+the purpose of listening. But they now lacked the courage to arrest
+those who uttered those words; they felt that such a provocation might
+suffice to tear away the veil behind which the revolution still
+concealed itself.
+
+The whole energy and watchfulness of the Roman government was therefore
+employed in endeavoring to avert the revolution, if possible; not,
+however, by removing the cause and occasion, but by depriving the people
+of the means. The son of Hortense, Louis Napoleon, seemed to the
+government a means which the revolution might use for its purposes, and
+it was therefore determined that he should be removed.
+
+His name, and even the three-colored saddle-blanket of his horse, with
+which he rode through the streets of Rome, were exciting to the
+populace, in whose veins the fever of revolution was already throbbing.
+Louis Napoleon must therefore be removed.
+
+The Governor of Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle, Cardinal
+Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to remove the
+young prince from Rome for a few weeks.
+
+But the cardinal indignantly declared that his nephew, who had done
+nothing, should not be compelled to leave Rome merely on account of his
+name and his saddle-blanket, and that he would never advise the Duchess
+of St. Leu to do anything of the kind.
+
+The Roman government therefore determined to adopt energetic means. It
+caused the dwelling of the duchess to be surrounded by soldiers, while
+a papal office presented himself before Hortense, and announced that he
+had received orders to remove Prince Louis from the city at once, and to
+conduct him without the papal territory.
+
+The fear of approaching evil caused the government to forget the respect
+due to nobility in misfortune and the emperor's nephew was turned out of
+the city like a criminal!
+
+Hortense received this intelligence almost with joy. Far from Rome, it
+seemed to her that he would be safer from the revolution, whose approach
+she so much dreaded; and it therefore afforded her great satisfaction to
+send the prince to Florence, to his father, believing that he would
+there be shielded from the dangerous political calumnies that threatened
+him in Rome. She therefore permitted him to depart; and how could she
+have prevented his departure--she, the lone, powerless woman, to whom
+not even the French ambassador would have accorded protection! No one
+interceded for her--no one protested against the violent and brutal
+course pursued toward Louis Napoleon--no one, except the Russian
+ambassador.
+
+The Emperor of Russia was the only one of all the sovereigns of Europe
+who felt himself strong enough not to ignore the name of Napoleon, and
+the consideration due to the family of a hero and of an emperor.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had, therefore, never refused his protection and
+assistance to the Bonapartes, and his ambassador was now the only one
+who protested against the violent course taken by the Roman government.
+
+The revolution at last broke forth. Italy arose as France had done,
+resolved to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, and be free!
+The storm first broke out in Modena. The duke saw himself compelled to
+fly, and a provisional government under General Menotti placed itself in
+his stead. But, while this was taking place in Modena, the populace of
+Rome was holding high festival in honor of the newly-chosen Pope Gregory
+XVI., who had just taken his seat in the chair of the deceased Pope Pius
+VIII., and these festivities, and the Carnival, seemed to occupy the
+undivided attention of the Romans; under the laughing mask of these
+rejoicings the revolution hid its grave and threatening visage, and it
+was not until _mardi-gras_ that it laid this mask aside and showed its
+true countenance.
+
+The people had been accustomed to throw confectionery and flowers on
+this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable by a shower of
+stones and bullets; this time they were not to appear in the harlequin
+jacket, but in their true form, earnest, grand, commanding,
+self-conscious, and self-asserting.
+
+But the government had been informed of the intention of the
+conspirators to avail themselves of the drive to the Corso, to begin the
+revolution, and this procession was prohibited an hour before the time
+appointed for its commencement.
+
+The people arose against this prohibition, and the revolution they had
+endeavored to repress by this means now broke out.
+
+The thunder of cannon and the rattling of musketry now resounded through
+the streets of Rome, and the people everywhere resisted the papal
+soldiery with energy and determination.
+
+The new pope trembled in the Quirinal, the old cardinals lost courage,
+and in dismay recoiled a step at every advancing stride of the
+insurgents. Gregory felt that the papal crown he had just achieved was
+already on the point of falling from his head, to be trodden in the dust
+by the victorious populace; he turned to Austria, and solicited help and
+assistance.
+
+But young Italy, the Italy of enthusiasm, of liberty, and of hope,
+looked to France for support. Old Italy had turned to Austria for help;
+young Italy looked for assistance to the free, newly-arisen France, in
+which the revolution had just celebrated a glorious victory. But France
+denied its Italian brother, and denied its own origin; scarcely had the
+revolution seated itself on the newly-erected kingly throne and invested
+itself with the crown and purple robe, when, for its own safety, it
+became reactionary, and denied itself.
+
+With all Italy, Rome was resolved to shake off the yoke of oppression;
+the whole people espoused this cause with enthusiasm; and in the streets
+of Rome--at other times filled with priests and monks and holy
+processions--in these streets, now alive with the triumphant youth of
+Rome, resounded exultant songs of freedom.
+
+The strangers, terrified by this change, now quitted the holy city in
+crowds, and hastened to their homes. Hortense desired to remain; she
+knew that she had nothing to fear from the people, for all the evil that
+had hitherto overtaken her, had come, not from the people, but always
+from the princes only[59]. However, letters suddenly arrived from her
+sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and announcing that they would leave
+Florence within the hour, in order to hasten forward to meet
+their mother.
+
+[Footnote 59: La Reine Hortense, p. 63.]
+
+Upon reading this, Hortense cried aloud with terror--she, who knew and
+desired no other happiness on earth than the happiness of her children,
+she whose only prayer to God had ever been, that her children might
+prosper and that she might die before them, now felt that a fearful
+danger threatened her sons, and that they were now about to be swept
+into the vortex of the revolution.
+
+They had left Florence, and their father, and were now on the way to
+Rome, that is, on the way to the revolution that would welcome them with
+joy, and inscribe the name Napoleon on its standards!
+
+But it was perhaps still time to save them; with her prayers and
+entreaties she might still succeed in arresting them on the verge of the
+abyss into which they were hastening in the intoxication of their
+enthusiasm. As this thought occurred to her, Hortense felt herself
+strong, determined, and courageous; and, on the same day on which she
+had received the letters, she left Rome, and hurried forward to meet
+her sons. She still hoped to be in time to save them; she fancied she
+saw her sons in every approaching carriage--but in vain!
+
+They had written that they would meet her on the road, but they were not
+there!
+
+Perhaps they had listened to the representations of their father;
+perhaps they had remained in Florence and were awaiting their mother's
+arrival there.
+
+Tormented by fear and hope, Hortense arrived in Florence and drove to
+the dwelling in which her son Louis Napoleon had resided. Her feet could
+scarcely bear her up; she hardly found strength to inquire after her
+son--he was not there!
+
+But he might be with his father, and Hortense now sent there for
+intelligence of her sons. The messenger returned, alone and dejected:
+her sons had left the city!
+
+The exultant hymn of liberty had struck on their delighted ear, and they
+had responded to the call of the revolution.
+
+General Menotti had appealed to them, in the name of Italy, to assist
+the cause of freedom with their name and with their swords, and they had
+neither the will nor the courage to disregard this appeal.
+
+A servant, left behind by her younger son, delivered to the duchess a
+letter from her son Louis Napoleon, a last word of adieu to his
+beloved mother.
+
+"Your love will understand us," wrote Louis Napoleon. "We cannot
+withdraw ourselves from duties that devolve upon us; the name we bear
+obliges us to listen to the appeal of unhappy nations. I beg you to
+represent this matter to my sister-in-law as though I had persuaded my
+brother to accompany me; it grieves him to have concealed from her one
+action of his life[60]."
+
+[Footnote 60: La Reine Hortense, p. 78.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DEATH OF PRINCE NAPOLEON.
+
+That which Hortense most dreaded had taken place: the voice of
+enthusiasm had silenced every other consideration; and the two sons of
+the Duchess of St. Leu, the nephews of the Emperor Napoleon, now stood
+at the head of the revolution. From Foligno to Civita Castellano, they
+organized the defence, and from the cities and villages the young people
+joyously hurried forth to enroll themselves under their banners, and to
+obey the Princes Napoleon as their leaders; the crowds which the young
+princes now led were scarcely armed, but they nevertheless advanced
+courageously, and were resolved to attempt the capture of Civita
+Castellano, in order to liberate the state prisoners who had been
+languishing in its dungeons for eight years.
+
+This was the intelligence brought back by the couriers whom Hortense had
+dispatched to her sons with letters entreating them to return.
+
+It was too late--they neither would nor could return.
+
+Their father wrung his hands in despair, and conjured his wife, he
+being confined to his arm-chair by illness and the gout, to do all in
+her power to tear their sons from the fearful danger that menaced them.
+For the revolution was lost; all who were cool and collected felt and
+saw this. But the youth refused to see it; they still continued to flock
+to the revolutionary banners; they still sang exultant hymns of freedom,
+and, when their parents endeavored to hold them back, they fled from the
+parental house secretly, in order to answer the call that resounded on
+their ear in such divine notes.
+
+One of the sons of the Princess of Canino, the wife of Lucien Bonaparte,
+had fled from his father's castle in order to join the insurgents. They
+succeeded in finding, and forcing him to return, and as the family were
+under obligations to the pope for having created the principalities of
+Canino and Musignano, for Lucien Bonaparte and his eldest son, the most
+extreme measures were adopted to prevent the young prince from fighting
+against the troops of the pope;
+
+The Princess of Canino, as a favor, requested the Grand-duke of Tuscany
+to confine her son in one of the state prisons of Tuscany; her request
+was granted, and her son taken to a prison, where he was kept during the
+entire revolution. It was proposed to the Duchess of St. Leu to adopt
+this same means of prevention, but, in spite of her anxiety and care,
+and although, in her restlessness and feverish disquiet, she wandered
+through her rooms day and night, she declined to take such a course.
+She was not willing to subject her sons to the humiliation of such
+compulsion; if their own reason, if the prayers and entreaties of their
+mother, did not suffice, force should not be resorted to, to bring them
+back. The whole family was, however, still employing every means to
+induce the two Princes Napoleon to withdraw from the revolution, which
+must inevitably again draw down upon the name Napoleon the suspicion of
+the angry and distrustful princes of Europe.
+
+Cardinal Fesch and King Jerome conjured their nephews, first in
+entreating, and then in commanding letters, to leave the insurgent army.
+
+With the consent of their father, Louis Bonaparte, they wrote to the
+provisional government at Bologna that the name of the two princes was
+injuring the cause of the revolution, and to General Armandi, the
+minister of war of the insurgent government, entreating him to recall
+the princes from the army. Every one, friend and foe, combined to
+neutralize the zeal and efforts of the two princes, and to prove to them
+that they could only injure the cause to which they gave their names;
+that foreign powers, considering the revolution a matter to be decided
+by Italy alone, would perhaps refrain from intervening; but that they
+would become relentless should a Bonaparte place himself at the head of
+the revolution, in order perhaps to shake the thrones of Europe anew.
+
+The two princes at last yielded to these entreaties and representations;
+they gave up their commands, and resigned the rank that had been
+accorded them in the insurgent army; but, as it was no longer in their
+power to serve the revolution with their name and with their brains,
+they were at least desirous of serving it with their arms: they resigned
+their commands, but with the intention of remaining in the army as
+simple soldiers and volunteers without any rank.
+
+And when their father and their uncles, not yet satisfied with what they
+had done, urged them still further the two princes declared that, if
+these cruel annoyances were continued, they would go to Poland, and
+serve the revolution there[61].
+
+[Footnote 61: La Reine Hortense, p. 93.]
+
+Hortense had taken no part in these attempts and efforts of her family;
+she knew that it was all in vain; she understood her sons better than
+they, and she knew that nothing in the world could alter a resolution
+they had once formed. But she also knew that they were lost, that the
+revolution must be suppressed, that they would soon be proscribed
+fugitives, and she quietly prepared to assist them when the evil days
+should come. She armed herself with courage and determination, and made
+her soul strong, in order that she might not be overwhelmed by the
+misfortune that was so near at hand.
+
+While all about her were weeping and lamenting, while her husband was
+wringing his hands in despair, and complaining of the present, Hortense
+quietly and resolutely confronted the future, and prepared to defy it.
+
+That which she dreaded soon took place. An Austrian fleet sailed into
+the Adriatic; an Austrian army was marching on the insurrectionary
+Italian provinces. Modena had already been reconquered; the insurgents
+were already flying in crowds before the Austrian cannon, whose
+thundering salvos were destined to destroy once more the hopes of the
+youth of Italy.
+
+Like an enraged lioness glowing with enthusiasm and courage, Hortense
+now sprang up. The danger was there, and she must save her sons! She had
+long considered how it was to be done, and whither she was to go with
+them. She had first resolved to go with them to Turkey, and to take up
+her residence in Smyrna, but the presence of the Austrian fleet which
+ruled the Adriatic made this plan impracticable. At this moment of
+extreme danger, a volume of light suddenly beamed in upon her soul, and
+pointed out the way to safety. "I will take them by a road," said she to
+herself, "on which they will be least expected. I will conduct them
+through France, through Paris. The death-penalty will there hang
+suspended over them, but what care I for that? Liberty, justice, and
+humanity, still exercise too much control over France to make me
+apprehend such severe measures. I must save my sons; the way through
+France is the way of safety, and I shall therefore follow it!"
+
+And Hortense immediately began to carry her plan into execution. She
+requested an Englishman residing in Florence, to whose family she had
+once rendered important services in France, to call on her, and begged
+him to procure her a passport for an English lady and her two sons
+through France to England.
+
+The lord understood her, and gladly consented to assist her and her two
+sons.
+
+On the following day he brought her the required passport, and Hortense,
+who well knew that the best way to keep a secret was to have no
+confidants, now declared to her husband, as well as to her family and
+her friends that she was resolved to find her sons, and to embark with
+them from Ancona for Corfu!
+
+For this purpose she demanded a passport of the government of Tuscany,
+and it was accorded her.
+
+Her sons were still in Bologna, but it was known that this city must
+fall into the hands of the Austrians in a few days, and all was lost
+unless Hortense arrived there before them. She sent a trusty servant to
+her sons to announce her coming. Then, at nightfall, she herself
+departed, accompanied by one of her ladies only. She was courageous and
+resolute, for she knew that the safety of her sons, her only happiness,
+was at stake.
+
+Her rapidly-driven carriage had soon passed without the city, and she
+now found herself in a part of the country still occupied by the
+insurgents. Here all still breathed courage, joyousness, and confidence.
+The entire population, adorned with cockades and three-colored ribbons,
+seemed happy and contented, and refused to believe in the danger that
+threatened.
+
+Festivals were everywhere being held in honor of the revolution and of
+liberty, and those who spoke of the advancing Austrians and of dangers
+were ridiculed. Instead of making preparations for their defence, the
+insurgents folded their hands in contentment, rejoicing over that which
+they had already attained, and blind to the tide that was rolling down
+upon them.
+
+In the mean while, the insurgent army was in position near Bologna, and
+also still occupied the two cities of Terni and Soleta, which they had
+courageously defended against the papal troops. Every one expected that
+a decisive battle would soon take place, and every one looked forward to
+it with a joyous assurance of victory.
+
+Hortense was far from participating in this general confidence. In
+Foligno, where she had remained to await her sons, she passed several
+sorrowful days of expectancy and suspense, alarmed by every noise, and
+ever looking forward with an anxiously-throbbing heart to the moment
+when her sons should come to her as fugitives, perhaps covered with
+wounds, perhaps dying, to tell her that all was lost! Her anxiety at
+last became so great, that she could no longer remain in Foligno; she
+must be nearer her sons, she must view the dangers that encompassed
+them, and, if need be, share them. Hortense, therefore, left Foligno,
+and started for Ancona.
+
+On her arrival at the first station, she saw a man descend from a
+carriage and approach her. He was unknown to her, and yet she felt a
+dark foreboding at his approach. The mother's heart already felt the
+blow that awaited her.
+
+This man was a messenger from her sons. "Prince Napoleon is ill," said
+he.
+
+Hortense remembered that she had heard that a contagious disease was
+ravaging the vicinity. "Is he indeed ill?" cried she, in dismay.
+
+"Yes; and he earnestly desires to see you, madame!"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Hortense, in terror, "if he calls for me, he must be
+very ill indeed!--Forward, forward, with all possible speed; I must
+see my son!"
+
+And onward they went with the speed of the wind from station to station,
+approaching nearer and nearer to their destination; but as they neared
+their destination, the faces they met grew sadder and sadder. At every
+station groups of people assembled about her carriage and gazed at her
+sorrowfully; everywhere she heard them murmur: "Napoleon is dead! Poor
+mother! Napoleon is dead!" Hortense heard, but did not believe it! These
+words had not been spoken by men, but were the utterances of her anxious
+heart! Her son was not dead, he could not be dead. Napoleon lived, yes,
+he still lived! And again the people around her carriage murmured,
+"Napoleon is dead!"
+
+Hortense reclined in her carriage, pale and motionless. Her thoughts
+were confused, her heart scarcely beat.
+
+At last she reached her destination; her carriage drove up to the house
+in Pesaro, where her sons were awaiting her.
+
+At this moment a young man, his countenance of a deathly pallor, and
+flooded with tears, rushed out of the door and to her carriage. Hortense
+recognized him, and stretched out her arms to him. It was her son Louis
+Napoleon, and on beholding his pale, sorrowful countenance, and his
+tear-stained eyes, the unhappy mother learned the truth. Yes, it was not
+her heart, it was the people who had uttered the fearful words:
+"Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon is dead!"
+
+With a heart-rending cry, Hortense sank to the ground in a swoon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FLIGHT FROM ITALY.
+
+But Hortense now had no leisure to weep over the son she had so dearly
+loved; the safety of the son who remained to her, whom she loved no
+less, and on whom her whole love must now be concentrated, was at stake.
+
+She still had a son to save, and she must now think of him--of Louis
+Napoleon, who stood in sorrow at her side, lamenting that Fate had not
+allowed him to die with his brother.
+
+Her son must be saved. This thought restored Hortense to health and
+strength. She is informed that the authorities of Bologna have already
+tendered submission to the Austrians; that the insurgent army is already
+scattering in every direction; that the Austrian fleet is already to be
+seen in the distance, approaching, perhaps with the intention of landing
+at Sinigaglia, in order to surround the insurgents and render flight
+impossible.
+
+This intelligence aroused Hortense from her grief and restored her
+energy. She ordered her carriage and drove with her son to Ancona, in
+full view of the people, in order that every one should know that it was
+her purpose to embark with her son for Corfu at that seaport. At Ancona,
+immediately fronting the sea, stood her nephew's palace, and there
+Hortense descended from her carriage.
+
+The waves of the storm-tossed sea sometimes rushed up to the windows of
+the room occupied by the duchess; from there she could see the port, and
+the crowds of fugitives who were pressing forward to save themselves on
+the miserable little vessels that there lay at anchor.
+
+And these poor people had but little time left them in which to seek
+safety. The Austrians were rapidly advancing; on entering the papal
+territory, they had proclaimed an amnesty, from the benefits of which
+Prince Louis Napoleon, General Zucchi, and the inhabitants of Modena,
+were, however, excepted. The strangers who had taken part in the
+insurrection were to be arrested and treated with all the severity
+of the law.
+
+The young people who had flocked from Modena, Milan, and from all Italy,
+to enroll themselves under the banner of the Roman revolution, now found
+it necessary to seek safety from the pursuing Austrians in flight.
+
+Louis Napoleon also had no time to lose; each moment lost might render
+flight impossible! Hortense was weary and ill, but she now had no time
+to think of herself; she must first save her son, then she could die,
+but not sooner.
+
+With perfect composure she prepared for her double (her feigned and her
+real) departure.
+
+Outwardly, she purposed embarking with her son at Corfu; secretly, it
+was her intention to fly to England through France! But the English
+passport that she had received for this purpose mentioned two sons, and
+Hortense now possessed but one; and it was necessary for her to provide
+a substitute for the one she had lost.
+
+She found one in the person of the young Marquis Zappi, who, compromised
+more than all the rest, joyfully accepted the proposition of the Duchess
+of St. Leu, promising to conform himself wholly to her arrangements,
+without knowing her plans and without being initiated in her secrets.
+
+Hortense then procured all that was necessary to the disguise of the
+young men as liveried servants, and ordered her carriage to be held in
+readiness for her departure.
+
+While this was being done in secret, she publicly caused all
+preparations to be made for her journey to Corfu. She sent her passport
+to the authorities for the purpose of obtaining the official _visa_ for
+herself and sons, and had her trunks packed. Louis Napoleon had looked
+on, with cold and mute indifference, while these preparations were being
+made. He stood by, pale and dejected, without complaining or giving
+utterance to his grief.
+
+Becoming at last convinced that he was ill, Hortense sent for a
+physician.
+
+The latter declared that the prince was suffering from a severe attack
+of fever, which might become dangerous unless he sought repose at once.
+It was therefore necessary to postpone their departure for a day, and
+Hortense passed an anxious night at the bedside of her fever-shaken,
+delirious son.
+
+The morning at last dawned, the morning of the day on which they hoped
+to fly; but when the rising sun shed its light into the chamber in which
+Hortense stood at her son's bedside, who can describe the unhappy
+mother's horror when she saw her son's face swollen, disfigured, and
+covered with red spots!
+
+Like his brother, Louis Napoleon had also taken the same disease.
+
+For a moment Hortense was completely overwhelmed, and then, by the
+greatest effort of her life, she summoned her fortitude to her aid. She
+immediately sent for the physician again, and, trusting to a sympathetic
+human heart, she confided all to him, and he did not disappoint her.
+What is to be done must be done quickly, immediately, or it will be
+in vain!
+
+Hortense thinks of all, and provides for all. Especially, she causes her
+son's passport to Corfu to be signed by the authorities, and a passage
+to be taken for him on the only ship destined for Corfu now lying in the
+harbor. She instructs the servants, who are conveying trunks and
+packages to the vessel, to inform the curious spectators of her son's
+intended departure on this vessel. She at the same time causes the
+report to be circulated that she has suddenly been taken ill, and can
+therefore not accompany her son.
+
+The physician confirms this statement, and informs all Ancona of the
+dangerous illness of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+And after all this had been done, Hortense causes her son's bed to be
+carried into the little cabinet adjoining her room, and falling on her
+knees at his bedside, and covering her face with her hands, she prays to
+God to preserve the life of her child!
+
+On the evening of this day the vessel destined for Corfu hoisted its
+anchor. No one doubted that Louis Napoleon had embarked on it, and every
+one pitied the poor duchess, who, made ill by grief and anxiety, had not
+been able to accompany her son.
+
+In the mean while Hortense was sitting at the bedside of her delirious
+son. But she no longer felt weak or disquieted; nervous excitement
+sustained her, and gave her strength and presence of mind. Her son was
+at the same time threatened by two dangers--by the disease, which the
+slightest mistake might render mortal; and by the arrival of the
+Austrians, who had expressly excepted her son Louis Napoleon from the
+benefits of the amnesty. She must save her son from both these
+dangers--this thought gave her strength.
+
+Two days had now passed; the last two vessels had left the harbor,
+crowded with fugitives; and now the advance-guard of the Austrians was
+marching into Ancona.
+
+The commandant of the advance-guard, upon whom the duty of designating
+quarters for the following army devolved, selected the palace of
+Princess Canino, where the Duchess of St. Leu resided, as headquarters
+for the commanding general and his staff. Hortense had expected this,
+and had withdrawn to a few small rooms in advance, holding all the
+parlors and large rooms in readiness for the general. When they,
+however, demanded that the entire palace should be vacated, the wife of
+the janitor, the only person whom Hortense had taken into her
+confidence, informed them that Queen Hortense, who was ill and unhappy,
+was the sole occupant of these reserved rooms.
+
+Strange to relate, the Austrian captain who came to the palace to make
+the necessary preparations for his general's reception was one of those
+who, in the year 1815, had protected the queen and her children from the
+fury of the royalists. For the second time he now interested himself
+zealously in behalf of the duchess, and hastened forward to meet the
+general-in-chief, Baron Geppert, who was just entering the city, in
+order to acquaint him with the state of affairs. He, in common with all
+the world, convinced that her son, Louis Napoleon, had fled to Corfu,
+declared his readiness to permit the duchess to retain the rooms she was
+occupying, and begged permission to call on her. But the duchess was
+still ill, and confined to her bed, and could receive no one.
+
+The Austrians took up their quarters in the palace; and in the midst of
+them, separated from the general's room by a locked door only, were
+Hortense and her sick son. The least noise might betray him. When he
+coughed it was necessary to cover his head with the bedclothes, in order
+to deaden the sound; when he desired to speak he could only do so in a
+whisper, for his Austrian neighbors would have been astonished to hear a
+male voice in the room of the sick duchess, and their suspicions might
+have been thereby aroused.
+
+At last, after eight days of torment and anxiety, the physician declared
+that Louis Napoleon could now undertake the journey without danger, and
+consequently the duchess suddenly recovered! She requested the Austrian
+general, Baron Geppert, to honor her with a call, in order that she
+might thank him for his protection and sympathy; she told him that she
+was now ready to depart, and proposed embarking at Livorno, in order to
+join her son at Malta, and go with him to England. As she would be
+compelled to pass through the whole Austrian army-corps on her way, she
+begged the general to furnish her with a passport through his lines over
+his own signature; requesting in addition that, in order to avoid all
+sensation, the instrument should not contain her name.
+
+The general, deeply sympathizing with the unhappy woman who was about to
+follow her proscribed son, readily accorded her request.
+
+Hortense purposed beginning her journey on the following day, the first
+day of the Easter festival; and, on sending her farewell greeting to the
+Austrian general, she informed him that she would start at a very early
+hour, in order to hear mass at Loretto.
+
+During the night all necessary preparations for the journey were made,
+and Louis Napoleon was compelled to disguise himself in the dress of a
+liveried servant; a similar attire was also sent to Marquis Zappi, who
+had hitherto been concealed in the house of a friend, and in this attire
+he was to await the duchess below at the carriage.
+
+At last, day broke and the hour of departure came. The horn of the
+postilion resounded through the street. Through the midst of the
+sleeping Austrian soldiers who occupied the antechamber through which
+they were compelled to pass, Hortense walked, followed by her son loaded
+with packages, in his livery. Their departure was witnessed by no one
+except the sentinel on duty.
+
+Day had hardly dawned. In the first carriage sat the duchess, with a
+lady companion, and in front, on the box, her son, as a servant, at the
+side of the postilion; in the second carriage her maid, behind her the
+young Marquis Zappi.
+
+As the sun arose and shone down upon the beautiful Easter day, Ancona
+was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side of Louis
+Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her to succeed so
+far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be merciful in the
+future. But there were still many dangers to be overcome; the slightest
+accident might still betray them. The danger consisted not only in
+having to pass through all the places where the Austrian troops were
+stationed; General Geppert's pass was a sufficient protection against
+any thing that might threaten them from this quarter.
+
+The greatest danger was to be apprehended from their friends--from some
+one who might accidentally recognize her son, and unintentionally
+betray them.
+
+They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
+greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one, and
+every one might betray them. This part of the journey must therefore be
+made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom they had dispatched
+in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary relays of horses; their
+dismay was, therefore, great when they found no horses at the station
+Camoscia, on the boundary of Tuscany, and were informed that several
+hours must elapse before they could obtain any!
+
+These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense passed
+them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the slightest noise that
+broke upon the air.
+
+Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated himself on a
+stone bench that stood in front of the miserable little station-house.
+Worn out by grief and still weak from disease, indifferent to the
+dangers that menaced from all sides, heedless of the night wind that
+swept, with its icy breath, over his face, the prince sank down upon
+this stone bench, and went to sleep.
+
+Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a half-open
+carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France, on a stone
+bench, that served him as a couch!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE PILGRIMAGE.
+
+Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu. It
+heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted mother and
+son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every step in Italy.
+
+At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary without being
+recognized. They were now in their own country--in _la belle France_,
+which they still loved and proudly called their mother, although it had
+forsaken and discarded them. The death-penalty threatened the Bonapartes
+who should dare to set foot on French soil. But what cared they for
+that? Neither Hortense nor her son thought of it. They only knew that
+they were in their own country. They inhaled with delight the air that
+seemed to them better and purer than any other; with hearts throbbing
+with joy, they listened to the music of this beautiful language that
+greeted them with the sweet native melodies.
+
+At Cannes they passed the first night. What recollections did this place
+recall to Hortense! Here it was that Napoleon had landed on his return
+from Elba to France; from Cannes he had commenced his march to Paris
+with a handful of soldiers, and had arrived there with an army. For the
+people had everywhere received him with exultation; the regiments that
+had been sent out against the advancing general had everywhere joyously
+gone over to his standard. Charles de Labédoyère, this enthusiastic
+adherent of the emperor, had been the first to do this. He was to have
+advanced against the emperor from Grenoble; but, with the exulting cry,
+"_Vive l'empereur!_" the entire regiment had gone over to its adored
+chieftain. Labédoyère had paid dearly for the enthusiasm of those
+moments; for, the for-the-second-time restored Bourbons punished his
+fidelity with death. Like Marshal Ney, Charles de Labédoyère was also
+shot; like the emperor himself, he paid for the triumph of the hundred
+days with his liberty and with his life!
+
+Of all these names and events of the past, Hortense thought, while
+enjoying the first hours of repose in their room at an hotel in Cannes.
+Leaning back in her chair, her large eyes gazing dreamily at the ceiling
+above her, she told the attentive prince of the days that had been, and
+spoke to him of the days in which they were now living--of these days of
+humiliation and obscurity--of those days in which the French nation had
+risen, and, shaking its lion's mane, hurled the Bourbons from their
+ancestral throne, and out of the land they had hitherto proudly called
+their own. On driving out the Bourbons, the people had freely chosen
+another king--not the King of Rome, who, in Vienna, as Duke of
+Reichstadt, had been made to forget the brilliant days of his
+childhood--not the son of the Emperor Napoleon. The people of France had
+chosen the Duke of Orleans as their king, and Louis Philippe's first act
+had been to renew the decree of banishment which the Bourbons had
+fulminated against the Bonapartes, and which declared it to be a
+capital crime if they should ever dare to set foot on the soil
+of France.
+
+"The people acted freely and according to their own will," said
+Hortense, with a sad smile, as she saw her son turn pale, and wrinkles
+gather on his brow. "Honor the will of the people, my son! In order to
+reward the emperor for his great services to the country, the people of
+France had unanimously chosen him their emperor. The people who give
+have also the right to take back again. The Bourbons, who consider
+themselves the owners of France, may reclaim it as an estate of which
+they have been robbed by the house of Orleans. But the Bonapartes must
+remember that they derived all their power from the will of the people.
+They must be content to await the future expression of its will, and
+then submit, and conform themselves to it[62]."
+
+[Footnote 62: The duchess's own words. See La Reine Hortense en Italie,
+Suisse, France, etc., p. 79.]
+
+Louis Napoleon bowed his head and sighed. He must conform to the will of
+the people; cautiously, under a borrowed name, he must steal into the
+land of his longing and of his dreams; he must deny his nationality, and
+be indebted, for his name and passport, to the country that had bound
+his uncle, like a second Prometheus, to the rock, and left him there to
+die! But he did it with a sorrowful, with a bleeding heart; he wandered
+with his mother, who walked heavily veiled at his side, from place to
+place, listening to her reminiscences of the great past. At her
+relation of these reminiscences, his love and enthusiasm for the
+fatherland, from which he had so long been banished, burned brighter and
+brighter. The sight, the air of this fatherland, had electrified him; he
+entertained but one wish: to remain in France, and to serve France,
+although in the humble capacity of a private soldier.
+
+One day Louis Napoleon entered his mother's room with a letter in his
+hand, and begged her to read it. It was a letter addressed to Louis
+Philippe, in which Louis Napoleon begged the French king to annul his
+exile, and to permit him to enter the French army as a private soldier.
+
+Hortense read the letter, and shook her head sadly. It wounded her just
+pride that her son, the nephew of the great emperor, should ask a favor
+of him who had not hesitated to make the most of the revolution for
+himself, but had nevertheless lacked the courage to help the banished
+Bonapartes to recover their rights, and enable them to return to their
+country. In his ardent desire to serve France, Louis Napoleon had
+forgotten this insult of the King of France.
+
+"My children," says Hortense, in her memoirs, "my children, who had been
+cruelly persecuted by all the courts, even by those who owed every thing
+to the emperor, their uncle, loved their country with whole-souled
+devotion. Their eyes ever turned toward France, busied with the
+consideration of institutions that might make France happy; they knew
+that the people alone were their friends; the hatred of the great had
+taught them this. To conform to the will of the people with resignation
+was to them a duty, but to devote themselves to the service of France
+was their hearts' dearest wish. It was for this reason that my son had
+written to Louis Philippe hoping to be permitted to make himself useful
+to his country in some way."
+
+Hortense advised against this venturous step; and when she saw how much
+this grieved her son, and observed his eyes filling with tears, she
+begged that he would at least wait and reflect, and postpone his
+decision until their arrival in Paris.
+
+Louis Napoleon yielded to his mother's entreaties, and in silence and
+sadness these two pilgrims continued their wandering through the country
+and cities, that to Hortense seemed transformed into luminous monuments
+of departed glory.
+
+In Fontainebleau Hortense showed her son the palace that had been the
+witness of the greatest triumphs and also of the most bitter grief of
+his great uncle. Leaning on his arm, her countenance concealed by a
+heavy black veil, to prevent any one from recognizing her, Hortense
+walked through the chambers, in which she had once been installed as a
+mighty and honored queen, and in which she was now covertly an exile
+menaced with death. The servants who conducted her were the same who had
+been there during the days of the emperor! Hortense recognized them at
+once; she did not dare to make herself known, but she nevertheless felt
+that she, too, was remembered there. She saw this in the expression
+with which the servants opened the rooms she had once occupied; she
+heard it in the tone in which they mentioned her name! Every thing in
+this palace had remained as it then was! There was the same furniture in
+the rooms which the imperial family had occupied after the peace of
+Tilsit, and in which they had given such brilliant _fêtes_, and received
+the homage of so many of the kings and princes of Europe, all of whom
+had come to implore the assistance and favor of their vanquisher! There
+were also the apartments which the pope had occupied, once voluntarily;
+subsequently, under compulsion. Alas! and there was also the little
+cabinet, in which the emperor, the once so mighty and illustrious ruler
+of Europe, had abdicated the crown which his victories, his good deeds,
+and the love of the French people, had placed on his head! And, finally,
+there were also the chapel and the altar before which the Emperor
+Napoleon had stood god-father to his nephew Louis Napoleon! All was
+still as it had been, except that the garden, that Hortense and her
+mother had laid out and planted, had grown more luxuriant, and now sang
+to the poor banished pilgrim with its rustling tree-tops a melancholy
+song of her long separation from her home!
+
+The sorrowing couple wandered on, and at last arrived before the gates
+of Paris. At this moment, Hortense was a Frenchwoman, a Parisian only,
+and, forgetting every thing else, all her grief and sufferings, she
+sought only to do the honors of Paris for her son. She ordered the
+coachman to drive them through the boulevards to the Rue de la Paix,
+and then to stop at the first good hotel. This was the same way over
+which she had passed sixteen years before, escorted by an Austrian
+officer. Then she had quitted Paris by night, driven out in a measure by
+the allies, who so much feared her, the poor, weak woman with her little
+boys, that troops had been placed under arms at regular intervals on her
+way, in order, as it was given out, to secure her safe passage. Now,
+after sixteen years, Hortense returned to Paris by the same route, still
+exiled and homeless, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
+French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
+proscription.
+
+But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she wept with
+joy at beholding once more the streets and places about which the
+memories of her youth clustered.
+
+By a strange chance, it was at the "_Hôtel de Hollande_" that the former
+Queen of Holland descended from her carriage, and took up her residence,
+holding thus, in a measure, her entrance into Paris, under the
+fluttering banner of the past. In the little _Hôtel de Hollande_, the
+Queen of Holland took possession of the apartments of the first floor,
+which commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the _Place
+Vendôme._ "Say to the column on the _Place Vendôme_ that I am dying,
+because I cannot embrace it," the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the
+album of a French nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful
+spies, who surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his
+father and of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the
+emperor's son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.
+
+Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was entirely
+unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He could go down
+into the square and hasten to the foot of the _Vendôme_ column, and in
+thought at least kneel down before the monument that immortalized the
+renown and grandeur of the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order
+to perform a sacred duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own
+honor and dignity.
+
+She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive criminal, in
+the city that in the exercise of its free will had chosen itself a king,
+but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to partake of French
+hospitality and enjoy French protection by stealth; she was not willing
+to go about in disguise, deceiving the government with a false pass and
+a borrowed name. She had the courage of truth and sincerity, and she
+resolved to say to the King of France that she had come, not to defy his
+decree of banishment by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing
+against his new crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
+forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no other
+means of saving her son; because she must pass through France with him
+in order to reach England.
+
+Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of men, had
+surrounded the new king almost entirely with the friends and servants
+of the emperor and of the Duchess of St. Leu. But, in order not to
+excite suspicion against these, Hortense now addressed herself to him
+with whom she had the slightest acquaintance and whose devotion to the
+Orleans family was too well known to be called in doubt by her
+undertaking. Hortense therefore addressed herself to M. de Houdetot, the
+adjutant of the king, or rather, she caused her friend Mlle. de Massuyer
+to write to him. She was instructed to inform the count that she had
+come to Paris with an English family, and was the bearer of a commission
+from the Duchess of St. Leu to M. de Houdetot.
+
+M. de Houdetot responded to her request, and came to the _Hôtel de
+Hollande_ to see Mlle. Massuyer. With surprise and emotion, he
+recognized in the supposititious English lady the Duchess of St. Leu,
+who was believed by all the world to be on the way to Malta, and for
+whom her friends (who feared the fatigue of so long a journey would be
+too much for Hortense in her weak state of health) had already taken
+steps to obtain for her permission to pass through France on her way
+to England.
+
+Hortense informed Count Houdetot of the last strokes of destiny that had
+fallen upon her, and expressed her desire to see the king, in order to
+speak with him in person about the future of her son.
+
+M. de Houdetot undertook to acquaint the king with her desire, and came
+on the following day to inform the duchess of the result of his mission.
+He told the duchess that the king had loudly lamented her boldness in
+coming to France, and the impossibility of his seeing her. He told her,
+moreover, that, as the king had a responsible ministry at his side, he
+had been compelled to inform the premier of her arrival, and that
+Minister Casimir Perrier would call on her during the day.
+
+A few hours later, Louis Philippe's celebrated minister arrived. He came
+with an air of earnest severity, as it were to sit in judgment upon the
+accused duchess, but her artless sincerity and her gentle dignity
+disarmed him, and soon caused him to assume a more delicate and
+polite bearing.
+
+"I well know," said Hortense in the course of the conversation, "I well
+know that I have broken a law, by coming hither; I fully appreciate the
+gravity of this offence; you have the right to cause me to be arrested,
+and it would be perfectly just in you to do so!"--Casimir Perrier shook
+his head slowly, and replied: "Just, no! Lawful, yes[63]!"
+
+[Footnote 63: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 110.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LOUIS PHILIIPE AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+The visit which Casimir Perrier had paid the duchess seemed to have
+convinced him that the fears which the king and his ministry had
+entertained had really been groundless, that the step-daughter of
+Napoleon had not come to Paris to conspire and to claim the still
+somewhat unstable throne of France for the Duke de Reichstadt or for
+Louis Napoleon, but that she had only chosen the way through France, in
+the anxiety of maternal love in order to rescue her son.
+
+In accordance with this conviction, Louis Philippe no longer considered
+it impossible to see the Duchess of St. Leu, but now requested her to
+call. Perhaps the king, who had so fine a memory for figures and
+money-matters, remembered that it had been Hortense (then still Queen of
+Holland) who, during the hundred days of the empire in 1815, had
+procured for the Duchess Orleans-Penthièvre, from the emperor,
+permission to remain in Paris and a pension of two hundred thousand
+francs per annum; that it had been Hortense who had done the same for
+the aunt of the present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in
+their joy over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written
+the duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
+assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable gratitude[64].
+Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of rewarding
+Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.
+
+[Footnote 64: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 185.]
+
+He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of her
+sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St. Leu to the
+Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl, as the
+step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as the wife of
+the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once more, a poor,
+nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded countenance, imploring a
+little toleration and protection of those to whom she had once accorded
+toleration and protection.
+
+Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the elegance and
+graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how to assume, and
+that had always been an inheritance of his house, with all the
+amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which he so well knew
+how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the point at once, he
+spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the duchess most, of the
+decree of banishment.
+
+"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile, and it is
+not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He assured her that
+this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte family was a heavy
+burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse himself for it by
+saying that the exile pronounced against the imperial family was only an
+article of the same law which the conventionists had abolished, and the
+renewal of which had been so vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it
+had seemed as though he had uttered a new decree of banishment, while in
+point of fact he had only renewed a law that had already existed under
+the consulate of Napoleon. "But," continued the king with exultation,
+"the time is no longer distant when there will be no more exiles; I will
+have none under my government!"
+
+Then, as if to remind the duchess that there had been exiles and
+decrees of banishment at all times, also under the republic, the
+consulate, and the kingdom, he spoke of his own exile, of the needy and
+humiliating situation in which he had found himself, and which had
+compelled him to hire himself out as a teacher and give instruction for
+a paltry consideration.
+
+The duchess had listened to the king with a gentle smile, and replied
+that she knew the story of his exile, and that it did him honor.
+
+Then the duchess informed the king that her son had accompanied her on
+her journey, and was now with her in Paris; she also told him that her
+son, in his glowing enthusiasm for his country, had written to the king,
+begging that he might be permitted to enter the army.
+
+"Lend me the letter," replied Louis Philippe; "Perrier shall bring it to
+me, and, if circumstances permit, I shall be perfectly willing to grant
+your son's request; and it will also give me great pleasure to serve you
+at all times. I know that you have legitimate claims on the government,
+and that you have appealed to the justice of all former ministries in
+vain. Write out a statement of all that France owes you, and send it _to
+me alone_. I understand business matters, and constitute myself from
+this time on your _chargé d'affaires_[65]. The Duke of Rovigo," he
+continued, "has informed me that the other members of the imperial
+family have similar claims. It will afford me great pleasure to be of
+assistance to all of you, and I shall interest myself particularly for
+the Princess de Montfort[66]."
+
+[Footnote 65: The king's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 201.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The Princess de Montfort was the wife of Jerome, the
+sister of the King of Würtemberg, and a cousin of the Emperor
+of Russia.]
+
+Hortense had listened to the king, her whole face radiant with delight.
+The king's beneficent countenance, his friendly smile, his hearty and
+cordial manner, dispelled all doubt of his sincerity in Hortense's mind.
+She believed in his goodness and in his kindly disposition toward
+herself; and, in her joyous emotion, she thanked him with words of
+enthusiasm for his promised benefits, never doubting that it was his
+intention to keep his word.
+
+"Ah, sire!" she exclaimed, "the entire imperial family is in misfortune,
+and you will have many wrongs to redress. France owes us all a great
+deal, and it will be worthy of you to liquidate these debts."
+
+The king declared his readiness to do every thing. He who was so fond of
+taking in millions and of speculating, smilingly promised, in the name
+of France, to disburse millions, and to pay off the old state debt!
+
+The duchess believed him. She believed in his protestations of
+friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct her
+to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame Adelaide with
+the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in the course of the
+conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her cordial disposition. She
+asked the duchess how long she expected to remain in Paris, and when the
+latter replied that she intended remaining three days longer, Madame
+exclaimed, in a tone of anxious dismay: "So long! Three days still! And
+there are so many Englishmen here who have seen your son in Italy, and
+might recognize you here!"
+
+But Fate itself seemed to delay the departure of the duchess and her
+son. On returning home from her visit to the Tuileries, she found her
+son on his bed in a violent fever, and the physician who had been called
+in declared that he was suffering from inflammation of the throat.
+
+Hortense was to tremble once more for the life of a son, and this son
+was the last treasure Fate had left her.
+
+Once more the mother sat at the bedside of her son, watching over him,
+lovingly, day and night. That her son's life might be preserved was now
+her only wish, her only prayer; all else became void of interest, and
+was lost sight of. She only left her son's side when Casimir Perrier
+came, as he was in the habit of doing daily, to inquire after her son's
+condition in the name of the king, and to request the duchess to name
+the amount of her claims against France, and to impart to him all her
+wishes with regard to her future. Hortense now had but one ardent
+wish--the recovery of her son; and her only request was, that she might
+be permitted to visit the French baths of the Pyrenees during the
+summer, in order to restore her failing health.
+
+The minister promised to procure this permission of the king, and of the
+Chambers, that were soon to be convened. "In this way we shall gradually
+become accustomed to your presence," observed Casimir Perrier. "As far
+as you are personally concerned, we shall be inclined to throw open the
+gates of the country to you. But with your son it is different, his name
+will be a perpetual obstacle in his way. If he should really desire at
+any time to take service in the army, it would be, above all, necessary
+that he should lay aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the
+wishes of foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties,
+that a war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change his
+name, if--"
+
+But now the duchess, her cheeks glowing, blushing with displeasure and
+anger, interrupted him. "What!" exclaimed she, "lay aside the noble name
+with which France may well adorn itself, conceal it as though we had
+cause to be ashamed of it?"
+
+Beside herself with anger, regardless, in her agitation, even of the
+suffering condition of her son, she hastened to his bedside, to inform
+him of the proposition made to her by Louis Philippe's minister.
+
+The prince arose in his couch, his eyes flaming, and his cheeks burning
+at the same time with the fever-heat of disease and of anger.
+
+"Lay aside my name!" he exclaimed. "Who dares to make such a proposition
+to me? Let us think of all these things no more, mother. Let us go back
+to our retirement. Ah, you were right, mother: our time is passed, or it
+has not yet come!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS FROM PARIS.
+
+Excitement had made the patient worse, and caused his fever to return
+with renewed violence. Hortense was now inseparable from his bedside;
+she herself applied ice to his burning throat, and assisted in applying
+the leeches ordered by the physician. But this continuous anxiety and
+excitement, all these troubles of the present, and sad remembrances of
+the past, had at last exhausted the strength of the delicate woman; the
+flush of fever now began to show itself on her cheeks also, and the
+physician urged her to take daily exercise in the open air if she
+desired to avoid falling ill.
+
+Hortense followed his advice. In the evening twilight, in plain attire,
+her face concealed by a heavy black veil, she now daily quitted her
+son's bedside, and went out into the street for a walk, accompanied by
+the young Marquis Zappi. No one recognized her, no one greeted her, no
+one dreamed that the veiled figure that walked so quietly and shyly was
+she who, as Queen of Holland, had formerly driven through these same
+streets in gilded coaches, hailed by the joyous shouts of the people.
+
+But, in these wanderings through Paris, Hortense also lived in her
+memories only. She showed the marquis the dwelling she had once
+occupied, and which had for her a single happy association: her sons had
+been born there. With a soft smile she looked up at the proud _façade_
+of this building, the windows of which were brilliantly illumined, and
+in whose parlors some banker or ennobled provision-dealer was now
+perhaps giving a ball; pointing to these windows with her slender white
+hand, she said: "I wished to see this house, in order to reproach myself
+for having been unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the
+midst of so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of
+the misfortune that was one day to come upon me[67]."
+
+[Footnote 67: The duchess's own words: see Voyage, etc., p. 225.]
+
+She looked down again and passed on, to seek the houses of several
+friends, of whom she knew that they had remained faithful; heavily
+veiled and enveloped in her dark cloak she stood in front of these
+houses, not daring to acquaint her friends with her presence, contented
+with the sweet sense of being near them!
+
+When, after having strengthened her heart with the consciousness of
+being near friends, she passed on through the streets, in which she, the
+daughter of France, was now unknown, homeless, and forgotten!--no, not
+forgotten!--as she chanced to glance in at a store she was just passing,
+she saw in the lighted window her own portrait at the side of that of
+the emperor.
+
+Overcome by a sweet emotion, Hortense stood still and gazed at these
+pictures. The laughing, noisy crowd on the sidewalk passed on, heedless
+of the shrouded woman who stood there before the shop-window, gazing
+with tearful eyes at her own portrait. "It seems we are still
+remembered," whispered she, in a low voice. "Those who wear crowns are
+not to be envied, and should not lament their loss; but is it possible
+that the love of the people, to receive which is so sweet, has not yet
+been wholly withdrawn from us?"
+
+The profound indifference with which France had accepted the exile of
+the Bonapartes had grieved her deeply. She had only longed for some
+token of love and fidelity in order that she might go back into exile
+consoled and strengthened. And now she found it. France proved to her
+through these portraits that she was not forgotten.
+
+Hortense stepped with her companion into the store to purchase the
+portraits of herself and of the emperor; and when she was told that
+these portraits were in great demand, and that many of them were sold to
+the people, she hardly found strength to repress the tears of blissful
+emotion that rose from her heart to her eyes. She took the portraits and
+hastened home, to show them to her son and to bring to him with them the
+love-greetings of France. While the duchess, her thoughts divided
+between the remembrances of the past and the cares and troubles of the
+present, had been sojourning in Paris for twelve days, all the papers
+were extolling the heroism of the duchess in having saved her son, and
+of her having embarked at Malta in order to take him to England.
+
+Even the king's ministerial council occupied itself with this matter,
+and thought it proper to make representations to his majesty on the
+subject. Marshal Sebastiani informed the king that the Duchess of St.
+Leu, to his certain knowledge, had landed at Corfu. With lively
+interest he spoke of the fatiguing journey at sea that the duchess would
+be compelled to make, and asked almost timidly if she might not be
+permitted to travel through France.
+
+The king's countenance assumed an almost sombre look, and he replied,
+dryly: "Let her continue her journey." Casimir Perrier bowed his head
+over the paper that lay before him, in order to conceal his mirth, and
+minister Barthe availed himself of the opportunity to give a proof of
+his eloquence and of his severity, by observing that a law existed
+against the duchess, and that a law was a sacred thing that no one
+should be permitted to evade.
+
+But the presence of the duchess, although kept a secret, began to cause
+the king and his premier Casimir Perrier more and more uneasiness. The
+latter had already once informed her through M. de Houdetot that her
+departure was absolutely necessary and must take place at once, and he
+had only been moved to consent to her further sojourn by the condition
+of the prince, whose inflammation of the throat had rendered a second
+application of leeches necessary.
+
+They were now, however, on the eve of a great and dangerous day, of the
+5th of May[68]. The people of Paris were strangely moved, and the new
+government saw with much apprehension the dawn of this day of such great
+memories for France. There seemed to be some justification for this
+apprehension. Since the break of day, thousands of people had flocked to
+the column on the _Place Vendôme_. Silently and gravely they approached
+the monument, in order to adorn with wreaths of flowers the eagles, or
+to lay them at the foot of the column, and then to retire mournfully.
+
+[Footnote 68: The anniversary of Napoleon's death.]
+
+Hortense stood at the window of her apartment, looking on with folded
+hands and tears of bliss at the impressive and solemn scene that was
+taking place on the _Place Vendôme_ beneath, when suddenly a violent
+knocking was heard at her door, and M. de Houdetot rushed in, a pale and
+sorrowful expression on his countenance.
+
+"Duchess," said he breathlessly, "you must depart immediately, without
+an hour's delay! I am ordered to inform you of this. Unless the life of
+your son is to be seriously endangered, you must leave at once!"
+
+Hortense listened to him tranquilly. She almost pitied the king--the
+government--to whom a weak woman and an invalid youth could cause such
+fear. How great must this fear be, when it caused them to disregard all
+the laws of hospitality and of decency! What had she done to justify
+this fear? She had not addressed herself to the people of France, in
+order to obtain help and protection for her son--for the nephew of the
+emperor; cautiously and timidly she had concealed herself from the
+people, and, far from being disposed to arouse or agitate her country,
+she had only made herself known to the King of France in order to
+solicit protection and toleration at his hands.
+
+She was distrusted, in spite of this candor; and her presence, although
+known to no one, awakened apprehensions in those in authority. Hortense
+pitied them; not a word of complaint or regret escaped her lips. She
+sent for her physician at once; and, after informing him that she must
+necessarily depart for London, she asked him if such a journey would
+endanger her son's life. The physician declared that, while he could
+have desired a few days more of repose, the prince would nevertheless,
+with proper care and attention, be able to leave on the following day.
+
+"Inform the king that I shall depart to-morrow," said Hortense; and,
+while M. de Houdetot was hastening to the king with this welcome
+intelligence, the duchess was making preparations for the journey, which
+she began with her son early on the following morning.
+
+In four days they reached Calais, where they found the ship that was to
+convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to leave her
+country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once more driven out,
+and condemned to live in a foreign country! Because the French people
+still refused to forget their emperor, the French kings hated and feared
+the imperial family. Under the old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis
+Philippe, who had attained his crown through the people, felt that it
+was necessary to flatter the people, and show some consideration for
+their sympathies. He declared to the people that he entertained the most
+profound admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree
+of banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the _Vendôme_
+column, with its bronze statue of the emperor, should be adorned, and at
+the same time his decree banished the daughter and the nephew of the
+emperor from France, and drove them back into a foreign country.
+
+Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she was
+leaving her country--the country in which she had friends whom she had
+not seen again; the country in which lay her mother's grave, which she
+had not dared to visit; and, finally, the grave of her son! She once
+more left behind her all the remembrances of her youth--all the places
+she had loved; and her regret and her tears made known how dear these
+things still were to her; that the banished and homeless one was still
+powerless to banish the love of country from her heart, and that France
+was still her home!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+PILGRIMAGE THROUGH FRANCE.
+
+The sojourn of the Duchess of St. Leu in England where she arrived with
+her son after a stormy passage, was for both a succession of triumphs
+and ovations. The high aristocracy of London heaped upon her proofs of
+esteem, of reverence, and of love; every one seemed anxious to atone for
+the severity and cruelty with which England had treated the emperor, by
+giving proofs of their admiration and respect for his step-daughter. All
+these proud English aristocrats seemed desirous of proving to the
+duchess and her son that they were not of the same disposition as Hudson
+Lowe, who had slowly tormented the chained lion to death with petty
+annoyances.
+
+The Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Holland, and Lady Grey, in
+particular, were untiring in their efforts to do the honors of their
+country to Hortense, and to show her every possible attention. But
+Hortense declined their proffered invitations. She avoided all
+publicity; she feared, on her own and her son's account, that the tattle
+of the world and the newspapers might once more draw down upon her the
+distrust and ill-will of the French government. She feared that this
+might prevent her returning with her son, through France, to her quiet
+retreat on the Lake of Constance, in Switzerland, to her charming
+Arenenberg, where she had passed so many delightful and peaceful years
+of repose and remembrance.
+
+Hortense was right. Her sojourn in England excited, as soon as it became
+known, in every quarter, care, curiosity, and disquiet. All parties were
+seeking to divine the duchess's intention in residing in London. All
+parties were convinced that she entertained plans that might endanger
+and frustrate their own. The Duchess de Berri, who resided in Bath, had
+come to London as soon as she heard of the arrival of the Duchess of St.
+Leu, in order to inquire into Hortense's real intention. The bold and
+enterprising Duchess de Berri was preparing to go to France, in order
+to call the people to arms for herself and son, to hurl Louis Philippe
+from his usurped throne, and to restore to her son his rightful
+inheritance. They, therefore, thought it perfectly natural that Hortense
+should entertain similar plans for her son; that she, too, should
+purpose the overthrow of the French king in order to place her own son,
+or the son of the emperor, the Duke de Reichstadt, on the throne.
+
+On the other hand, it had been endeavored to persuade Prince Leopold, of
+Coburg, to whom the powers of Europe had just offered the crown of
+Belgium, that the Duchess of St. Leu had come to England in order to
+possess herself of Belgium by a _coup d'état_, and to proclaim Louis
+Napoleon its king. But this wise and magnanimous prince laughed at these
+intimations. He had known the duchess in her days of magnificence, and
+he now hastened to lay the same homage at the foot of the homeless woman
+that he had once devoted to the adored and powerful Queen of Holland. He
+called on the duchess, conversed with her of her beautiful and brilliant
+past, and told her of the hopes which he himself entertained for the
+future. Deeply bowed down by the death of his beloved wife, Princess
+Charlotte of England, it was his purpose to seek consolation in his
+misfortune by striving to make his people happy. He had therefore
+accepted the crown tendered him by the people, and was on the point of
+departing for Belgium.
+
+While taking leave of the duchess, after a long and cordial
+conversation, he remarked, with a gentle smile: "I trust you will not
+take my kingdom away from me on your journey through Belgium?"
+
+While the new government of France, as well as the exiled Bourbons,
+suspected the Duchess of St. Leu and her son of entertaining plans for
+the subversion of the French throne, the imperialists and republicans
+were hoping that Hortense's influence might be exerted upon the
+destinies of France. Everywhere in France as well as in England, the
+people were of the opinion that the new throne of Louis Philippe had no
+vitality, because it had no support in the heart of the people. The
+partisans of the Bourbons believed that France longed for the grandson
+of St. Louis, for its hereditary king, Henry V.; the imperialists were
+convinced that the new government was about to be overthrown, and that
+France was more anxious than ever to see the emperors son, Napoleon II.,
+restored. The republicans, however, distrusted the people and the army,
+and began to perceive that they could only attain the longed-for
+republican institutions under a Bonaparte. They therefore sent their
+secret emissaries as well to the Duke de Reichstadt as to
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+The Duke de Reichstadt, to whom these emissaries proposed that he should
+come to France and present himself to the people, replied: "I cannot go
+to France as an adventurer; let the nation call me, and I shall find
+means to get there."
+
+To the propositions made to him, Louis Napoleon replied that he belonged
+to France under all circumstances; that he had proved this by asking
+permission to serve France, but he had been rejected. It would not
+become him to force to a decision by a _coup d'état_ the nation whose
+decrees he would ever hold sacred.
+
+Hortense regarded these efforts of the imperialists and of the
+republicans to win her son to their purposes with a sorrowful and
+anxious heart. She hoped and longed for nothing more than the privilege
+of living in retirement with her memories; she felt exhausted and
+sobered by the few steps she had already taken into the great world;
+she, who had ever felt the most tender sympathy for the misfortunes of
+others, and the most ardent desire to alleviate them--she had nowhere
+found in her misfortune any thing but injustice, indifference,
+and calumny.
+
+Hortense longed to be back at Arenenberg, in her Swiss mountains.
+Thither she desired to return with her son, in order that she might
+there dream with him of the brilliant days that had been, and sing with
+him the exalted song of her remembrances! If the French government
+should permit her to journey with her son through France, she could
+easily and securely reach the Swiss Canton of Thurgau, where her little
+estate, Arenenberg, lay under the protection of the republic; the
+daughter of the emperor would there be certain to find peace and repose!
+
+The duchess there wrote to M. de Houdetot, begging him to procure for
+her from the French government a passport, permitting her to travel
+through France under some assumed name. It was promised her after long
+hesitation, but under the condition that she should not commence her
+journey until after July, until after the first anniversary of the
+coronation of Louis Philippe.
+
+Hortense agreed to this, and received on the first of August a passport,
+which permitted her, as Madame Arenenberg, to pass through France with
+her son in order to return to her estate in Switzerland.
+
+It was at first the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the unquiet
+movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey through
+Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and uninterested
+demeanor, that she had no share whatever in these movements and riots.
+
+But, on informing Louis Napoleon of her intention, he exclaimed, with
+sparkling eyes: "If we go to Paris, and if I should see the people
+sabred before my eyes, I shall not be able to resist the inclination to
+place myself on its side[69]!"
+
+[Footnote 69: La Reine Hortense, p. 276.]
+
+Hortense clasped her son anxiously in her arms, as if to protect him
+from all danger, on her maternal heart. "We shall not go to Paris," said
+she, "we will wander through France, and pray before the monuments of
+our happiness!"
+
+On the 7th of August the Duchess of St. Leu left England with her son,
+Louis Napoleon, and landed after a pleasant passage at Boulogne.
+
+Boulogne was for Hortense the first monument of her happiness, at the
+foot of which she wished to pray! There, during the most brilliant
+period of the empire, she had attended the military _fêtes_, in the
+midst of which the emperor was preparing to go forth to encounter new
+dangers, and to reap, perhaps, new renown. A high column designated the
+place where these camp-festivals had once taken place. It had been
+erected under the empire, but under the restoration the name of Louis
+XVIII. had been inscribed on it.
+
+Accompanied by the prince, the Duchess of St. Leu ascended this column,
+in order to show him from its summit the beautiful and flourishing
+France, that had once been her own and through which they must now pass
+with veiled countenances and borrowed names. From there she pointed out
+to him the situation of the different camps, the location of the
+imperial tent, then the place where the emperor's throne had stood, and
+where he had first distributed crosses of the legion of honor among
+the soldiers.
+
+With a glowing countenance and in breathless attention, Louis Napoleon
+listened to his mother's narrative. Hortense, lost in her recollections,
+had not noticed that two other visitors, a lady and a gentleman, were
+now also on the platform and had listened to a part of her narrative. As
+the duchess ceased speaking, they approached to tell her with what deep
+interest they had listened to her narrative of the most glorious period
+of French history. They were a young married couple from Paris, and had
+much to relate concerning the parties who were now arrayed against each
+other in France, and who made the future of the country so uncertain.
+
+In return for Hortense's so eloquent description of the past, they now
+told her of a _bon mot_ of the present that was going the rounds of
+Parisian society. It was there said that the best means of satisfying
+everybody and all parties would be, to convert France into a republic
+and to give it three consuls, the Duke of Reichstadt, the Duke of
+Orleans, and the Duke of Bordeaux. "But," added they, "it might easily
+end in the first consul's driving out the other two, and making
+himself emperor."
+
+Hortense found the courage to answer this jest with a smile, but she
+hastened to leave the place and to get away from the couple, who had
+perhaps recognized her, and told them of the _bon mot_ with a purpose.
+
+Sadly and silently, mother and son returned to their hotel, which was
+situated on the sea-side, and commanded a fine view of the surging,
+foaming waters of the channel and of the lofty column of the empire.
+
+They both stepped out on the balcony. It was a beautiful evening; the
+setting sun shed its purple rays over the surface of the sea. Murmuring
+and in melodious _tace_ the foaming waves rolled in upon the beach; on
+another side, the lofty column, glowing in the light of the setting sun,
+towered aloft like a pillar of fire, a memorial monument of fire!
+
+Hortense, who for some time had been silently gazing, first at the
+column, then at the sea, now turned with a sad smile to her son.
+
+"Let us spend an hour with recollections of the past," said she. "In the
+presence of this foaming sea and of this proud column, I will show you
+a picture of the past. Do you wish to see it?"
+
+His gaze fastened on the imperial column, Louis Napoleon silently nodded
+assent.
+
+Hortense went to her room, and soon returned to the balcony with a book,
+bound in red velvet. Often, during the quiet days of Arenenberg, the
+prince had seen her writing in this book, but never had Hortense yielded
+to his entreaties and permitted him to read any part of her memoirs.
+Unsolicited it was her intention to unfold before him to-day a brilliant
+picture; in view of the sad and desolate present, she wished to portray
+to him the bright and glittering past, perhaps only for the purpose of
+entertaining him, perhaps in order to console him with the hope that all
+that is passes away, and that the present would therefore also come to
+an end, and that which once was, again become reality for him, the heir
+of the emperor.
+
+She seated herself at her son's side, on a little sofa that stood on the
+balcony, and, opening her book, began to read.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FRAGMENT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+"The emperor had returned from Italy. The beautiful ceremony of the
+distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honor had taken place
+before his departure, and I had been present on the occasion; the
+emperor now repaired to Boulogne, in order to make a second
+distribution of the order in the army on his birthday. He had made my
+husband general of the army of the reserve, and sent him a courier, with
+the request that he should come with me and our son to the camp at
+Boulogne. My husband did not wish to interrupt the baths he was taking
+at St. Amand, but he requested me to go to Boulogne, to spend a week
+with the emperor.
+
+"The emperor resided at Boulogne in a little villa called _Pont de
+Brigue_. His sister, Caroline, and Murat, lived in another little villa
+near by. I lived with them, and every day we went to dine with the
+emperor. During two years, our troops had been concentrating in full
+view of England, and every one expected an attack. The camp at Boulogne
+was erected on the sea-side, and resembled a long and regularly-built
+city. Each hut had a little garden, flowers, and birds. In the middle of
+the camp, on an elevation, stood the emperor's tent; near by, that of
+Marshal Berthier. All the men-of-war on the water were drawn up in a
+line, only waiting the signal of departure. In the distance we could see
+England, and its beautiful ships that were cruising along the coast
+seemed to form an impenetrable barrier. This grand spectacle gave us for
+the first time an illustration of an unknown, hitherto not-dreamed-of
+power that stood opposed to us. Here every thing was calculated to
+excite the imagination. This boundless sea might soon transform itself
+into a battle-field, and swallow up the _élite_ of the two greatest
+nations. Our troops, proud in the feeling that there were no obstacles
+for them, made impatient by two years' repose, glowing with energy and
+bravery, already imagined themselves to have attained the opposite
+coast. When one considered their bravery and confidence, success seemed
+certain; but when the eye turned to the impenetrable forest of masts on
+the hostile ships, a feeling of anxiety and fear suddenly took
+possession of the heart. And yet nothing seemed to be wanting to the
+expedition but a favorable wind.
+
+"Of all the homage that a woman can receive, military homage has in the
+highest degree the chivalrous character, and it is impossible not to
+feel flattered by it.
+
+"There could not be any thing more delightful or imposing than the
+homage of which I was here the object, and it was only here that it made
+any impression on me.
+
+"The emperor gave me as an escort his equerry, General Defrance.
+Whenever I approached a camp division, the guard was called out and
+presented arms.
+
+"I had interceded for several soldiers who were undergoing punishment
+for breaches of discipline, and was on this account received everywhere
+with the liveliest enthusiasm. The entire mounted general staff escorted
+my carriage, and my approach was everywhere hailed by brilliant music.
+It was on such an occasion that I saw for the first time the urn which a
+grenadier wore attached to his belt; I was told that the emperor, in
+order to do honor to the memory of the gallant Latour d'Auvergne[70],
+had caused his heart to be enclosed in a leaden casket, which he had
+intrusted to the oldest soldier of the regiment, commanding that his
+name should always be called at the roll-call, as though he were
+present. He who bore the heart replied: 'Dead on the field of honor.'
+
+[Footnote 70: Latour d'Auvergne, a descendant of the celebrated Turenne,
+was known and honored throughout the whole army on account of the
+lion-hearted courage which he had exhibited on so many occasions. As he
+invariably declined the many advancements and honors that were tendered
+him, Napoleon appointed him first grenadier of the army. He fell in the
+action at Neuburg, and the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais,
+afterward caused a monument to be erected there in his memory.]
+
+"One day, a breakfast was given me at the camp of Ambleteuse. I desired
+to go by water, and, notwithstanding a contrary wind, the admiral took
+me. I saw the English ships, and we passed so near them, that they might
+easily have captured our yacht. I also visited the Dutch fleet commanded
+by Admiral Versuelt, where I was received with great applause, the
+sailors little dreaming that I would be their queen within the space of
+a year[71].
+
+[Footnote 71: In order to reach the harbor of Ambleteuse to which they
+had been assigned, the Dutch had first been compelled to do battle with
+the English fleet, and in this combat they had acquitted themselves with
+the greatest honor.]
+
+"On another occasion, the emperor ordered a review. The English, who
+felt disquieted, by the appearance of so many troops drawn up before
+them, approached nearer and nearer to our coasts, and even fired a few
+cannon-shots at us; the emperor was at the head of his French columns
+when they replied to these shots, and was thus placed between two fires.
+As we had followed him, we were now compelled to remain at his side. To
+his uncle's great joy, my son exhibited no symptom of fear whatever. But
+the generals trembled at seeing the emperor exposed to such danger. The
+ramrod of some awkward soldier might prove as dangerous as a ball. In
+the midst of this imposing spectacle, I was struck with astonishment at
+the contrast presented by the troops under different circumstances. When
+drawn up in line of battle, they glowed with gallantry and
+determination, but, in the days of repose, they resembled well-behaved
+children, who could amuse themselves with a flower or a bird. The most
+daring warrior was then often converted into the most diligent and
+submissive scholar.
+
+"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent, the
+grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several songs, and
+came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young girls. In the
+most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song full of the fiercest
+and most daring threats against England.
+
+"From the emperor's parlor we often saw the soldiers of his guard
+assemble on the grass-plot before the castle; one of them would play the
+violin and instruct his comrades in dancing. The beginners would study
+the '_jétés_' and '_assemblés_' with the closest attention; the more
+advanced ones would execute a whole contredance. From behind the
+window-blinds we watched them with the greatest pleasure. The emperor,
+who often surprised us at this occupation, would laugh with us and
+rejoice at the innocent amusements of his soldiers.
+
+"Was this project of a landing in England really intended? Or was it
+the emperor's purpose by these enormous preparations to divert attention
+from other points, and fix it on this one only? Even to-day this is a
+question which I cannot venture to decide; here, as elsewhere, I only
+report what I have seen.
+
+"Madame Ney also gave me a brilliant festival at Montreuil, where her
+husband the marshal was in command. During the forenoon the troops were
+manoeuvred before me, in the evening a ball took place. But this was
+suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that the emperor had
+just embarked.
+
+"A number of young officers, who had been present at the ball, rushed
+out on the road to Boulogne; I followed them with the rapidity of
+lightning, escorted as usual by General Defrance, who burned with
+impatience to be again at the emperor's side. I myself felt unutterable
+emotion at the prospect of witnessing so great an occurrence. I imagined
+myself observing the battle from the summit of the tower that stood near
+the emperor's tent; beholding our fleet advance and sink down into the
+waves, I shuddered in anticipation.
+
+"At last I arrived. I inquired after the emperor, and learned that he
+had actually attended the embarkation of all his troops during the
+night, but that he had just returned to his villa.
+
+"I did not see him until dinner, at which he asked Prince Joseph, who
+was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed in this
+pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the soldiers.
+Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed that a departure
+was really intended, and that the soldiers had doubted it so little that
+they had sold their watches. The emperor also often asked if the
+telegraph had not yet announced the approach of the French squadron; his
+adjutant, Lauriston, was with the squadron, and the emperor seemed only
+to be awaiting Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to
+set sail.
+
+"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired, and I
+took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and Dunkirk. I saw
+troops defiling before me everywhere; and with regret and fear I left
+this magnificent army, thinking that they might perhaps in a few days be
+exposed to the greatest dangers.
+
+"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage of our
+fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving in our
+neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the Rhine. Austria
+had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris, to see the emperor
+once more before his departure for Germany[72]."
+
+[Footnote 72: La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc., p. 278.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PILGRIM.
+
+On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son, in
+order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
+her memories.
+
+It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although banished
+and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she still stood
+on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living in a foreign land,
+in a land whose language was unknown to her, and whose people she could
+therefore not understand. Now, on this journey through France, she
+rejoiced once more in being able to understand the conversation of the
+people in the streets, and of the peasants in the fields. It was a
+sensation of mingled bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a
+stranger among this people, and it therefore now afforded her the
+greatest delight to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
+_naïve_ and artless words.
+
+As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in which she
+purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out into the streets
+on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into a booth, seated
+herself, and conversed with the people who came to the store to purchase
+their daily necessaries; on another occasion, she accosted a child on
+the street, kissed it, and inquired after its parents; then, again, she
+would converse with the peasants in the villages about their farms, and
+the prospects of a plentiful harvest. The _naïve_, strong, and healthy
+disposition of the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of
+a happy mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
+French people, to which they, though banished and cast off,
+still belonged.
+
+In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince Condé. The
+forests that stood in the neighborhood had once belonged to the queen,
+or rather they had been a portion of the appendage which the emperor,
+since the union of Holland and France, had set apart for her second son,
+Louis Napoleon. Hortense had never been in the vicinity, and could
+therefore visit the castle without fear of being recognized.
+
+They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the garden, who
+had been the former possessor of the great forests of Chantilly.
+
+"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense," replied the
+man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued to speak of her
+here for a long time; it was said that she was wandering about in the
+country in disguise, but for the last few years nothing has been heard
+of her, and I do not know what has become of her."
+
+"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad a smile
+that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with tears.
+
+From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine, for
+Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once seen in the
+days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These places now seemed
+as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How great the splendor that
+had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the emperor had visited the owner
+of the place in order to enjoy with him the delights of the chase! In
+the walks of the park, in which thousands of lamps had then shone, the
+grass now grew rankly; a miserable, leaky boat was now the only
+conveyance to the Poplar Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques,
+on whose monument Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names.
+Morfontaine appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in
+1815, and it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense
+had attended a magnificent festival given by Joseph Bonaparte, then its
+owner, to his imperial brother.
+
+In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful remembrances for
+Hortense, for here was situated the great college for the daughters of
+high military officers, of which Hortense had been the protectress. She
+dared not show herself, for she well knew that she was not forgotten
+here; here there were many who still knew and loved her, and she could
+only show herself to strangers. But she nevertheless visited the church,
+and descended with Louis Napoleon into the vaults. Louis XVIII. alone
+reposed in the halls which the empire had restored for the reception of
+the new family of rulers, adopted by France. Alas! he who built these
+halls, the Emperor Napoleon, now reposed under a weeping-willow on a
+desolate island in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him now
+occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus of the emperor.
+
+While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls, Hortense thought
+of the day on which she had come hither with the emperor to inspect the
+building of the church. And that time she had been ill and suffering,
+and with the fullest conviction she had said to her mother that she,
+Queen Hortense, would be the first that would be laid to rest in the
+vault of St. Denis. Now, after so many years, she descended into it
+living and had hardly a right to visit it.
+
+But there was another grave, another monument to her memories, beside
+which Hortense desired to pray. This was the grave of the Empress
+Josephine, in the church at Ruelle.
+
+With what emotions did she approach this place and kneel down beside the
+grave-mound! Of all that Josephine had loved, there remained only
+Hortense and her son, a solitary couple, who were now secretly visiting
+the place where Hortense's mother reposed. The number of flowers that
+adorned the monument proved that Josephine was at least resting in the
+midst of friends, who still held her memory sacred, and this was a
+consolation for her daughter.
+
+From Ruelle and its consecrated grave they wandered on to Malmaison.
+Above all, Hortense wished to show this palace to her son! It was from
+this place that Napoleon had departed to leave France forever! Here
+Hortense had had the pleasure of sweetening for him, by her tender
+sympathy, the moment when all the world had abandoned him--the moment
+when he fell from the heights of renown into the abyss of misfortune.
+But, alas! the poor queen was not even to have the satisfaction of
+showing to her son the palace, sacred to so many memories that had once
+been her own! The present owner had given strict orders to give
+admission to the palace only upon presentation of permits that must be
+obtained of him beforehand, and, as Hortense had none, her entreaties
+were all in vain.
+
+She was cruelly repelled from the threshold of the palace in which in
+former days she had been so joyfully received by her devoted friends
+and servants!
+
+Sorrowfully, her eyes clouded with tears, she turned away and returned
+to her hotel, leaning on her son's arm.
+
+In silence she seated herself at his side on the stone bench that stood
+before the house, and gazed at the palace in which she had spent such
+happy and momentous days, lost in the recollections of the past!
+
+"It is, perhaps, natural," she murmured in a low voice, "that absence
+should cause those, who have the happiness to remain in their homes, to
+forget us. But, for those who are driven out into foreign lands, the
+life of the heart stands still, and the past is all to them; to the
+exiled the present and the future are unimportant. In France every thing
+has progressed, every thing is changed, I alone am left behind, with my
+sentiments of unchangeable love and fidelity! Alas! how sorrowful and
+painful it is to be forgotten[73]! How--"
+
+Suddenly she was interrupted by the tones of a piano, that resounded in
+her immediate vicinity. Behind the bench on which they were sitting,
+were the windows of the parlor of the hotel. These windows were open,
+and each tone of the music within could be heard with the greatest
+distinctness.
+
+The playing was now interrupted by a female voice, which said: "Sing us
+a song, my daughter."
+
+"What shall I sing?" asked another and more youthful voice.
+
+"Sing the beautiful, touching song your brother brought you from Paris
+yesterday. The song of Delphine Gay, set to music by M. de Beauplan."
+
+"Ah, you mean the song about Queen Hortense, who comes to Paris as a
+pilgrim? You are right, mamma, it is a beautiful and touching song, and
+I will sing it!"
+
+And the young lady struck the keys more forcibly, and began to play the
+prelude.
+
+Outside on the stone bench sat she who was once Queen Hortense, but was
+now the poor, solitary pilgrim. Nothing remained to her of the glorious
+past, but her son, who sat at her side! Hand in hand, both breathless
+with emotion, both pale and tearful, they listened until the young girl
+concluded her touching song.
+
+[Footnote 73: The duchess's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p.
+305.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was once more
+in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking the Lake of
+Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic lake, with its
+island and its surrounding cities and villages.
+
+Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned its back
+on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny alike
+frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and the
+Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her residence
+in their territory--still had the courage to offer the Duchess of St.
+Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil of the little
+republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and distrust of the mighty
+could not drive her!
+
+In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a bleeding
+breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful blow, the loss
+of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and bowed down by the
+coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the cowardly fear of its
+egoism, had become faithless, even to the holiest and most imperishable
+of all religions, the religion of memory!
+
+How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned her! how
+many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour of peril!
+
+In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them all;
+and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied them! She
+had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her world--Arenenberg,
+in which her last and only happiness, her son, the heir of the imperial
+name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which was as a temple of memory, in
+which Hortense was the pious and believing priestess.
+
+At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her journey
+through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in the heroism
+of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The noblest womanhood, the
+most cultivated mind, the proudest and purest soul, speaks from out this
+book, with which Hortense has erected a monument to herself that is more
+imperishable than all the monuments of stone and bronze, for this
+monument speaks to the heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote
+this book with her heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her
+eyes; she concludes it with a touching appeal to the French people,
+which it may well be permitted us to repeat here; it is as follows:
+
+"The renewal of the law of exile, and the assimilation made between us
+and the Bourbons, testify to the sentiments and fears that are
+entertained respecting us. No friendly voice has been raised in our
+behalf; this indifference has doubled the bitterness of our banishment!
+May they, however, still be happy--those who forget! May they, above
+all, make France happy! This is my prayer!
+
+"As for the people, it will, if it remembers its glory, its grandeur,
+and the incessant care of which it was the object, ever hold our memory
+dear. This is my firm conviction, and this thought is the sweetest
+consolation of an exile, the sweetest consolation he can take with him
+to the grave[74]!"
+
+Hortense still lived a few years of peaceful tranquillity; far from all
+she loved--far also from the son who was her last hope, never dreaming
+that destiny had so brilliant a future in store for him, and that Louis
+Napoleon, whom the Bourbons had banished from France as a child, and the
+Orleans as a youth--that Louis Napoleon would one day be enthroned in
+Paris as emperor, while the Bourbons and Orleans languish in foreign
+lands as exiles!
+
+In the year 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Bonapartes, died!
+
+Weary, at last, of misfortune, and of the exile in which she languished,
+she bowed her head, and went home to her great dead--home to Napoleon
+and Josephine!
+
+[Footnote 74: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 324.]
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Mühlbach
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12019 ***
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+M&Uuml;HLBACH.</title>
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12019 ***</div>
+
+<a name="389.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/389.jpg"><img src="images/389.jpg"
+width="75%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the
+Sections.</b></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>QUEEN HORTENSE</h1>
+<h2>A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era</h2>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>L. M&Uuml;HLBACH</h2>
+<br>
+<h5>AUTHOR OF</h5>
+<h4>PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES,<br>
+JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,<br>
+MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.</h4>
+<br>
+<h5>TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY</h5>
+<h3>CHAPMAN COLEMAN</h3>
+<h4>1910</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_I.">BOOK I.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.1">I.--Days of Childhood.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.1">II.--The Prophecy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.1">III.--Consequences of the
+Revolution.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.1">IV.--General Bonaparte.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.1">V.--The Marriage.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.1">VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.1">VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.1">VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from
+Egypt.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_II.">BOOK II.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.2">I.--A First Love.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.2">II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.2">III--Consul and King.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.2">IV.--The Calumny.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.2">V.--King or Emperor.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.2">VI.--Napoleon's Heir.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.2">VII.--Premonitions.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.2">VIII.--The Divorce.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.2">IX.--The King of Holland.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.2">X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.2">XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of
+Violets.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.2">XII.--The Days of Misfortune.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.2">XIII.--The Allies in Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV.2">XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and
+Louise de Cochelet.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV.2">XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor
+Alexander.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI.2">XVI.--The New Uncles.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII.2">XVII.--Death of the Empress
+Josephine.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_III.">BOOK III.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE RESTORATION.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.3">I.--The Return of the
+Bourbons.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.3">II.--The Bourbons and the
+Bonapartes.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.3">III.--Madame de Sta&euml;l.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.3">IV.--Madame de Sta&euml;l's Return to
+Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.3">V.--Madame de Sta&euml;l's Visit to Queen
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.3">VI.--The Old and New Era.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.3">VII.--King Louis XVIII.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.3">VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.3">IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his
+Wife.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.3">X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.3">XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and
+Napoleon's Arrival.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.3">XII.--The Hundred Days.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.3">XIII.--Napoleon's Last
+Adieu.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_IV.">BOOK IV.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.4">I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.4">II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.4">III.--The Revolution of 1830.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.4">IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.4">V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.4">VI.--The Flight from Italy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.4">VII.--The Pilgrimage.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.4">VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.4">IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from
+Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.4">X.--Pilgrimage through France.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.4">XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.4">XII.--The Pilgrim.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.4">XIII.--Conclusion.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<center>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#389.jpg">General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of
+the Sections, <i>Frontispiece</i>.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#390.jpg">View of the Tuileries.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#391.jpg">Portrait of Queen Hortense.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#392.jpg">Portrait of Madame de Sta&euml;l.</a></li>
+</ul>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>QUEEN HORTENSE.</h2>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I."></a>BOOK I.</h2>
+<h3><i>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION.</i></h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.1"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says
+our great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss
+purchased with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far
+too costly.</p>
+<p>And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
+Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy?
+Now, let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have
+tasted felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is
+imperishable and eternal!"</p>
+<p>Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of
+an emperor to endure.</p>
+<p>In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune
+and with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother,
+she was not spared.</p>
+<p>A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic
+days was this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had
+descended from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign,
+exhausted and weary of life, found refuge at length in the grave,
+yet still survived among us as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen
+of nations, but the Queen of Flowers.</p>
+<p>The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's
+beautiful daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race,
+deny her when she was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful
+emperor, but merely the daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers
+the lovely Hortense continued to live on, and Gavarni, the great
+poet of the floral realm, has reared to her, as Hortensia, the
+Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his "<i>Fleurs
+Anim&eacute;es</i>." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of
+the Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of
+a half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris.
+Farther in the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the
+carved likeness of the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness
+reigns around the spot, but above it, in the air, hovers the
+imperial eagle. The imperial mantle, studded with its golden bees,
+undulates behind him, like the train of a comet; the dark-red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the golden cross, hangs around
+his neck, and in his beak he bears a full-blooming branch of the
+crown imperial.</p>
+<p>It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming
+picture of Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant
+that sweeps by us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow,
+when we scan the life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and
+meditate upon her destiny. She had known all the grandeur and
+splendor of earth, and had seen them all crumble again to dust. No,
+not all! Her ballads and poems remain, for genius needs no diadem
+to be immortal.</p>
+<p>When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she
+none the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her
+poems are sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness
+and full of impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance
+oversteps the bounds of womanly gentleness. Her musical
+compositions, too, are equally melodious and attractive to the
+heart. Who does not know the song, "<i>Va t'en, Guerrier</i>,"
+which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at Napoleon's
+request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of France
+once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
+march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same
+warlike harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the
+same distant destination. This ballad, written by Hortense,
+survived. At one time everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then,
+when the Bourbons had returned, the scarred and crippled veterans
+of the <i>Invalides</i> hummed it under their breath, while they
+whispered secretly to each other of the glory of <i>La Belle
+France</i>, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now gone forever.</p>
+<p>To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and
+mounts in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place
+Vend&ocirc;me. The bronze visage of the emperor seems to melt into
+a smile as these tremulous billows of melody go sweeping around his
+brow, and the Hortensias on the queen's grave raise dreamingly
+their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of
+the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth
+lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so
+holy a significance--holy because it is the master-chant of a
+religion which all men and all nations should revere--the "religion
+of our memories." Thus, this "<i>Va t'en, Guerrier</i>," which
+France now sings, resounds over the grave of the queen, like a
+salute of honor over the last resting-place of some brave
+soldier.</p>
+<p>She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable
+queen--but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of
+courage that belongs to woman--the courage to smile through her
+tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the
+doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken heart; her step-father,
+the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged lion, on a lone
+rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned kings and
+queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs, banished
+from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
+those to whom <i>they</i> had been clement, a little spot of earth,
+where, far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might
+live in quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their
+mighty sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy
+tale, which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to
+men and nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed
+stings, were eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned
+Napoleon race.</p>
+<p>Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia
+had the mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the
+contrary, to teach her children to love them and do good to them.
+The heart of the dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but
+she did not allow these wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her
+heart to harden under the broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to
+bleed. She cherished her bereavements and her wounds, and kept them
+open with her tears; but, even while she suffered measureless woes,
+it solaced her heart to relieve the woes and dry the tears of
+others. Thus was her life a constant charity; and when she died she
+could, like the Empress Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept
+much, but never have I made others weep."</p>
+<p>Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who,
+against the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful
+Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique.
+This alliance, which love alone had brought about, seemed destined,
+nevertheless, to no happy issue. While both were young, and both
+inexperienced, passionate, and jealous, both lacked the strength
+and energy requisite to restrain the wild impulses of their fiery
+temperaments within the cool and tranquil bounds of quiet married
+life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and
+tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor
+in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine was too innocent,
+too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all those things
+that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her husband
+an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered in
+the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be
+conceived, then, that such a state of things soon led to violent
+scenes and bitter grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable
+not to attract attention and admiration wherever she went, and she
+was not yet <i>blas&eacute;e</i> and hackneyed enough to take no
+pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and the admiration so
+universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part to win them.
+But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she required of her
+husband that these trifling outside coquetries should not disquiet
+him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose the most
+unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
+suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and
+both became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding
+the love they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts,
+had not their children rendered such a separation impossible. These
+children were a son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years
+younger than the boy. Both parents loved these children with
+passionate tenderness; and often when one of the stormy scenes at
+which we have hinted took place in the presence of the young
+people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress from little
+Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and mother, whose
+anger, after all, was but the result of excessive attachment.</p>
+<p>But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the
+moment arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his
+little sister in her efforts to soothe the irritation of her
+parents. The viscount had sent Eugene, who was now seven years of
+age, to a boarding-school; and little Hortense, quite disheartened
+by the absence of her brother, had no longer the means or the
+courage to allay the quarrels that raged between her parents, but
+would escape in terror and dismay, when they broke out, to some
+lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a misfortune, the
+extent of which her poor little childish heart could not yet
+estimate.</p>
+<p>In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young
+viscountess received a letter from Martinique. It was from her
+mother, Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her
+daughter the terrors of her lonely situation in her huge, silent
+residence, where there was no one around her but servants and
+slaves, whose singularly altered and insubordinate manner had, of
+late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her with secret
+apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her daughter
+to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the last
+few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
+dazzling youth.</p>
+<p>Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a
+hint from destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and
+resolved to end them forever, she took her little daughter,
+Hortense, then scarcely four years old, and with her sailed away
+from France, to seek beyond the ocean and in her mother's arms the
+new happiness of undisturbed tranquillity.</p>
+<p>But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The
+mutterings and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on
+all sides. A subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all
+lands; a dull thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were
+about to change into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that
+would dash to atoms, and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and
+fiery cinder-showers, the happiness and peace of all humanity. And,
+finally, this terrific crater did, indeed, open and hurl
+destruction and death on all sides, over the whole world,
+uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations, and
+silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
+echoes of its awful voice!</p>
+<p>This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most
+fearful explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole
+world shook and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious
+masses from beneath overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse
+the order of things and place the lowest where the highest had
+been. Even away in Martinique this social earthquake was felt,
+which had already, in France, flung out the bloody guillotine from
+its relentless crater. This guillotine had become the altar of the
+so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon this altar the
+intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new idol those
+who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by whose
+death they now believed that they could purchase freedom for
+evermore.</p>
+<p>"<i>Egalit&eacute;! fraternit&eacute;! libert&eacute;!</i>" Such
+was the battle-cry of this howling, murdering populace. Such were
+the three words which burned in blood-red letters of fire above the
+guillotine, and their mocking emblem was the glittering axe, that
+flashed down, to sever from their bodies the heads of the
+aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion represented in those
+three words, they would not recognize as brethren and equals, or
+admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this battle-cry of
+the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as Martinique,
+where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience to the
+point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
+equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They,
+at last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their
+masters, and the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of
+the whites served as the bridal torches to their espousal of
+liberty.</p>
+<p>The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes
+in which these firebrands fell.</p>
+<p>One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the
+flames, which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek
+of terror, she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in
+her arms from the couch where the child lay quietly slumbering,
+wrapped her in the bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire,
+from the house. She burst, with the lion-like courage of a mother,
+through the shouting, fighting crowds of soldiers and blacks
+outside, and fled, with all the speed of mortal terror, toward the
+harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready to weigh anchor. An
+officer, who at that moment was stepping into the small boat that
+was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young woman, as,
+holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with one
+last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with
+the deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both
+mother and child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then
+instantly put out from land, and bounded away over the billows with
+its lovely burden.</p>
+<p>The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping
+her child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel,
+climbed up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this
+moment all her thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and
+it was only when she had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed
+in the cabin and free from all danger--only after she had fulfilled
+all the duties of a mother, that the woman revived in her breast,
+and she cast shamed and frightened glances around her. Only
+half-clad, in light, fluttering night-clothes, without any other
+covering to her beautiful neck and bosom than her superb, luxuriant
+hair, which fell around her and partly hid them, like a thick black
+veil, stood the young Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais, in the
+midst of a group of gazing men!</p>
+<p>However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so
+soon as her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine
+eagerly requested to be taken back to land, in order that she might
+fly to her mother's assistance.</p>
+<p>But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to
+give the young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins
+who were burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells
+could be distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast,
+so far as the eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea,
+though, of flame and smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in
+long tongues of fire far against the sky. It was a terrible, an
+appalling spectacle; and Josephine fled from it to the bedside of
+her little sleeping daughter. Then, kneeling there by the couch of
+her child, she uplifted to heaven her face, down which the tears
+were streaming, and implored God to spare her mother.</p>
+<p>But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and
+farther away from this blazing coast.</p>
+<p>Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's
+burning home, which gradually grew less to her sight, then
+glimmered only like a tiny star on the distant horizon, and finally
+vanished altogether. With that last ray her childhood and past life
+had sunk forever in the sea, and a new world and a new life opened
+for both mother and child. The past was, like the ships of Cortez,
+burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light far away over into
+her future, and as Josephine stood there with her little Hortense
+in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island where her
+early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
+mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:</p>
+<p>"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all
+France will be at your feet. You will be greater there than a
+queen."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.1"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>THE PROPHECY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with
+her little daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her
+residence in a small dwelling. There she soon received the
+intelligence of the rescue of her mother, and of the
+re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In France, however, the
+revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the banner of the
+Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody shadow over
+Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in the
+evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
+that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at
+every door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in
+every family. In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all
+her earlier griefs, all the insults and humiliations to which she
+had been subjected by her husband; the old love revived in her
+breast, and, as it might well be that on the morrow death would
+come knocking at her own door, she wished to devote the present
+moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a reunion with her
+son.</p>
+<p>But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The
+viscount had felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an
+injury, too great an insult, to be now willing to consent to a
+reconciliation with his wife. Sympathizing friends arranged a
+meeting between them, without, however, previously informing the
+viscount of their design. His anger was therefore great when, on
+entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in response to that
+gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had so
+obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
+when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in
+silvery tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was
+now powerless to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his
+heart, and when the child, with a winning smile, entreated him to
+kiss her mamma as he had kissed her; when he saw the beautiful
+countenance of Josephine wet with tears; when he heard his father's
+voice saying, "My son, reconcile yourself with my daughter!
+Josephine is my daughter, and I would not call her so if she were
+unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son, Eugene, gazing at him
+wistfully, his head resting on his mother's shoulder, his heart
+relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he stepped forward
+to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful greeting of
+love, Josephine sank on his bosom.</p>
+<p>Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united
+in a closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to
+have spent their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear
+and cloudless. But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the
+black shadow of the revolution.</p>
+<p>Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the
+new legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position,
+in order to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue.
+With the rank of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the
+North, accompanied by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread
+premonition told her that she would never see the general again,
+and this premonition did not deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and
+insurrection not only raged among the people of Paris, but also in
+the army. The aristocrats, who were given over to the guillotine in
+Paris, were also regarded with distrust and hatred in the army, and
+Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry on the battle-field of
+Soissons, had been promoted to the position of commanding general,
+was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of France and of
+the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to Paris, and
+thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
+victims of the revolution lay in confinement.</p>
+<p>The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached
+Josephine, and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf.
+She mentally vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her
+children, or to die with him. She courageously confronted all
+dangers, all suspicions, and was happy when she found him in his
+prison, where she visited him, whispering words of consolation and
+hope in his ear.</p>
+<p>But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
+Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
+herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of
+an aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
+arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.</p>
+<p>Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
+prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only
+left their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all
+help, avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two
+children were threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger,
+for the estate of their parents had been confiscated, and, in the
+same hour in which Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances
+and doors of their dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left
+to find a sheltering roof for themselves. But yet they were not
+entirely helpless, not quite friendless, for a friend of Josephine,
+a Madame Ho1stein, had the courage to come to the rescue, and take
+the children into her own family.</p>
+<p>But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in
+order to avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who,
+coming from the scum of the people, were now the rulers of France.
+An imprudent word, a look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon,
+and render up to the guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this
+courageous friend of the two children. It was in itself a capital
+crime that she had taken the children of the accused into her
+house, and it was therefore necessary to adopt every means of
+conciliating the authorities. It was thought necessary that
+Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend the
+festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
+decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was
+never required to take an active part in these celebrations. She
+was not considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the
+people; she had not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a
+viscount, of an imprisoned <i>ci-devant.</i> Eugene had been
+apprenticed to a carpenter, and the son of the viscount was now
+often seen walking through the streets in a blouse, carrying a
+board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.</p>
+<p>While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary
+security, the future of their parents was growing darker and
+darker, and not only the life of the general, but also that of his
+wife, was now seriously endangered. Josephine had been removed from
+the prison of St. Pelagie to that of the Carmelites, and this
+brought her a step nearer the scaffold. But she did not tremble for
+herself, she thought only of her children and her husband; she
+wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she bribed her
+jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts to
+place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
+day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just
+been conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited
+for further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
+acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he
+already free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he
+were free, he would have found means to inform her of the fact; and
+if he were dead, his name would certainly have been mentioned in
+the list of the condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine
+passed the long day. Night came, but brought no rest for her and
+her companions in misery--the other occupants of the prison--who
+also looked death in the face, and who watched with her throughout
+the long night.</p>
+<p>The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select.
+There were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de
+Maille, whose seventeen-years-old daughter had just been
+guillotined; there was the Marquise de Cr&eacute;qui, the
+intellectual lady who has often been called the last marquise of
+the <i>ancien r&eacute;gime</i>, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
+the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
+aristocratic standpoint. There was Abb&eacute; T&eacute;xier, who,
+when the revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he
+had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution,
+replied: "Will you see any better after having hung me to the
+lantern?" And there was yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of
+Cagliostro, who, like his master, could read the future, and with
+the assistance of a decanter full of water and a "dove," that is,
+an innocent young girl of less than seven, could solve the
+mysteries of fate.</p>
+<p>To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself
+after this day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of
+the fate of her husband.</p>
+<p>In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the
+prison now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an
+assignat of fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had
+consented that his little six-years-old daughter should serve the
+Grand Cophta as "dove," and had made all other preparations. A
+table stood in the middle of the hall, on which was a decanter
+filled with clear, fresh water, around which were three candles in
+the form of a triangle, and placed as near the decanter as
+possible, in order that the dove should be able to see the better.
+The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought from her bed
+in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and behind
+her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
+the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
+ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their
+aristocratic manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly
+observant of etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the
+honor of the <i>tabouret</i> in the Tuileries, were here accorded
+the same precedence, and all possible consideration shown them.</p>
+<p>On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her
+large, dark eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression,
+stood the unhappy Josephine, and, at some distance behind the
+ladies, the jailer with his wife.</p>
+<p>Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and
+cried in a loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"</p>
+<p>The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
+decanter.</p>
+<p>"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look
+into the prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"</p>
+<p>"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot
+lies a young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man,
+writing on a sheet of paper that lies on a large book."</p>
+<p>"Can you read?"</p>
+<p>"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the
+paper."</p>
+<p>"The one who sleeps?"</p>
+<p>"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing
+something on the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair;
+now he opens a little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it;
+they are assignats, he counts them and then puts them back in the
+pocket-book. Now he rises and walks softly, softly."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest
+noise as yet, have you?"</p>
+<p>"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."</p>
+<p>"What do you see now?"</p>
+<p>"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be
+weeping."</p>
+<p>"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in
+the pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."</p>
+<p>"Of what color is this coat?"</p>
+<p>"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk
+and covered with shining buttons."</p>
+<p>"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed,
+child."</p>
+<p>He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The
+little girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her
+parents, who led her from the hall.</p>
+<p>"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta,
+addressing Josephine.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing
+for death<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_1">[1]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
+Cr&eacute;qui, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol.
+vi., p. 238.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received
+a package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La
+Force, named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General
+Beauharnais and had found the package and the letter, addressed to
+the duchess, in his pocket on the morning of the execution of the
+general.</p>
+<p>In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver
+to Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last
+adieus to wife and children.</p>
+<p>This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could
+bequeath to his Josephine and her unhappy children!</p>
+<p>Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and
+his last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of
+blood gushing from her mouth.</p>
+<p>Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her
+the most tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a
+physician should be called.</p>
+<p>"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the
+best physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will
+restore to him his wife."</p>
+<p>This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered
+from her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of
+Terror. This was the herald of certain death, and she courageously
+prepared for the grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children
+she must leave behind.</p>
+<p>A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
+revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as
+there was no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss
+which themselves had digged.</p>
+<p>The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty
+thousands of the already condemned victims of the revolution.</p>
+<p>Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to
+liberty, and could now hasten to her children, but she came back to
+them as a poor widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible
+republic" were on hers and her children's property as well as on
+that of all other aristocrats.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.1"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an
+end, and a milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre
+over the poor land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death.
+It was no longer a capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to
+be better dressed than the <i>sans-culottes</i>, to wear no
+Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the emigrants. The guillotine,
+which had ruled over Paris during two years of blood and tears, now
+rested from its horrid work, and allowed the Parisians to think of
+something else besides making their wills and preparing for
+death.</p>
+<p>Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were
+disposed to make the most of this release from the fear of
+immediate death, and to enjoy themselves to the utmost while they
+could.</p>
+<p>They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once
+more; so long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently
+longed for amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris,
+who had been dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the
+reins had been torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins
+again, and reconquer the position from which the storm-wind of the
+revolution had hurled them.</p>
+<p>Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five
+directors who now swayed the destinies of France; Madame
+R&eacute;camier, the friend of all the eminent and distinguished
+men of that period; and Madame de Sta&euml;l, the daughter of
+Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose government
+had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris its
+drawing-rooms, its reunions, its <i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, its fashions,
+and its luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the
+Church had not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief
+in a Supreme Being was already re-established. Robespierre had
+already been bold enough to cause the inscription, "There is a
+Supreme Being," to be placed over the altars of the churches that
+had been converted into "Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a
+Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who had first acknowledged its
+existence, was soon to experience in himself that such was the
+case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by them with
+desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the head of
+the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell a
+prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
+existence. While engaged in the H&ocirc;tel de Ville in signing
+death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the
+guillotine, he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards,
+who had stormed the gates and penetrated into the building, and the
+attempt to blow out his brains with his pistol miscarried.
+Bleeding, his jaw shattered by the bullet, he was dragged before
+Fouquier-Tainville to receive his sentence, and to be conducted
+thence to the scaffold. In order that the proceeding should be
+attended with all formalities, he was, however, first conducted to
+the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety was then
+sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
+bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the
+scaffold, the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged.
+Like a bundle of rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large
+table that stood in the middle of the room. But yesterday
+Robespierre had been enthroned at this table as almighty ruler over
+the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen; but yesterday he had
+here issued his decrees and signed the death-sentences, that lay on
+the table, unexecuted. These papers were now the only salve the
+ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in his face, from
+which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed by
+himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
+tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate <i>sans-culotte</i>, with
+which to bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat
+there in the midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding,
+groaning, and complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched
+arms, pointing to this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was
+right. There is a Supreme Being!"</p>
+<p>This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was
+dead; Th&eacute;roigne de M&eacute;ricourt was no longer the
+Goddess of Reason, and Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of
+Liberty and Virtue. Women had given up representing divinities, and
+desired to be themselves again, and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms
+of the capital, by means of their intellect and grace, the throne
+which had gone down in the revolution.</p>
+<p>Madame Tallien, Madame R&eacute;camier, and Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, reorganized society, and all were anxious to obtain
+admission to their parlors. To be sure, these entertainments and
+reunions still wore a sufficiently strange and fantastic
+appearance. Fashion, which had so long been compelled to give way
+to the <i>carmagnole</i> and red cap, endeavored to avenge its long
+banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in doing so
+assumed a political, reactionary aspect. <i>Coiffures &agrave; la
+Jacobine</i> were now supplanted by <i>coiffures &agrave; la
+victime</i> and <i>au repentir</i>. In order to exhibit one's taste
+for the fine arts, the draperies of the statues of Greece and
+ancient Rome were now worn. Grecian <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> were given,
+at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly honored, and Roman
+feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled those of
+Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
+palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now
+taken up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the
+new French society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud
+to wear the generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic,
+Madame Tallien chose the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and
+the gold-embroidered purple robes, and the golden tiara in her
+black, shining hair, gave to the charming and beautiful daughter of
+the republic the magnificence of an empress. She had also drawn
+around her a splendid court. All eagerly pressed forward to pay
+their respects to and obtain the good will of the mighty wife of
+the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of attraction to
+all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or aspired to
+such. While in the parlors of Madame R&eacute;camier, who, despite
+the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the
+good time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often
+sanguinary <i>bon mots</i> at the expense of the republic
+uttered--while in Madame de Sta&euml;l's parlors art and science
+had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and court lived for the
+present, and basked in the splendor with which she knew how to
+invest the palace of the dictators of France.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been
+living, with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad
+memories. A day came, however, when she was compelled to tear
+herself from this last consolation of the unhappy, the brooding
+over the sorrows and losses of the past, or see her children become
+the victims of misery and want. The time had come when she must
+leave her retirement, and step, as a petitioner, before those who
+had the power to grant, as a favor, that which was hers by right,
+and restore to her, at least in part, her sequestered estate.
+Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was still Madame de
+Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might assist her in
+her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father. Madame
+Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
+admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being
+called on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished
+position at the court of King Louis. She therefore received her
+with great amiability, and endeavored to make the charming and
+beautiful viscountess her friend. But Josephine found that estates
+were more easily lost than recovered. The republic, one and
+indivisible, was always ready to take, but not to give; and, even
+with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien freely exerted in her
+behalf, it was some time before Josephine succeeded in recovering
+her estate. In the mean time, she really suffered want, and she and
+her children were compelled to bear the hardships and
+mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true friends
+still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
+delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with
+food and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was
+characteristic of this period that no one felt humiliated by
+accepting benefits of this kind from his friends. Those who had
+lost all had not done so through their own fault; and those who had
+saved their property out of the general wreck could not attribute
+their fortune to their own merit or wisdom, but merely to chance.
+They therefore considered it a sacred duty to divide with those who
+had been less fortunate; and the latter would point with pride to
+the poverty which proved that they had been true to themselves and
+principle, and accept what friendship offered. This was the result
+of a kind of community of property, to which the revolution had
+given birth. Those who had possessions considered it their duty to
+divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded this
+division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.</p>
+<p>Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends
+without blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de
+Montmorin to provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and
+she and Hortense could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to
+dine with her twice a week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were
+assembled, on certain days, a number of friends, who had been
+robbed of their fortunes by the storms of the revolution. Madame
+Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor, gave these dinners to
+her friends, but each guest was expected to bring with him his own
+white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered one of the
+greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a law had
+been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain amount
+of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
+purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
+general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
+requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that
+no more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and
+that amount cost the purchaser dearly<a name=
+"FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a>. Josephine, however,
+had not even the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An
+exception to this rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and
+Hortense; and at Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always
+provided white bread for them, and for them alone of all her
+guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was soon, however, to be freed from
+this want. One day when she had been invited by Madame Tallien to
+dinner, and had walked to the palace with Hortense, Tallien
+informed her that the government had favorably considered her
+petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the widow of
+a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with his
+blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
+domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed
+from her furniture and other personal property, and that the
+republic had remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury
+for her relief, until the sequestration of her landed estates
+should be annulled, which he expected would soon take place.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+M&eacute;moires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
+i., p. 80.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She
+pressed her daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in
+tears: "We shall at last be happy! My children shall no longer
+suffer want!" This time the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy,
+the first in long years.</p>
+<p>Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her
+children an education suitable to their rank; she could now once
+more assume the position in society to which her beauty, youth,
+amiability, and name entitled her. She no longer came to Madame
+Tallien's parlor as a suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all
+were eager to do homage to the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to
+the beautiful and charming viscountess. But Josephine preferred the
+quiet bliss of home-life in the circle of her children to the
+brilliant life of society; she gradually withdrew from the noisy
+circles of the outer world, in order that she might, in peaceful
+retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the hearts and
+minds of her promising children.</p>
+<p>Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal
+security no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had
+left his master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was
+preparing himself for military service under the instruction of
+excellent teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers
+of comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France
+filled him with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his
+teacher of the deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling
+eyes and glowing countenance: "I too will become a gallant general,
+some day!"</p>
+<p>Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who
+was scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an
+elder and younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature
+had given Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to
+this beauty grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her
+daughter's intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early
+accustomed to care and want, this child had not the giddy,
+thoughtless disposition usually characteristic of girls of her age.
+She had too early gained an insight into the uncertainty and
+emptiness of all earthly magnificence, not to appreciate the
+littleness of those things upon which young girls usually place so
+high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with the adornment
+of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath the yoke
+of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
+enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
+dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
+Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at
+home, to amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more
+useful, if not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done
+in the brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early
+matured in the school of experience and suffering, the girl of
+twelve had acquired a womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet
+her noble and chaste features still wore the impress of childhood,
+and in her large blue eyes reposed a whole heaven of innocence and
+peace. When she sat with her harp at the window in the evening
+twilight, the last rays of the setting sun gilding her sweet
+countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her beautiful blond
+hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
+angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter
+portray. In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and
+melodies which Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with
+the silvery tones of her voice, in words composed by herself,
+half-childish prayer, half rhapsody of love, and revealing the most
+secret thoughts of the fair young being who stood on the threshold
+of womanhood, bidding adieu to childhood with a blissful smile, and
+dreaming of the future.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.1"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>GENERAL BUONAPARTE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long
+and stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and
+repose, the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to
+time in fits of fury, and tranquillity continued far from being
+permanently restored. The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution,
+still exercised their pestilential influence over the populace of
+Paris, and stirred the rude masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms
+of discontent and disorder.</p>
+<p>But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild
+masses in his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down
+into the dust with the flashing master-glance of his resistless
+eye.</p>
+<p>That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine
+years of age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero
+crowned with laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of
+victory. As commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of
+valor at the recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to
+the rank of general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the
+republic. Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the
+young general of five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the
+government, being still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished
+to remove him from Paris, and send him to La Vend&eacute;e as a
+brigadier-general. Buonaparte declined this mission, because he
+preferred remaining in the artillery service, and, for that reason,
+the government of the republic relieved him of his duties and put
+him on half-pay.</p>
+<p>So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the
+brilliant star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and
+shed the fulness of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the
+secret voices which whispered in his breast of a dazzling future,
+and a fabulous career of military glory, had already announced the
+rising of his star.</p>
+<p>So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed
+quiet, retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted
+friends only, who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted
+circumstances. For Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited
+means in the tempests of the revolution, and all that he possessed
+consisted of the laurels he had won on the battle-field, and his
+half pay as a brigadier-general. But, like the Viscountess de
+Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends who deemed it an honor
+to receive him as a guest at their table, and also, like Josephine,
+he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him to the dinners
+that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He often
+dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
+boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that
+time still his host, favored of the gods. The young general,
+instead of, like his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought
+only his ration, which was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned
+to his brother Louis, who was very fond of it, while Madame
+Bourrienne took care that he should invariably find his supply of
+white, bread at his plate. She had managed to get some flour
+smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had white-bread
+made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
+discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of
+them to the scaffold.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently
+wrote the name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of
+expectation, hoping that, should the existing government, so
+hostile to him, be suppressed by another, his wishes might be at
+last fulfilled. These wishes were, by the way, of a rather
+unpretending character. "If I could only live here quietly, at
+Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent that
+pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
+carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"</p>
+<p>He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the
+"pretty little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the
+cardinal, when the important events that soon shook Paris once more
+prevented him, and the famous 13th Vend&eacute;miaire, 1795, again
+summoned the famous general away from his meditations to stern
+practical activity. It was on that day, the 13th Vend&eacute;miaire
+(October 5th), that there came the outburst of the storm, the
+subterranean rumblings of which had been so long perceptible. The
+sections of Paris rose against the National Convention which had
+given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two thirds of
+the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
+legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
+accept the new constitution only when it provided that the
+legislative body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The
+Convention, thus assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was
+resolved to stand its ground, and called upon the representatives
+who commanded the armed forces, to defend the republic of their
+creation. Barras was appointed the first general commanding the
+Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the second. It was not long
+before a ferocious conflict broke out in the streets between the
+army and the insurgent sections. At that time the populace were not
+always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear up the
+pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
+terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the
+Church of St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but
+they were driven from them also; the struggle in the streets
+recommenced, and streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.</p>
+<p>After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras
+declared to the triumphant National Convention that the victory
+over the insurgents was chiefly due to the comprehensive and
+gallant conduct of General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon
+the latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of
+the Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on
+the day of peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from
+obscurity; his name had risen above the horizon!</p>
+<p>He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the
+whispering voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant
+song of his future career. He was now already conscious that he had
+a shining goal before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet
+assign a title, that flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale,
+and which he swore to make reality at last.</p>
+<p>One day, there came to the headquarters of the young
+general-in-chief a young man who very pressingly asked to see him.
+Bonaparte had him admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous,
+fiery glance, the noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at
+once prepossessed him in the young man's favor, and he forthwith
+questioned him in gentle, friendly tones, concerning the object of
+his visit.</p>
+<p>"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais,
+and I have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was
+denounced before the Committee of Public Safety as a
+<i>suspect</i>, and given over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, who
+had him murdered, three days before the fall of Robespierre."</p>
+<p>"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.</p>
+<p>"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I
+come now to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have
+the kindness to bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to
+induce them to give me back my father's sword. I will faithfully
+use it in fighting the enemies of my country and defending the
+cause of the republic."</p>
+<p>These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to
+the stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of
+his eyes grew softer.</p>
+<p>"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and
+this filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of
+General Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"</p>
+<p>"With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the
+necessary commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the
+adjutant returned, bringing with him the sword of General
+Beauharnais.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed
+with strong emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession
+of his father--to his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred
+emotion started into his eyes.</p>
+<p>Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white
+hand, which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as
+soft, as delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess,
+rested lightly on Eugene's shoulder.</p>
+<p>"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all
+hearts to him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you
+or your family."</p>
+<p>Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement.
+"Good general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will
+pray for you."</p>
+<p>This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly
+nod, he desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to
+call upon him soon again.</p>
+<p>This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the
+commencement of the acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and
+Josephine. The sword of the guillotined General Beauharnais placed
+an imperial crown upon the head of his widow, and adorned the brows
+of his son and his daughter with royal diadems.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.1"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>THE MARRIAGE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene,
+Josephine met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant
+<i>soir&eacute;es</i> given by Barras, the first general-in-chief.
+She asked Barras to introduce her to the young general, and then,
+in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of all prudery, yet
+none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand to
+Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
+the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.</p>
+<p>The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and
+beautiful woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to
+manhood. Her enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a
+sea of warmth and passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while
+the gentle, love-enticing smile that played around her mouth
+revealed the tender feminine gentleness and amiability of her
+disposition. Bonaparte had never mastered the art of flattering
+women in the light, frivolous style of the fashionable coxcomb; and
+when he attempted it his compliments were frequently of so unusual
+and startling a character that they might just as well contain an
+affront as a tribute of eulogy.</p>
+<p>"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was
+emperor, to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red
+hair you have!"</p>
+<p>"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time
+that a man ever told me so."</p>
+<p>And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a
+very handsome blond<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_3">[3]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to Tours,
+because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen of
+Spain.</blockquote>
+<p>To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once
+said: "Ah, good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to
+another: "What beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress
+that is! Who could have put it up for you in such ridiculous
+style?"</p>
+<p>Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women
+with words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language
+that his eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very
+hour, conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy
+at the thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young
+hero had awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to
+livelier palpitations.</p>
+<p>From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and,
+ere long, Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing
+confession of his love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her
+hand. In vain her powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored
+to dissuade her from marrying this young, penniless general; in
+vain did they remind her that he might be killed in the very next
+battle, and that she might thus again be left a reduced widow.
+Josephine shook her handsome curls with a peculiar smile. Perhaps
+she was thinking of the prophecy of the negress at Martinique;
+perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of Bonaparte's eye, and
+on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the very man to
+bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved him
+ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
+any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
+friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
+determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he
+was. Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous
+impatience to make their modest little preparations for their new
+housekeeping establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to
+complete his dream of happiness; he possessed neither house nor
+carriage, and Josephine, too, was without an equipage.</p>
+<p>Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on
+foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon
+period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as
+a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and
+confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle
+of the wheels, and they were not obliged to interrupt their sweet
+interchange of sentiment while getting into and out of a vehicle.
+Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the promenades, he smiling
+proudly when the passers-by broke out in spontaneous exclamations
+of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy and exultant as she
+overheard the whispered admiration and respect with which the
+multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with the
+general through the throng.</p>
+<p>One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to
+Ragideau, the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had
+been the business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long
+time, and Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her
+own disposal, a sum of money belonging to her that had been
+deposited with him. Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while
+Josephine went into the adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's
+office.</p>
+<p>"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
+Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.</p>
+<p>The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do
+well, and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I
+am satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."</p>
+<p>"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with
+the proud and happy look of a person really in love. "My future
+husband is General Bonaparte!"</p>
+<p>The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm.
+"How?" said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this
+little General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has
+already deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and
+throw him back into insignificance?"</p>
+<p>Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."</p>
+<p>"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you
+are wrong in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are
+committing a folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who
+has nothing but his hat and his sword."</p>
+<p>"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then,
+turning the conversation, she began to speak of the practical
+matters that had brought her thither.</p>
+<p>When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine
+returned to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He
+came, smiling, to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the
+notary, who was with her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the
+latter shrank back in consternation. Josephine also remarked that
+Bonaparte's countenance was paler that day than usual, and that he
+was less communicative and less disposed to chat with her; but she
+had already learned that it was not advisable to question him as to
+the cause of his different moods. So, she kept silent on that
+score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon drove away the
+clouds that had obscured the general's brow.</p>
+<p>The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of
+March, 1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense,
+Josephine's children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien,
+Calmelet, and Leclerq. The marriage-contract contained, along with
+the absolutely requisite facts of the case, a very pleasant piece
+of flattery for Josephine, since, in order to establish an equality
+of ages between the two parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a
+year older, and Josephine four years younger, than they really
+were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract states, born on the 5th of
+February, 1768 but on the 15th of August, 1769; and Josephine not,
+as the document represents, on the 23d of July, 1767, but on the
+23d of June, 1763<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_4">[4]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 350.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in
+queenly fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his
+appointment to the command of the Italian army, which Barras and
+Tallien had granted to her, at her own request.</p>
+<p>But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of
+activity, there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few
+happy weeks with his lovely wife and his new family, in the small
+residence in the Rue Chautereine, which he had purchased a short
+time before his marriage, and which Josephine had fitted up with
+that elevated and refined good taste that had always distinguished
+her.</p>
+<p>One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He
+had his house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There
+was now only a carriage to be procured in order to make the general
+the "happiest of men."</p>
+<p>But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the
+farther they advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the
+possession of a small house in Paris. He now wanted an
+establishment in the country also.</p>
+<p>"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the
+Yonne," he wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living
+on his property near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will
+buy it. Then I will retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not
+want any of the national domains<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5">[5]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 103.</blockquote>
+<p>As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the
+victorious General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses,
+which was a present to the general of the French Republic from the
+Emperor of Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years
+later, he would have him for a son-in-law.</p>
+<p>These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of
+Arcola, Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte
+brought back with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only
+gift which the general had not refused to accept.</p>
+<p>It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently
+hitched to a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look
+attached to the gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the
+first consul made his solemn entry into the Tuileries.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.1"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>BONAPARTE IN ITALY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few
+weeks in which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone
+in Paris, doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not
+only from her husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied
+his young step-father to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to
+Madame Campan's boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to
+Queen Marie Antoinette, had, at that time, opened an establishment
+for the education of young ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest
+and most eminent families of newly-republicanized France liked to
+send their daughters to it, so that they might learn from the
+former court-lady the refined style and manners of old royalist
+times.</p>
+<p>Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and
+there, in the society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of
+Bonaparte, and afterward Queen of Naples--and the young Countess
+Stephanie Beauharnais, her cousin, passed a few happy years of
+work, of varied study, and of youthful maiden-dreams.</p>
+<p>Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring
+enthusiasm, to her studies, which consisted, not only in the
+acquisition of languages, in music, and drawing, history and
+geography, but still more in the mastering the so-called <i>bon
+ton</i> and that aristocratic <i>savoir vivre</i> of which Madame
+Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus receiving
+instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in painting
+from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and was
+playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
+the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating
+in the balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show
+off the talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in
+a word, Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments
+of a distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful
+all these little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time,
+would one day be to her, and how good a thing it was that she had
+learned to play parts at Madame Campan's, and to appear in society
+as a great lady.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and
+exulting triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending,
+brighter and brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the
+name of Bonaparte was echoing in louder and louder volume through
+the world, and filling all Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear
+and trembling, as the sea becomes agitated when the sun begins to
+rise. Victory after victory came joyfully heralded from Italy, as
+ancient states fell beneath the iron tread of the victor, and new
+ones sprang into being. The splendid old Republic of Venice, once
+the terror of the whole world, the victorious Queen of the
+Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell in
+fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
+Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the
+slender monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained
+to the shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in
+Candia, Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the
+old commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state,
+the Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the
+French Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin,
+laid his peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted
+away, another Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given
+Venice the greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to
+the front at the head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom
+Bonaparte had said that he was "a man."</p>
+<p>"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how
+seldom one meets <i>men</i> in the world! In Italy there are
+eighteen millions of inhabitants, but I have found only two
+<i>men</i> among them all--Dandolo and Melzi<a name=
+"FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 139.</blockquote>
+<p>But, while Bonaparte was despairing of <i>men</i>, in the very
+midst of his victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned
+love for his wife, to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and
+most ardent letters, the answers to which he awaited with the most
+impatient longing.</p>
+<p>Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual
+and singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
+campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
+excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
+weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only
+on the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was
+more considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned
+<i>all</i> the communications he received to the flames,
+<i>unread</i>, and--while the fire on his hearth was consuming the
+paper on which, perchance, was written the despairing appeal of a
+mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a disconsolate wife,
+beseeching pity for her husband; or the application of an ambitious
+statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with a sardonic
+smile, and say, "There's <i>my</i> correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
+least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached
+him, indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary,
+Bourrienne, much time and labor, for, when they finally went to
+work on them, time and circumstances had already disposed of four
+fifths of them, and thus only one fifth required answers--a result
+that made Bonaparte laugh heartily, and filled him with justifiable
+pride in what he termed his "happy idea."</p>
+<p>Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to
+wait ere they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his
+heart bounding with delight, and invariably answered them, in such
+impassioned, glowing language as only his warm southern temperament
+could suggest, and contrasted with which even Josephine's missives
+seemed a little cool and passionless.</p>
+<p>Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting
+letters from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with
+him; and hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the
+general summoned his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his
+call with rapture, and hastened to Italy to join him. Now came
+proud days of triumph and gratified affection. All Italy hailed
+Bonaparte as the conquering hero; all Italy did homage to the woman
+who bore his name, and whose incomparable fascination and
+amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won all hearts. Her life now
+resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal pageant; a dazzling
+fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights" that had become
+reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine, sparkling with
+stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.1"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte
+made his proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the
+front courtyard of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the
+<i>Corps L&eacute;gislatif</i>, was erected a vast amphitheatre, in
+which sat all the high authorities of France; in the centre of the
+amphitheatre stood the altar of the country, surmounted by three
+gigantic statues, representing Freedom, Equality, and Peace. As
+Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the dense crowd that
+occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their feet with
+uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the windows of
+the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who waved
+welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
+this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An
+officer of the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity,
+had clambered up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the
+palace, then undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the
+ground almost at Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost
+simultaneously from a thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale
+and shrank back, shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a
+moment before had exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these
+living flowers, now stood there bare, with empty, gaping casements.
+A perceptible thrill ran through the ranks of the <i>Corps
+L&eacute;gislatif</i>, and here and there the whisper passed that
+this fall of an officer portended the early overthrow of the
+Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like the
+unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies
+at the feet of General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of
+Arcola new <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> every day; and when these
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i> were over, and Bonaparte, fatigued with the
+speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be on his way
+returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who beset his
+path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
+persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of
+the hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.</p>
+<p>A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
+individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on
+himself. Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation
+of his own inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him
+with a sort of reverential exultation.</p>
+<p>Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment
+of these glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely
+overwhelmed and disturbed, could have held aloof from these
+ovations of the people of Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the
+heart of his wife with pride and joy. While in the theatre, he
+shrank back, abashed, behind his wife's chair when the audience,
+learning his presence, filled their noisy plaudits and clamored to
+have a glimpse at him, Josephine would thank the crowd on his
+behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling with tears for
+this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a natural and
+appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero. But
+Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
+demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as
+though it would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their
+cries of "<i>Vive Bonaparte!</i>" while Josephine turned her face
+toward him, glowing with delight, and called out, exultingly--"See,
+how they love you, these good people of Paris!" he replied, with an
+almost melancholy expression "Bah! The crowd would be just as
+numerous and noisy if they were conducting me to the scaffold!"</p>
+<p>However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided,
+and his life resumed its more tranquil course.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest
+and calm enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated)
+dwelling in the Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city
+authorities had changed to <i>Rue de la Victoire</i>, in honor of
+the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo. He could, after so many
+battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while in the arms of love
+and happiness.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
+restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories.
+He felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of
+his conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the
+notes of the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and
+to other paths of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but
+could not completely satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning
+of death.</p>
+<p>"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he.
+"They retain the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one
+celebrity blots out another in this great Babylon; if I show myself
+much oftener to the public, they will cease to look at me, and if I
+do not soon undertake something new, they will forget me."</p>
+<p>And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented,
+that filled all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of
+France with an army to conquer, for the French Republic, that
+ancient land of Egypt, on whose pyramids the green moss of
+long-forgotten ages was flourishing.</p>
+<p>Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris;
+but she needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to
+sustain this separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to
+her might be just as likely to last six years as six months. And
+what could afford better consolation to a heart so tender as
+Josephine's than the presence of her beloved daughter? She had
+willingly given up her son to her husband, and he had accompanied
+the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and her she would
+not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school.</p>
+<p>Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who
+had come to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after
+two years' stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all
+the charms of innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.</p>
+<p>Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had
+retained the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a
+white sheet of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to
+write a mortal name. She loved nothing beyond her mother, her
+brother, the fine arts, and flowers. She entertained a profound but
+speechless veneration for her young step-father. His burning gaze
+made her uneasy and timorous; his commanding voice made her heart
+throb anxiously; in fine, she reverenced him with adoring but too
+agitated an impression of awe to find it possible to love him. He
+was for her at all times the hero, the lord and master, the father
+to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she dared not love him;
+she could only look up to and honor him from a distance.</p>
+<p>Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine
+arts, and flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of
+a child, upon the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to
+her, and from which she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling
+piece of good fortune without having any accurate idea in what it
+was to consist. She still loved all mankind, and believed in their
+truth and rectitude. No thorn had yet wounded her heart; no
+disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed to pieces, had yet left
+its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of transparent whiteness. The
+expression of her large blue eyes was still radiant and undimmed,
+and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it almost made her
+mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the last echo of
+some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too well knew
+that it would soon be hushed.</p>
+<p>But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling
+their melodies; the world still lay before her like an early
+morning dream, and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.</p>
+<p>Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
+boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of
+Plombi&egrave;res. But there it was that Hortense came near
+experiencing the greatest sorrow of her life, in nearly losing her
+mother.</p>
+<p>She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room
+of the house they occupied at Plombi&egrave;res. The doors facing
+the balcony were open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was
+sitting by the window painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she
+had gathered with her own hands on the hills of Plombi&egrave;res.
+Josephine found the atmosphere of the room too close, and invited
+some ladies to step out with her upon the balcony. A moment
+afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed by piercing
+shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate fright to
+the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her mother
+and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings had
+given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
+Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would
+have sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held
+back with the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared
+the young girl, and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded
+heaven of her youth. Her mother escaped with no other injury than
+the fright, and a slight wound on her arm, while one of the ladies
+had both legs broken.</p>
+<p>Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of
+the fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was,
+indeed, the wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet
+"something more than a queen."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.1"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had
+adorned his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the
+returning conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first
+time, Hortense was present at the festivities which the city of
+Paris dedicated to her step-father; for the first time she saw the
+homage that men and women, graybeards and children alike, paid to
+the hero of Italy and Egypt. These festivities and this homage
+filled her heart with a tremor of alarm, and yet, at the same time,
+with joyous exultation. In the midst of these triumphs and these
+ovations which were thus offered to her second father, the young
+girl recalled the prison in which her mother had once languished,
+the scaffold upon which the head of her own father had fallen; and
+frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered uniform of
+her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the time when
+Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice, through
+the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.</p>
+<p>These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
+Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune,
+preserved to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her
+from entertaining any overweening or domineering propensity in her
+day of prosperity, or from seeming cast down and hopeless when
+adversity came. She never lulled herself with the idea of good
+fortune that could not pass away, but her remembrances kept her
+eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune came, it did not take
+her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to confront it.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days
+in full draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom
+she was so fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified
+love; and in the name of her murdered father she thanked General
+Bonaparte with double fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for
+having been the means of procuring for her mother, who had suffered
+so deeply in her first wedded life, so magnificent a glow of
+splendor and happiness in her second marriage.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to
+dispel this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution
+convulsed all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two
+hostile camps, burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On
+one side stood the democratic republicans, who looked back with
+longing regret to the days of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving,
+as they did, that tranquillity and protracted peace must soon wrest
+the reins of power from their grasp, and therefore anxiously
+desiring to secure control through the element of intimidation.
+This party declared that liberty was in danger, and the
+Constitution threatened; they summoned the <i>sans-culottes</i> and
+the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of
+the imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at
+Bonaparte as the man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put
+France once more in the bonds of servitude.</p>
+<p>On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
+republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
+fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
+disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
+guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists
+and poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew
+that the days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic
+had brought not merely human beings, but also the arts and
+sciences, to the scaffold. With them, too, were arrayed the
+merchants and artisans, the bankers, the business-men, the
+property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the republic at least
+established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation, in order to
+have confidence in its durability and substantial character, and to
+commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success. And
+at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was
+a fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in
+which little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were
+slaughtered.</p>
+<p>The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the
+Directory, and the Constitution of the year III., fell together,
+and from the ruins of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic
+arose the moderate, rational republic of the year 1798. At its head
+were the three consuls, Bonaparte, Cambac&egrave;res, and
+Lebrun.</p>
+<p>On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls
+entered the Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept,
+as conquerors, in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.</p>
+<p>From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the
+forms of etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic
+republic, had slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of
+the Luxembourg and the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and
+circumspectly, 'tis true, in broad daylight. People were no longer
+required, in accordance with the spirit of equality, to ignore all
+distinctions of condition and culture, by the use of the words
+"citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the name of brotherhood, to
+endure the close familiarities of every brawling street ruffian;
+or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal liberty and
+inclination be trampled under foot.</p>
+<p>Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners
+again; and the three consuls, who had taken possession of the
+Luxembourg, whispered the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and
+greeted Josephine and her daughter, who were installed in the
+apartments prepared for them in the palace on the next day, with
+the title of "madame." Yet, only a year earlier, the two words
+"monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in Paris, and brought
+about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had promulged the
+stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever should use
+the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on pretext
+whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable of
+ever again serving in the army of the republic<a name=
+"FNanchor7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.</blockquote>
+<p>Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry,
+along with the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg,
+which had been delivered from its democratic tyrants.</p>
+<p>Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense
+was "Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now
+required a larger retinue of servants, and a more showy
+establishment. Indeed, temerity could not yet go so far as to speak
+of the <i>court</i> of Madame Bonaparte and the <i>court ladies</i>
+of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had still to be content with the
+limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg, but they were soon to
+be compensated for all this, and, if they still had to call each
+other <i>monsieur</i> and <i>madame</i>, they could, a few years
+later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in
+the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the
+joint residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the
+ambition of Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the
+other two men who shared the supreme control of France with him.
+Too it was also for the longings that now spoke with ever louder
+and stronger accents in his breast, and pushed him farther and
+farther onward in this path of splendor and renown which, at first,
+had seemed to him but as the magic mirage of his dreams, but which
+now appeared as the glittering truth and reality of his waking
+hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the three consuls, but
+they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to work to prepare
+the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It would not do to
+oust the representatives of the people, who held their sessions
+there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be made
+to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
+France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed
+monster of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was
+necessary, before entering the Tuileries, to give the French people
+proof that men might still be very good republicans, even although
+they might wish to be housed in the bedchamber of a king.</p>
+<p>Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to
+the Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a
+residence worthy of the representatives of the republic. So, the
+first move made was to set up a handsome bust of the elder
+Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's, which he had brought with him
+from Italy--in one of the galleries of the Tuileries; and then
+David had to carve out some other statues of the republican heroes
+of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A number of
+democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the 13th
+Vend&eacute;miaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of
+the death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans,
+arriving just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army
+should wear the badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were
+worn on the arm, and sable streamers waved from the standards, in
+honor of the deceased republican hero.</p>
+<p>However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army
+had sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered
+the Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which
+towered aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription
+of the republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend
+"August 10, 1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France
+is overthrown and will never rise again." It was between these two
+significant symbols that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries.
+It was a very long and imposing procession of carriages which moved
+that day toward the palace, through the streets of the capital.
+They only lacked the outward pomp and magnificence which rendered
+the latter <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> of the empire so remarkable. With the
+exception of the splendid vehicle in which the three consuls rode,
+and which was drawn by the six grays presented by the Emperor of
+Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen. France of
+the new day had not had the opportunity to build any state-coaches,
+and those of old France had been too shamefully misused to admit of
+their ever serving again; for it would be out of the question to
+employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
+state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the
+vehicles in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs
+to their place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September
+days of the year 1793.</p>
+<p>The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at
+that time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the
+streets and slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down
+from the guillotine and dyed the ground with the purple of the new
+system of popular liberty.</p>
+<p>The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which
+the guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their
+original savage propensities, and hence those who had been so
+fortunate as to escape the murderous axe of the
+<i>sans-culottes</i> had now to apprehend the danger of falling a
+victim to the sharp teeth of these wild blood-hounds; and as the
+ferocious brutes knew no difference between aristocrats and
+republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it became
+necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
+So, the Champs Elys&eacute;es were surrounded with troops, and the
+dogs were driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where
+they were mowed down by musketry. On that one day the dead
+carcasses of more than three thousand dogs lay about in the streets
+of Paris, and there they continued to fester for three days longer,
+because a dispute had arisen among the city officials as to whose
+duty it was to remove them. At length the Convention undertook that
+task, and intrusted the work to representative Gasparin, who was
+shrewd enough to convert the removal of the dead animals into a
+republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the <i>ci-devants</i>
+and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite proper,
+therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.</p>
+<p>Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the
+fugitive and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their
+stables, and the carcasses of the dogs were flung into these
+emblazoned and escutcheoned vehicles of old France. Six grand
+coaches that had belonged to the king opened the procession, and
+the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the luckless quadrupeds could
+be seen behind the glittering glass panels heaped together in wild
+disorder<a name="FNanchor8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor8">[8]</a>
+M&eacute;moires of the Marchioness de Cr&eacute;qui, vol. viii., p.
+10.</blockquote>
+<p>After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and
+indivisible republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be
+consistently used for any human and less mournful occasion, and
+hence it was that the consular procession to the Tuileries was so
+deficient in carriages, and that public hacks on which the numbers
+were defaced had to be employed.</p>
+<p>"With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution
+was at an end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory,
+yawning chasm which had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and
+democrats; and of that sword he made a bridge over which society
+might pass from one century to the other, and from the republic to
+the empire.</p>
+<a name="390.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/390.jpg"><img src="images/390.jpg"
+width="75%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>View of the Tuileries.</b></p>
+<p>As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the
+Diana Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries,
+and was with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed
+there, both of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused
+in front of the statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to
+the statue of Julius Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of
+the grave, solemn faces; but, suddenly, as though just awaking from
+a deep dream, he sharply raised his head, and, laying his hand with
+an abrupt movement upon Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at
+the statue of Brutus with blazing, almost menacing glances, said in
+a voice that made the hearts of both the ladies bound within their
+bosoms:</p>
+<p>"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there.
+And whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and
+conventionists have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how
+the savage Jacobins and cohorts of <i>sans-culottes</i> surrounded
+the palace and led away the good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah!
+never mind, Josephine; have no fear for the future! Let them but
+dare to come hither once more<a name="FNanchor9"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_9">[9]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor9">[9]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. vi., p. 3.</blockquote>
+<p>And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the
+statues of Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry
+thunder through the long gallery, and made the figures of the
+heroes of the dead republic tremble on their pedestals.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus,
+as though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar,
+challenge all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one
+he aspired to be, to mortal combat.</p>
+<p>The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in
+the Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and
+daughter of General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered,
+had now found another father, who was destined to avenge that
+murder on the republic itself.</p>
+<p>The revolution was over!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II."></a>BOOK II.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND</i>.</h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.2"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>A FIRST LOVE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution
+closed, and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity
+followed. Josephine and Hortense were the cynosure of all these
+festivals, for they were, likewise, the animating centre whence the
+grace and beauty, the attractive charm, and the intellectual
+significance of them all, proceeded.</p>
+<p>Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the
+court of Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such
+enchanting delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people
+already began to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the
+powerful wife of the First Consul of France. Now, also,
+<i>audiences</i> were held, and Josephine and Hortense already had
+a court retinue who approached them with the same subserviency and
+humility as though they had been princesses of the blood.</p>
+<p>Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets
+of Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and
+wherever the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the
+wife and daughter of the first consul with applauding shouts.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made
+their appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons.
+There were chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid
+dinners and evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of
+foreign powers were received in solemn audience; for, now, all the
+European states had recognized the French Republic under the
+consulate, and, as Bonaparte had concluded peace with England and
+Austria, these two great powers also sent envoys to the court of
+the mighty consul.</p>
+<p>Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed
+contentions of the toilet, and <i>powder or no powder</i> was one
+of the great questions of etiquette in which Josephine gave the
+casting vote when she said that "every one should dress as seemed
+best and most becoming to each, but yet endeavor to let good taste
+pervade the selection."</p>
+<p>For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less
+zest than formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for
+some time she had seemed to prefer being alone more than in
+previous years, and held herself aloof in the quiet retirement of
+her own apartments, where the melancholy, tender, and touching
+melodies which she drew from her harp in those lonely hours seemed
+to hold her better converse than all the gay and flattering remarks
+that she was accustomed to hear in her mother's grand saloons.</p>
+<p>Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she
+confide what was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she
+venture to confess that she was in love, and with all the innocent
+energy, all the warmth and absolute devotion of a first attachment.
+How blissful were those hours of reverie, of expectant peering into
+the future, which seemed to promise the rising of another sun of
+happiness to her beaming gaze! For this young girl's passion had
+the secret approbation of her mother and her step-father, and both
+of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the least degree, aware
+of the tender understanding that subsisted between Hortense and
+General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
+Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young
+girl's heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more
+serious meaning to it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea
+of a union between Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above
+all other things, to give Duroc a more important and imposing
+status, and therefore sent him as ambassador to St. Petersburg, to
+convey to the Emperor Alexander, who had just ascended his father's
+throne, the congratulations and good wishes of the First Consul of
+France.</p>
+<p>The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
+constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
+becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to
+them of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand,
+one last tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of
+each other. But they hoped in the future, and looked forward to
+Duroc's return, and to the precious recompense that Bonaparte had
+significantly promised to his friend. That recompense was the hand
+of Hortense Until then, they had to content themselves with that
+sole and sweetest solace of all parted lovers, the letters that
+they interchanged, and which Bourrienne, Bonaparte's secretary,
+faithfully and discreetly transmitted.</p>
+<p>"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his
+M&eacute;moires, "I played a game of billiards with Mademoiselle
+Hortense, who was an adept at it. "When I said, in a low tone to
+her, 'I have a letter,' the game would cease at once, and she would
+hasten to her room, whither I followed her, and took the letter to
+her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of emotion and
+delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she would
+go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her<a name=
+"FNanchor10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor10">[10]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent
+dreams of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what
+was taking place around her, and did not perceive that others were
+ready to make her young heart the plaything of domestic and
+political intrigue.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the
+beautiful and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first
+consul, as in the first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by
+separating Hortense from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of
+the strongest supports of her influence, and thus, by isolating
+Josephine, bring themselves nearer to their brother. They well knew
+the affection which Bonaparte, who was particularly fond of
+children, entertained for those of his wife, and they also knew
+that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by their entreaties or
+their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented Josephine and
+Bonaparte from separating.</p>
+<p>This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of
+Junot had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from
+Egypt.</p>
+<p>At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman,
+against whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply
+because he was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne
+implored him, at least, to hear Josephine before condemning her,
+and to see whether she could not clear herself, or he could not
+forgive her, he had replied:</p>
+<p>"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I
+would tear my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as
+Bonaparte spoke, his voice trembling the while with rage, he
+clutched his breast with his hand as though he would indeed rend it
+to pieces. This scene occurred in the evening, but, when Bourrienne
+came into the office next morning, Bonaparte stepped forward to
+meet him with a smile on his face, and a little confused.</p>
+<p>"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here!
+Don't suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I
+reproached her vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you
+have?--when she left me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she
+descended the stairs with her head drooping, I saw Eugene and
+Hortense, who went with her, sobbing violently. I have not the
+heart to look unmoved on any one in tears. Eugene had accompanied
+me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to regard him as my
+adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young man. Hortense
+is just coming out into the world of society, and every one who
+knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the sight
+of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
+made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims
+of their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned
+round and, along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the
+movement, and said nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal
+man without having his hours of weakness!"</p>
+<p>"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted
+children will reward you for it!"</p>
+<p>"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
+sacrifice that I have made for them<a name=
+"FNanchor11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor11">[11]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.</blockquote>
+<p>This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for
+Josephine had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had
+joyfully become convinced that the accusations of his jealous
+brothers had been unjust.</p>
+<p>Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move
+Hortense, since they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that
+she, with her gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense,
+her penetrating and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young
+Mentor at the side of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive,
+somewhat vain, and very extravagant mother.</p>
+<p>It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first
+removed; and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because
+she interfered with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers.
+Since they could not become great and celebrated by their own
+merits, they desired to be so through their illustrious brother;
+and, in order that they might become kings, Bonaparte must, above
+all things, wear a crown. Josephine was opposed to this project;
+she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers that a usurpation of
+the crown must bring with it, and she had so little ambition as to
+prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the proud but
+perilous exaltation to a throne.</p>
+<p>For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and
+Bonaparte must choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there
+should course legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be
+content to see a crown upon the head of her consort.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.2"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above
+all things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of
+the burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they
+sent to each other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be
+transferred to the Italian army with a higher command, and that
+Hortense should then be given to him. They persuaded the
+unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was easy to deceive in these
+minor matters and thus easy because he was occupied with grand
+designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep the proposed
+union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early return to
+surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.</p>
+<p>But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her
+hostile brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her
+entire future, was imperilled, should she not succeed in making
+friends and allies in the family of Bonaparte itself. There was
+only one of Bonaparte's brothers who was not hostile to her, but
+loved her as the wife of his brother, to whom he was, at that time,
+still devoted with the most enthusiastic and submissive
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious
+and sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a
+man of science than fit for the council-chamber and the
+drawing-room. His was a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character,
+which, notwithstanding its apparent gentleness, developed an
+inflexible determination and energy at the right, decisive moment,
+and then could not be shaken by either threats or entreaties. His
+external appearance was little calculated to please, nay, was even
+somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of others only in
+moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his large blue
+eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.</p>
+<p>Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained,
+undemonstrative, and by no means showy natures which are too rarely
+understood, because, in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the
+time and do not take the pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a
+mother is in a position to comprehend and love men of this stamp,
+because the confidential home relations of long years have revealed
+to them the hidden bloom of these sensitive plants which shrink
+back and close their leaves at every rude contact of the world. But
+rarely, however, do they find a loving heart outside, for, since
+their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no one gives
+himself the trouble to discover them.</p>
+<p>The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was
+the one who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a
+point of support in the Bonaparte family.</p>
+<p>Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them,
+next to her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole
+family of brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither
+egotistical nor ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly
+allowed them to have their way, and only asked that they would also
+leave him undisturbed to follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive
+inclinations. He was the confidant of his young and beautiful
+sisters, who were always sure to find in him a discreet counsellor,
+and never a betrayer. Finally, he was the one of the whole circle
+of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the sincerest and warmest
+inclination, because he could not help esteeming him for his noble
+qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as he was by his
+other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of Jerome, Joseph,
+and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and chagrin to
+Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand
+fresh sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that
+I had consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said
+Bonaparte, one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between
+him and Jerome, which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting
+another draft on the private purse of the first consul.</p>
+<p>Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared
+thankfully content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him,
+unsolicited, and there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on
+his account, or any debts of his to pay.</p>
+<p>This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
+respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how
+to manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this
+was a quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she
+could never avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how
+much care and anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often
+Bonaparte had scolded her about them; how often she had promised to
+do differently, and make no more purchases until she should be in a
+condition to pay at once!</p>
+<p>But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
+impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing
+eyes and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she
+could not escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point
+precisely was it that the penitent sinner continually fell into
+fresh transgression--and again ran into debt!</p>
+<p>Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular
+as her own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two
+young, careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to
+each other, and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly
+as they did their purses.</p>
+<p>So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
+strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a
+premonitory distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have
+happened that she took the mighty eagle that fluttered above her
+head for a bird of evil omen whose warning cry she frequently
+fancied that she heard in the stillness of the night.</p>
+<p>The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more
+than a queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new
+fortune-teller, Madame Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to
+her, "You will wear a crown, but only for a short time."</p>
+<p>Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and
+too healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be
+something else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had
+no children, yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and
+his brothers repeated to him daily that this was for him a
+political necessity.</p>
+<p>Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her
+hands for help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her
+daughter to give up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure
+the real happiness of her mother.</p>
+<p>Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at
+the thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying
+an unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had
+scarcely noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked
+to sacrifice her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a
+cold-blooded calculation, an artificial family intrigue; and so,
+with all the enthusiasm of a first love, she swore rather to perish
+than to forego her lover.</p>
+<p>"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said
+Josephine. "What he is, he is only through the friendship of
+Bonaparte. He has no estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were
+Bonaparte to abandon him he would fall back into nothingness and
+obscurity again."</p>
+<p>Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and
+have no other ambition than to be his wife."</p>
+<p>"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to
+become your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own
+sake alone?"</p>
+<p>"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has
+told me that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal
+fidelity and love to me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to
+belong to each other."</p>
+<p>Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.</p>
+<p>"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is
+willing to marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that
+Bonaparte would then advance him the more rapidly?"</p>
+<p>"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing
+with honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far
+from all selfish calculation."</p>
+<p>"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine,
+irritated by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm
+for her own fortunes.</p>
+<p>Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated,
+so beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of
+death had passed over it.</p>
+<p>"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that
+Duroc loves me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give
+him up, and marry whom you will."</p>
+<p>Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey,"
+she replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that
+he does not love you, but the family alliance which you
+present."</p>
+<p>Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc
+returns to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see
+him again--she should read consolation and love's assurance in his
+handsome manly face; not that she needed this to confirm her
+confidence, for she believed in him, and not the shadow of a doubt
+obscured her blissful greeting.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes
+of this intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a
+supporting ally in the family, <i>against</i> the family itself;
+and for this reason Louis must become the husband of Hortense.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved
+to marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake
+his resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and
+little endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to
+show that Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but
+wanted to make an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte
+resolved, at least, to put his friend to the test, and, if
+Josephine turned out to be right, to marry Hortense to his own
+brother.</p>
+<p>After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back
+into his office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the
+writing-desk.</p>
+<p>"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.</p>
+<p>"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."</p>
+<p>"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him
+Hortense--that he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take
+place in two days, at the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred
+thousand francs, and I appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth
+military division. On the day after his wedding he shall start with
+his wife for Toulon, and we shall live apart. I will not have a
+son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to see these matters brought
+to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether Duroc accepts my
+propositions."</p>
+<p>"I don't think that he will, general."</p>
+<p>"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother
+Louis."</p>
+<p>"Will she consent?"</p>
+<p>"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."</p>
+<p>Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told
+him, word for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.</p>
+<p>Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on
+with his communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.</p>
+<p>"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had
+got through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
+son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful
+it may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can
+remain in Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his
+hat, without a trace of excitement or concern, and departed.</p>
+<p>That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full
+consent to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that
+Duroc had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished
+her, through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously
+feigned to love her.</p>
+<p>Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a
+word of complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely
+that a thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to
+atoms her love, her hopes, her future, and her happiness.</p>
+<p>But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the
+evil that had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to
+it. She had been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now
+for her future, her embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when
+<i>he</i> had deceived her --<i>he</i>, the only one whom she had
+loved?</p>
+<p>The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling,
+into Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready
+to fulfil her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight.
+She little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and
+of despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present
+smiling unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a
+worn-out heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in
+order that Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for
+him was dead, but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her
+tears, and conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too,
+enabled her to declare that she was ready to accept the husband
+whom her mother might present to her.</p>
+<p>Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one
+of Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question
+whether she should attain her other aim through that son, and
+whether she should find in him a support against the intrigues of
+the other brothers of the first consul.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.2"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>CONSUL AND KING.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the
+young couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802,
+Hortense was married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but
+one of the first consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the
+civil ceremony, and had never given his own union with Josephine
+the sanction of the Church, was less careless and unconcerned with
+regard to this youthful alliance, which had, indeed, great need of
+the blessing of Heaven, in order to prove a source of any good
+fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he reasoned that the
+consciousness of the indissoluble character of their union would
+lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
+inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render
+their separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the
+Tuileries, after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow
+the blessing of God and of the Church upon the bride and
+bridegroom.</p>
+<p>Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged
+by the young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the
+ceremonies were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new
+home, in the same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which
+her mother had occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful
+union with Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry
+into this dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and
+happiness did not shine in their faces, as had been the case with
+Bonaparte and Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with
+tears, and the countenance of her young husband was dark and
+gloomy. For, on his side, he, too, felt no love for this young
+woman; and, as she never forgave him for having accepted her hand,
+although he knew that she loved another, he, in like manner, could
+never forgive her having consented to be his wife, although he had
+not been the one to solicit it, and although he had never told her
+that he loved her. Both had bowed to the will of him who gave the
+law, not merely to all France, but also to his own family, and who
+had already become the lord and master of the republic. Both had
+married through obedience, not for love; and the consciousness of
+this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between these two
+otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the consciousness
+of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love one
+another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
+were forbidden to seek elsewhere.</p>
+<p>Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart,
+did Hortense make her appearance at the <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> which
+were given in honor of her marriage; and it was with a beclouded
+brow and averted face that Louis Bonaparte received the customary
+congratulations. While every one around them exhibited a cheerful
+and joyous bearing, while parties were given in their honor, and
+people danced and sang, the young couple only, of all present, were
+dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense, and she turned
+her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not read in it
+her deep and angry aversion.</p>
+<p>But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus
+indissolubly bound up with another, she had to try to live with
+that other. Hortense, externally so gentle and yielding, so full of
+maiden coyness and delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and
+resolute soul, and, in the noble pride of her wounded heart, was
+unwilling to give any one the right to pity her. Her soul wept, but
+she restrained her tears and still tried to smile, were it only
+that Duroc might not perceive the traces of her grief upon her
+sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her heart, and she
+rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim to
+happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted
+at the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth,
+and so she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a
+melancholy smile, "I must manage to be happy, without happiness.
+Let me try!"</p>
+<p>And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and
+again took part in the festivities which now were filling the halls
+of St. Cloud, Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were
+but the dying lay of the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the
+cradle-song of reviving monarchy.</p>
+<p>For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
+turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose
+between a seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already
+a republic but in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed,
+but a new-born, naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was
+wanting, that should possess the determined courage to clothe it
+with ermine and purple, in order to transform the helpless babe
+into a proud, triumphant man.</p>
+<p>That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher
+courage to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of
+monarchy, that lay there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver
+there a little longer; but, lest it should freeze altogether, he
+threw over it, for the time being, the mantle of his "consulship
+for life." Beneath it, the babe could slumber comfortably a few
+weeks longer, while waiting for its purple robes.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for
+life. He stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only
+upon himself whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like
+General Monk, he would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him
+the sceptre of his forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired
+the first; Josephine implored Heaven for the latter alternative.
+She was too completely a loving woman only, to long for the chilly
+joys of mere ambition; she was too entirely occupied with her
+personal happiness, not to fear every danger that menaced it.
+Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he would also have to
+think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in order to
+strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
+legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
+children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once,
+proposed to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it
+with the presence of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of
+royal dignity meant a separation from her; and Josephine still
+loved him too well, and too much with a young wife's love, to take
+so great a sacrifice upon her.</p>
+<p>Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the
+Count de Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had
+found an asylum at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of
+France.</p>
+<p>The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis
+XVIII.) had written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with
+emotion, and, with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had
+conjured her husband to, at least, give the brother of the beheaded
+king a mild and considerate answer. Yes, she had even ventured to
+beseech Bonaparte to comply with the request that Louis had made,
+and give him back the throne of his ancestors. But Bonaparte had
+laughed at this suggestion, as he would at some childish joke; for
+it had never entered into his head that any one could seriously ask
+him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot of a throne,
+which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom France had
+banished forever, should ascend.</p>
+<p>Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the
+victor at Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and
+Egypt--would not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity.
+Meanwhile, you are losing precious time. <i>We</i> can secure the
+glory of France; I say <i>we</i>, because I have need of Bonaparte
+in the work, and because he cannot complete it without me."</p>
+<p>But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but
+"I," and to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the
+Count de Lille: "You cannot desire your return to France, for you
+would have to enter it over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice
+your personal interests to the tranquillity and happiness of
+France. History will pay you a grateful acknowledgment."</p>
+<p>Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own
+position, and mark out what you want for your friends." And
+Bonaparte did choose his position; but unfortunately for the Count
+de Lille, it was the very one which the latter had wished to
+reserve for himself.</p>
+<p>Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for
+him, could she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had
+no longings for a diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did
+not require in order to command admiration.</p>
+<p>"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these
+days," said Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.</p>
+<p>Josephine replied, with tears: "<i>Mon Dieu</i>! I am far from
+cherishing any such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of
+Bonaparte--of the first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell
+him so; conjure him not to make himself king<a name=
+"FNanchor12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor12">[12]</a> Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.</blockquote>
+<p>But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne
+to tell her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him
+herself.</p>
+<p>One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at
+breakfast, and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered
+without having been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her
+husband, who sat with his back turned toward her, and had not yet
+noticed her. Lightly throwing her arm around his neck, and letting
+herself sink upon his breast, and then stroking his pale cheeks and
+glossy brown hair, with an expression of unutterable love and
+tenderness, she said:</p>
+<p>"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked
+brother Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."</p>
+<p>Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he
+said. "It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your
+La Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these
+wonderful stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now,
+don't bother me about them any more!"</p>
+<p>Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word,
+but he nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most
+intimate personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown.
+In the course of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to
+him:</p>
+<p>"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all
+Europe; whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be
+only the youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield
+precedence to them."</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that
+daring and imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and
+decisive moments, he responded:</p>
+<p>"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive <i>all</i>
+the kings from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they
+will have to recognize me as the oldest prince of all."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.2"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE CALUMNY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been
+followed by such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated.
+She had made a most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was,
+of all the first consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself
+the least about politics, and was the least likely to engage in any
+intrigue. Besides, this alliance had materially diminished the
+affection which Louis had always previously manifested for
+Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths of his noble and upright
+heart, for having been so egotistic as to sacrifice the happiness
+of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he blamed her, too,
+for having forced him into a marriage which love had not concluded,
+and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine had, at
+least, lost a friend in him.</p>
+<p>The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually
+strange. They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each
+other, and reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had
+been driven into this union against their own wishes. In this
+singular interchange of confidence, they went so far as to
+commiserate each other, and to condole with one another as friends,
+over the wretchedness they endured in their married bondage.</p>
+<p>They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that
+they detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual
+compassion, that out of that very compassion--that very hatred
+itself--love might possibly spring into being.</p>
+<p>Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife,
+busied with the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to
+drive away the clouds that obscured her brow; already, too,
+Hortense had come to regard it as her holiest and sweetest duty to
+endeavor to compensate her husband, by her kindly deportment toward
+him, and the delicate and attentive respect that distinguished her
+bearing, for the unhappiness he felt beside her; already had both,
+in fine, begun to console each other with the reflection that the
+child which Hortense now bore beneath her heart would, one day, be
+to them a compensation for their ill-starred marriage and their
+lost freedom.</p>
+<p>"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and
+when he calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive
+me for being his mother."</p>
+<p>"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that
+you love him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will
+pardon me for being your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at
+least, for I will be the father of your darling child."</p>
+<p>Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and
+innocent hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have
+overcome their unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last
+from hatred. But the world was pitiless to them; it had no
+compassion for their youth and their sufferings; with cruel hands
+it dashed away this tender blossoming of nascent affection, which
+was beginning to expand in their hearts. Josephine had wedded
+Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure in him an ally in
+the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and now that
+daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
+calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense
+from the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs
+by means of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the
+effect of calumny.</p>
+<p>They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had
+married his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was
+attached to her himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.</p>
+<p>These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child
+whose birth Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte
+than merely through the fact that his step-daughter was his
+brother's wife.</p>
+<p>This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those
+who devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest
+suspicion of such immorality, how strict he was in his own
+principles, and how repulsive it therefore would be to him to find
+himself made the object of such infamous slanders.</p>
+<p>The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these
+evil rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense
+away to a distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus
+isolated, could also be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte,
+being separated from his guardian angel, would no longer hear her
+whispering:</p>
+<p>"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory
+of the greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not
+make thyself a king!"</p>
+<p>In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very
+lightly whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard.
+Bonaparte's enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a
+weapon of it with which to assail him as a hero.</p>
+<p>One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had
+always been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the
+organ of Count d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued
+to read, a dark shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the
+paper in his clinched fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then
+as suddenly again his countenance cleared, and a proud smile
+flitted across it. He had his master of ceremonies summoned to his
+presence, and bade him issue the necessary invitations for a court
+ball to be given, on the evening of the next day, at St. Cloud. He
+then went to Josephine to inform her in person of the projected
+<i>f&ecirc;te</i>, and to say that he wished her to tell Hortense,
+who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly desired her
+to be present.</p>
+<p>Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
+requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch
+on which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining,
+busied with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women
+prepare her attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and
+seriously burdened by this festive attire, which harmonized so
+little with her feelings, and was so far from becoming to her
+figure, for she was only a few weeks from her confinement; but with
+her gentle and yielding disposition she did not venture, even in
+thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed upon her by her
+step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the appointed
+hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to meet
+her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
+at all, earnestly urged her to dance.</p>
+<p>Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto
+Bonaparte had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her
+condition; he had frequently said that he thought there was nothing
+more indecent than for a female to join in the dance under such
+circumstances, and now it was he who asked her to do that very
+thing.</p>
+<p>For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but
+Bonaparte grew only the more pressing and vehement in his
+request.</p>
+<p>"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with
+his irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take
+the floor only once, and that for but a single
+<i>contredance</i>."</p>
+<p>And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with
+shame at the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the
+gaze of all, obeyed and joined the dances.</p>
+<p>This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
+Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
+read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing
+flattery, and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her
+advanced state of pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure
+in the <i>contredance</i>, as a peculiar trait of amiability!</p>
+<p>Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very
+emphatic piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at
+once to the Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her
+how it was possible that, so early as the very next morning, there
+could be verses published in the newspapers concerning what had
+taken place at the ball on the preceding evening.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came
+in, and was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an
+evasive and jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her
+mother, who was leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with
+weeping and her heart oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had
+given no evasive answer, but had told the whole truth, and
+Josephine's heart was at that moment too full of wretchedness, too
+overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble, for her possibly to
+retain it within her own breast.</p>
+<p>Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it.
+She told her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the
+verses beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had
+urged her to dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other
+purpose than to have her dance, and have the poem that complimented
+her and referred to her pregnancy published in the next day's
+paper.</p>
+<p>Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the
+ground for all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage
+to tell her of the slanders that had been circulated in reference
+to herself and Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem,
+the ball, and her participation in the dance, because, on the
+preceding day, he had read in an English journal the calumnious
+statement that Madame Louis Bonaparte had safely given birth to a
+vigorous and healthy child some weeks previously, and he wished in
+this manner to refute the malicious statement.</p>
+<p>Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn.
+She had not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of
+injury, this shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained,
+but, as she rose to take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and
+it required hours of exertion to restore her to consciousness.</p>
+<p>A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant,
+and so passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was
+destroyed the hope of a better understanding between her and her
+husband.</p>
+<p>Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart.
+In those long, lonely days that she had passed during her
+confinement, she had the time and opportunity to meditate on many
+things, and keenly to estimate her whole present position and
+probable future. She had now become a mother, without having a
+child; yet the resolute energy of a mother remained to her. The
+youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl had now become
+transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman, that would
+no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would meet
+them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
+changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend
+to its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of
+resolution; and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious
+fireside at home was denied her, to at least make her house a
+pleasant gathering-point for her friends--for men of scientific and
+artistic attainments, for poets and singers, for painters and
+sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere long, all Paris was talking
+about Madame Louis Bonaparte's drawing-rooms, the agreeable and
+elegant entertainments that were given there, and the concerts
+there arranged, in which the first singers of the day executed
+pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited, with his
+wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written. Every
+one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which the
+participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
+themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or
+abuse, but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation;
+where, in fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists,
+and enjoy the newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.</p>
+<p>Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had
+resigned herself to accept the burden of existence, she would
+strive to render it as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of
+its hateful and repulsive features, but to turn away from them with
+a noble and disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the
+frightful calumnies which her mother had privately made known to
+her, nor had she deemed any defence or proof of her innocence at
+all necessary. She felt that there were certain accusations against
+which to even undertake defence is to admit their possibility, and
+which, therefore, could only be combated by silence. The slanders
+that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far beneath her, that
+they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell powerless at
+her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while to thrust
+them.</p>
+<p>But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this
+vile story, and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors
+were still spread abroad, and that his foes still bestirred
+themselves to keep him ever on the alert, and, if possible, to dim
+the lustre of his gloriously-won laurels by the shadow of an
+infamous crime.</p>
+<p>"There are still rumors abroad of a <i>liaison</i> between me
+and Hortense," said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even
+invented the most repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At
+the time, I thought that these calumnies were circulated among the
+public because the latter go earnestly desired that I might have a
+child to inherit my name. But it is still spoken of, is it
+not?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did
+not believe this calumny would be so long continued."</p>
+<p>"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes
+flashing with anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth
+there is in it. You have heard and seen all; not the smallest
+circumstance could escape you. You were her confidant in her
+love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to clear me of this infamous
+reproach if you should some day write my history. Posterity shall
+not associate my name with such infamy. I shall depend on you,
+Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have never
+believed in this abominable calumny?"</p>
+<p>"No, never, general."</p>
+<p>"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account,
+but for the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy
+enough, as is my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I
+love them both, and because this very circumstance gives color to
+the reports which idle chatterboxes have circulated regarding my
+relations to her. Therefore, bear this in mind when you write of me
+hereafter."</p>
+<p>"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but,
+unfortunately, I can not compel the world to believe the
+truth."</p>
+<p>Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the
+truth. With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it
+has been attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense,
+even down to our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the
+elegant and considerate language of the courteous diplomat, which
+is elsewhere always characteristic of his writings.</p>
+<p>"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that
+Bonaparte entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a
+step-father should entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense
+entertained for the first consul a feeling of reverential fear. She
+always spoke to him tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him
+with a petition. She was in the habit of coming to me, and I then
+submitted her wishes; and only when Bonaparte received them
+unfavorably did I mention the name of the petitioner. 'The silly
+thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not speak to me
+herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
+fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a
+father would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness
+of her actions in the most private relations of life, I declare
+that I have never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that
+would tend to convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider
+this calumny as belonging to the category of those which malice so
+willingly circulates about those persons whose career has been
+brilliant, and which credulity and envy so willingly believe. I
+declare candidly that, if I entertained the slightest doubt with
+regard to this horrible calumny, I would say so. But Bonaparte is
+no more! Impartial history must not and shall not give countenance
+to this reproach; she should not make of a father and friend a
+libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted, without,
+however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
+between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood!
+And this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
+throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
+exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession
+of a man, he can never be freed from it again?"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.2"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>KING OR EMPEROR.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at
+least, only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said:
+"I entreat you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not
+make himself king, he made himself emperor. He did not take up the
+crown that had fallen from the head of the Bourbons; he created a
+new one for himself--a crown which the French people and Senate
+had, however, offered him. The revolution still stood a threatening
+spectre behind the French people; its return was feared, and, since
+the discovery of the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru,
+the people anxiously asked themselves what was to become of France
+if the conspirators should succeed in murdering Bonaparte; and when
+the republic should again be sent adrift, without a pilot, on the
+wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that their institutions
+should be securely established and maintained, and believed that
+this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a monarchical form
+of government. The consulate for life must therefore be changed
+into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One can
+be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
+terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor,
+because they flattered themselves that in so doing they should
+still be able to preserve the republic.</p>
+<p>On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so
+long and carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th
+of May, the Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in
+the name of the people and army, to accept the imperial dignity,
+and exchange the Roman chair of a consul for the French throne of
+an emperor.</p>
+<p>Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, the late second consul of the
+republic, stood at the head of the Senate, and upon him devolved
+the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the wishes of the French people.
+Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s--who, as a member of the Convention, had
+voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that royalty
+should be forever banished from French soil--this same
+Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, was now the first to salute Bonaparte
+with "imperial majesty," and with the little word, so full of
+significance, "sire." He rewarded Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, for
+this by writing to him on the game day, and appointing him high
+constable of the empire, as the first act of his imperial rule. In
+this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte signed himself
+merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican style of
+writing. He addressed Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, as "citizen
+consul," and followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time,
+his letter being dated "the 20th Flor&eacute;al, of the year
+12."</p>
+<p>The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new
+dignity, was to invest the members of his family also with new
+dignities, and to confer upon them the rank of Princes of France,
+with the title "imperial highness." Moreover, he made his brother
+Joseph prince elector, and his brother Louis conn&eacute;table. On
+the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his new dignity, to present
+the generals and staff officers to the emperor, and then to conduct
+them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled.
+Josephine was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of
+the splendor of her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious
+heart, of the prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told
+her, "You will wear a crown, but only for a short time." She felt
+that this wondrous fortune could not last long--that the new
+emperor would have to do as the kings or old had done, and
+sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order to appease the
+hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would, therefore,
+sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his fortune and
+dynasty.</p>
+<p>It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and
+made her shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore,
+with a feeling of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new
+titles and honors that Fate had showered upon her, as from an
+inexhaustible horn of plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost
+with shame, she heard herself addressed with the titles with which
+she had addressed the Queen of France years before, in these same
+halls, when she came to the Tuileries as Marquise de Beauharnais,
+to do homage to the beautiful Marie Antoinette. She had died on the
+scaffold and now Josephine was the "majesty" that sat enthroned in
+the Tuileries, her brilliant court assembled around her, while in a
+retired nook of England the legitimate King of France was leading a
+lonely and gloomy life.</p>
+<p>Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as
+empress, she still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate
+Bourbons, and esteemed it her sacred duty to assist and advise
+those who, true to their principles and duties, had followed the
+royal family, or had emigrated, in order that they might, at least,
+not be compelled to do homage to the new system. Her purse was
+always at the service of the emigrants; and, if Josephine
+continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly allowance,
+her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her kindly,
+generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the half
+of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
+matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her
+creditors, she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of
+misfortune and the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other
+purpose<a name="FNanchor13"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_13">[13]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor13">[13]</a> M&eacute;moires sur la reine Hortense, par
+le Baron van Schelten, vol. i., p. 145.</blockquote>
+<p>Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the
+High Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant
+court of the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now
+a "Princess of France," an "imperial highness," who must be
+approached with reverence, who had her court and her maids of
+honor, and whose liberty and personal inclinations, as was also the
+case with her mother, were confined in the fetters of the strict
+etiquette which Napoleon required to be observed at the new
+imperial court.</p>
+<p>But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded
+by this new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no
+additional happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance
+Hortense's youth and beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She
+would have been contented to live in retirement, at the side of a
+beloved husband; her proud position could not indemnify her for her
+lost woman's happiness.</p>
+<p>But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to
+bear misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered
+her a recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a
+new hope--she promised to become a mother again.</p>
+<p>Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her
+daughter's hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give
+birth to a son, the gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be
+banished from the head of the empress. With this son, the dynasty
+of the new imperial family would be assured; this son could be the
+heir of the imperial crown, and Napoleon could well adopt as his
+own the child who was at the same time his nephew and his
+grandson.</p>
+<p>Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would
+rather content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of
+the emperor and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to
+separate himself from her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved
+his wife; he still compared with all he thought good and beautiful,
+the woman who shed around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and
+loveliness.</p>
+<p>When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy
+and thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
+exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These
+acclamations and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of
+Josephine! How proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a
+people<a name="FNanchor14"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_14">[14]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor14">[14]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.</blockquote>
+<p>But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said,
+upon entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to
+<i>be</i> in the Tuileries; one must also <i>remain</i> there"--he
+now said: "It is not enough to have been made emperor by the French
+people; one must also have received his consecration as emperor
+from the Pope of Rome."</p>
+<p>And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world;
+not only to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his
+will.</p>
+<p>Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the
+Pope left the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new
+emperor the blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.
+This was a new halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded
+triumph, which he celebrated over France, over the whole world and
+its prejudices, and over all the dynasties by the "grace of God."
+The Pope came to Paris to crown the emperor. The German emperors
+had been compelled to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the
+papal benediction, and now the Pope made a pilgrimage to Paris to
+crown the French emperor, and acknowledge the son of the Revolution
+as the consecrated son of the Church. All France was intoxicated
+with delight at this intelligence; all France adored the hero, who
+made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and converted even the
+holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his grandeur. Napoleon's
+journey with Josephine through France, undertaken while they
+awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single, continuous
+triumph. It was not only the people who received him with shouts of
+joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her <i>sanctus,
+sanctus</i>, and the priests received him at the doors of their
+churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of
+France. Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal
+exultation, with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and
+solemn addresses of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a
+transcendental nature.</p>
+<p>"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his
+enthusiastic address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and
+then He rested." And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet
+won over by the emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial
+court, whispered, quite audibly: "God would have done better had He
+rested a little sooner!"</p>
+<p>Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder,
+in which they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and
+that Pope Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was
+now approaching the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that
+had now arisen victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was
+everywhere received by the people and authorities with the greatest
+honor. The old royal palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the
+emperor, been refurnished with imperial magnificence, and, as a
+peculiarly delicate attention, the Pope's bedchamber had been
+arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber in the Quirinal at
+Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now repaired to
+Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony had,
+however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
+Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity
+with this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the
+approach of the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give
+himself the appearance of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way.
+The equipages and the imperial court had taken position in the
+forest of Nemours. Napoleon, however, attired in hunting-dress,
+rode, with his suite, to the summit of a little hill, which the
+Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope at once ordered a halt,
+and the emperor also brought his suite to a stand with a gesture of
+his hand. A brief interval of profound silence followed. All felt
+that a great historical event was taking place, and the eyes of all
+were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief figures of
+this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in his
+simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
+robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.</p>
+<p>As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his
+carriage, hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed
+his foot on the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already
+touched the earth. Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he
+must make up his mind to step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin
+slippers, on the wet soil, softened by a shower of rain, that had
+fallen on the previous day. The emperor's hunting-boots were
+certainly much better adapted to this meeting in the mud than the
+Pope's white satin slippers.</p>
+<p>Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly;
+then, through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the
+imperial equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance,
+interrupted this tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest
+accident that the emperor stood on the right, and the Pope on the
+left side of the equipage, that had now been brought to a stand
+again. The two doors of the carriage were simultaneously thrown
+open by the lackeys; at the same time, the Pope entered the
+carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right side, both
+seating themselves side by side at the same time. This settled the
+question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but the
+emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.</p>
+<p>The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of
+December, 1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris,
+but all France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of
+people surged to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the
+houses were filled with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the
+bells were ringing in all the churches, and joyous music,
+intermixed with the shouts of the people, was heard in every
+direction. For a moment, however, these shouts were changed into
+laughter, and that was when the papal procession approached, headed
+by an ass led by the halter, in accordance with an ancient custom
+of Rome. While the Pope, with the high dignitaries of the Church,
+repaired to the cathedral to await there the coming of the imperial
+couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial insignia in the
+Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet mantle, bordered
+with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and arraying
+himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new dignity.
+When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his wife,
+who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
+gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the
+palace, as he desired to see him at once.</p>
+<p>A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring
+him from his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little
+notary Ragideau entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the
+imperial pair were alone, awaiting him in their glittering
+attire.</p>
+<p>His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon
+stepped forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau,"
+said he, gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether
+General Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his
+sword, or whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for
+having married me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment,
+and Josephine asked the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte
+related how, while standing in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain
+occasion, he had heard the notary advising Josephine not to marry
+poor little Bonaparte; not to become the wife of the general, who
+possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.</p>
+<p>The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart
+like a dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no
+complaint, and made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his
+supreme triumph, to-day the emperor remembered that moment of
+humiliation, and, arrayed with the full insignia of the highest
+earthly dignity, he accorded himself the triumph of reminding the
+little notary that he had once advised Josephine not to marry him,
+because of his poverty.</p>
+<p>The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the
+mighty Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and
+his sword, but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of
+Notre-Dame, to place the golden imperial crown on his head.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.2"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S HEIR.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities
+of the coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her
+in the retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son;
+and in this child the happy mother found consolation and a new
+hope.</p>
+<p>Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
+foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
+grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had
+been gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
+unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured
+her mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus
+given a first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no
+longer a reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a
+separation, for there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath
+the imperial throne of France.</p>
+<p>The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's
+wishes, and to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not
+requested the Pope to delay his departure for a few days, in order
+to baptize the child? The Pope performed this sacred rite at St.
+Cloud, the emperor holding the child, and Madame Letitia standing
+at his side as second witness. Hortense now possessed an object
+upon which she could lavish the whole wealth of love that had until
+now lain concealed in her heart. The little Napoleon Charles was
+Hortense's first happy love; and she gave way to this intoxicating
+feeling with the most intense delight.</p>
+<p>Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the
+word; she no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now
+bestow her undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon,
+the Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of
+Piedmont by Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health,
+had not been compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to
+remain in her little house in Paris, which she could exchange when
+summer came for her husband's new estate, the castle of
+Saint-Leu.</p>
+<p>But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in
+this charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The
+brother and sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be
+permitted to lead a life of retirement. They were rays of the sun
+that now dazzled the whole world; they must fulfil their destiny,
+and contribute their light to the ruling sun.</p>
+<p>An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned
+from Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see
+his son, to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a
+brilliant destiny; the Constable of France was to become a king.
+Delegates of the Republic of Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived
+in Paris, and requested their mighty neighbor, the Emperor
+Napoleon, to give them a king, who should unite them with the
+glittering empire, through the ties of blood. Napoleon intended to
+fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king, in the person of
+his brother Louis.</p>
+<p>But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and
+refused to accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also
+in perfect harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to
+strengthen his resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was
+proposed to place on their heads would be nothing more than a
+golden chain of dependence; that the King of Holland could be
+nothing more than the vassal of France; and their personal
+relations to each other added another objection to this political
+consideration.</p>
+<p>In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound
+them together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and
+could avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served
+to separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
+themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary
+union. In Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in
+Holland they would live in entire dependence on each other, and
+hear continually the rattling of the chain with which each had
+bound the other to the galley of a union without love.</p>
+<p>Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor
+to ward off this new misfortune that was suspended over their
+heads, in the form of a kingly crown.</p>
+<p>But how could they resist successfully the iron will of
+Napoleon? Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon
+directly on the subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine
+already felt that her wishes no longer exercised the power of
+earlier days over the emperor. She therefore avoided interceding
+where she was not sure of being successful.</p>
+<p>At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother
+openly; but Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and
+his gentle, yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence
+of the deputation of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed
+for a sceptre and crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to
+accept the crown which had been freely tendered him, and to be to
+his country a king who would respect and protect its liberties, its
+laws, and its religion.</p>
+<p>With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept
+this crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.</p>
+<p>And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single
+and sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and
+energy. The people of Holland having chosen him to be their king,
+he was determined to do honor to their choice; having been
+compelled to give up his own country and nationality, he determined
+to belong to his new country with his whole heart and being--to
+become a thorough Hollander, as he could no longer remain a
+Frenchman.</p>
+<p>This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an
+entirely new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the
+emperor, was now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man
+of action, who had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to
+devote all the powers of his being to its attainment. As King of
+Holland, he desired, above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and
+to be able to contribute to their welfare and happiness. He studied
+their language with untiring diligence, and made himself acquainted
+with their manners and customs, for the purpose of making them his
+own. He investigated the sources of their wealth and of their
+wants, and sought to develop the former and relieve the latter. He
+was restless in his efforts to provide for his country, and to
+merit the love and confidence which his subjects bestowed on
+him.</p>
+<p>His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and
+glittering position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had
+so unwillingly accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together,
+at brilliant entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new
+nobility of Holland, and taught the stiff society of that country
+the fine, unconstrained tone, and the vivacious intellectual
+conversation of Parisian society. It was under Hortense's fostering
+hand that art and science first made their way into the
+aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social reunions a
+higher and nobler importance.</p>
+<p>And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science,
+but also the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the
+unhappy, whose tears she dried, and whose misery she
+alleviated--and this royal pair, though adored and blessed by their
+subjects, could not find within their palaces the least reflection
+of the happiness they so well knew how to confer upon others
+without its walls. Between these two beings, so gentle and yielding
+to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist, and not even the
+birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up the chasm that
+separated them.</p>
+<p>And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of
+destiny. Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the
+presumptive heir to his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so
+dearly that he often played with him for hours on the terraces of
+St. Cloud, the child Josephine worshipped, because its existence
+seemed to assure her own happiness, the child that had awakened the
+first feeling of motherly bliss in Hortense's bosom, the child that
+had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte for the unenjoyable present
+with bright hopes for the future--the little Napoleon Charles died
+in the year 1807, of the measles.</p>
+<p>This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the
+imperial pair of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled
+with tears when this intelligence was brought him, and a cry of
+horror escaped Josephine's lips.</p>
+<p>"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is
+decided. He will put me away."</p>
+<p>But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she
+hastened to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away
+from the place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense
+returned with the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had
+almost succumbed to his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health
+in the baths of the Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now
+stood desolate again; death had banished life and joy from its
+halls; and, though the royal pair were subsequently compelled to
+return to it, joy and happiness came back with them no more.</p>
+<p>King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
+ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
+irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his
+young wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices,
+and excuse his irritable disposition. They were totally different
+in their views, desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their
+children, instead of being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange
+them the more, for each insisted on considering them his or her
+exclusive property, and in having them educated according to his or
+her views and wishes.</p>
+<p>But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and
+cares, in the greater misery of her mother. A letter from
+Josephine, an agonized appeal to her daughter for consolation,
+recalled Hortense to her mother's side, and she left the Hague and
+hastened to Paris.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.2"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>PREMONITIONS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French
+clairvoyante, were now about to be fulfilled. The crown which
+Josephine had reluctantly and sorrowfully accepted, and which she
+had afterward worn with so much grace and amiability, with such
+natural majesty and dignity, was about to fall from her head.
+Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the dreamed-of future had
+been realized, to put away from him the woman who had loved him and
+chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his hopes for the
+future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave fidelity,
+had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation, was now
+to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
+widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should
+be done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
+pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to
+sacrifice to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good
+angel;" and he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the
+thought of her tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating
+gaze.</p>
+<p>But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
+threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
+countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from
+Vienna, had caused the door that connected his room with that of
+his wife to be locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers,
+who dared to address her with less reverence, but with a touch of
+compassionate sympathy; she heard it in the low whispering that
+ceased when she approached a group of persons in her parlors; it
+was betrayed to her in the covert, mysterious insinuations of the
+public press, which attached a deep and comprehensive significance
+to the emperor's journey to Vienna.</p>
+<p>She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she
+was too weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act
+her part as wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should
+not flow outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she
+suppressed her sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her
+cheeks with rouge. But she longed for a heart to whom she could
+confide her anguish, and show her tears, and therefore called her
+daughter to her side.</p>
+<p>How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many
+tears were shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine
+whispered in her daughter's ear!</p>
+<p>"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the
+last few weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although
+compelled to appear before the world as such! What glances,
+Hortense, what glances courtiers fasten upon a discarded woman! In
+what uncertainty, what expectancy more cruel than death, have I
+lived and am I still living, awaiting the lightning stroke that has
+long glowed in Napoleon's eyes<a name="FNanchor15"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_15">[15]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor15">[15]</a> Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol.
+viii., p. 243.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full
+of bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to
+sacrifice her own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had
+been condemned to a union without love, in order that the happiness
+of her mother's union might be established on a firm basis. And now
+all had been in vain; the sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the
+tide of misfortune now about to bear down her unhappy mother.
+Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She was a queen, and yet
+only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar on the street
+her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter stood on
+the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and this
+queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
+with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had
+led in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though
+struggling with want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in
+wishes, in illusions; now, they possessed all that could adorn
+life; now millions of men bowed down to them, and saluted them with
+the proud word "majesty," and yet empress and queen were now poor
+in hopes and wishes, poor in the illusions that lay shattered at
+their feet, and rejoicing only in the one happiness, that of being
+able to confide their misery to each other.</p>
+<p>A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be
+called to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but
+before the gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom
+the whole world now bowed, almost quailed.</p>
+<p>"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an
+important matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has
+done so much for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice
+which they demand of me. The tranquillity and welfare of France
+require that I shall choose a wife who can give the country an heir
+to the throne. Josephine has been living in suspense and anguish
+for six months, and this must end. You, Hortense, are her dearest
+friend and her confidante; she loves you more than all else in the
+world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother for this step? You
+would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."</p>
+<p>Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her
+eyes on the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His
+glance again quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of
+a pure, innocent woman. Hortense had the courage to positively
+refuse the emperors request.</p>
+<p>"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then
+refuse my request?"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears,
+"sire, I have not the strength to stab my mother to the
+heart<a name="FNanchor16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor16">[16]</a> Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.</blockquote>
+<p>And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the
+emperor's cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.2"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DIVORCE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through
+a third person, the distressing tidings of his determination with
+regard to herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come
+to Paris, and on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of
+his wish. Eugene, like his sister, received this intelligence in
+silent submissiveness, but like his sister, he refused to impart to
+his mother, tidings that must destroy her happiness forever.</p>
+<p>The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the
+distressing tidings in person.</p>
+<p>It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress
+dined, as usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering
+the room made Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance
+that the fatal hour had come. But she repressed the tears which
+were rushing to her eyes, and looked entreatingly at her daughter,
+who sat on the opposite side of the table, a deathly pallor on her
+countenance.</p>
+<p>Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The
+sighs and half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving
+breast were quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled
+dismally, and drove the rain violently against the window-panes;
+within, an ominous, oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of
+Nature contrasted, and yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely
+with this human silence. Napoleon broke this silence but once, and
+that was when, in a harsh voice, he asked the lackey, who stood
+behind him, what time it was. Then all was still as before.</p>
+<p>At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and
+coffee was then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then
+set the cup down with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it
+touched the table. With an angry gesture he dismissed the
+attendants.</p>
+<p>"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost
+inaudibly.</p>
+<p>"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a
+profound obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of
+tender compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.</p>
+<p>The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this
+being left alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in
+which they sat opposite each other! How strange the glance which
+the emperor fastened on his wife!</p>
+<p>She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that
+moved his soul, but she also read in them that her hour was
+come!</p>
+<p>As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and
+Josephine shudderingly recoiled.</p>
+<p>Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart,
+regarding her with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.</p>
+<p>"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
+Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you
+alone, do I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in
+this world. Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My
+dearest desires must yield to the interests of France<a name=
+"FNanchor17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor17">[17]</a> The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne,
+vol. iii., p. 344.</blockquote>
+<p>"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand
+angrily--"no, speak no further. I understand you, and I expected
+this, but the blow is not the less deadly."</p>
+<p>She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of
+despair came over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last
+broke forth. She wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her
+heaving breast, and a loud cry of anguish burst from her lips. She
+at last fainted away, and was thus relieved from a consciousness of
+her sufferings.</p>
+<p>When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and
+her physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her
+trembling arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her
+mother's heart, sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew,
+feeling that he could be of no further assistance. It had only been
+in his power to recall Josephine to a consciousness of her misery;
+but for her misery itself he had no medicine; he knew that her
+tears and her daughter's sympathy could alone give relief.</p>
+<p>Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came
+in to inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her
+bedside, she shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased
+to flow, and her usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances
+of anger and offended love at the emperor. But love soon conquered
+anger. She extended her tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet
+smile, peculiar to woman, trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle,
+touching voice, she said: "Was I not right, my friend, when I
+shrank back in terror from the thought of becoming an
+empress<a name="FNanchor18"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_18">[18]</a>?"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor18">[18]</a> Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne,
+vol. iii., p. 342, <i>et seq</i>.</blockquote>
+<p>Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these
+farewell tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the
+emperor had already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the
+hand of the Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in
+Vienna. Nothing now remained to be done but to remove Josephine
+from the throne, and elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the
+vacant place!</p>
+<p>The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He
+assembled about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and
+princes, created by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of
+the Tuileries, in the presence of his court and the Senate, the
+emperor appeared; at his side the empress, arrayed for the last
+time in all the insignia of the dignity she was about to lay aside
+forever.</p>
+<p>In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
+determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
+trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
+words. The arch-chancellor, Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, then caused
+the appropriate paragraph of the <i>Code Civile</i> to be read,
+applied it to the case under consideration, in a short, terse
+address, and pronounced the union of the emperor and empress
+dissolved.</p>
+<p>This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the
+law. Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the
+court, and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the
+graceful, sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few
+other women.</p>
+<p>As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by
+inward emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his
+iron countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then
+walked through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on
+either side, and greeted all with a last soft look, a last
+inclination of the head, nothing could be heard but weeping, and
+even those who rejoiced over her downfall, because they hoped much
+from the new empress and the new dynasty, were now moved to tears
+by this silent and yet so eloquent leave-taking.</p>
+<p>The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his
+dearest possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from
+Josephine.</p>
+<p>On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison,
+her future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and
+was now to be the widow's seat, of her love.</p>
+<p>Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who
+constituted this court did not leave her. During the next few weeks
+the crowds of the coming and going on the road from Paris to
+Malmaison presented the appearance of a procession; the equipages
+of all the kings and princes who were sojourning in Paris, and of
+all the nobles and dignitaries of the new France, were to be seen
+there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain, that still preserved its
+sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the empress at Malmaison.
+And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and humble, as well as by
+the rich and great. All wished to say to the empress that they
+still loved and honored her, and that she was still enthroned in
+their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at an end.</p>
+<p>The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
+whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that,
+with Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future
+would avenge her tears.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.2"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE KING OF HOLLAND.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison,
+Hortense was seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother
+lamented as a misfortune, because she still loved her husband,
+would have conferred happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved
+her husband. Once again in harmony with her husband, Hortense
+entreated the emperor to permit them to be divorced, and the king
+united his entreaties with those of the queen.</p>
+<p>But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear
+before the people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage
+bond. For state reasons he had separated from his wife, and for
+state reasons he could not give his consent to the dissolution of
+the union of his brother and step-daughter. They must, therefore,
+continue to drag the chain that united them; and they did, but with
+angry hearts.</p>
+<p>Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than
+ever; while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to
+Napoleon's express command, remained in Paris for some time. They
+were to attend the festivities that were soon to take place at the
+imperial court in honor of the marriage of the emperor with the
+Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. The daughter of the divorced
+empress, with the emperor's sisters, had been selected to carry the
+train of the new empress on the marriage-day. Napoleon wished to
+prove to France and to all Europe that there was no other law in
+his family than his will, and that the daughter of Josephine had
+never ceased to be his obedient daughter also. Napoleon wished,
+moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that she might
+have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
+inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
+womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court.
+Hortense mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April,
+1810, the day of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she,
+together with his sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She
+alone did this without making any resistance, while it was only
+after the most violent opposition to Napoleon's command that his
+sisters, Queen Caroline of Naples, the Duchess Pauline of
+Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of Tuscany, consented to
+undergo the humiliation of walking behind their new sovereign as
+humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not the only
+persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the day
+of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
+dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
+grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration
+in the chapel in the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
+opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and
+he did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had
+not appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red
+robes thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's
+dress.</p>
+<p>The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
+enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy
+forebodings; and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince
+Schwartzenberg in honor of the imperial marriage, a short time
+afterward, the fearful fire occurred that cost so many human lives
+and destroyed so much family happiness, the people remembered with
+terror that other misfortune that had occurred on the day of the
+entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and called this fire an
+earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian" would bring upon
+France and the emperor.</p>
+<p>While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in
+honor of the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering
+over her husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his
+crown.</p>
+<p>When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of
+Holland, he had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new
+people, and to devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too
+honest a man not to keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was
+to make such arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare
+and prosperity of Holland seemed to require, without in the least
+considering whether these laws were conducive to the interests of
+France or not. He would not regard Holland as a province dependent
+upon France, of which he was the governor, but as an independent
+land that had chosen him to be its free and independent king. But
+Napoleon did not view the matter in the same light; in his eyes it
+was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to refuse to conform
+itself in every respect to the interests of its powerful neighbor,
+France.</p>
+<p>When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he
+had charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same
+time to remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of
+France." Louis had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander;
+and when the interests of France and Holland came into conflict,
+the king took the side of his new country, and acted as a
+Hollander. He was of the opinion that the welfare of Holland
+depended on its commerce and industry only, and that it could only
+be great through its commercial importance; he therefore reduced
+the army and navy, making merchantmen of the men-of-war, and
+peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.</p>
+<p>Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and
+angrily reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole
+squadrons, discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until
+Holland was without power, both on land and water, as though
+warehouses and clerks were the material elements of power."
+Napoleon reproached the king still more bitterly, however, for
+having re-established commercial relations with England, for having
+raised the blockade for Holland which France had established
+against England, and for having permitted the American ships, that
+had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor quietly in
+those of Holland.</p>
+<p>The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should
+conform himself to his will and to the interests of France
+unconditionally; that he should immediately break off all
+commercial relations between Holland and England; that he should
+re-establish a fleet, of forty ships-of-the-line, seven frigates,
+and seven brigs, and an army of twenty-five thousand men, and that
+he should abolish all the privileges of the nobility that were
+contrary to the constitution.</p>
+<p>King Louis had the courage to resist these demands, in the name
+of Holland, and to refuse to obey instructions, the execution of
+which must necessarily have affected the material interests of
+Holland most injuriously.</p>
+<p>Napoleon responded to this refusal with a declaration of war.
+The ambassador of Holland received his passport, and a French army
+corps was sent to Holland, to punish the king's insolence.</p>
+<p>But the misfortune that threatened Holland had called the king's
+whole energy into activity, and Napoleon's anger and threats were
+powerless to break his resolution. As the commander of the French
+troops, the Duke of Reggio, approached Amsterdam, to lay siege to
+that city and thereby compel the king to yield, Louis determined
+rather to descend from his throne than to submit to the unjust
+demands of France. He, therefore, issued a proclamation to his
+people, in which he told them that he, convinced that he could do
+nothing more to promote their welfare, and, on the contrary,
+believing that he was an obstacle in the way of the restoration of
+friendly relations between his brother and Holland, had determined
+to abdicate in favor of his two sons, Napoleon Louis and Charles
+Louis Napoleon. Until they should attain their majority the queen,
+in conformity with the constitution, was to be regent. He then took
+leave of his subjects, in a short and touching address. He now
+repaired, in disguise, and under the name of Count de St. Leu,
+through the states of his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and
+through Saxony to T&ouml;plitz.</p>
+<p>Here he learned that Napoleon, far from respecting and
+fulfilling the conditions of his abdication, had united the kingdom
+of Holland with the empire. The king published a protest against
+this action of the emperor, in which, in the name of his son and
+heir, Napoleon Louis, he denounced this act of the emperor as a
+totally unjustifiable act of violence, and demanded that the
+kingdom of Holland should be re-established, in all its integrity,
+declaring the annexation of Holland to France to be null and void,
+in the name of himself and his sons.</p>
+<p>Napoleon responded to this protest by causing the king to be
+informed by the French ambassador in Vienna that unless he returned
+to France by the 1st of December, 1810, he should be regarded and
+treated as a rebel, who dared to resist the head of his family and
+violate the constitution of the empire.</p>
+<p>Louis neither answered nor conformed to this threat. He repaired
+to Gr&auml;tz, in Styria, and lived there as a private gentleman,
+beloved and admired, not only by those who came in contact with him
+there, but enjoying the esteem of all Europe, which he had won by
+the noble and truly magnanimous manner in which he had sacrificed
+his own grandeur to the welfare of his people. Even his and
+Napoleon's enemies could not withhold from the King of Holland the
+tribute of their respect, and even Louis XVIII. said of him: "By
+his abdication, Louis Bonaparte has become a true king; in
+renouncing his crown, he has shown himself worthy to wear it. He is
+the first monarch who has made so great a sacrifice but of pure
+love for his people; others have also relinquished their thrones,
+but they did it when weary of power. But in this action of the King
+of Holland there is something truly sublime--something that was not
+duly appreciated at first, but which will be admired by posterity,
+if I mistake not, greatly<a name="FNanchor19"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_19">[19]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor19">[19]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. v., p. 47.</blockquote>
+<p>In Gr&auml;tz, Louis Bonaparte, Count de St. Leu, lived a few
+peaceful, tranquil years, perhaps the first years of happiness he
+had enjoyed in his short and hitherto stormy life. Occupied with
+work and study, he easily forgot his former grandeur and
+importance. As it had once been his ambition to become a good king,
+it was now his ambition to become a good writer. He published his
+romance Marie, and, encouraged by the success which it met with in
+his circle of friends, he also gave his poems to the public--poems
+whose tender and passionate language proved that this so often
+misunderstood, so often repulsed, and, therefore, so timid and
+distrustful heart, could warm with a tenderness of love that Marie
+Pascal, the beautiful artist of the harp, could hardly have had the
+cruelty to withstand.</p>
+<p>But a day came when Louis Bonaparte closed his ear to all these
+sweet voices of happiness, of peace, and of love, to listen only to
+the voice of duty, that appealed to him to return to France, to his
+brother's side. While the sun of fortune shone over Napoleon, the
+king, who had voluntarily descended from a throne, remained in
+obscurity; but when the days of misfortune came upon the emperor,
+there could be but one place for his brave and faithful brother,
+and that was at Napoleon's side.</p>
+<p>Madame de St. Elme, who was at Gr&auml;tz at this time, and who
+witnessed the farewell scene between Louis Bonaparte and the
+inhabitants of Gr&auml;tz, says: "On the day when Austria so
+unexpectedly sundered its alliance with France, King Louis felt the
+necessity of abandoning an asylum, for which he would henceforth
+have been indebted to the enemies of France, and hastened to claim
+of the great unjust man who had repulsed him, the only place
+commensurate with the dignity of his character, the place at his
+side.</p>
+<p>"This was a subject of profound sorrow and regret for the
+inhabitants of Gr&auml;tz, and of all Styria, for there was not a
+pious or useful institution, or a poor family in Styria, that had
+not been the object of his beneficence, and yet it was well known
+that the king who had descended from his throne so hastily, and
+with so little preparation, had but small means, and denied himself
+many of the enjoyments of life, in order that he might lend a
+helping hand to others. He was entreated, conjured with tears, to
+remain, but he held firm to his resolution. And when the horses,
+that they had at first determined to withhold from him, were at
+last, at his earnest and repeated solicitation, provided, the
+people unharnessed these horses from his carriage, in order that
+they might take their places, and accompany him to the gates of the
+city with this demonstration of their love. This departure had the
+appearance of a triumphal procession; and this banished king,
+without a country, was greeted with as lively plaudits on leaving
+his place of exile as when he mounted his throne<a name=
+"FNanchor20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor20">[20]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une contemporaine, vol.
+iv., p. 377.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.2"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>JUNOT, THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render
+assistance to the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother
+Louis, forgetting the mortifications and injuries he had sustained
+at the emperor's hands, hastened to his side, there was one of the
+most devoted kept away from him by fate--one upon whom the emperor
+could otherwise have depended in life and death.</p>
+<p>This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who,
+descended from an humble family, had by his merit and heroism
+elevated himself to the rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed
+to respond when the ominous roll of the war-drum recalled all
+Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it was not his will, but fate,
+that kept him away.</p>
+<p>Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear
+and without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present
+governor of Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a
+visitation of the most fearful of all diseases--his brain was
+affected! The scars that covered his head and forehead, and
+testified so eloquently to his gallantry, announced at the same
+time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed by
+sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
+his brain.</p>
+<p>The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And
+yet, this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of
+Istria and Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these
+provinces, had invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the
+noble disposition, fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms,
+he had conferred upon him sovereign power to rule in his stead.
+There was, therefore, no one who could take the sceptre from his
+hand, and depose him from his high position. Napoleon had placed
+this sceptre in his hand, and he alone could demand it of him. Even
+the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers of Istria appealed for
+help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford them no relief. He
+could only say to them: "Send a courier to the emperor, and await
+his reply."</p>
+<p>But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a
+distance of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no
+telegraphs. The Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the
+emperor, with an entreaty for their relief, but the Russian
+proverb, "Heaven is high, and the emperor distant," applied to them
+also! Weeks must elapse before the courier could return with the
+emperor's reply; until then, there was no relief; and until then,
+there was no authority to obey but the Duke d'Abrantes, the poor
+madman!</p>
+<p>No other authority, no institution, had the right to place
+itself in his stead, or to assume his prerogatives for an instant
+even, without violating the seal of sovereignty that Napoleon had
+impressed on the brow of his governor!</p>
+<p>Napoleon, whose crown was already trembling on his head, who was
+already so near his own fall, still possessed such gigantic power
+that its reflection sufficed to protect, at a distance of a
+thousand miles from the boundaries of France, the inviolability of
+a man who had lost his reason, and no longer had the power of
+reflection and volition.</p>
+<p>How handsome, how amiable, how chivalrous, had Junot been in his
+earlier days! How well he had known how to charm beautiful women in
+the drawing-rooms, soldiers on the battle-field, and knights at the
+tourney! In all knightly accomplishments he was the master--always
+and everywhere the undisputed victor and hero. These
+accomplishments had won the heart of Mademoiselle de Premont. The
+daughter of the proud baroness of the Faubourg St. Germain had
+joyfully determined, in spite of her mother's dismay, to become the
+wife of the soldier of the republic, of Napoleon's comrade-in-arms.
+Although Junot had no possession but his pay, and no nobility but
+his sword and his renown, this nevertheless sufficed to win him the
+favor of the daughter of this aristocratic mother--of the daughter
+who was yet so proud of being the last descendant of the Comneni.
+Napoleon, who loved to see matrimonial alliances consummated
+between his generals and his nobility and the old legitimist
+nobility of France, rewarded the daughter of the Faubourg St.
+Germain richly for the sacrifice she had made for his
+comrade-in-arms, in giving up her illustrious name, and her
+coat-of-arms, to become the wife of a general without ancestors and
+without fortune. He made his friend a duke, and the Duchess
+d'Abrantes had no longer cause to be ashamed of her title; the
+descendant of the Comneni could content herself with the homage
+done her as the wife of the governor of Lisbon, contented with the
+laurels that adorned her husband's brow--laurels to which he added
+a new branch, but also new wounds, on every battle-field.</p>
+<p>The consequences of these wounds had veiled the hero's laurels
+with mourning-crape, and destroyed the domestic happiness of the
+poor duchess forever. She had first discovered her husband's sad
+condition, but she had known how to keep it a secret from the rest
+of the world. She had, however, refused to accompany the duke to
+Illyria, and had remained in Paris, still hoping that the change of
+climate and associations might restore him to health.</p>
+<p>But her hopes were not to be realized. The attacks of madness,
+that had hitherto occurred at long intervals only, now became more
+frequent, and were soon no longer a secret. All Illyria knew that
+its governor was a madman, and yet no one dared to oppose his will,
+or to refuse to obey his commands; all still bowed to his will, in
+humility and silent submissiveness, hopefully awaiting the return
+of the courier who had been dispatched to Napoleon at Paris.</p>
+<p>"But heaven is high, and the emperor distant!" And much evil
+could happen, and did happen, before the courier returned to
+Trieste, where Junot resided. The poor duke's condition grew worse
+daily; his attacks of madness became more frequent and more
+dangerous, and broke out on the slightest provocation.</p>
+<p>On one occasion a nightingale, singing in the bushes beneath his
+window, had disturbed his rest; on the following morning he caused
+the general alarm to be sounded, and two battalions of Croats to be
+drawn up in the park, to begin a campaign against the poor
+nightingale, who had dared to disturb his repose.</p>
+<p>On another occasion, Junot fancied he had discovered a grand
+conspiracy of all the sheep of Illyria; against this conspiracy he
+brought the vigilance of the police, all the means of the
+administration, and the whole severity of the law, into requisition
+for its suppression.</p>
+<p>At another time, he suddenly became desperately enamoured of a
+beautiful Greek girl, who belonged to his household. Upon her
+refusal to meet his advances favorably, a passionate desperation
+took possession of Junot, and he determined to set fire to his
+palace, and perish with his love in the flames. Fortunately, his
+purpose was discovered, and the fire he had kindled stifled at
+once.</p>
+<p>He would suddenly be overcome with a passionate distaste for the
+grandeur and splendor that surrounded him, and long to lay aside
+his brilliant position, and fly to the retirement of an humble and
+obscure life.</p>
+<p>It was his dearest wish to become a peasant, and be able to live
+in a hut; and, as there was no one who had the right to divest him
+of his high dignities and grant his desire, he formed the
+resolution to divest himself of this oppressive grandeur, by the
+exercise of his own fulness of power, and to withdraw himself from
+the annoyances imposed upon him by his high position.</p>
+<p>Under the pretence of visiting the provinces, he left Trieste,
+to lead for a few weeks an entirely new life--a life that seemed,
+for a brief period, to soothe his excited mind. He arrived, almost
+incognito, in the little city of Gorizia, and demanded to be
+conducted to the most unpretending establishment to which humble
+and honest laborers were in the habit of resorting for refreshment
+and relaxation. He was directed to an establishment called the
+Ice-house, a place to which poor daily laborers resorted, to repose
+after the labors of the day, and refresh themselves with a glass of
+beer or wine.</p>
+<p>In this Ice-house the governor of Illyria now took up his abode.
+He seldom quitted it, either by day or night; and here, like
+Haroun-al-Raschid, he took part in the harmless merriment of happy
+and contented poverty. And here this poor man was to find a last
+delight, a last consolation; here he was to find a last friend.</p>
+<p>This last friend of the Duke d'Abrantes--this Pylades of the
+poor Orestes--was--a madman!--a poor simpleton, of good family, who
+was so good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at
+large, and free scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however,
+possessed a kind of droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought
+to bear most effectively, sparing neither rank nor position. The
+half-biting, half-droll remarks of this Diogenes of Istria was all
+that now afforded enjoyment to the broken-down old hero. It was
+with intense delight that he heard the social grandeur and
+distinctions that had cost him so dear made ridiculous by this
+half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to jeer at the pomp
+that surrounded the governor, and imitate French elegance in a
+highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor princely
+friend's delight knew no bounds.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, after the poor fellow had been entertaining him
+in this manner, the Duke d'Abrantes threw himself, in his
+enthusiasm, in his friend's arms, and invested him with the
+insignia of the Legion of Honor, by hanging around his neck the
+grand-cross of this order hitherto worn by himself. The emperor had
+given Junot authority to distribute this order to the deserving
+throughout the provinces of Illyria and Istria, and the governor
+himself having invested this mad Diogenes with the decoration,
+there was no one who was competent to deprive him of it. For weeks
+this mad fool was to be seen in the streets of Gorizia, parading
+himself like a peacock, with the grand-cross of the honorable order
+of the Emperor Napoleon, and, at the same time, uttering the most
+pointed and biting <i>bon mots</i> at the expense of his own
+decoration. The duke often accompanied him in his wanderings
+through the town, sometimes laughing loudly at the fool's jests,
+sometimes listening with earnest attention, as though his
+utterances were oracles. Thus this strange couple passed the time,
+either lounging through the streets together, or seated side by
+side on a stone by the way, engaged in curious reflections on the
+passers-by, or philosophizing over the emptiness of all glory and
+grandeur, and over the littleness and malice of the world,
+realizing the heart-rending, impressive scenes between Lear and his
+fool, which Shakespeare's genius has depicted.</p>
+<p>After weeks of anxious suspense, the imperial message, relieving
+Junot of his authority, and placing the Duke of Otranto in his
+place, at last arrived. The poor Duke d'Abrantes left Illyria, and
+returned to France, where, in the little town of Maitbart, after
+long and painful struggles, he ended, in sadness and solitude, a
+life of renown, heroism, and irreproachable integrity.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.2"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A VENDER OF VIOLETS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Gradually, the brilliancy of the sun that had so long dazzled
+the eyes of all Europe began to wax pale, and the luminous star of
+Napoleon to grow dim among the dark clouds that were gathering
+around him. Fortune had accorded him all that it could bestow upon
+a mortal. It had laid all the crowns of Europe at his feet, and
+made him master of all the monarchies and peoples. Napoleon's
+antechamber in Erfurt and in Dresden had been the rendezvous of the
+emperors, kings, and princes of Europe, and England alone had never
+disguised its hostility beneath the mask of friendship, and bent
+the knee to a hated and feared neighbor. Napoleon, the master of
+Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother," could now
+proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no
+longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had
+now become a new triumph of his grandeur.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, during the congress at Erfurt, all the
+emperors, kings, and princes, were assembled around Napoleon's
+table. He occupied the seat between his enthusiastic friend the
+Emperor of Russia, and his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria.
+Opposite them sat the King of Prussia, his ally, although Napoleon
+had deprived him of the Rhine provinces; and the Kings of Bavaria
+and W&uuml;rtemberg, to whom Napoleon had given crowns, whose
+electorate and duchy he had converted into kingdoms, and of whom
+the first had given his daughter in marriage to Napoleon's adopted
+son, Eugene, and the second his daughter to Napoleon's brother
+Jerome. There were, further, at the table, the King of Saxony and
+the Grand-duke of Baden, to the latter of whom Napoleon had given
+the hand of Josephine's niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais. All these
+were princes, "by the grace of God," of brilliant and haughty
+dynasties; and in their midst sat the son of the advocate of
+Corsica--he, the Emperor of France--he, upon whom the gaze of all
+these emperors and kings was fastened in admiration and respect.
+Napoleon's extraordinary memory had just been the topic of
+conversation, and the emperor was about to explain how he had
+brought it to such a state of perfection.</p>
+<p>"While I was still a sub-lieutenant," began Napoleon, and
+instantly his hearers let fall their gaze, and looked down in shame
+at their plates, while a cloud of displeasure passed over the brow
+of the emperor of Austria at this mention of the low origin of his
+son-in-law. Napoleon observed this, and for an instant his eagle
+glance rested on the embarrassed countenances that surrounded him;
+he then paused for a moment. He began again, speaking with sharp
+emphasis: "When I still had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant,"
+said he, and the Emperor Alexander of Russia, the only one of the
+princes who had remained unembarrassed, laid his hand on the
+emperor's shoulder, smiled approvingly, and listened with interest
+and pleasure to the emperor's narrative of the time when he "still
+had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant<a name=
+"FNanchor21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor21">[21]</a> Bossuet, M&eacute;moires, vol.
+V.</blockquote>
+<p>Napoleon, as we have said, had already mounted so high that for
+him there was no longer a summit to be attained, and now his
+heart's last and dearest wish had been granted by destiny. His
+wife, Marie Louise, had given birth to a son on the 20th of May,
+1811, and the advent of the little King of Rome had fulfilled the
+warmest desires of Napoleon and of France. The emperor now had an
+heir; Napoleon's dynasty was assured.</p>
+<p>Festivities were therefore held in honor of this event, in the
+Tuileries, at the courts, of the Queen of Naples, of the
+Grand-duchess de Guastalla, of all the dukes of the empire, and of
+the Queen of Holland.</p>
+<a name="391.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/391.jpg"><img src="images/391.jpg"
+width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Portrait of Queen Hortense.</b></p>
+<p>Hortense was ill and in pain; a nervous headache, that she had
+been suffering from for some time, betrayed the secret of the pain
+and grief she had so long concealed from observation. Her cheeks
+had grown pale, and her eyes had lost their lustre. Her mother wept
+over her lost happiness in Malmaison, and, when Hortense had wept
+with and consoled her mother, she was compelled to dry her eyes and
+hasten to the Tuileries, and appear, with a smiling countenance,
+before her who was now her empress and her mother's happy
+rival.</p>
+<p>But Hortense had accepted her destiny, and was determined to
+demean herself as became her own and her mother's dignity. She
+endeavored to be a true and sincere friend to the young empress,
+and fulfil the emperor's wishes, and to give brilliant
+entertainments in honor of the King of Rome, in spite of the pain
+it must cost her. "The emperor wills it, the emperor requires it;"
+that was sufficient for all who were about him, and it was
+sufficient for her. Her mother had gone because it was his will,
+she had remained because it was his will, and she now gave these
+entertainments for the same reason. But there was an element of
+sadness and gloom even in these festivities of the carnival of
+1813; the presence of so many cripples and invalids recalled the
+memory of the reverses of the past year. At the balls there was a
+great scarcity of young men who could dance; incessant wars had
+made the youth of France old before their time, and had converted
+vigorous men into cripples.</p>
+<p>Her heart filled with dark forebodings, Hortense silently
+prepared herself against the days of misfortune which she knew must
+inevitably come. When these days should come, she wished to be
+ready to meet them with a brave heart and a resolute soul, and she
+also endeavored to impress on the minds of her two beloved sons the
+inconstancy of fortune, in order that they might look misfortune
+boldly in the face. She had no compassion with the tender youth of
+these boys, who were now eight and six years old; no compassion,
+because she loved them too well not to strive to prepare them for
+adversity.</p>
+<p>One day the Duchess of Bassano gave a ball in honor of the
+queen, and Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned
+her resolution to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion.
+Her blond hair, that reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed
+in the ancient Greek style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers,
+not natural flowers, however, but consisting of Hortensias in
+diamonds. Her dress was of pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias
+in silver. The hem of her dress and its train was encircled with a
+garland of flowers composed of roses and violets. A bouquet of
+Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom, and her necklace and
+bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias. In this rich and
+tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress Josephine the
+day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies and
+gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for the
+occasion.</p>
+<p>The parlor, filled with these ladies glittering with diamonds,
+and with these cavaliers in their rich, gold-embroidered uniforms,
+presented a brilliant spectacle. The queen's two sons, who came
+running into the room at this moment to bid their "bonne petite
+maman" adieu, stood still for an instant, dazzled by this
+magnificence, and then timidly approached the mother who seemed to
+them a queen from the fairy-realm floating in rosy clouds. The
+queen divined the thoughts of her boys, whose countenances were for
+her an open book in which she read every emotion.</p>
+<p>She extended a hand to each of her children, and led them to a
+sofa, on which she seated herself, taking the youngest, Louis
+Napoleon, who was scarcely six years old, in her lap, while his
+elder brother, Napoleon Louis, stood at her side, his curly head
+resting on Hortense's shoulder, gazing tenderly into the pale,
+expressive face of his beautiful mother.</p>
+<p>"I am very prettily dressed to-day, am I not, Napoleon?" said
+Hortense, laying her little hand, that sparkled with diamonds, on
+the head of her eldest son. "Would you like me less if I were poor,
+and wore no diamonds, but merely a plain black dress? Would you
+love me less then?"</p>
+<p>"No, <i>maman</i>!" exclaimed the boy, almost angrily, and
+little Louis Napoleon, who sat in his mother's lap, repeated in his
+shrill little voice: "No, <i>maman</i>!"</p>
+<p>The queen smiled. "Diamonds and dress do not constitute
+happiness, and we three would love each other just as much if we
+had no jewelry, and were poor. But tell me, Napoleon, if you had
+nothing, and were entirely alone in the world, what would you do
+for yourself?"</p>
+<p>"I would become a soldier," cried Napoleon, with sparkling eyes,
+"and I would fight so bravely that I should soon be made an
+officer."</p>
+<p>"And you, Louis, what would you do to earn your daily
+bread?"</p>
+<p>The little fellow had listened earnestly to his brother's words,
+and seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the
+knapsack and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and
+that he was, as yet, too weak to become a soldier.</p>
+<p>"I," said he, after a pause, "I would sell bouquets of violets,
+like the little boy who stands at the gates of the Tuileries, and
+from whom we buy our flowers every day."</p>
+<p>The ladies and cavaliers, who had listened to this curious
+conversation in silence, now laughed loudly at this naive reply of
+the little prince.</p>
+<p>"Do not laugh, ladies," said the queen, earnestly, as she now
+arose; "it was no jest, but a lesson that I gave my children, who
+were so dazzled by jewelry. It is the misfortune of princes that
+they believe that everything is subject to them, that they are made
+of another stuff than other men, and have no duties to perform.
+They know nothing of human suffering and want, and do not believe
+that they can ever be affected by anything of the kind. And this is
+why they are so astounded, and remain so helpless, when the hand of
+misfortune does strike them. I wish to preserve my sons from
+this<a name="FNanchor22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor22">[22]</a> The queen's own words.</blockquote>
+<p>She then stooped and kissed her boys, who, while she and her
+brilliant suite were driving to the Tuileries, busied their little
+heads, considering whether it was easier to earn one's bread as a
+soldier, or by selling violets at the gates of the Tuileries, like
+the little beggar-boy.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.2"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DAYS OF MISFORTUNE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The round of festivities with which the people of France
+endeavored to banish the shadow of impending misfortune, was soon
+to be abruptly terminated. The thunder of the cannon on the
+battle-fields of Hanau and Leipsic silenced the dancing-music in
+the Tuileries; and in the drawing-rooms of Queen Hortense, hitherto
+devoted to music and literature, the ladies were now busily engaged
+in picking lint for the wounded who were daily arriving at the
+hospitals of Paris from the army. The declaration of war of Austria
+and Russia had aroused France from its haughty sense of
+invincibility. All felt that a crisis was at hand. All were
+preparing for the ominous events that were gathering like
+storm-clouds over France. Each of the faithful hastened to assume
+the position to which honor and duty called him. And it was in
+response to such an appeal that Louis Bonaparte now returned from
+Gr&auml;tz to Paris; he had heard the ominous tones of the voice
+that threatened the emperor, and wished to be at his side in the
+hour of danger.</p>
+<p>It was not as the wife, but in the spirit of a Frenchwoman and a
+queen, that Hortense received the intelligence of her husband's
+return. "I am delighted to hear it," said she; "my husband is a
+good Frenchman, and he proves it by returning at the moment when
+all Europe has declared against France. He is a man of honor, and
+if our characters could not be made to harmonize, it was probably
+because we both had defects that were irreconcilable.</p>
+<p>"I," added she, with a gentle smile, "I was too proud, I had
+been spoiled, and was probably too deeply impressed with a sense of
+my own worth; and this defect is not conducive to pleasant
+relations with one who is distrustful and low-spirited. But our
+interests were always the same, and his hastening to France, to
+enroll himself with all his brother Frenchmen, for the defence of
+his country, is worthy of the king's character. It is only by doing
+thus that we can testify our gratitude for the benefits the people
+have conferred upon our family<a name="FNanchor23"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_23">[23]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor23">[23]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la reine
+Hortense, vol. i., p. 167.</blockquote>
+<p>In the first days of January, 1814, the news that the enemy had
+crossed the boundaries of France, and that the Austrians, Russians,
+and Prussians, were marching on Paris, created a panic throughout
+the entire city. For the first time, after so many years of
+triumph, France trembled for its proud army, and believed in the
+possibility of defeat.</p>
+<p>In the Tuileries, also, gloom and dejection ruled the hour for
+the first time; and while, when the army had heretofore gone forth,
+the question had been, "When shall we receive the first
+intelligence of victory?" there were now only mute, inquiring
+glances bent on the emperor's clouded countenance.</p>
+<p>On the 24th of January, Napoleon left Paris, in order to repair
+to the army. The empress, whom he had made regent, giving her a
+council, consisting of his brothers and the ministers, as a
+support--the empress had taken leave of him in a flood of tears,
+and Queen Hortense, who had alone been present on this occasion,
+had been compelled to remain for some time with the empress, in
+order to console and encourage her.</p>
+<p>But Hortense was far from feeling the confidence which she
+exhibited in the presence of the empress and of her own court. She
+had never believed in the duration of these triumphs and of this
+fortune; she had always awaited the coming evil in silent
+expectation, and she was therefore now ready to face it bravely,
+and to defend herself and her children against its attacks. She
+therefore was calm and self-possessed, while the entire imperial
+family was terror-stricken, while all Paris was in a panic, while
+the fearful intelligence, "The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks
+are marching on Paris!" was overrunning the city. "The Grand-duke
+Constantine has promised his troops that they shall warm themselves
+at the burning ruins of Paris, and the Emperor Alexander has sworn
+that he will sleep in the Tuileries."</p>
+<p>Nothing was now dreamed of but plundering, murder, and rapine;
+people trembled not only for their lives, but also for their
+property, and hastened to bury their treasures, their jewelry,
+their gold and silver, to secure it from the rapacious hands of the
+terrible Cossacks. Treasures were buried in cellars, or hid away in
+the walls of houses. The Duchess de Bassano caused all her valuable
+effects to be put in a hidden recess, and the entrance to the same
+to be walled up and covered with paper. There were among these
+valuable effects several large clocks, in golden cases, that were
+richly studded with precious stones, but it had unfortunately been
+forgotten to stop them, so that for the next week they continued to
+strike the hours regularly, and thereby betrayed to the neighbors
+the secret the duchess had so anxiously endeavored to conceal.</p>
+<p>But the cry, "The Cossacks are coming!" was not the only
+alarm-cry of the Parisians. Another, and a long-silent cry, was now
+heard in Paris--a strange cry, that had no music for the ear of the
+imperialist, but one that, to the royalist, had a sweet and
+familiar sound. This cry was, "The Count de Lille!" or, as the
+royalists said, "King Louis XVIII." The royalists no longer
+whispered this name, but proclaimed it loudly and with enthusiasm,
+and even those of them who had attached themselves to the imperial
+court, and played a part at the same, now dared to remove their
+masks a little, and show their true countenance.</p>
+<p>Madame Ducayla, one of the most zealous royalists, although
+attached to the court society of the Tuileries, had gone to
+Hartwell, to convey to him messages of love and respect in the name
+of all the royalists of Paris, and to tell him that they had now
+begun to smooth the way for his return to France and the throne of
+his ancestors. She had returned with authority to organize the
+conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them the king's sanction.
+Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the glittering weathercock in
+politics, had already experienced a change in disposition, in
+consequence of the shifting political wind, and when Countess
+Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from
+Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come
+from Hartwell, I have seen the king, and he has instructed me--" he
+interrupted her in loud and angry tones, exclaiming: "Are you mad,
+madame? You dare to confess such a crime to me?" He had, however,
+then added in a low voice: "You have seen him, then? Well, I am his
+most devoted servant<a name="FNanchor24"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_24">[24]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor24">[24]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une femme de
+qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 133.</blockquote>
+<p>The royalists held meetings and formed conspiracies with but
+little attempt at concealment, and the minister of police,
+Fouch&eacute;, whose eyes and ears were always on the alert, and
+who knew of everything that occurred in Paris, also knew of these
+conspiracies of the royalists; he did not prevent them, however,
+but advised caution, endeavoring to prove to them thereby the deep
+reverence which he himself experienced for the unfortunate royal
+family.</p>
+<p>In the midst of all this confusion and anxiety, Queen Hortense
+alone preserved her composure and courage, and far from
+endeavoring, like others, to conceal and secure her treasures,
+jewelry, and other valuables, she determined to make no change or
+reduction whatever in her manner of living; she wished to show the
+Parisians that the confidence of the imperial family in the emperor
+and his invincibility was not to be shaken. She therefore continued
+to conduct her household in truly royal style, although she had
+received from the exhausted state treasury no payment of the
+appanage set apart for herself and children for a period of three
+months. But she thought little of this; her generous heart was
+occupied with entirely different interests than those of her own
+pecuniary affairs.</p>
+<p>She wished to inspire Marie Louise, whom the emperor had
+constituted empress-regent on his departure for the army, with the
+courage which she herself possessed. She conjured her to show
+herself worthy of the confidence the emperor had reposed in her at
+this critical time, and to adopt firm and energetic measures. When,
+on the 28th of March, the terror-inspiring news was circulated that
+the hostile armies were only five leagues from Paris, and while the
+people were flying from the city in troops, Hortense hastened to
+the Tuileries to conjure the empress to be firm, and not to leave
+Paris. She entreated Marie Louise, in the name of the emperor, her
+husband, and the King of Rome, her son, not to heed the voice of
+the state council, who, after a long sitting, had unanimously
+declared that Paris could not be held, and that the empress, with
+her son and her council, should therefore leave the capital.</p>
+<p>But Marie Louise had remained deaf to all these pressing and
+energetic representations, and the queen had not been able to
+inspire her young and weak sister-in-law with her own
+resolution.</p>
+<p>"My sister," Hortense had said to her, "you will at least
+understand that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and
+thereby endanger your crown, but I see that you are resigned to
+this sacrifice."</p>
+<p>"It is true," Marie Louise had sadly replied. "I well know that
+I should act differently, but it is too late. The state council has
+decided, and I can do nothing!"</p>
+<p>In sadness and dejection Hortense had then returned to her
+dwelling, where Lavalette, Madame Ney, and the ladies of her court,
+awaited her.</p>
+<p>"All is lost," said she, sadly. "Yes, all is lost. The empress
+has determined to leave Paris. She lightly abandons France and the
+emperor. She is about to depart."</p>
+<p>"If she does that," exclaimed General Lavalette, in despair,
+"then all is really lost, and yet her firmness and courage might
+now save the emperor, who is advancing toward Paris by forced
+marches. After all this weighing and deliberating, they have
+elected to take the worst course they could choose! But, as this
+has finally been determined on, what course will your majesty now
+pursue?"</p>
+<p>"I remain in Paris," said the queen, resolutely; "as I am
+permitted to be mistress of my own actions, I am resolved to remain
+here and share the fortunes of the Parisians, be they good or evil!
+This is at least a better and worthier course than to incur the
+risk of being made a prisoner on the public highway."</p>
+<p>Now that she had come to a decision, the queen exhibited a
+joyous determination, and her mind recovered from its depression.
+She hastened to dispatch a courier to Malmaison to the Empress
+Josephine, now forgotten and neglected by all, to conjure her to
+leave for Novara at once. She then retired to her bedchamber to
+seek the rest she so much needed after so many hours of
+excitement.</p>
+<p>But at midnight she was aroused from her repose to a sad
+awakening. Her husband, with whom she had held no kind of
+intercourse since his return, had now, in the hour of danger,
+determined to assert his marital authority over his wife and
+children. He wrote the queen a letter, requiring her to leave Paris
+with her children, and follow the empress.</p>
+<p>Hortense replied with a decided refusal. A second categoric
+message from her husband was the response. He declared that if she
+should not at once conform to his will, and follow the empress with
+her children, he would immediately take his children into his own
+custody, by virtue of his authority as husband and father.</p>
+<p>At this threat, the queen sprang up like an enraged lioness from
+her lair. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes she commanded that
+her children should be at once brought to her, and then, pressing
+her two boys to her heart with passionate tenderness, she
+exclaimed: "Tell the king that I shall leave the city within the
+hour!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.2"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE ALLIES IN PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The anxiety of motherly love had effected what neither the
+departure of the empress nor the news of the approach of the
+Cossacks could do. Hortense had taken her departure. She had
+quitted Paris, with her children and suite, which had already begun
+to grow sensibly smaller, and arrived, after a hurried flight,
+endangered by bands of marauding Cossacks, in Novara, where the
+Empress Josephine, with tears of sorrow and of joy alike, pressed
+her daughter to her heart. Although her own happiness and grandeur
+were gone, and although the misfortunes of the Emperor
+Napoleon--whom she still dearly loved--oppressed her heart,
+Josephine now had her daughter and dearest friend at her side, and
+that was a sweet consolation in the midst of all these misfortunes
+and cares.</p>
+<p>At Novara, Hortense received the intelligence of the fall of the
+empire, of the capitulation of Paris, of the entrance of the
+allies, and of the abdication of Napoleon.</p>
+<p>When the courier sent by the Duke of Bassano with this
+intelligence further informed the Empress Josephine that the island
+of Elba had been assigned Napoleon as a domicile, and that he was
+on the point of leaving France to go into exile, Josephine fell,
+amid tears of anguish, into her daughter's arms, crying: "Hortense,
+he is unhappy, and I am not with him! He is banished to Elba! Alas!
+but for his wife, I would hasten to his side, to share his
+exile!"</p>
+<p>While the empress was weeping and lamenting, Hortense had
+silently withdrawn to her apartments. She saw and fully appreciated
+the consequences that must ensue to the emperor's entire family,
+from his fall; she already felt the mortifications and insults to
+which the Bonapartes would now be exposed from all quarters, and
+she wished to withdraw herself and children from their influence.
+She formed a quick resolve, and determined to carry it out at once.
+She caused Mademoiselle de Cochelet, one of the few ladies of her
+court who had remained faithful, to be called, in order that she
+might impart to her her resolution.</p>
+<p>"Louise," said she, "I intend to emigrate. I am alone and
+defenceless, and ever threatened by a misfortune that would be more
+cruel than the loss of crown and grandeur--the misfortune of seeing
+my children torn from me by my husband. My mother can remain in
+France--her divorce has made her free and independent; but I bear a
+name that will no longer be gladly heard in France, now that the
+Bourbons are returning. I have no other fortune than my diamonds.
+These I shall sell, and then go, with my children, to my mother's
+estate in Martinique. I lived there when a child, and have retained
+a pleasant remembrance of the place. It is undoubtedly hard to be
+compelled to give up country, mother, and friends; but one must
+face these great strokes of destiny courageously. I will give my
+children a good education, and that shall be my consolation."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle de Cochelet burst into tears, kissed the queen's
+extended hand, and begged so earnestly that she might be permitted
+to accompany her, that Hortense at last gave a reluctant consent.
+It was arranged between them that Louise should hasten to Paris, in
+order to make the necessary preparations for the queen's long
+journey; and she departed on this mission, under the protection of
+the courier, on the following morning.</p>
+<p>How changed and terrible was the aspect Paris presented on her
+arrival! At the gate through which they entered Cossacks stood on
+guard; the streets were filled with Russian, Austrian, and Prussian
+soldiery, at whose side the proud ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain were to be seen walking, in joyous triumph, bestowing upon
+the vanquishers of France as great a devotion as they could have
+lavished upon the beloved Bourbons themselves, whose return was
+expected in a few days.</p>
+<p>A Swedish regiment was quartered in the queen's dwelling; her
+servants had fled; her glittering drawing-rooms now sheltered the
+conquerors of France; and in the Tuileries preparations were
+already being made for the reception of the Bourbons.</p>
+<p>No one dared to pronounce the name of Napoleon. Those who were
+formerly his most zealous flatterers were now the most ready to
+condemn him. Those upon whom he had conferred the greatest benefits
+were now the first to deny him, hoping thereby to wipe out the
+remembrance of the benefits they had received. The most zealous
+Napoleonists now became the most ardent royalists, and placed the
+largest white cockades in their hats, in order that they might the
+sooner attract the attention of the new rulers.</p>
+<p>But there was still one man who pronounced the name of Napoleon
+loudly, and with affectionate admiration, and publicly accorded him
+the tribute of his respect.</p>
+<p>This one was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. He had loved
+Napoleon so dearly, that even the position of hostility which
+policy compelled him to assume could not banish from his heart
+friendship for the hero who had so long ruled Europe.</p>
+<p>Napoleon's fate was decided; and it was attributable to the
+zealous efforts of the czar that the allies had consented to the
+emperor's demands, and appointed him sovereign of the island of
+Elba. Now that Alexander could do nothing more for Napoleon, he
+desired to make himself useful to his family, at least, and thereby
+testify the admiration which he still felt for the fallen
+Titan.</p>
+<p>The Empress Marie Louise and the little King of Rome had no need
+of his assistance. The empress had not availed herself of the
+permission of the allies to accompany her husband to Elba, but had
+placed herself and son under the protection of her father, the
+Emperor of Austria.</p>
+<p>The Emperor Alexander therefore bestowed his whole sympathy upon
+Napoleon's divorced wife and her children, the Viceroy of Italy and
+the Queen of Holland. He took so great an interest in the queen,
+that he declared his intention, in case Hortense should not come to
+Paris, of going to Novara to see her, in order to learn from her
+own lips in what manner he could serve her, and how she desired
+that her future should be shaped.</p>
+<p>Count Nesselrode, the emperor's minister, was also zealous in
+his endeavors to serve the queen. The count had long been the
+intimate friend of Louise de Cochelet; and, desirous of giving her
+a further proof of his friendship, he knew of no better way of
+doing so than by rendering a service to Queen Hortense and her
+children. Louise informed the count of the queen's intended
+departure for Martinique. Count Nesselrode smiled sadly over this
+desperate resolve of a brave mother's heart, and instructed Louise
+to beg the queen to impart to him, through her confidante, all her
+wishes and demands, in order that he might lay them before the
+emperor.</p>
+<p>The queen's fate was the subject of great sympathy in all
+quarters. When, in one of the sessions of the ministers of the
+allies, in which the fate of France, of the Bourbons, and of the
+Bonapartes, was to be the subject of deliberation, the question of
+making some provision for the emperor's family came up for
+consideration, the prince of Benevento exclaimed: "I plead for
+Queen Hortense alone; for she is the only one for whom I have any
+esteem." Count Nesselrode added: "Who would not be proud to claim
+her as a countrywoman? She is the pearl of her France!" And
+Metternich united with the rest in her praise<a name=
+"FNanchor25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor25">[25]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p 279.</blockquote>
+<p>But it was in vain that Louise de Cochelet imparted this
+intelligence to the queen; the entreaties and representations of
+her friends were powerless to persuade Hortense to leave her
+retirement and come to Paris.</p>
+<p>The following letter of the queen, written to Louise, concerning
+her affairs, will testify to her beautiful and womanly sentiments.
+This letter is as follows:</p>
+<p>"My dear Louise,--You and all my friends write me the same
+questions: 'What do you want? What do you demand?' I reply to all
+of you: I want nothing whatever! What should I desire? Is not my
+fate already determined? When one has the strength to form a great
+resolution, and when one can firmly and calmly contemplate the idea
+of making a journey to India or America, it is unnecessary to
+demand any thing of any one. I entreat you to take no steps that I
+should be compelled to disavow; I know that you love me, and this
+might induce you to do so. I am really not to be pitied; it was in
+the midst of grandeur and splendor that I have suffered! I shall
+now, perhaps, learn the happiness of retirement, and prefer it to
+all the magnificence that once surrounded me. I do not believe I
+can remain in France; the lively interest now shown in my behalf
+might eventually occasion mistrust. This idea is annihilating; I
+feel it, but I shall not willingly occasion sorrow to any one. My
+brother will be happy; my mother can remain in her country, and
+retain her estates. I, with my children, shall go to a foreign
+land, and, as the happiness of those I love is assured, I shall be
+able to bear the misfortune that strikes only at my material
+interests, but not at my heart. I am still deeply moved and
+confounded by the fate that has overtaken the Emperor Napoleon and
+his family. Is it true? Has all been finally determined? Write me
+on this subject. I hope that my children will not be taken from me;
+in that case I should lose all courage. I will so educate them that
+they shall be happy in any station of life. I shall teach them to
+bear fortune and misfortune with equal dignity, and to seek true
+happiness in contentment with themselves. This is worth more than
+crowns. Fortunately, they are healthy. Thank Count Nesselrode for
+his sympathy. I assure you there are days that are properly called
+days of misfortune, and that are yet not without a charm; such are
+those that enable us to discern the true sentiments people hold
+toward us. I rejoice over the affection which you show me, and it
+will always afford me gratification to tell you that I return it.
+HORTENSE<a name="FNanchor26"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_26">[26]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor26">[26]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., pp. 275-277.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV.2"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+<h3>CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND LOUISE DE COCHELET.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In the meanwhile, Hortense was still living with her mother in
+Novara, firmly resolved to remain in her retirement, sorrowing over
+the fate of the imperial house, but quite indifferent as to her own
+fate.</p>
+<p>But her friends--and even in misfortune Hortense still had
+friends--and above all her truest friend, Louise de Cochelet,
+busied themselves all the more about her future, endeavoring to
+rescue out of the general wreck of the imperial house at least a
+few fragments for the queen.</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet was still sojourning in Paris, and the
+letters which she daily wrote to the queen at Novara, and in which
+she informed her of all that was taking place in the city, are so
+true a picture of that strange and confused era, that we cannot
+refrain from here inserting some of them.</p>
+<p>In one of her first letters Louise de Cochelet relates a
+conversation which she had had with Count Nesselrode, in relation
+to the queen's future.</p>
+<p>"The Bourbons," she writes, "have now been finally accepted. I
+asked Count Nesselrode, whom I have just left: 'Do you believe that
+the queen will be permitted to remain in France? Will the new
+rulers consider this proper?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'I am sure
+of it, for we will make it a condition with them, and without us
+they would never have come to the throne at all! It is not the
+Bourbons, but it is we, it is all Europe, that arranges and
+regulates these matters. I therefore trust that they will never
+violate the agreement. Rest assured that the Emperor Alexander will
+always support the right.'</p>
+<p>"All of these strangers here speak of you, madame, with great
+enthusiasm. Metternich, who doubtlessly recollects your great
+kindness to his wife and children, inquired after you with lively
+interest. Prince Leopold is devotedly attached to yourself and the
+Empress Josephine, and ardently desires to be able to serve you
+both. Count Nesselrode thinks it would be well for you to write to
+the Emperor Alexander, as he takes so warm an interest in your
+affairs.</p>
+<p>"The old nobility is already much discontented; it considers
+itself debased, because it sees itself mixed with so many new
+elements."</p>
+<p>"Come to Malmaison with the empress," she writes a few days
+later, "the Emperor Alexander will then go there at once to meet
+you; he is anxious to make your acquaintance, and you already owe
+him some thanks, as he devotes himself to your interests as though
+they were his own. The Duke of Vicenza, who demeans himself so
+worthily with regard to the Emperor Napoleon, requests me to inform
+you that the future of your children depends on your coming to
+Malmaison.</p>
+<p>"The Emperor Napoleon has signed an agreement, that secures the
+future of all the members of his family; you can remain in France,
+and retain your titles. You are to have for yourself and children
+an income of four hundred thousand francs.</p>
+<p>"It is said here that the Faubourg St. Germain is furious over
+the brilliant positions provided for the imperial family and the
+empress. This is their gratitude for all her goodness to them.</p>
+<p>"You wish to make Switzerland your home. Count Nesselrode thinks
+you may be right, that it is a good retreat; but you should not
+give up the one you have here, and should in any event retain the
+right to return to France.</p>
+<p>"Fancy, madame, Count Nesselrode insists on my seeing his
+emperor! I have not yet consented, because I do not like to do any
+thing without your assent; but I confess I long to make his
+acquaintance. I am made quite happy by hearing you so well spoken
+of here.</p>
+<p>"Count Nesselrode said to me yesterday: 'Tell the queen that I
+shall be happy to fulfil all her wishes, and that I can do so, that
+I have the power.' For great security he wishes to have a future
+assured you that shall be independent of the treaty. I do not know
+what to say to him. Write to me, and demand something, I conjure
+you!"</p>
+<p>The queen's only response to this appeal was a letter addressed
+to the Emperor Napoleon, and sent to Count Nesselrode, with the
+request that it should be forwarded to its destination.</p>
+<p>"It is strange," wrote Louise de Cochelet in relation to this
+matter--"strange that all my efforts to serve you here have had no
+other result than your sending a commission to Count Nesselrode to
+forward to Fontainebleau a letter addressed to the Emperor
+Napoleon. He at first thought I was bringing him the letter he had
+solicited for his emperor; but he well knows how to appreciate all
+that is noble and great, and as he possesses the most admirable
+tact, he thinks the letter cannot well reach the emperor through
+him, and will therefore send it to the Duke of Vicenza, at
+Fontainebleau, to be delivered by him to the Emperor Napoleon."</p>
+<p>Another letter of Louise de Cochelet is as follows: "I have just
+seen Count Nesselrode again; he makes many inquiries concerning
+you; the Emperor of Russia now resides on the Elys&eacute;e
+Bourbon. The count tells me a story that is in circulation here,
+and has reference to the Empress Marie Louise and the kings her
+brothers-in-law. They were about to force her to enter a carriage,
+in which they were to continue their journey with her; when she
+refused to enter, it is said the King of Westphalia became so
+violent that he gave her a little beating. She cried for help, and
+General Caffarelli<a name="FNanchor27"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_27">[27]</a>, who commanded the guards, came to her
+rescue. On the following day she and her son were made prisoners,
+and all the crown diamonds in her possession seized by the
+authorities; but it seems as though capture was precisely what she
+wished.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor27">[27]</a> According to Napoleon's instructions, his
+brothers were to prevent the empress and the King of Rome from
+falling into the hands of the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene
+in his memoirs, and it is self-evident that it was not so stormy as
+the gossip of Paris portrayed it.</blockquote>
+<p>"The Queen of Westphalia has just arrived in Paris; the Emperor
+Alexander, her cousin, called on her immediately. It is supposed
+that she will return to her father.</p>
+<p>"Your brothers future is not yet determined on, but it will
+certainly be a desirable and worthy one. There are many intrigues
+going on in connection with it, as Count Nesselrode informs me. As
+for the kingdom of Naples, it is no longer spoken of. By the
+details of the last war with us, narrated to me by the count, I see
+that he despises many of our ministers and marshals, and that these
+must be very culpable; and yet he tells me that they considered the
+result uncertain a week before our overthrow; as late as the 10th
+of March they believed that peace had been made with Prussia at
+least.</p>
+<p>"Do not grieve over the fate of the emperor on the island of
+Elba. The emperor selected it himself; the allies would have
+preferred any other place.</p>
+<p>"All the mails arriving at Paris have been seized by the allies.
+Among the letters there was one from the Empress Marie Louise to
+her husband. She writes that her son is well, but that on awakening
+from a good night's rest he had cried and told her he had dreamed
+of his father; notwithstanding all her coaxing and promises of
+playthings, he had, however, refused to tell what he had dreamed of
+his father, and that this circumstance had made her uneasy in spite
+of her will.</p>
+<p>"Prince Leopold resides in the same house with Countess Tascher;
+he is incessantly busied with yours and your mother's affairs; he
+at least is not oblivious of the kindness you have both shown him.
+I know that it is his intention to speak to the Emperor of Russia,
+and then write to you.</p>
+<p>"All your friends say that you must consider the interest of
+your children, and accept the future offered you. M. de Lavalette
+and the Duke of Vicenza are also of this opinion. You lose enough
+without this, and you may well permit the victors to return a small
+portion of that which they have taken from you, and which is
+rightfully yours.</p>
+<p>"In short, all your friends demand that you shall repair to
+Malmaison as soon as the Emperor Napoleon shall have departed from
+Fontainebleau. I am assured that the Emperor Alexander intends to
+hunt you up in Novara if you should not come to Malmaison. It will
+therefore be impossible to avoid him. Consider that the fate of
+your children lies in his hands! In the treaty of Fontainebleau you
+and your children were provided for together; this is a great point
+for you, and proves how highly you are thought of.</p>
+<p>"It is to the Emperor of Russia alone that you owe this; and
+when the Duke of Vicenza submitted this article of the treaty to
+the Emperor Napoleon for his signature, it met with his entire
+approval. Your sole and undivided authority over your children is
+thereby acknowledged. You should, therefore, not reject the good
+offered you for your children. I do not think it would require much
+persuasion to induce others to accept that which is tendered
+you.</p>
+<p>"Madame Tascher, who has proved herself to be your true friend
+and relative, has just had her first interview with the Duke of
+Dalberg, the member of the provisional government. She spoke of
+you, and I will here give you his response, word for word: 'She is
+considered as being altogether foreign to the Bonaparte family,
+because she has separated herself from her husband. She will be the
+refuge of her children, who are left to her. She is so dearly
+beloved and highly esteemed, that she can be very happy. She can
+remain in France, and do whatever she pleases; but she must now
+return to Paris.' Countess Tascher came to me immediately after
+leaving the duke, in order to acquaint me with what he had
+said.</p>
+<p>"Friends and foes alike say this about you: 'Those who are not
+delighted with what is being done for the queen are bad people! And
+as for her, what has she to regret in all this? Only the good she
+has done! Now, the world will dare to love her, and to express
+their love; she has so few wishes, she is so perfect!'</p>
+<p>"In short, it would seem almost that the people are pleased with
+the misfortune that places you in the right light, and they say,
+'She is far more worthy in herself than when surrounded by a
+glittering court!'</p>
+<p>"Yesterday I saw the new arrivals from Fontainebleau, M. de
+Lascour and M. de Lavoestine. They came to me to learn where you
+were to be found, and intend visiting you at once, either at Novara
+or at Malmaison, as the case may be. These two gentlemen are true
+knights. 'No matter what she is to become,' said they; 'we can now
+show our devotion, without incurring the risk of being considered
+flatterers.'</p>
+<p>"The last two weeks at Fontainebleau have been a period of the
+greatest interest. All these young men, together with M. de
+Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re and M. de Montesquieu, wished to accompany
+the emperor; but he forbade their doing so, and, in taking leave of
+them, appealed to them to remain, and to continue to serve their
+country zealously.</p>
+<p>"Lascour and Lavoestine, together with many other officers of
+the army, are much displeased with the generals who left
+Fontainebleau without taking leave of the emperor.</p>
+<p>"Upon taking leave of the Empress Josephine, the emperor is
+reported to have said: 'She was right; my separation from her has
+brought misfortune upon my head.'</p>
+<p>"It is said that the Duchess of Montebello will leave the
+Empress Marie Louise."</p>
+<p>But all these entreaties and flatteries, and these appeals to a
+mother's heart, were, as yet, powerless to break the queen's pride.
+She still considered it more worthy and becoming to remain away
+from the city in which the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
+celebrating the orgies of their victorious royalism with the
+soldiers of the allied armies. Instead of yielding to Louise de
+Cochelet's entreaties, the queen wrote her the following
+letter:</p>
+<p>"My dear Louise,--My resolution gives you pain! You all accuse
+me of childish waywardness. You are unjust! My mother can follow
+the Duke de Vicenza's counsel; she will go to Malmaison, but <i>I
+remain here,</i> and I have good reasons for doing so. I cannot
+separate my interests from those of my children. It is they, it is
+their nearest relatives, who are being sacrificed by all that is
+taking place, and I am, therefore, determined not to approach those
+who are working our ruin. I must be saddened by our great
+misfortune, and I will appear so, and abstain from approaching
+those who would still consider me a supplicant, even though I
+should demand nothing of them.</p>
+<p>"I can readily believe that the Emperor Alexander is kindly
+disposed toward me; I have heard much good of him, even from the
+Emperor Napoleon. Although I was once anxious to make his
+acquaintance, I at this moment have no desire to see him. Is he not
+our vanquisher? In their hearts, your friends must all approve of
+my determination, whatever they may say. I find retirement
+congenial. When you have seen enough of your friends, you will
+return to me. I am suffering in my breast, and shall perhaps go to
+some watering-place. I do not know whether it is due to the air of
+Novara, but since I have been here I cannot breathe. My friends
+maintain that it is due to the mental shocks resulting from the
+great events that have transpired; but they are in error; death has
+spared us all, and the loss of a glittering position is not the
+greatest loss one can sustain. What personal happiness do I lose?
+My brother will, I trust, be well and suitably provided for, and he
+will be no longer exposed to danger. He must be very uneasy on our
+account, and yet I dare not write to him, as my letters would
+probably never reach him; if an opportunity should present itself,
+please let him know that we are no longer surrounded by dangers.
+Adieu. I entreat you once more to undertake nothing in my behalf. I
+fear your impetuosity and friendship, and yet I love to be able to
+count on you. My children are well. My mother opposes all my plans;
+she asserts that she has need of me; but I shall, nevertheless, go
+to her who must now be more unhappy than all of us.</p>
+<p>HORTENSE."</p>
+<p>She of whom Hortense thought that she must be more unhappy than
+all of them, was the wife of Napoleon, Marie Louise, who had now
+left Blois, to which place she had gone as empress-regent, and
+repaired to Rambouillet, to await the decision of the allies with
+regard to the future of herself and son. It was certainly one of
+the most peculiar features of this period, so rich in extraordinary
+occurrences, to see the sovereigns of Europe, the overthrown rulers
+of France, and those who were about to grasp the sceptre once more,
+thrown confusedly together in Paris, and within a circuit of some
+fifty miles around that city: a Bourbon in the Tuileries, Bonaparte
+at Fontainebleau, his wife and his son at Rambouillet, the divorced
+empress at Novara, the Emperors of Russia and Austria, and the King
+of Prussia, at Paris; moreover, a whole train of little German
+potentates and princes, and the Napoleonic kings and princes, who
+were all sojourning in Paris or its vicinity.</p>
+<p>The Queen of Holland considered it her duty, in these days of
+misfortune and danger, to stand at the side of her whom Napoleon
+had commanded them to consider the head of the family, and to serve
+faithfully in life and death. Hortense therefore determined to go
+to the Empress Marie Louise at Rambouillet, in accordance with the
+emperor's commands.</p>
+<p>This determination filled the hearts of the queen's friends with
+sorrow; and Louise had no sooner received the letter in which the
+queen announced her impending departure, than she hastened to
+reply, imploring her to abandon this intention. M. de Marmold, the
+queen's equerry, departed with all speed to bring this letter to
+the queen at Louis, where she was to pass the night, and to add his
+entreaties to those of Louise.</p>
+<p>"M. de Marmold, the bearer of this letter, will deliver it to
+you at Louis, if he arrives there in good time," wrote Louise de
+Cochelet. "If you go to Rambouillet, you will destroy your own
+position, and also that of your children; this is the conviction of
+all your friends. I was so happy, for Prince Leopold had written
+you, in the name of the Emperor Alexander, and begged you to come
+to Malmaison. You could not have avoided seeing him, as he would
+even have gone to Novara. Instead, however, of returning with the
+Empress Josephine, you are on the point of uniting yourself with a
+family that has never loved you. With them you will experience
+nothing but distress, and they will not be thankful for the
+sacrifice you are about to make. You will regret this step when it
+is too late. I conjure you, do not go to Rambouillet!</p>
+<p>"Your course will touch those to whom you are going but little,
+and will displease the allies, who take so much interest in
+you.</p>
+<p>"The empress is a thorough Austrian at heart, and the visits of
+members of her husband's family are regarded with disfavor. I tell
+you this at the request of Prince Leopold and Madame de
+Caulaincourt. The latter, if you do not come here soon, will go to
+you, in spite of her great age. She conjures you not to go to
+Rambouillet, as your lady of honor, and the friend of your mother;
+she even forbids your doing so.</p>
+<p>"When I informed Prince Leopold of your intention to go to the
+Empress Marie Louise at Rambouillet, his eyes filled with tears.
+'It is beautiful to be proud,' said he, 'but she can no longer
+retreat; she is already under obligations to the Emperor of Russia,
+who effected the treaty of the 11th of April. I await her reply, to
+deliver it to the emperor: she owes him a reply.'</p>
+<p>"I passed an hour with our good friend Lavalette this morning.
+This excellent man knew nothing of the measures we have been taking
+to persuade you to return, and said to me: 'How fortunate it would
+be for her and her children, if the emperor should desire to see
+her!' Do come, do come; show your friends this favor; we shall all
+be in despair if you go to Rambouillet!</p>
+<p>"Prince Leopold will write you a few lines. He could not be more
+devoted to yourself and the Empress Josephine if you were his
+mother and his sister. Count Tschernitscheff has been to see me.
+The Emperor of Austria arrives here to-morrow, and the new French
+princes and the king will soon follow. What a change!</p>
+<p>"You must see the Emperor of Russia, because he so much desires
+it. I conjure you, on my knees, to do me this favor! The emperor
+conducts himself so handsomely that every one is constrained to
+respect him; one forgets that he is the conqueror, and can only
+remember him as the protector. He seems to be the refuge of all
+those who have lost all, and are in distress. His conduct is
+admirable; he receives none but business calls, and such others as
+are absolutely necessary. The fair ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain cannot boast of his attention to them, and this does him
+all the more credit, he being, as it is said, very susceptible to
+the fair sex. He told Prince Leopold that he intended going to
+Novara, adding: 'You know that I love and esteem this family;
+Prince Eugene is the prince of knights; I esteem the Empress
+Josephine, Queen Hortense, and Prince Eugene, all the more from the
+fact that her demeanor toward the Emperor Napoleon has been so much
+more noble than that of so many others, who should have shown him
+more devotion.' How could it be possible not to respect a man of
+such nobility of character? I trust you will soon have an
+opportunity of judging of this yourself. For God's sake,
+return!</p>
+<p>LOUISE."</p>
+<br>
+<p>But these entreaties were all in vain. M. de Marmold arrived at
+Louis in time to see the queen; he delivered the letters of her
+friends, and did all that lay in his power to persuade her not to
+go to Rambouillet.</p>
+<p>But Hortense held firmly to her intention. "You are right," said
+she. "All this is true; but I shall, nevertheless, go to the
+Empress Marie Louise, for it is my duty to do so. If unpleasant
+consequences should result from this step for me, I shall pay no
+attention to them, but merely continue to do my duty. Of all of us,
+the Empress Marie Louise must be the most unhappy, and must stand
+most in need of consolation; it is, therefore, at her side that I
+can be of most use, and nothing can alter my determination."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV.2"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+<h3>QUEEN HORTENSE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Queen Hortense had gone to Rambouillet, in spite of the
+entreaties and exhortations of her friends. The Empress Marie
+Louise had, however, received her with an air of embarrassment. She
+had told the queen that she was expecting her father, the Emperor
+of Austria, and that she feared the queen's presence might make him
+feel ill at ease. Moreover, the young empress, although dejected
+and grave, was by no means so sorrowful and miserable as Hortense
+expected. The fate of her husband had not wounded the heart of
+Marie Louise as deeply as that of the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>Hortense felt that she was not needed there; that the presence
+of the Emperor of Austria would suffice to console the Empress of
+France for her husband's overthrow. She thought of Josephine, who
+was so deeply saddened by Napoleon's fate; and finding that,
+instead of consoling, she only embarrassed the Empress Marie
+Louise, she hastened to relieve her of her presence.</p>
+<p>And now, at last, Hortense bowed her proud, pure heart beneath
+the yoke of necessity; now, at last, she listened to the prayers
+and representations of her mother, who had returned to Malmaison,
+and of her friends, and went to Paris. It had been too often urged
+upon her that she owed it to her sons to secure their fortune and
+future, not to overcome her personal repugnance, and conform
+herself to this new command of duty.</p>
+<p>She had, therefore, returned to Paris for a few days, and taken
+up her abode in her dwelling, whose present dreariness recalled,
+with sorrowful eloquence, the grandeur of the past.</p>
+<p>These drawing-rooms, once the rendezvous of so many kings and
+princes, were now desolate, and bore on their soiled floors the
+footprints of the hostile soldiers who had recently been quartered
+there. At the czar's solicitation, they had now been removed; but
+the queen's household servants had also left it. Faithless and
+ungrateful, they had turned their backs on the setting sun, and
+fled from the storm that had burst over the head of their
+mistress.</p>
+<p>The Emperor Alexander hastened to the queen's dwelling as soon
+as her arrival in Paris was announced, the queen advancing to meet
+him as far as the outermost antechamber.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, with a soft smile, "I have no means of
+receiving you with due ceremony; my antechambers are deserted."</p>
+<p>The appearance of this solitary woman, this queen without a
+crown, without fortune, and without protection and support, who
+nevertheless stood before him in all the charms of beauty and
+womanhood, a soft smile on her lips, made a deep impression on the
+emperor, and his eyes filled with tears.</p>
+<p>The queen observed this, and hastened to say, "But what of that?
+I do not think that antechambers filled with gold-embroidered
+liveries would make those who come to see me happier, and I esteem
+myself happy in being able to do you the honors of my house alone.
+I have, therefore, only won."</p>
+<p>The emperor took her hand, and, while conducting the queen to
+her room, conversed with her, with that soft, sad expression
+peculiar to him, lamenting with bitter self-reproaches almost that
+he was himself, in part, to blame for the misfortunes that had
+overtaken the emperor and his family. He then conjured her to
+abandon her intention of leaving France, and to preserve herself
+for her mother and friends. He told her that, in abandoning her
+country, her friends, and her rights, she would be guilty of a
+crime against her own children, against her two sons, who were
+entitled to demand a country and a fortune at her hands.</p>
+<p>The queen, overcome at last by these earnest and eloquent
+representations, declared her readiness to remain in France, if the
+welfare of her sons should require it.</p>
+<p>"Until now," said she, "I had formed all my resolutions with
+reference to misfortune. I was entirely resigned, and I never
+thought of the possibility of any thing fortunate happening for me;
+and even yet, I do not know what I can desire and demand. I am,
+however, determined to accept nothing for myself and children that
+would be unworthy of us, and I do not know what that could be."</p>
+<p>With an assuring smile, the emperor extended his hand to the
+queen. "Leave that to me," said he. "It is, then, understood, you
+are to remain in France?"</p>
+<p>"Sire, you have convinced me that the future of my sons requires
+it. I shall therefore remain."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI.2"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+<h3>THE NEW UNCLES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Malmaison, to which place Hortense had returned after a short
+stay in Paris, and where the Empress Josephine was also sojourning,
+was a kind of focus for social amusement and relaxation for the
+sovereigns assembled in Paris. Each of these kings and princes
+wished to pay his homage to the Empress Josephine and her daughter,
+and thereby, in a measure, show the last honors to the dethroned
+emperor.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, when the King of Prussia, with his two sons,
+Prince Frederick William (the late king) and William, had come to
+Malmaison, and announced their desire to call on the empress, she
+sent them an invitation to a family dinner, at which she also
+invited the Emperor of Russia and his two brothers to attend.</p>
+<p>The emperor accepted this invitation, and on entering, with the
+young archdukes, the parlor in which the Duchess de St. Leu was
+sitting, he took his two brothers by the hand and conducted them to
+Hortense.</p>
+<p>"Madame," said he, "I confide my brothers to your keeping. They
+are now making their <i>d&eacute;but</i> in society. My mother
+fears their heads may be turned by the beauties of France; and in
+bringing them to Malmaison, where so many charming persons are
+assembled, I am certainly fulfilling my promise to preserve them
+from such a fate but poorly."</p>
+<p>"Reassure yourself, sire," replied the queen, gravely; "I will
+be their mentor, and I promise you a motherly surveillance."</p>
+<p>The emperor laughed, and, pointing to Hortense's two sons, who
+had just been brought in, he said: "Ah, madame, it would be much
+less dangerous for my brothers if they were of the age of these
+boys."</p>
+<p>He approached the two boys with extended hands, and while
+conversing with them in a kindly and affectionate manner, addressed
+them with the titles "monseigneur" and "imperial highness."</p>
+<p>The children regarded him wonderingly, for the Russian emperor
+was the first to address the little Napoleon and his younger
+brother, Louis Napoleon, with these imposing titles. The queen had
+never allowed them to be called by any but their own names. She
+wished to preserve them from vain pride, and teach them to depend
+on their own intrinsic merit.</p>
+<p>Shortly afterward the King of Prussia and his sons were
+announced, and the emperor and his brothers left the young princes,
+and advanced to meet the king.</p>
+<p>While the emperor and the king were exchanging salutations,
+Hortense's two sons inquired of their governess the names of the
+gentlemen who had just entered.</p>
+<p>"It is the King of Prussia," whispered the governess; "and the
+gentleman who has just spoken with you is the Emperor of
+Russia."</p>
+<p>The little Louis Napoleon regarded the tall figures of those
+princes thoughtfully for a moment, by no means impressed by their
+imposing titles. He was so accustomed to see his mother surrounded
+by kings, and these kings had always been his uncles.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," said the little Louis Napoleon, after a short
+pause, "are these two new gentlemen, the emperor and the king, also
+our uncles, like all the others and must we call them so?"</p>
+<p>"No, Louis, you must simply call them 'sire.'"</p>
+<p>"But," said the boy, after a moment's reflection, "why is it
+that they are not our uncles?"</p>
+<p>The governess withdrew with the two children to the back of the
+parlor, and explained to them, in a low voice, that the emperors
+and kings then in Paris, far from being their uncles, were their
+vanquishers.</p>
+<p>"Then," exclaimed the elder boy, Napoleon Louis, his face
+flushing with anger, "then they are the enemies of my uncle, the
+emperor! Why did this Emperor of Russia embrace us?"</p>
+<p>"Because he is a noble and generous enemy, who is endeavoring to
+serve you and your mother in your present misfortune. Without him
+you would possess nothing more in the world, and the fate of your
+uncle, the emperor, would be much sadder than it already is."</p>
+<p>"Then we ought to love this emperor very dearly?" said the
+little Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Certainly; for you owe him many thanks."</p>
+<p>The young prince regarded the emperor, who was conversing with
+the empress Josephine, long and thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>When the emperor returned to Malmaison on the following day, and
+while he was sitting at his mother's side in the garden-house,
+little Louis Napoleon, walking on tiptoe, noiselessly approached
+the emperor from behind, laid a small glittering object in his
+hand, and ran away.</p>
+<p>The queen called him back, and demanded with earnest severity to
+know what he had done.</p>
+<p>The little prince returned reluctantly, hanging his head with
+embarrassment, and said, blushing deeply: "Ah, <i>maman,</i> it is
+the ring Uncle Eugene gave me. I wished to give it to the emperor,
+because he is so good to my <i>maman</i>!"</p>
+<p>Deeply touched, the emperor took the boy in his arms, seated him
+on his knees, and kissed him tenderly.</p>
+<p>Then, in order to give the little prince an immediate reward, he
+attached the ring to his watch-chain, and swore that he would wear
+the token as long as he lived<a name="FNanchor28"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_28">[28]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor28">[28]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII.2"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+<h3>DEATH OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Since Napoleon's star had grown pale, and himself compelled to
+leave France as an exile, life seemed to Josephine also to be
+enveloped in a gloomy mourning-veil; she felt that her sun had set,
+and night come upon her. But she kept this feeling a profound
+secret, and never allowed a complaint or sigh to betray her grief
+to her tenderly-beloved daughter. Her complaints were for the
+emperor, her sighs for the fate of her children and grandchildren.
+She seemed to have forgotten herself; her wishes were all for
+others. With the pleasing address and grace of which age could not
+deprive her, she did the honors of her house to the foreign
+sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a forced composure, in which
+her soul had no share. She would have preferred to withdraw with
+her grief to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought it her
+duty to make this sacrifice for the welfare of her daughter and
+grandchildren; and she, the loving mother, could do what Hortense's
+pride would not permit--she could entreat the Emperor Alexander to
+take pity on her daughter's fate.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in establishing
+her future, and had received the letters-patent which secured to
+the queen the duchy of St. Leu Alexander hastened to Malmaison, to
+communicate this good news to the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>She did not reward him with words, but with gushing tears, as
+she extended to the emperor both hands. She then begged him, with
+touching earnestness, to accept from her a remembrance of this
+hour.</p>
+<p>The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait of Josephine
+was painted, and begged her to give him that.</p>
+<p>"<i>No</i>, sire," said she; "such a cup can be bought anywhere.
+But I wish to give you something that cannot be had anywhere else
+in the world, and that will sometimes remind you of me. It is a
+present that I received from Pope Pius VII., on the day of my
+coronation. I present you with this token in commemoration of the
+day on which you bring my daughter the ducal crown, in order that
+it may remind you of mother and daughter alike--of the dethroned
+empress and of the dethroned queen."</p>
+<p>This present, which she now extended to the emperor with a
+charming smile, was an antique cameo, of immense size, and so
+wondrously-well executed that the empress could well say its equal
+was nowhere to be found in the world. On this cameo the heads of
+Alexander the Great and of his father, Philip of Macedonia, were
+portrayed, side by side; and the beauty of the workmanship, as well
+as the size of the stone, made this cameo a gem of inestimable
+value. And for this reason the emperor at first refused to accept
+this truly imperial present, and he yielded only when he perceived
+that his refusal would offend the empress, who seemed to be more
+pale and irritable than usual.</p>
+<p>Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for the royal
+family of the Bourbons had on this day caused her heart to bleed
+anew. Josephine had read an article in the journals, in which, in
+the most contemptuous and cruel terms, attention was called to the
+fact that the eldest son of the Queen of Holland had been interred
+in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and that the Minister Blacas had
+now issued an order to have the coffin removed from its
+resting-place, and buried in an ordinary grave-yard.</p>
+<p>Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in
+order that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of
+her beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the
+Church of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine's
+whole figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her
+countenance. Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her
+sufferings to-day, for the first time; Hortense was not present,
+and she might therefore, for once, allow herself the sad
+consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and its paint, the pale
+countenance, which death had already lightly touched.</p>
+<p>"Your majesty is ill!" exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.</p>
+<p>With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander's eyes, Josephine
+pointed to her breast, and whispered: "Sire, I have received the
+death-wound here!"</p>
+<p>Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her
+heart was bleeding to death.</p>
+<p>Terrified by Josephine's condition, the emperor hurried to
+Paris, and sent his own physician to inquire after her condition.
+When the latter returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine
+was dangerously ill, and that he did not believe her recovery
+possible.</p>
+<p>He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense
+and Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's
+bedside throughout the night. The best physicians were called in,
+but these only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the
+condition of the empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With
+strong hands, she had held it together as long as her children's
+welfare seemed to require. Now that Hortense's future was also
+assured--now that she knew that her grandchildren would, at least,
+not be compelled to wander about the world as exiled beggars--now
+Josephine withdrew her hands from her heart, and suffered it to
+bleed to death.</p>
+<p>On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an
+illness which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not
+heard her mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with
+Eugene, after her mother had received the sacrament from
+Abb&eacute; Bertrand--when she saw her mother, with outstretched
+arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to them--Hortense fainted away at
+her mother's bedside, and the empress breathed her last sigh in
+Eugene's arms.</p>
+<p>The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris
+profoundly. It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a
+day that Napoleon was no longer the ruler of France, and that the
+Bourbons had reascended the throne of their fathers. All Paris
+mourned; for the hearts of the French people had not forgotten this
+woman, who had so long been their benefactress, and of whom each
+could relate the most touching traits of goodness, of generosity,
+and of gentleness.</p>
+<p>Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as
+empress in the hearts of the French people and thousands poured
+into Malmaison, to pay their last homage to their deceased empress.
+Even the Faubourg St. Germain mourned with the Parisians; these
+haughty and insolent royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons,
+may, perhaps, for a moment, have recalled the benefits which the
+empress had shown them, when, as the mighty Empress of France, she
+employed the half of her allowance for the relief of the emigrants.
+They had returned without thinking of the thanks they owed their
+forgotten benefactress; now that she was dead, they no longer
+withheld the tribute of their admiration.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how
+interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness!
+How well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and
+good taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"</p>
+<p>Immediately after the death of the empress, Eugene had conducted
+the queen from the death-chamber, almost violently, and had taken
+her and her children to St. Leu. The body of the empress was
+interred in Malmaison, and followed to the grave by her two
+grandchildren only. Grief had made both of her children severely
+ill, and the little princes were followed, not by her relatives,
+but by the Russian General Von Sacken, who represented the emperor,
+and by the equipages of all those kings and princes who had helped
+to hurl the Bonapartes from their thrones and restore the
+Bourbons.</p>
+<p>The emperor passed his last night in France, before leaving for
+England, at St. Leu; and, on taking leave of Eugene and Hortense,
+who, at the earnest solicitation of her brother, had left her room
+for the first time since her mother's death, for the purpose of
+seeing the emperor, he assured them of his unchangeable friendship
+and attachment. As he knew that, among those whom he strongly
+suspected, Pozzo di Borgo<a name="FNanchor29"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_29">[29]</a>, the ambassador he left behind him in
+Paris, was an irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon and his family, he
+had assigned to duty at the embassy as <i>attach&eacute;</i>, a
+gentleman selected for this purpose by Louise de Cochelet--M. de
+Boutiakin--and it was through him that the emperor directed that
+the letters and wishes of the queen and of her faithful young lady
+friend should be received and answered.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor29">[29]</a> Upon receiving the intelligence of the death
+of the emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill
+him, but I threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order
+that he might never rise again."</blockquote>
+<p>A few days later Eugene also left St. Leu and his sister
+Hortense, to return, with the King of Bavaria, to his new home in
+Germany. It was not until his departure that Hortense felt to its
+full extent the gloomy loneliness and dreary solitude by which she
+was surrounded. She had not wept over the downfall of all the
+grandeur and magnificence by which she had formerly been
+surrounded; she had not complained when the whirlwind of fate
+hurled to the ground the crowns of all her relations, but had bowed
+her head to the storm with resignation, and smiled at the loss of
+her royal titles; but now, as she stood in her parlor at St. Leu
+and saw none about her but her two little boys and the few ladies
+who still remained faithful--now, Hortense wept.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" she cried, bursting into tears, as she extended her hand
+to Louise de Cochelet, "alas! my courage is at an end! My mother is
+dead, my brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon
+forget his promised protection, and I alone must contend, with my
+two children, against all the annoyances and enmities to which the
+name I bear will subject me! I fear I shall live to regret that I
+allowed myself to be persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will the
+love I bear my country recompense me for the torments which are in
+store for me?"</p>
+<p>The queen's dark forebodings were to be only too fully realized.
+In the great and solemn hour of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal
+vision the veil that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan
+prophetess, we see the impending evil, powerless to avert it.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_III."></a>BOOK III.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE RESTORATION.</i></h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.3"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the 12th of April, Count d'Artois, whom Louis XVIII. had sent
+in advance, and invested with the dignity of a lieutenant-general
+of France, made his triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the
+city, he was received by the newly-formed provisional government,
+Talleyrand at its head; and here it was that Count d'Artois replied
+to the address of that gentleman in the following words: "Nothing
+is changed in France, except that from to-day there will be one
+Frenchman more in the land." The people received him with cold
+curiosity, and the allied troops formed a double line for his
+passage to the Tuileries, at which the ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain, adorned with white lilies and white cockades, received him
+with glowing enthusiasm. Countess Ducayla, afterward the well-known
+friend of Louis XVIII., had been one of the most active instruments
+of the restoration, and she it was who had first unfolded again in
+France the banner of the Bourbons--the white flag. A few days
+before the entrance of the prince, she had gone, with a number of
+her royalist friends, into the streets, in order to excite the
+people to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty. But the
+people and the army had still preserved their old love for the
+emperor, and the proclamation of Prince Schwartzenberg, read by
+Bauvineux in the streets, was listened to in silence. True, the
+royalists cried, <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> at the end of this reading,
+but the people remained indifferent and mute.</p>
+<p>This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed to
+indicate a secret discontent with the new order of things. She felt
+that this sullen people must be inflamed, and made to speak with
+energy and distinctness. To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and
+proclamations had been attempted in vain; now the countess
+determined to attempt to arouse them by another means--to astonish
+them by the display of a striking symbol--to show them the white
+flag of the Bourbons!</p>
+<p>She gave her companion, Count de Montmorency, her handkerchief,
+that he might wave it aloft, fastening it to the end of his cane,
+in order that it should be more conspicuous. This handkerchief of
+Countess Ducayla, fastened to the cane of a Montmorency, was the
+first royalist banner that fluttered over Paris, after a banishment
+of twenty years. The Parisians looked at this banner with a kind of
+reverence and shuddering wonder; they did not greet it with
+applause; they still remained silent, but they nevertheless
+followed the procession of royalists, who marched to the
+boulevards, shouting, <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> They took no part in
+their joyful demonstration, but neither did they attempt to prevent
+it.</p>
+<p>This demonstration of the royalists, and particularly of the
+royalist ladies, transcended the bounds of propriety, and of their
+own dignity. In their fanaticism for the legitimate dynasty, they
+gave the allies a reception, which almost assumed the character of
+a declaration of love, on the part of the fair ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, for all the soldiers and officers of the
+allied army. In a strange confusion of ideas, these warriors, who
+had certainly entered France as enemies, seemed to these fair ones
+to be a part of the beloved Bourbons; and they loved them with
+almost the same love they lavished upon the royal family itself.
+During several days they were, in their hearts, the daughters of
+all countries except their own!</p>
+<p>Louis XVIII. was himself much displeased with this enthusiasm of
+the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and openly avowed to
+Countess Ducayla his dissatisfaction with the ridiculous and
+contemptible behavior of these ladies at that time. He was even of
+the opinion that it was calculated to injure his cause, as the
+nation had then not yet pronounced in his favor.</p>
+<p>"They should," said he, "have received the allies with a
+dignified reserve, without frivolous demonstrations, and without
+this inconsiderate devotion. Such a demeanor would have inspired
+them with respect for the nation, whereas they now leave Paris with
+the conviction that we are still--as we were fifty years ago--the
+most giddy and frivolous people of Europe. You particularly,
+ladies--you have compromised yourselves in an incomprehensible
+manner. The allies seemed to you so lovable <i>en masse,</i> that
+you gave yourselves the appearance of also loving them <i>en
+d&eacute;tail</i>; and this has occasioned reports concerning you
+which do little honor to French ladies!"</p>
+<p>"But, <i>mon Dieu!</i>" replied Countess Ducayla to her royal
+friend, "we wished to show them a well-earned gratitude for the
+benefit they conferred in restoring to us your majesty; we wished
+to offer them freely what we, tired of resistance, were at last
+compelled to accord to the tyrants of the republic and the
+sabre-heroes of the empire! None of us can regret what we have done
+for our good friends the allies!"</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, that which the ladies "had done for their good
+friends the allies" was the occasion of many annoying family
+scenes, and the husbands who did not fully participate in the
+enthusiasm of their wives were of the opinion that they had good
+cause to complain of their inordinate zeal.</p>
+<p>Count G----, among others, had married a young and beautiful
+lady a few days before the restoration. She, in her youthful
+innocence, was entirely indifferent to political matters; but her
+step-father, her step-mother, and her husband, Count G----, were
+royalists of the first water.</p>
+<p>On the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris,
+step-father, step-mother, and husband, in common with all good
+legitimists, hurried forward to welcome "their good friends," and
+each of them returned to their dwelling with a stranger--the
+husband with an Englishman, the step-mother with a Prussian, and
+the step-father with an Austrian. The three endeavored to outdo
+each other in the attentions which they showered upon the guests
+they had the good fortune to possess. The little countess alone
+remained indifferent, in the midst of the joy of her family. They
+reproached her with having too little attachment for the good
+cause, and exhorted her to do everything in her power to entertain
+the gallant men who had restored to France her king.</p>
+<p>The husband requested the Englishman to instruct the young
+countess in riding; the marquise begged the Prussian to escort her
+daughter to the ball, and teach her the German waltz; and, finally,
+the marquis, who had discovered a fine taste for paintings in the
+Austrian, appealed to this gentleman to conduct the young wife
+through the picture-galleries.</p>
+<p>In short, every opportunity was given the young countess to
+commit a folly, or rather three follies, for she did not like to
+give the preference to any one of the three strangers. She was
+young, and inexperienced in matters of this kind. Her triple
+intrigue was, therefore, soon discovered, and betrayed to her
+family; and now husband, step-father, and step-mother, were
+exasperated. This exceeded even the demands of their royalism; and
+they showered reproaches on the head of the young wife.</p>
+<p>"It is not my fault!" cried she, sobbing. "I only did what you
+commanded. You ordered me to do everything in my power to entertain
+these gentlemen, and I could therefore refuse them nothing."</p>
+<p>But there were also cases in which the advances of the
+enthusiastic ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were repelled. Even
+the high-born and haughty Marquise M---- was to experience this
+mortification. She stepped before the sullen, sombre veterans of
+the Old Guard of the empire, who had just allowed Count d'Artois to
+pass before their ranks in dead silence. She ardently appealed to
+their love for the dynasty of their fathers, and, in her enthusiasm
+for royalism, went so far as to offer herself as a reward to him
+who should first cry <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> But the faithful
+soldiers of the emperor stood unmoved by this generous offer, and
+the silence remained unbroken by the lowest cry!</p>
+<p>The princes who stood at the head of the allied armies were, of
+course, the objects of the most ardent enthusiasm of the royalist
+ladies; but it was, above all, with them that they found the least
+encouragement. The Emperor of Austria was too much occupied with
+the future of his daughter and grandson, and the King of Prussia
+was too grave and severe, to find any pleasure in the coquetries of
+women. The young Emperor Alexander of Russia, therefore, became the
+chief object of their enthusiasm and love. But their enthusiasm
+also met with a poor recompense in this quarter. Almost
+distrustfully, the czar held himself aloof from the ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain; and yet it was they who had decided the fate
+of France with him, and induced him to give his vote for the
+Bourbons; for until then it had remained undetermined whom the
+allies should call to the throne of France.</p>
+<p>In his inmost heart, the Emperor of Russia desired to see the
+universally-beloved Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, elevated
+to the vacant throne. The letter with which Eugene replied to the
+proposition of the allies, tendering him the ducal crown of Genoa,
+had won for Josephine's son the love and esteem of the czar for all
+time. Alexander had himself written to Eugene, and proffered him,
+in the name of the allies, a duchy of Genoa, if he would desert
+Napoleon, and take sides with the allies. Eugene Beauharnais had
+replied to him in the following letter:</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"SIRE,--I have received your majesty's propositions. They are
+undoubtedly very favorable, but they are powerless to change my
+resolution. I must have known how to express my thoughts but poorly
+when I had the honor of seeing you, if your majesty can believe
+that I could sully my honor for any, even the highest, reward.
+Neither the prospect of possessing the crown of the duchy of Genoa,
+nor that of the kingdom of Italy, can induce me to become a
+traitor. The example of the King of Naples cannot mislead me; I
+will rather be a plain soldier than a traitorous prince.</p>
+<p>"The emperor, you say, has done me injustice; I have forgotten
+it; I only remember his benefits. I owe all to him--my rank, my
+titles, and my fortune, and I owe to him that which I prefer to all
+else--that which your indulgence calls my renown. I shall,
+therefore, serve him as long as I live; my person is his, as is my
+heart. May my sword break in my hands, if it could ever turn
+against the emperor, or against France! I trust that my
+well-grounded refusal will at least secure to me the respect of
+your imperial majesty. I am, etc."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The Emperor of Austria, on the other hand, ardently desired to
+secure the throne of France to his grandson, the King of Rome,
+under the regency of the Empress Marie Louise; but he did not
+venture to make this demand openly and without reservation of his
+allies, whose action he had promised to approve and ratify. The
+appeals of the Duke of Cadore, who had been sent to her father by
+Marie Louise from Blois, urging the emperor to look after her
+interests, and to demand of the allies that they should assure the
+crown to herself and son, were, therefore, fruitless.</p>
+<p>The emperor assured his daughter's ambassador that he had reason
+to hope for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist
+on any action in her behalf.</p>
+<p>"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my
+son-in-law, and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."</p>
+<p>"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice
+is required at your hands."</p>
+<p>"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor,
+"to sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised
+the allies to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to
+consent to all they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count
+Metternich, is at this moment with them, and I shall ratify
+everything which he has signed<a name="FNanchor30"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_30">[30]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor30">[30]</a> Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.</blockquote>
+<p>But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should
+sign for him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome
+was to be the King of France.</p>
+<p>But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this
+hope.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in
+Talleyrand's house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd
+French diplomat, who well knew how much easier it would be to bend
+the will of the Agamemnon of the holy alliance<a name=
+"FNanchor31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a> to his wishes,
+when he should have him in hand, as it were, day and night. In
+offering the emperor his hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention
+to make him his prisoner, body and soul, and to use him to his own
+advantage.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor31">[31]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;.</blockquote>
+<p>It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to
+concert measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had
+transformed himself into the zealous legitimist of to-day.</p>
+<p>Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the
+Russian emperor, and he succeeded.</p>
+<p>While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet,
+Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de
+Lemall&eacute;--endeavor to make a great stroke. The emperor is
+gallant, and what he denies to diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to
+the ladies."</p>
+<p>He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's
+cabinet alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees,
+and stretched out her arms.</p>
+<p>With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened
+forward to assist her to rise.</p>
+<p>"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A noble lady
+never has occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."</p>
+<p>"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it
+is my purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you
+alone can restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess
+Louis XVIII. once more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to
+us!"</p>
+<p>"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the
+Bourbon family?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole
+love!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies
+filled with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"</p>
+<p>"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis
+XVIII., and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back.
+Let the legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be
+done<a name="FNanchor32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor32">[32]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 179.</blockquote>
+<p>And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the
+legislative bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to
+communicate the hopes with which the emperor had inspired her to
+all Paris; on the evening after her interview with the emperor, she
+gave a grand <i>soir&eacute;e</i>, to which she invited the most
+beautiful ladies of her party, and a number of senators.</p>
+<p>"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap
+the gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not
+know that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen
+vows?"</p>
+<p>On the following day the senate assembled, and elected a
+provisional government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of
+Dalberg, the Marquis of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the
+Abb&eacute; Montesquieu. The senate and the new provisional
+government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed from the throne, and
+recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus publicly and
+solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name of the
+French people, it at the same time testified to its own
+unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with
+its recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the
+salary which they had hitherto received, should be continued to
+them for life." While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took
+care to pay themselves for their trouble, and to secure their own
+future.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.3"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate
+and provisional government as the declaration of the people, and
+recalled to the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count
+de Lille, had so long languished in exile at Hartwell.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to
+the decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of
+Rome, to be robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to
+fall from his daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as
+much astonished at this result as Marie Louise, for, until their
+entrance into Paris, the allies had flattered the Austrian emperor
+with the hope that the crown of France would be secured to his
+daughter and grandson. The emperor's astonishment at this turn of
+affairs was made the subject of a caricature, which, on the day of
+the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was affixed to the same walls on which
+Chateaubriand's enthusiastic <i>brochure</i> concerning the
+Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of which thousands of
+copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the Emperor of Austria
+was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage; the Emperor
+Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England as
+postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up
+behind as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the
+carriage, holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of
+Austria, "Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And <i>taken me
+in</i>," was the reply of Francis I.</p>
+<p>The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was
+great, now that their king was at last restored to them, and they
+eagerly embraced every means of showing their gratitude to the
+Emperor of Russia. But Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to
+their homage; he even went so far as to avoid attending the
+entertainments given by the new king at the Tuileries, and society
+was shocked at seeing the emperor openly displaying his sympathy
+for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and repairing to Malmaison,
+instead of appearing at the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet
+to inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the
+Faubourg St. Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's
+maid-of-honor, as he was in the habit of doing from time to time,
+for the purpose of discussing the queen's interests with her.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards
+your majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It
+has even caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said
+he to me, recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high
+circles of society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay
+about it; it is feared that he is there subjected to influences to
+which policy requires he should not be exposed.'"</p>
+<p>"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor,
+laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the
+Faubourg St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that
+they have not made a conquest of me! I prefer the noble qualities
+of the soul to all outward appearances; and I find united in the
+Empress Josephine, in the Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene,
+all that is admirable and lovable. I am better pleased to be here
+with you in quiet, confidential intercourse, than with those who
+really demean themselves as though they were crazed, and who,
+instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared for them, are only
+intent on destroying their enemies, and have commenced with those
+who formerly accorded them such generous protection; they really
+weary one with their extravagances.</p>
+<p>"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of
+the conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew
+how far their amiability could extend; but their heart is
+undoubtedly no longer their own. I am therefore on my guard against
+being deceived by it, and I fancy these ladies love to please so
+well, that they are even angry with those who respond to the
+attentions which are so lavishly showered on them, with
+conventional politeness only."</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against
+the emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by
+the manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it
+was but natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm
+for a young emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light,
+and that they must necessarily, even without being coquettish,
+ardently desire to be noticed by him.</p>
+<p>"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these
+ladies only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart
+palpitate? I seek mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those
+who display a desire to exercise a control over my heart; in this I
+see nothing but self-love, and I hold myself aloof from such
+contact."</p>
+<p>While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain
+were lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the
+returned king of the boundless delight of his people, this people
+was already beginning to grumble. The allies had now completed
+their task, they had restored to France its legitimate king, and
+they now put the finishing-touch to their work by providing in the
+treaty, that France should be narrowed down to the boundaries it
+had had before the revolution.</p>
+<p>France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers.
+From the weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which
+they had been compelled to accord to the strength of the
+empire.</p>
+<p>All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much
+French blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be
+given up, and the great, extended France was to shrink back into
+the France it had been thirty years before! It was this that made
+the people murmur. The Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they
+had grown weary of endless wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the
+conquests they had made under their emperor. The surrender of these
+conquests wounded the national pride, and they were angry with
+their king for being so ready to put this shame upon France--for
+holding the crown of France in higher estimation than the honor of
+France!</p>
+<p>It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most
+bitterly felt the disgrace that attached to him in this
+re-establishment of France within its ancient boundaries, and he
+had endeavored to protest in every way against this demand of the
+allies. But his representative had been made to understand that if
+Louis XVIII. could not content himself with the France the allies
+were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to relinquish it to
+Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to yield to
+necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while his
+courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
+he was heard to whisper, "<i>Nos chers amis les ennemis</i><a name=
+"FNanchor33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor33">[33]</a> "Our dear friends the enemies!"</blockquote>
+<p>Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great
+reluctance, and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII.
+consented to the demands made by the allies in behalf of the family
+of Napoleon. But the Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended
+the rights of the Queen of Holland and her children against the
+ill-will of the Bourbons, the dislike of the royalists, and the
+disinclination of the allies, alike. The family of the emperor owed
+it to him and to his firmness alone that the article of the treaty
+of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII. agreed "that the titles
+and dignities of all the members of the family of the Emperor
+Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not be deprived
+of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.</p>
+<p>It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last
+succeeded in obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate
+and a title, that secured her position. King Louis finally yielded
+to his urgent solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the title
+of Duchess of St. Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.</p>
+<p>But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under
+the pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given
+him his throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have
+forgotten as willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of
+the empire.</p>
+<p>For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep,
+and were not a little surprised to find that the world had
+progressed in the meanwhile.</p>
+<p>According to their ideas, every thing must have remained
+standing at the point where they had left it twenty years before;
+and they were at least determined to ignore all that had happened
+in the interval. King Louis therefore signed his first act as in
+"the nineteenth" year of his reign, and endeavored in all things to
+keep up a semblance of the continuation of his reign since the year
+1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which King Louis appointed
+Hortense Duchess of St. Leu were drawn up in a manner offensive to
+the queen, for they contained the following: "The king appoints
+Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais Duchess of St. Leu."</p>
+<p>The queen refused to accept this title, under the circumstances,
+and rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had
+angrily demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier,
+consented to draw up the letters-patent in a different style. They
+read: "The king appoints Hortense Eug&eacute;nie, included in the
+treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess of St. Leu." This was, to be
+sure, merely a negative and disguised recognition of the former
+rank of the queen; but it was, at least no longer a degradation to
+accept it.</p>
+<p>The Viceroy of Italy, the noble Eugene--who was universally
+beloved, and who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the
+czar, to secure his future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much
+annoyance and perplexity.</p>
+<p>The king could not refuse to recognize the brave hero of the
+empire and the son-in-law of the King of Bavaria, who was one of
+the allies; and, as Eugene desired an audience of the king, it was
+accorded him at once.</p>
+<p>But how was he to be received? With what title was Napoleon's
+step-son, the Viceroy of Italy, to be addressed? It would have been
+altogether too ridiculous to repeat the absurdity contained in
+Hortense's letters-patent, and call Eugene "Viscount de
+Beauharnais;" but to accord him the royal title would have
+compromised the dignity of the legitimate dynasty. A brilliant
+solution of this difficult question suggested itself to King Louis.
+When the Duke d'Aumont conducted Prince Eugene to the royal
+presence, the king advanced, with a cordial smile, and saluted him
+with the words, "M. Marshal of France, I am happy to see you."</p>
+<p>Eugene, who was on the point of making his salutation, remained
+silent, and looked over his shoulder to see whom the king was
+speaking with. Louis XVIII. smiled, and continued: "You, my dear
+sir, are a marshal of France. I appoint you to this dignity."</p>
+<p>"Sire," said Eugene, bowing profoundly, "I am much obliged to
+your majesty for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the
+rank to which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the
+high title with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I
+must decline it<a name="FNanchor34"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_34">[34]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor34">[34]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 267.</blockquote>
+<p>The king's stratagem had thus come to grief, and Eugene left the
+royal presence with flying colors. He was not under the necessity
+of accepting benefits from the King of France, for his step-father,
+the King of Bavaria, made Eugene a prince of the royal house of
+Bavaria, and created for him the duchy of Leuchtenberg. Hither
+Eugene retired, and lived there, surrounded by his wife and
+children, in peace and tranquillity, until death tore him from the
+arms of his sorrowing family, in the year 1824.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.3"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The restoration, that had overthrown so many of the great, and
+that was destined to restore to the light so many names that had
+lain buried in obscurity, now brought back to Paris a person who
+had been banished by Napoleon, and who had been adding new lustre
+and renown to her name in a foreign land. This personage was Madame
+de Sta&euml;l, the daughter of Necker, the renowned poetess of
+"Corinne" and "Delphine."</p>
+<p>It had been a long and bitter struggle between Madame de
+Sta&euml;l and the mighty Emperor of the French; and Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, with her genius and her impassioned eloquence, and
+adorned with the laurel-wreath of her exile, had perhaps done
+Napoleon more harm than a whole army of his enemies. Intense hatred
+existed on both sides, and yet it had depended on Napoleon alone to
+transform this hatred into love. For Madame de Sta&euml;l had been
+disposed to lavish the whole impassioned enthusiasm of her heart
+upon the young hero of Marengo and Arcola--quite disposed to become
+the Egeria of this Numa Pompilius. In the warm impulse of her
+stormy imagination, Madame de Sta&euml;l, in reference to
+Bonaparte, had even, in a slight measure, been regardless of her
+position as a lady, and had only remembered that she was a poetess,
+and that, as such, it became her well to celebrate the hero, and to
+bestow on the luminous constellation that was rising over France
+the glowing dithyrambic of her greetings.</p>
+<a name="392.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/392.jpg"><img src="images/392.jpg"
+width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Portrait of Madame de Sta&euml;l.</b></p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l had, therefore, not waited for Napoleon to
+seek her, but had made the first advances, and sought him.</p>
+<p>To the returning victor of Italy she wrote letters filled with
+impassioned enthusiasm; but these letters afforded the youthful
+general but little pleasure. In the midst of the din of battle and
+the grand schemes with which he was continually engaged, Bonaparte
+found but little time to occupy himself with the poetical works of
+Madame de Sta&euml;l. He knew of her nothing more than that she was
+the daughter of the minister Necker, and that was no recommendation
+in Napoleon's eyes, for he felt little respect for Necker's genius,
+and even went so far as to call him the instigator of the great
+revolution. It was, therefore, with astonishment that the young
+general received the enthusiastic letter of the poetess; and, while
+showing it to some of his intimate friends, he said, with a shrug
+of his shoulders, "Do you understand these extravagances? This
+woman is foolish!"</p>
+<p>But Madame de Sta&euml;l did not allow herself to be dismayed by
+Bonaparte's coldness and silence--she continued to write new and
+more glowing letters.</p>
+<p>In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate
+enthusiasm as to say, that it was a great error in human
+institutions that the gentle and quiet Josephine had united her
+faith with his; that she, Madame de Sta&euml;l, and Bonaparte, were
+born for each other, and that Nature seemed to have created a soul
+of fire like hers, in order that it might worship a hero such as he
+was.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he
+threw it in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of
+sentiment, should dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not
+answer these letters!"</p>
+<p>He did not answer them, but Madame de Sta&euml;l did not, or
+rather would not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give
+up a resolution once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l was now also determined to have her way, and to
+approach Bonaparte despite his resistance.</p>
+<p>And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all
+obstacles, and the interview, so long wished for by her, and so
+long avoided by him, at last took place. Madame de Sta&euml;l was
+introduced at the Tuileries, and received by Bonaparte and his
+wife. The personal appearance of this intellectual woman was,
+however, but little calculated to overcome Bonaparte's prejudice.
+The costume of Madame de Sta&euml;l was on this occasion, as it
+always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and Napoleon
+loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired. In
+this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Sta&euml;l gave free scope
+to her wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do,
+she only succeeded in depressing him.</p>
+<p>It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, in her ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay
+her a compliment, that Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat
+indiscreet question: "Who is in your eyes the greatest woman?" with
+the sarcastic reply, "She who bears the most children to the
+state."</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l had come with a heart full of enthusiasm;
+in her address to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to
+earth;" she had come an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an
+offended woman. Her wounded vanity never forgave the answer which
+seemed to make her ridiculous. She avenged herself, in her
+drawing-room, by the biting <i>bon mots</i> which she hurled at
+Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully
+repeated to the first consul.</p>
+<p>But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded
+against the hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely
+than weapons of steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l was his superior, and the consciousness of this
+embittered Bonaparte all the more against the lady, who dared prick
+the heel of Achilles with the needle of her wit, and strike at the
+very point where he was most sensitive.</p>
+<p>A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest
+geniuses of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both
+with equal bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side,
+and could punish the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.</p>
+<p>He banished Madame de Sta&euml;l from Paris, and soon afterward
+even from France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the
+praises of her "god descended from heaven," now went into exile his
+enemy and a royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius,
+in making proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the
+minds of men an invisible but none the less formidable army against
+her enemy the great Napoleon.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l soon gave still greater weight to the
+flaming eruptions of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing
+renown and greatness; and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon
+became as redoubtable an opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia,
+or Austria, could be.</p>
+<p>But in the midst of the triumphs she was celebrating in her
+exile, Madame de Sta&euml;l soon began to long ardently to return
+to France, which she loved all the more for having been compelled
+to leave it. She therefore used all the influence she possessed in
+Paris, to obtain from Napoleon permission to return to her home,
+but the emperor remained inexorable, even after having read
+Delphine.</p>
+<p>"I love," said he, "women who make men of themselves just as
+little as I love effeminate men. There is an appropriate
+<i>r&ocirc;le</i> for every one in the world. Of what use is this
+vagabondizing of fantasy? What does it accomplish? Nothing! All
+this is nothing but do rangement of mind and feeling. I dislike
+women who throw themselves in my arms, and for this reason, if for
+no other, I dislike this woman, who is certainly one of that
+number."</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l's petitions to be permitted to return to
+Paris were therefore rejected, but she was as little disposed to
+abandon her purpose now as she was at the time she sought to gain
+Bonaparte's good-will. She continued to make attempts to achieve
+her aim, for it was not only her country that she wished to
+reconquer, but also a million francs which she wished to have paid
+to her out of the French treasury.</p>
+<p>Her father, Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a
+million francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy
+bread for the starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in
+writing, that this "national debt of France" should be
+returned.</p>
+<p>But the revolution that shattered the throne of the unfortunate
+king, also buried beneath the ruins of the olden time the promises
+and oaths that had been written on parchment and paper.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l now demanded that the emperor should fulfil
+the promises of the overthrown king, and that the heir of the
+throne of the Bourbons should assume the obligations into which a
+Bourbon had entered with her father.</p>
+<p>She had once called Napoleon a god descended from heaven; and
+she even now wished that he might still prove a god for her,
+namely, the god Pluto, who should pour out a million upon her from
+his horn of plenty.</p>
+<p>As she could not go to France herself, she sent her son to plead
+with the emperor, for herself and her children.</p>
+<p>Well knowing, however, how difficult it would be, even for her
+son to secure an audience of the emperor, she addressed herself to
+Queen Hortense in eloquent letters imploring her to exert her
+influence in her son's behalf.</p>
+<p>Hortense, ever full of pity for misfortune, felt the warmest
+sympathy and admiration for the genius of the great poetess, and
+interceded for Madame de Sta&euml;l with great courage and
+eloquence. She alone ventured, regardless of Napoleon's frowns and
+displeasure, to plead the cause of the poor exile again and again,
+and to solicit her recall to France, as a simple act of justice;
+she even went so far in her generosity as to extend the
+hospitalities of her drawing-rooms to the poetess's son, who was
+avoided and fled from by every one else.</p>
+<p>Hortense's soft entreaties and representations were at last
+successful in soothing the emperor's anger. He allowed Madame de
+Sta&euml;l to return to France, on the condition that she should
+never come to Paris or its vicinity; he then also accorded Madame
+de Sta&euml;l's son the long-sought favor of an audience.</p>
+<p>This interview of Napoleon with Madame de Sta&euml;l's son is as
+remarkable as it is original. On this occasion, Napoleon openly
+expressed his dislike and even his hatred as well of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l as of her father, although he listened with generous
+composure to the warm defence of the son and grandson.</p>
+<p>Young Sta&euml;l told the emperor of his mother's longing to
+return to her home, and touchingly portrayed the sadness and
+unhappiness of her exile.</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the emperor, "your mother is in a state of
+exaltation. I do not say that she is a bad woman. She has wit, and
+much intellect, perhaps too much, but hers is an inconsiderate, an
+insubordinate spirit. She has grown up in the chaos of a falling
+monarchy, and of a revolution, and she has amalgamized the two in
+her mind. This is all a source of danger; she would make
+proselytes, she must be watched; she does not love me. The
+interests of those whom she might compromise, require that I should
+not permit her to return to Paris. If I should allow her to do so,
+she would place me under the necessity of sending her to
+Bic&eacute;tre, or of imprisoning her in the Temple, before six
+months elapsed; that would be extremely disagreeable, for it would
+cause a sensation, and injure me in the public opinion. Inform your
+mother that my resolution is irrevocable. While I live, she shall
+not return to Paris."</p>
+<p>It was in vain that young Sta&euml;l assured him in his mother's
+name, that she would avoid giving him the least occasion for
+displeasure, and that she would live in complete retirement if
+permitted to return to Paris.</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes! I know the value of fine promises!" exclaimed the
+emperor. "I know what the result would be, and I repeat it, it
+cannot be! She would be the rallying-point of the whole Faubourg
+St. Germain. She live in retirement! Visits would be made her, and
+she would return them; she would commit a thousand indiscretions,
+and say a thousand humorous things, to which she attaches no
+importance, but which annoy me. My government is no jest, I take
+every thing seriously; I wish this to be understood, and you may
+proclaim it to the whole world!"</p>
+<p>Young Sta&euml;l had, however, the courage to continue his
+entreaties; he even went so far as to inquire in all humility for
+the grounds of the emperor's ill-will against his mother. He said
+he had been assured that Necker's last work was more particularly
+the cause of the emperor's displeasure, and that he believed Madame
+de Sta&euml;l had assisted in writing it. This was, however, not
+so, and he could solemnly assure the emperor that his mother had
+taken no part in it whatever. Besides, Necker had also done full
+justice to the emperor in this work.</p>
+<p>"Justice, indeed! He calls me the 'necessary man.' The necessary
+man! and yet, according to his book, the first step necessary to be
+taken, was to take off this necessary man's head! Yes, I was
+necessary to repair all that your grandfather had destroyed! It is
+he who overthrew the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the
+scaffold!"</p>
+<p>"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then
+not aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he
+defended the king!"</p>
+<p>"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when
+he lies in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then
+maintain that I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that
+M. Necker defended Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak
+prove nothing. Robespierre's property was also confiscated. Not
+even Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, have brought such misery upon
+France as Necker; he it is who made the revolution. You did not see
+it, but I was present in those days of horror and public distress;
+but I give you my word that they shall return no more while I live!
+Your schemers write out their utopias, the simple-minded read these
+dreams, they are printed and believed in; the common welfare is in
+everybody's mouth, and soon there is no more bread for the people;
+it revolts, and that is the usual result of all these fine
+theories! Your grandfather is to blame for the orgies that brought
+France to desperation."</p>
+<p>Then lowering his voice, from the excited, almost angry tone in
+which he had been speaking, to a milder one, the emperor approached
+the young man, who stood before him, pale, and visibly agitated.
+With that charming air of friendly intimacy that no one knew so
+well how to assume as Napoleon, he gently pinched the tip of the
+young man's ear, the emperor's usual way of making peace with any
+one to whom he wished well, after a little difficulty.</p>
+<p>"You are still young," said he; "if you possessed my age and
+experience, you would judge of these matters differently. Your
+candor has not offended, but pleased me; I like to see a son defend
+his mother's cause! Your mother has entrusted you with a very
+difficult commission, and you have executed it with much spirit. It
+gives me pleasure to have conversed with you, for I love the young
+when they are straightforward and not too 'argumentative.' But I
+can nevertheless give you no false hopes! You will accomplish
+nothing! If your mother were in prison, I should not hesitate to
+grant you her release. But she is in exile, and nothing can induce
+me to recall her."</p>
+<p>"But, sire, is one not quite as unhappy far from home and
+friends, as in prison?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah! those are romantic notions! You have heard that said
+about your mother. She is truly greatly to be pitied. With the
+exception of Paris, she has the whole of Europe for her
+prison!"</p>
+<p>"But, sire, all her friends are in Paris!"</p>
+<p>"With her intellect, she will be able to acquire new ones
+everywhere. Moreover, I cannot understand why she should desire to
+be in Paris. Why does she so long to place herself in the immediate
+reach of tyranny? You see I pronounce the decisive word! I am
+really unable to comprehend it. Can she not go to Rome, Berlin,
+Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London would be the right place!
+There she can perpetrate libels whenever she pleases. At all of
+these places I will leave her undisturbed with the greatest
+pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate
+those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what
+would happen, if I should permit your mother to return to Paris.
+She would commit new follies; she would corrupt those who surround
+me; she would corrupt Garat, as she once corrupted the tribunal; of
+course, she would promise all things, but she would, nevertheless,
+not avoid engaging in politics."</p>
+<p>"Sire," I can assure you that my mother does not occupy herself
+with politics at all; she devotes herself exclusively to the
+society of her friends, and to literature."</p>
+<p>"That is the right word, and I fully understand it. One talks
+politics while talking of literature, of morals, of the fine arts,
+and of every conceivable thing! If your mother were in Paris, her
+latest <i>bon mots</i> and phrases would be recited to me daily;
+perhaps they would be only invented; but I tell you I will have
+nothing of the kind in the city in which I reside! It would be best
+for her to go to London; advise her to do so. As far as your
+grandfather is concerned, I have certainly not said too much; M.
+Necker had no administrative ability. Once more, inform your mother
+that I shall never permit her to return to Paris."</p>
+<p>"But if sacred interests should require her presence here for a
+few days, your majesty would at least--"</p>
+<p>"What? Sacred interests? What does that mean?"</p>
+<p>"Sire," the presence of my mother will be necessary, in order to
+procure from your majesty's government the return of a sacred
+debt."</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah! sacred! Are not all the debts of the state
+sacred?"</p>
+<p>"Without doubt, sire; but ours is accompanied by peculiar
+circumstances."</p>
+<p>"Peculiar circumstances!" exclaimed the emperor, rising to
+terminate the long interview, that began to weary him. "What
+creditor of the state does not say the same of his debt? Moreover,
+I know too little of your relations toward my government. This
+matter does not concern me, and I will not be mixed up in it. If
+the laws are for you, all will go well without my interference; but
+if it requires influence, I shall have nothing to do with it, for I
+should be rather against than for you!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said young Sta&euml;l, venturing to speak once more, as
+the emperor was on the point of leaving, "sire, my brother and I
+were anxious to settle in France; but how could we live in a land
+in which our mother would not be allowed to live with us
+everywhere?"</p>
+<p>Already standing on the threshold of the door, the emperor
+turned to him hastily. "I have no desire whatever to have you
+settle here," said he; "on the contrary. I advise you not to do so.
+Go to England. There they have a <i>penchant</i> for Genevese,
+parlor-politicians, etc.; therefore, go to England; for I must say,
+I should be rather ill than well disposed toward you<a name=
+"FNanchor35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor35">[35]</a> Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.3"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L'S RETURN TO PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l returned to her cherished France with the
+restoration. She came back thirsting for new honor and renown, and
+determined, above all, to have her work republished in Germany, its
+publication having been once suppressed by the imperial police. She
+entertained the pleasing hope that the new court would forget that
+she was Necker's daughter, receive her with open arms, and accord
+her the influence to which her active mind and genius entitled
+her.</p>
+<p>But she was laboring under an error, by which she was not
+destined to be long deceived. She was received at court with the
+cold politeness which is more terrible than insult. The king, while
+speaking of her with his friends, called Madame de Sta&euml;l "a
+Chateaubriand in petticoats." The Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me seemed
+never to see the celebrated poetess, and never addressed a word to
+her; the rest of the court met Madame de Sta&euml;l armed to the
+teeth with all the hatred and prejudices of the olden time.</p>
+<p>It was also in vain that Madame de Sta&euml;l endeavored to act
+an important part at the new court; they refused to regard her as
+an authority or power, but treated her as a mere authoress; her
+counsel was ridiculed, and they dared even to question the renown
+of M. Necker.</p>
+<p>"I am unfortunate," said Madame de Sta&euml;l to Countess
+Ducayla; "Napoleon hated me because he believed me to possess
+intellect; these people repel me because I at least possess
+ordinary human understanding! I can certainly get on very well
+without them; but, as my presence displeases them, I shall, at
+least, endeavor to get my money from them."</p>
+<p>The "sacred debt" had not been paid under the empire, and it was
+now Madame de Sta&euml;l's intention to obtain from the king what
+the emperor had refused.</p>
+<p>She was well aware of the influence which Countess Ducayla
+exercised over Louis XVIII., and she now hastened to call on the
+beautiful countess--whose acquaintance she had made under peculiar
+circumstances, in a romantic love intrigue--in order to renew the
+friendship they had then vowed to each other.</p>
+<p>The countess had not forgotten this friendship, and she was now
+grateful for the service Madame de Sta&euml;l had then shown her.
+She helped to secure the liquidation of the sacred debt, and, upon
+the order of King Louis, the million was paid over to Madame de
+Sta&euml;l. "But," says the countess, in her memoirs, "I believe
+the recovery of this million cost Madame de Sta&euml;l four hundred
+thousand francs, besides a set of jewelry that was worth at least
+one hundred thousand."</p>
+<p>The countess's purse and the jewelry case, however, doubtlessly
+bore evidence that she might as well have said "I know" as "I
+believe."</p>
+<p>Besides the four hundred thousand francs and the jewelry, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l also gave the countess a piece of advice. "Make the
+most of the favor you now enjoy," said she to her; "but do so
+quickly, for, as matters are now conducted, I fear that the
+restoration will soon have to be restored."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" asked the countess, smiling.</p>
+<p>"I mean that, with the exception of the king, who perhaps does
+not say all he thinks, the others are still doing precisely as they
+always have done, and Heaven knows to what extremities their folly
+is destined to bring them! They mock at the old soldiers and assist
+the young priests, and this is the best means of ruining
+France."</p>
+<p>Countess Ducayla considered this prediction of her intellectual
+friend as a mere cloud with which discontent and disappointed
+ambition had obscured the otherwise clear vision of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, and ridiculed the idea, little dreaming how soon her
+words were to be fulfilled.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l consoled herself for her cold reception at
+court, by receiving the best society of Paris in her parlors, and
+entertaining them with biting <i>bon mots</i> and witty
+<i>persiflage</i>, at the expense of the grand notabilities, who
+had suddenly arisen with their imposing genealogical trees out of
+the ruins and oblivion of the past.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l now also remembered the kindness Queen
+Hortense had shown her during her exile; and not to her only, but
+also to her friend, Madame R&eacute;camier, who had also been
+exiled by Napoleon, not, however, as his enemies said, "because she
+was Madame de Sta&euml;l's friend," but simply because she
+patronized and belonged to the so-called "little church." The
+"little church" was an organization born of the spirit of
+opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a portion of the
+Catholic clergy, and was one of those things appertaining to the
+internal relations of France that were most annoying and
+disagreeable to the emperor.</p>
+<p>Queen Hortense had espoused the cause of Madame de Sta&euml;l
+and of Madame R&eacute;camier with generous warmth. She had
+eloquently interceded for the recall of both from their exile; and,
+now that the course of events had restored them to their home, both
+ladies came to the queen to thank her for her kindness and
+generosity.</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet has described this visit of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l so wittily, with so much <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>, and
+with such peculiar local coloring, that we cannot refrain from
+laying a literal translation of the same before the reader.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.3"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L'S VISIT TO QUEEN HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet relates as follows: "Madame de Sta&euml;l and
+Madame R&eacute;camier had begged permission of the queen to visit
+her, for the purpose of tendering their thanks. The queen invited
+them to visit her at St. Leu, on the following day.</p>
+<p>"She asked my advice as to which of the members of her social
+circle were best qualified to cope with Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p>
+<p>"'I, for my part,' said the queen, 'have not the courage to take
+the lead in the conversation; one cannot be very intellectual when
+sad at heart, and I fear my dullness will infect the others.'</p>
+<p>"We let quite a number of amiable persons pass before us in
+review, and I amused myself at the mention of each new name, by
+saying, 'He is too dull for Madame de Sta&euml;l.'</p>
+<p>"The queen laughed, and the list of those who were to be invited
+was at last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two
+ladies in great suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the
+queen, of being intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of
+conjuring up a somewhat embarrassed and stupid expression to our
+faces. We presented the appearance of actors on the stage looking
+at each other, while awaiting the rise of the curtain. Jests and
+<i>bon mots</i> followed each other in rapid succession until the
+arrival of the carriage recalled to our faces an expression of
+official earnestness.</p>
+<p>"Madame R&eacute;camier, still young, and very handsome, and
+with an expression of <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> in her charming
+countenance, made the impression on me of being a young lady in
+love, carefully watched over by too severe a <i>duenna,</i> her
+timid, gentle manner contrasted so strongly with the somewhat too
+masculine self-consciousness of her companion. Madame de Sta&euml;l
+is, however, generally admitted to have been good and kind,
+particularly to this friend, and I only speak of the impression she
+made on one to whom she was a stranger, at first sight.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l's extremely dark complexion, her original
+toilet, her perfectly bare shoulders, of which either might have
+been very beautiful, but which harmonized very poorly with each
+other; her whole <i>ensemble</i> was far from approximating to the
+standard of the ideal I had formed of the authoress of Delphine and
+Corinne. I had almost hoped to find in her one of the heroines she
+had so beautifully portrayed, and I was therefore struck dumb with
+astonishment. But, after the first shock, I was at least compelled
+to acknowledge that she possessed very beautiful and expressive
+eyes; and yet it seemed impossible for me to find anything in her
+countenance on which love could fasten, although I have been told
+that she has often inspired that sentiment.</p>
+<p>"When I afterward expressed my astonishment to the queen, she
+replied: 'It is, perhaps, because she is capable of such great love
+herself, that she succeeds in inspiring others with love; moreover,
+it flatters a man's self-love to be noticed by such a woman, and,
+in the end, one can dispense with beauty, when one has Madame de
+Sta&euml;l's intellect.'</p>
+<p>"The queen inquired after Madame de Sta&euml;l's daughter, who
+had not come with her, and who was said to be truly charming. I
+believe the young gentlemen of our party could have confronted the
+beautiful eyes of the daughter with still greater amiability than
+those of the mother, but an attack of toothache had prevented her
+coming.</p>
+<p>"After the first compliments and salutations, the queen proposed
+to the ladies to take a look at her park. They seated themselves on
+the cushions of the queen's large <i>char &agrave; banc</i>, which
+has become historic on account of the many high and celebrated
+personages who have been driven in it at different times. The
+Emperor Napoleon was, however, not one of this number, as he never
+visited St. Leu; but, with this exception, there are few of the
+great and celebrated who have not been seated in it at one time or
+another.</p>
+<p>"As they drove through the park and the forest of Montmorency,
+in a walk only, the conversation was kept up as in the parlor, and
+the consumption of intellectuality was continued. The beautiful
+neighborhood, that reminded one of Switzerland, as it was remarked,
+was duly admired. Then Italy was spoken of. The queen, who had been
+somewhat <i>distraite</i>, and had good cause to be somewhat sad,
+and disposed to commune with herself, addressed Madame de
+Sta&euml;l with the question, 'You have been in Italy, then?'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l was, as it were, transfixed with dismay,
+and the gentlemen exclaimed with one accord: 'And Corinne? and
+Corinne?'</p>
+<p>"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarrassment,
+awakening, as it were, from her dreams.</p>
+<p>"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not
+read Corinne?'</p>
+<p>"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it
+again,' and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could
+understand, she abruptly changed the topic of conversation.</p>
+<p>"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that
+the book had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in
+Holland. The king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up
+to her grief, believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that
+it was necessary to arouse her from this state of mental dejection
+at all hazards. It was determined that I should read 'Corinne' to
+her. She was not in a condition to pay much attention to it, but
+she had involuntarily retained some remembrance of this romance.
+Since then, I had several times asked permission of the queen to
+read Corinne to her, but she had always refused. 'No, no,' said
+she, 'not yet; this romance has identified itself with my sorrow.
+Its name alone recalls the most fearful period of my whole life. I
+have not yet the courage to renew these painful impressions.'</p>
+<p>"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had
+embarrassed and moved the queen so much when she replied to the
+question addressed to her concerning Corinne. But the authoress
+could, of course, only interpret it as indicating indifference for
+her master-work, and I told the queen on the following day that it
+would have been better to have confessed the cause of her confusion
+to Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p>
+<p>"'Madame de Sta&euml;l would not have understood me,' said she;
+'now, I am lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a
+simpleton, but it was not the time to speak of myself, and of my
+painful reminiscences.'</p>
+<p>"The large <i>char &agrave; banc</i> was always preferred to the
+handsomest carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of
+two wooden benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each
+other), because it was more favorable for conversation. But it
+afforded no security against inclement weather, and this we were
+soon to experience. The rain poured in streams, and we all returned
+to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was there prepared and offered
+the ladies, in which they might repair the disarrangement of their
+toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them long, kept there
+by the questions of Madame de Sta&euml;l concerning the queen and
+her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There was
+now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing,
+hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the
+display of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to
+admire but a moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face
+to face, like the rest of the world, with material life, these two
+celebrated women, who are everywhere sought after, and received
+with such marked consideration. There they are, as wet as myself,
+and as little poetic.' We were really behind the curtain, but it
+was shortly to rise again.</p>
+<p>"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a
+German accent was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed:
+'Ah, that is Prince Augustus of Prussia!'</p>
+<p>"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two
+ladies had therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had
+come merely to pay the queen a visit, and it was so near
+dinner-time, that politeness required that he should be invited to
+remain. And this was doubtless what he wished.</p>
+<p>"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Sta&euml;l
+on his left. The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig
+on her napkin, which she twisted between her fingers while
+speaking, as was her habit. The conversation was animated, and it
+was amusing to observe Madame de Sta&euml;l gesticulating with the
+little twig in her fingers. One might have supposed that some fairy
+had given her this talisman, and that her genius was dependent upon
+this little twig.</p>
+<p>"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were
+well acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de
+Sta&euml;l thought it would be a delightful task for an
+intellectual woman, to turn the sultan's head, and then to compel
+him to give his Turks a constitution. After dinner, freedom of the
+press was also a topic of conversation.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l astonished me, not only by the brilliancy
+of her genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she
+treated questions of that kind, for until then custom had not
+allowed women to discuss such matters. At entertainments,
+philosophy, morals, sentiment, heroism, and the like, had been the
+subjects of conversation, but the emperor monopolized politics. His
+era was that of actions, and, we may say it with pride, of great
+actions, while the era that followed was essentially that of great
+words, and of political and literary controversies.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that
+which is right, happen what may.'</p>
+<p>"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,'
+said she, 'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while
+doing so.'</p>
+<p>"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the
+reflection of inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no
+longer the woman of mind only, but also the woman of heart and
+feeling, and I comprehended at this moment how charming she could
+be.</p>
+<p>"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching
+the emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could
+not have known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go
+to Elba! Do you think he would receive me well? I was born to
+worship this man, and he has repelled me.'</p>
+<p>'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor
+say that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could
+compare his labors with the exertions of a man who, having the
+summit of a steep mountain ever before his eyes, strains every
+nerve to attain it, ever toiling painfully upward, and allowing his
+progress to be arrested by no obstacle whatever. "All the worse for
+those," said he, "who meet me on my course--I can show them no
+consideration."'</p>
+<p>"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have
+extended you a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his
+mountain.'</p>
+<p>"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Sta&euml;l; 'I have
+been injured in his opinion.'</p>
+<p>"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him
+ill, if you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed
+you to be his enemy, and he feared you, which was something very
+unusual for him,' added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is
+unfortunate, you will show yourself his friend, and prove yourself
+to be such, and I am satisfied that he will receive you well.'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l also occupied herself a great deal with
+the young princes, but she met with worse success with them than
+with us. It was perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity,
+that she showered unsuitable questions upon them.</p>
+<p>"'Do you love your uncle?'</p>
+<p>"'Very much, madame!'</p>
+<p>"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'</p>
+<p>"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'</p>
+<p>'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing
+with the words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'</p>
+<p>"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not
+oftener than any other.'</p>
+<p>"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and
+precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest
+composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me
+and said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is
+that what you call being intellectual?'</p>
+<p>"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all
+indulged in an expression of opinion concerning them, and young
+Prince Napoleon was the one upon whom the ladies had made the least
+flattering impression, but he only ventured to intimate as much in
+a low voice.</p>
+<p>"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this
+visit. One could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its
+inconsiderateness, and its wanderings, but there was nothing
+pleasing, nothing graceful and womanly, in Madame de Sta&euml;l's
+manner<a name="FNanchor36"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_36">[36]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_36"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor36">[36]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reine
+Hortense, vol. i., pp. 429-440.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.3"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last
+withdrawn from the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the
+independent ruler of France. In him, in the returned members of his
+family, and in the emigrants who were pouring into the country from
+all quarters, was represented the old era of France, the era of
+despotic royal power, of brilliant manners, of intrigues, of
+aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury. Opposed to them stood the
+France of the new era, the generation formed by Napoleon and the
+revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no other ancestors
+than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had nothing to
+relate of the <i>oeil de boeuf</i> and the <i>petites maisons</i>,
+but an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the
+hospitals in which their wounds had been healed.</p>
+<p>These two parties stood opposed to each other.</p>
+<p>Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous
+warfare at the court of Louis XVIII., with this difference,
+however, that young France, hitherto ever victorious, now
+experienced a continuous series of reverses and humiliations. Old
+France was now victorious. Not victorious through its gallantry and
+merit, but through its past, which it endeavored to connect with
+the present, without considering the chasm which lay between.</p>
+<p>True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April,
+that none of his subjects should be deprived of their titles and
+dignities; and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and
+barons, could therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad
+and humiliating <i>r&ocirc;le</i>, and they were made to feel that
+they were only tolerated, and not welcome.</p>
+<p>The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been entitled to
+seats in the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but
+the doors of these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of
+the new Napoleonic nobility. "The ladies of the old era still
+retained their <i>tabouret,</i> as well as their grand and little
+<i>entr&eacute;e</i> to the Tuileries and the Louvre, and it would
+have been considered very arrogant if the duchesses of the new era
+had made claim to similar honors."</p>
+<p>It was the Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me who took the lead and set
+the Faubourg St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant
+pretensions in ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting
+enemy of the new era, born of the revolution, and of its
+representatives; it is true, however, that she, who was the
+daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had herself so long
+languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the horrors of the
+revolution in their saddest and most painful features. She now
+determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget this
+era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.</p>
+<p>At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the
+Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me, who sat next to the King of Bavaria,
+pointed to the Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the
+prince who married a princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness
+to ally one's self in such a manner with that general!"</p>
+<p>The duchess did not or would not remember that the King of
+Bavaria, as well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other
+side, and could well hear her words, had also allied themselves
+with General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had
+formerly occupied in the Tuileries, the duchess asked old Dubois,
+who had formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office
+under the empire, and who now showed her the new and elegant
+instruments provided by Josephine--she asked him: "What has become
+of my piano?"</p>
+<p>This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the
+duchess was surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty
+years had not passed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th
+of August, 1792, the day on which the populace demolished the
+Tuileries, had never been!</p>
+<p>But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and
+the Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than
+one night lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the
+levee of to-day of King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that
+persons they had known as children had grown up since they last saw
+them, and insisted on treating every one as they had done in
+1789.</p>
+<p>After the Empress Josephine's death, Count d'Artois paid a visit
+to Malmaison, a place that had hardly existed before the
+revolution, and which owed its creation to Josephine's love and
+taste for art.</p>
+<p>The empress, who had a great fondness for botany, had caused
+magnificent greenhouses to be erected at Malmaison; in these all
+the plants and flowers of the world had been collected. Knowing her
+taste, all the princes of Europe had sent her, in the days of her
+grandeur, in order to afford her a moment's gratification, the
+rarest exotics. The Prince Regent of England had even found means,
+during the war with France, to send her a number of rare
+West-Indian plants. In this manner her collection had become the
+richest and most complete in all Europe.</p>
+<p>Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view
+this celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being
+conducted through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he
+recognized his old flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of
+Trianon!"</p>
+<p>And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also
+returned to France with the same ideas with which they had fled the
+country. They endeavored, in all their manners, habits, and
+pretensions, to begin again precisely where they had left off in
+1789. They had so lively an appreciation of their own merit, that
+they took no notice whatever of other people's, and yet their
+greatest merit consisted in having emigrated.</p>
+<p>For this merit they now demanded a reward.</p>
+<p>All of these returned emigrants demanded rewards, positions, and
+pensions, and considered it incomprehensible that those who were
+already in possession were not at once deprived of them. Intrigues
+were the order of the day, and in general the representatives of
+the old era succeeded in supplanting those of the new era in
+offices and pensions as well as in court honors. All the high
+positions in the army were filled by the marquises, dukes, and
+counts, of the old era, who had sewed tapestry and picked silk in
+Coblentz, while the France of the new era was fighting on the
+battle-field, and they now began to teach the soldiers of the
+empire the old drill of 1780.</p>
+<p>The etiquette of the olden time was restored, and the same
+luxurious and lascivious disposition prevailed among these
+cavaliers of the former century which had been approved in the
+<i>oeil de boeuf</i> and in the <i>petites maisons</i> of the old
+era.</p>
+<p>These old cavaliers felt contempt for the young Frenchmen of the
+new era on account of their pedantic morality; they scornfully
+regarded men who perhaps had not more than one mistress, and to
+whom the wife of a friend was so sacred, that they never dared to
+approach her with a disrespectful thought even.</p>
+<p>These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
+reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of
+the many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which
+they unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their
+sweetest relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the
+remembrance of the old <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, and when they spoke of
+this era, they forgot their age and debility, and were once more
+the young <i>rou&eacute;s</i> of the <i>oeil de boeuf</i>.</p>
+<p>Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis
+de Chim&egrave;ne and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the
+frivolous era, in which the boudoir and the <i>petites maisons</i>
+were the battle-field, and the myrtle instead of the laurel the
+reward of victory, while these gentlemen were conversing of some
+occurrence under the old government, the Duke de Lauraguais, in
+order to more nearly fix the date of the occurrence of which they
+were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was in the year in
+which I had my <i>liaison</i> with your wife."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes," replied the marquis, with perfect composure, "that
+was in the year 1776."</p>
+<p>Neither of the gentlemen found anything strange in this allusion
+to the past. The <i>liaison</i> in question had been a perfectly
+commonplace matter, and it would have been as ridiculous in the
+duke to deny it as for the marquis to have shown any
+indignation.</p>
+<p>The wisest and most enlightened of all these gentlemen was their
+head, King Louis XVIII. himself.</p>
+<p>He was well aware of the errors of those who surrounded him, and
+placed but little confidence in the representatives of the old
+court. But he was nevertheless powerless to withdraw himself from
+their influence, and after he had accorded the people the charter,
+in opposition to the will and opinion of the whole royal family, of
+his whole court and of his ministers, and had sworn to support it
+in spite of the opposition of "Monsieur" and the Prince de
+Cond&eacute;, who was in the habit of calling the charter
+"<i>Mademoiselle la Constitution de 1791,</i>" Louis withdrew to
+the retirement of his apartments in the Tuileries, and left his
+minister Blacas to attend to the little details of government, the
+king deeming the great ones only worthy of his attention.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.3"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>KING LOUIS XVIII.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>King Louis XVIII. was, however, in the retirement of his palace,
+still the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the representatives
+of the old era; he clearly saw many things to which his advisers
+purposely closed their eyes. To his astonishment, he observed that
+the men who had risen to greatness under Bonaparte, and who had
+fallen to the king along with the rest of his inheritance, were not
+so ridiculous, awkward, and foolish, as they had been represented
+to be.</p>
+<p>"I had been made to suppose," said Louis XVIII., "that these
+generals of Bonaparte were peasants and ruffians, but such is not
+the case. He schooled these men well. They are polite, and quite as
+shrewd as the representatives of the old court. We must conduct
+ourselves very cautiously toward them."</p>
+<p>This kind of recognition of the past which sometimes escaped
+Louis XVIII., was a subject of bitter displeasure to the gentlemen
+of the old era, and they let the king perceive it.</p>
+<p>King Louis felt this, and, in order to conciliate his court, he
+often saw himself compelled to humiliate "the <i>parvenus</i>" who
+had forced themselves among the former.</p>
+<p>Incessant quarrelling and intriguing within the Tuileries was
+the consequence, and Louis was often dejected, uneasy, and angry,
+in the midst of the splendor that surrounded him.</p>
+<p>"I am angry with myself and the others," said he on one occasion
+to an intimate friend. "An invisible and secret power is ever
+working in opposition to my will, frustrating my plans, and
+paralyzing my authority."</p>
+<p>"And yet you are king!"</p>
+<p>"Undoubtedly I am king!" exclaimed Louis, angrily; "but am I
+also master? The king is he who all his life long receives
+ambassadors, gives tiresome audiences, listens to annihilating
+discourses, goes in state to Notre-Dame, dines in public once a
+year, and is pompously buried in St. Denis when he dies. The master
+is he who commands and can enforce obedience, who puts an end to
+intriguing, and can silence old women as well as priests. Bonaparte
+was king and master at the same time! His ministers were his
+clerks, the kings his brothers merely his agents, and his courtiers
+nothing more than his servants. His ministers vied with his senate
+in servility, and his <i>Corps L&eacute;gislatif</i> sought to
+outdo his senate and the church in subserviency. He was an
+extraordinary and an enviable man, for he had not only devoted
+servants and faithful friends, but also an accommodating
+church<a name="FNanchor37"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_37">[37]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_37"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor37">[37]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. v., p. 35.</blockquote>
+<p>King Louis XVIII., weary of the incessant intrigues with which
+his courtiers occupied themselves, withdrew himself more and more
+into the retirement of his palace, and left the affairs of state to
+the care of M. de Blacas, who, with all his arrogance and egotism,
+knew very little about governing.</p>
+<p>The king preferred to entertain himself with his friends, to
+read them portions of his memoirs, to afford them an opportunity of
+admiring his verses, and to regale them with his witty and not
+always chaste anecdotes; he preferred all these things to tedious
+and useless disputes with his ministers. He had given his people
+the charter, and his ministers might now govern in accordance with
+this instrument.</p>
+<p>"The people demand liberty," said the king. "I give them enough
+of it to protect them against despotism, without according them
+unbridled license. Formerly, the taxes appointed by my mere will
+would have made me odious; now the people tax themselves.
+Hereafter, I have nothing to do but to confer benefits and show
+mercy, for the responsibility for all the evil that is done will
+rest entirely with my ministers<a name="FNanchor38"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_38">[38]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_38"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor38">[38]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 410.</blockquote>
+<p>While his ministers were thus governing according to the
+charter, and "doing evil," the king, who now had nothing but "good"
+to do, was busying himself in settling the weighty questions of the
+old etiquette.</p>
+<p>One of the most important features of this etiquette was the
+question of the fashions that should now be introduced at court;
+for it was, of course, absurd to think of adopting the fashions of
+the empire, and thereby recognize at court that there had really
+been a change since 1789.</p>
+<p>They desired to effect a counter-revolution, not only in
+politics, but also in fashions; and this important matter occupied
+the attention of the grand dignitaries of the court for weeks
+before the first grand levee that the king was to hold in the
+Tuilerics. But, as nothing was accomplished by their united wisdom,
+the king finally held a private consultation with his most intimate
+gentleman and lady friends on this important matter, that had,
+unfortunately, not been determined by the charter.</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies, M. de Breg&eacute;, declared to
+the king that it was altogether improper to continue the fashions
+of the empire at the court of the legitimate King of France.</p>
+<p>"We are, therefore, to have powder, coats-of-mail, etc.,"
+observed the king.</p>
+<p>M. de Breg&eacute; replied, with all gravity, that he had given
+this subject his earnest consideration day and night, but that he
+had not yet arrived at a conclusion worthy of the grand-master of
+ceremonies of the legitimate king.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said the Duke de Chartres, smiling, "I, for my part,
+demand knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and the cue."</p>
+<p>"But I," exclaimed the Prince de Poir, who had remained in
+France during the empire, "I demand damages, if we are to be
+compelled to return to the old fashions and clothing before the new
+ones are worn out!"</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies replied to this jest at his
+expense with a profound sigh only; and the king at last put an end
+to this great question, by deciding that every one should be
+permitted to follow the old or new fashions, according to his
+individual taste and inclination.</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this
+royal decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness:
+"Your majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man;
+uniformity of attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads
+directly to an agrarian law."</p>
+<p>"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as
+Figaro. Many a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles
+before a procurator in a long gown<a name="FNanchor39"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_39">[39]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_39"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor39">[39]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 384.</blockquote>
+<p>But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in
+fashions, he allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce
+the entire etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this
+etiquette, the king could not rise from his couch in the morning
+until the doors had been opened to all those who had the <i>grande
+entr&eacute;e</i>--that is to say, to the officers of his
+household, the marshals of France, several favored ladies; further,
+to his <i>cafetier</i>, his tailor, the bearer of his slippers, his
+barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
+apothecaries.</p>
+<p>The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored
+individuals, etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie
+himself, but requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their
+contents of the previous day.</p>
+<p>The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal
+family," was also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies
+not only found it necessary to make preparations for this dinner
+weeks beforehand, but the king was also compelled to occupy himself
+with this matter, and to appoint for this great ceremony the
+necessary "officers of provisions"--that is to say, the
+wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand doorkeepers, and the
+cook-in-chief.</p>
+<p>At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and
+indispensable "ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in
+front of the king's seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an
+antique work of art which the city of Paris had once presented to a
+King of France, had also been lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792,
+and the grand-master of ceremonies had been compelled to have a new
+one made by the court jeweller for the occasion. This "ship" was a
+work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel deprived of its masts
+and rigging; and in the same, between two golden plates, were
+contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance with the
+old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and princesses, could
+pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
+were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.</p>
+<p>The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the
+fashion of the "royal lady-friends."</p>
+<p>Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
+lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess
+Ducayla occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the
+king, and dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be
+seen on the brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by
+ill-health, weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him
+the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i> of the imperial court; she
+reminded him of the old affairs of his youth, which the king knew
+how to relate with so much wit and humor, and which he so loved to
+relate; it devolved upon her to examine the letters of the "black
+cabinet," and to read the more interesting ones to the king.</p>
+<p>King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he
+rewarded her in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing
+<i>ennui</i> from his apartments. Finding that the countess had no
+intimate acquaintance with the contents of the Bible, he gave her
+the splendid Bible of Royaumont, ornamented with one hundred and
+fifty magnificent engravings, after paintings of Raphael. Instead
+of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note covered each of these
+engravings<a name="FNanchor40"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_40">[40]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_40"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor40">[40]</a> Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France,
+par St. Edme, vol. ii., p. 383. M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 409.</blockquote>
+<p>On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;"
+and in this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note,
+as in the Bible.</p>
+<p>For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful
+countess, perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal
+snuff-box," which appellation had its origin in the habit which the
+king fondly indulged in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely
+shoulder, and then snuffing it up with his nose.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.3"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being
+introduced anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was
+governing in complacent recklessness, time was progressing,
+notwithstanding his endeavors to turn it backward in his
+flight.</p>
+<p>While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new
+France, a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor
+of Elba, was forming great plans of conquest, and preparing in
+secret understanding with the faithful, to leave his place of exile
+and return to France.</p>
+<p>He well knew that he could rely on his old army--on the army who
+loudly cried, "<i>Vive le roi!</i>" and then added, <i>sotto
+voce</i>, "<i>de Rome, et son petit papa</i><a name=
+"FNanchor41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41">[41]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_41"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor41">[41]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reine
+Hortense, vol. iii, p. 121.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense, the new Duchess of St. Leu, took but little part in
+all these things. She had, notwithstanding her youth and beauty, in
+a measure taken leave of the world. She felt herself to be no
+longer the woman, but only the mother; her sons were the objects of
+all her tenderness and love, and she lived for them only. In her
+retirement at St. Leu, her time was devoted to the arts, to
+reading, and to study; and, after having been thus occupied
+throughout the day, she passed the evening in her drawing-room, in
+unrestrained intellectual conversation with her friends.</p>
+<p>For she had friends who had remained true, notwithstanding the
+obscurity into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although
+they filled important positions at the new court, had retained
+their friendship for the solitary dethroned queen.</p>
+<p>With these friends the Duchess of St. Leu conversed, in the
+evening, in her parlor, of the grand and beautiful past, giving
+themselves up entirely to these recollections, little dreaming that
+this harmless relaxation could awaken suspicion.</p>
+<p>For the Duke of Otranto, who had succeeded in his shrewdness in
+retaining his position of minister of police, as well under Louis
+XVIII. as under Napoleon, had his spies everywhere; he knew of all
+that was said in every parlor of Paris; he knew also that it was
+the custom, in the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu, to look from
+the dark present back at the brilliant past, and to console one's
+self for the littleness of the present, with the recollection of
+the grandeur of departed days! And Fouch&eacute;, or rather the
+Duke of Otranto, knew how to utilize everything.</p>
+<p>In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of
+security, to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking
+place, Fouch&eacute; told him that a conspiracy against the
+government was being formed in the parlors of the Duchess of St.
+Leu; that all those who were secret adherents of Bonaparte were in
+the habit of assembling there, and planning the deliverance of the
+emperor from Elba. In order, however, on the other hand, to provide
+against the possibility of Napoleon's return, the Duke of Otranto
+hastened to the Duchess of St. Leu, to warn her and conjure her to
+be on her guard against the spies by whom she was surrounded, as
+suspicion might be easily excited against her at court.</p>
+<p>Hortense paid no attention to this warning; she considered
+precaution unnecessary, and was not willing to deprive herself of
+her one happiness--that of seeing her friends, and of conversing
+with them in a free and unconstrained manner.</p>
+<p>The parlors of the duchess, therefore, continued to be thrown
+open to her faithful friends, who had also been the faithful
+servants of the emperor; and the Dukes of Bassano, of Friaul, of
+Ragusa, of the Moskwa, and their wives, as well as the gallant
+Charles de Labedoy&egrave;re, and the acute Count Renault de
+Saint-Jean d'Angely, still continued to meet in the parlors of the
+Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>The voice of hostility was raised against them with
+ever-increasing hostility; the reunions that took place at St. Leu
+were day by day portrayed at the Tuileries in more hateful colors;
+and the poor duchess, who lived in sorrow and retirement in her
+apartments, became an object of hatred and envy to these proud
+ladies of the old aristocracy, who were unable to comprehend how
+this woman could be thought of while they were near, although she
+had been the ornament of the imperial court, and who was considered
+amiable, intellectual, and beautiful, even under the legitimate
+dynasty.</p>
+<p>Hortense heard of the ridiculous and malicious reports which had
+been circulated concerning her, and, for the sake of her friends
+and sons, she resolved to put an end to them.</p>
+<p>"I must leave my dear St. Leu and go to Paris," said she. "There
+they can better observe all my actions. Reason demands that I
+should conform myself to circumstances."</p>
+<p>She therefore abandoned her quiet home at St. Leu, and repaired
+with her children and her court to Paris, to again take up her
+abode in her dwelling in the Rue de la Victoire.</p>
+<p>But this step gave fresh fuel to the calumnies of her enemies,
+who saw in her the embodied remembrance of the empire which they
+hated and at the same time feared.</p>
+<p>The Bonapartists still continued their visits to her parlors, as
+before; and no appeals, no representations could induce Hortense to
+close her doors against her faithful friends, for fear that their
+fidelity might excite suspicion against herself.</p>
+<p>In order, however, to contradict the report that adherents of
+Napoleon only were in the habit of frequenting her parlors, the
+duchess also extended the hospitalities of her parlors to the
+strangers who brought letters of recommendation, and who desired to
+be introduced to her. Great numbers hastened to avail themselves of
+this permission.</p>
+<p>The most brilliant and select circle was soon assembled around
+the duchess. There, were to be found the great men of the empire,
+who came out of attachment; distinguished strangers, who came out
+of admiration; and, finally, the aristocrats of the old era, who
+came out of curiosity, who came to see if the Duchess of St. Leu
+was really so intelligent, amiable, and graceful, as she was said
+to be.</p>
+<p>The parlors of the duchess were therefore more talked of in
+Paris than they had been at St. Leu. The old duchesses and
+princesses of the Faubourg St. Germain, with all their ancestors,
+prejudices, and pretensions, were enraged at hearing this
+everlasting praise of the charming queen, and endeavored to appease
+their wrath by renewed hostilities against its object.</p>
+<p>It was not enough that she was calumniated, at court and in
+society, as a dangerous person; the arm of the press was also
+wielded against her.</p>
+<p>As we have said, Hortense was the embodied remembrance of the
+empire, and it was therefore determined that she should be
+destroyed. <i>Brochures</i> and pamphlets were published, in which
+the king was appealed to, to banish from Paris, and even from
+France, the dangerous woman who was conspiring publicly, and even
+under the very eyes of the government, for Napoleon, and to banish
+with her the two children also, the two Napoleons; "for," said
+these odious accusers, "to leave these two princes here, means to
+raise in France wolves that would one day ravage their
+country<a name="FNanchor42"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_42">[42]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_42"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor42">[42]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reins
+Hortense, vol. ii., p. 330.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense paid but little attention to these reports and
+calumnies. She was too much accustomed to being misunderstood and
+wrongly judged, to allow herself to be disquieted thereby. She knew
+that calumnies were never refuted by contradiction, and that it was
+therefore better to meet them with proud silence, and to conquer
+them by contempt, instead of giving them new life by combating and
+contradicting them.</p>
+<p>She herself entertained such contempt for calumny that she never
+allowed anything abusive to be said in her presence that would
+injure any one in her estimation. When, on one occasion, while she
+was still Queen of Holland, a lady of Holland took occasion to
+speak ill of another lady, on account of her political opinions,
+the queen interrupted her, and said: "Madame, here I am a stranger
+to all parties, and receive all persons with the same
+consideration, for I love to hear every one well spoken of; and I
+generally receive an unfavorable impression of those only who speak
+ill of others<a name="FNanchor43"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_43">[43]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_43"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor43">[43]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.</blockquote>
+<p>And, strange to say, she herself was ever the object of calumny
+and accusation.</p>
+<p>"During twenty-five years, I have never been separated from
+Princess Hortense," says Louise de Cochelet, "and I have never
+observed in her the slightest feeling of bitterness against any
+one; ever good and gentle, she never failed to take an interest in
+those who were unhappy; and she endeavored to help them whenever
+and wherever they presented themselves. And this noble and gentle
+woman was always the object of hatred and absurd calumnies, and
+against all this she was armed with the integrity and purity of her
+actions and intentions only<a name="FNanchor44"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_44">[44]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_44"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor44">[44]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.</blockquote>
+<p>Nor did Hortense now think of contradicting the calumnies that
+had been circulated concerning her. Her mind was occupied with
+other and far more important matters.</p>
+<p>An ambassador of her husband, who resided in Florence, had come
+to Paris in order to demand of Hortense, in the name of Louis
+Bonaparte, his two sons.</p>
+<p>After much discussion, he had finally declared that he would be
+satisfied, if his wife would send him his eldest son, Napoleon
+Louis, only.</p>
+<p>But the loving mother could not and would not consent to a
+separation from either of her children; and as, in spite of her
+entreaties, her husband persisted in refusing to allow her to
+retain both of them, she resolved, in the anguish of maternal love,
+to resort to the most extreme means to retain the possession of her
+sons.</p>
+<p>She informed her husband's ambassador that it was her fixed
+purpose to retain possession of her children, and appealed to the
+law to recognize and protect them, and not allow her sons to be
+deprived of their rights as Frenchmen, by going into a compulsory
+exile.</p>
+<p>While the Duchess of St. Leu was being accused of conspiring in
+favor of Napoleon, her whole soul was occupied with the one
+question, which was to decide whether one of her sons could be torn
+from her side or not; and, if she conspired at all, it was only
+with her lawyer in order to frustrate her husband's plans.</p>
+<p>But the calumnies and accusations of the press were nevertheless
+continued; and at last her friends thought it necessary to lay
+before the queen a journal that contained a violent and abusive
+article against her, and to request that they might be permitted to
+reply to it.</p>
+<p>"With a sad smile, Hortense read the article and returned the
+newspaper.</p>
+<p>"It is extremely mortifying to be scorned by one's countrymen,"
+said she, "but it would be useless to make any reply. I can afford
+to disregard such attacks--they are powerless to harm me."</p>
+<p>But when on the following morning the same journal contained a
+venomous and odious article levelled at her husband, Louis
+Bonaparte, her generous indignation was aroused, and, oblivious of
+all their disagreements, and even of the process now pending
+between them, she remembered only that it was the father of her
+children whom they had dared to attack, and that he was not present
+to defend himself. It therefore devolved upon her to defend
+him.</p>
+<p>"I am enraged, and I desire that M. Despr&eacute;s shall reply
+to this article at once," said Hortense. "Although paternal love on
+the one side, and maternal love on the other, has involved us in a
+painful process, it nevertheless concerns no one else, and it
+disgraces neither of us. I should be in despair, if this sad
+controversy were made the pretext for insulting the father of my
+children and the honored name he bears. For the very reason that I
+stand alone, am I called on to defend the absent to the best of my
+ability. Therefore let M. Despr&eacute;s come to me; I will
+instruct him how to answer this disgraceful article!"</p>
+<p>On the following day, an able and eloquent article in defence of
+Louis Bonaparte appeared in the journal--an article that shamed and
+silenced his accusers--an article which the prince, whose cause it
+so warmly espoused, probably never thought of attributing to the
+wife to whose maternal heart be had caused such anguish<a name=
+"FNanchor45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45">[45]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_45"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor45">[45]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 303.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.3"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE BURIAL OF LOUIS XVI. AND HIS WIFE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The earnest endeavors of the Bourbon court to find the
+resting-place of the remains of the royal couple who had died on
+the scaffold, and who had expiated the crimes of their predecessors
+rather than their own, were at last successful. The remains of the
+illustrious martyrs had been sought for in accordance with the
+directions of persons who had witnessed their sorrowful and
+contemptuous burial, and the body of Louis XVI. was found in a
+desolate corner of the grave-yard of St. Roch, and in another place
+also that of Queen Marie Antoinette.</p>
+<p>It was the king's wish, and a perfectly natural and just one, to
+inter these bodies in the royal vault at St. Denis, but he wished
+to do it quietly and without pomp; his acute political tact taught
+him that these sad remains should not be made the occasion of a
+political demonstration, and that it was unwise to permit the bones
+of Louis XVI. to become a new apple of discord.</p>
+<p>But the king's court, even his nearest relatives, his ministers,
+and the whole troop of arrogant courtiers, who desired, by means of
+an ostentatious interment, not only to show a proper respect for
+the beheaded royal pair, but also to punish those whom they
+covertly called "regicides," and whom they were nevertheless now
+compelled to tolerate--the king's entire court demanded a solemn
+and ceremonious interment; and Louis, who, as he himself had said,
+"was king, but not master," was compelled to yield to this
+demand.</p>
+<p>Preparations were therefore made for an ostentatious interment
+of the royal remains, and it was determined that the melancholy
+rites should take place on the 21st of January, 1815, the
+anniversary of painful memories and unending regret for the royal
+family.</p>
+<p>M. de Chateaubriand, the noble and intelligent eulogist and
+friend of the Bourbons, caused an article to be inserted in the
+<i>Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, in which he announced the
+impending ceremony. This article was then republished in pamphlet
+form; and so great was the sympathy of the Parisians in the
+approaching event, that thirty thousand copies were disposed of, in
+Paris alone, in one day.</p>
+<p>On the 20th of January the graves of the martyrs were opened,
+and all the princes of the royal house who were present, knelt down
+at the edge of the grave to mingle their prayers with those of the
+thousands who had accompanied them to the church-yard.</p>
+<p>But the king was right. This act, that appeared to some to be a
+mere act of justice, seemed an insult to others, and reminded them
+of the dark days of error and fanaticism, in which they had allowed
+themselves to be drawn into the vortex of the general delirium.
+Many of those who in the Assembly had voted for the death of the
+king, were now residing at Paris, and even at court, as for
+instance Fouch&eacute;, and to them the approaching ceremony seemed
+an insult.</p>
+<p>"Are you aware," exclaimed Descourtis, as he rushed into the
+apartment of Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, who was at that moment
+conversing with the Count de Pere, "have you already been informed
+that this ceremony is really to take place to-morrow?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, to-morrow is the fated day. To-morrow we are to be
+delivered over to the daggers of fanatics."</p>
+<p>"Is this the pardon that was promised us?"</p>
+<p>"As for that," exclaimed the Count de Pere (a good royalist), "I
+was not aware that there was an article in the constitution
+forbidding the reinterment of the mortal remains of the royal pair.
+The proceeding will be perfectly lawful."</p>
+<p>"It is their purpose to infuriate the populace," exclaimed
+Descourtis, pale with inward agitation. "Old recollections are to
+be recalled and a mute accusation hurled at us. But we shall some
+day be restored to power again, and then we will remember
+also!"</p>
+<p>Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, who had listened to this conversation
+in silence, now stepped forward, and, taking Descourtis's hand in
+his own, pressed it tenderly.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my friend," said he, in sad and solemn tones, "I would we
+were permitted to march behind the funeral-car in mourning-robes
+to-morrow! We owe this proof of repentance to France and to
+ourselves!"</p>
+<p>The solemn funeral celebration took place on the following day.
+All Paris took part in it. Every one, even the old republicans, the
+Bonapartists as well as the royalists, joined the funeral
+procession, in order to testify that they had abandoned the past
+and were repentant.</p>
+<p>Slowly and solemnly, amid the ringing of all the bells, the roll
+of the drum, the thunders of artillery, and the chants of the
+clergy, the procession moved onward.</p>
+<p>The golden crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car,
+shone lustrously in the sunlight. It had fallen from the heads of
+the royal pair while they still lived; it now adorned them in
+death.</p>
+<p>Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived
+at the Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre.
+Suddenly a terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the
+air.</p>
+<p>The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen
+down, touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into
+fragments on the glittering snow of the street.</p>
+<p>This occurred on the 21st of January; two months later, at the
+same hour, and on the same day, the crown of Louis XVIII. fell from
+his head, and Napoleon placed it on his own!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.3"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>A cry of tremendous import reverberated through Paris, all
+France, and all Europe, in the first days of March, 1815. Napoleon,
+it was said, had quitted Elba, and would soon arrive in France!</p>
+<p>The royalists heard it with dismay, the Bonapartists with a
+delight that they hardly took the pains to conceal.</p>
+<p>Hortense alone took no part in the universal delight of the
+imperialists. Her soul was filled with profound sadness and dark
+forebodings. "I lament this step," said she; "I would have
+sacrificed every thing to prevent his return to France, because I
+am of the belief that no good can come of it. Many will declare
+for, and many against him, and we shall have a civil war, of which
+the emperor himself may be the victim<a name=
+"FNanchor46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46">[46]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_46"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor46">[46]</a> Cochelet, vol. ii., p. 348.</blockquote>
+<p>In the meanwhile the general excitement was continually
+increasing; it took possession of every one, and at this time none
+would have been capable of giving cool and sensible advice.</p>
+<p>Great numbers of the emperor's friends came to the Duchess of
+St. Leu, and demanded of her counsel, assistance, and
+encouragement, accusing her of indifference and want of sympathy,
+because she did not share their hopes, and was sad instead of
+rejoicing with them.</p>
+<p>But the spies of the still ruling government, who lay in wait
+around the queen's dwelling, did not hear her words; they only saw
+that the emperor's former generals and advisers were in the habit
+of repairing to her parlors, and that was sufficient to stamp
+Hortense as the head of the conspiracy which had for its object the
+return of Napoleon to France.</p>
+<p>The queen perceived the danger of her situation, but she bowed
+her head to receive the blows of Fate in silent resignation. "I am
+environed by torments and perplexities," said she, "but I see no
+means of avoiding them. There is no resource for me but to arm
+myself with courage, and that I will do."</p>
+<p>The royal government, however, still hoped to be able to stem
+the advancing tide, and compel the waves of insurrection to surge
+backward and destroy those who had set them in motion.</p>
+<p>They proposed to treat the great event which made France glow
+with new pulsations, as a mere insurrection, that had been
+discovered in good time, and could therefore be easily repressed.
+They therefore determined, above all, to seize and render harmless
+the "conspirators," that is to say, all those of whom it was known
+that they had remained faithful to the emperor in their hearts.</p>
+<p>Spies surrounded the houses of all the generals, dukes, and
+princes of the empire, and it was only in disguise and by the
+greatest dexterity that they could evade the vigilance of the
+police.</p>
+<p>The Duchess of St. Leu was at last also compelled to yield to
+the urgent entreaties of her friends, and seek an asylum during
+these days of uncertainty and danger. She quitted her dwelling in
+disguise, and, penetrating through the army of spies who lay in
+wait around the house and in the street in which she resided, she
+happily succeeded in reaching the hiding-place prepared for her by
+a faithful servant of her mother. She had already confided her
+children to another servant who had remained true to her in her
+time of trouble.</p>
+<p>The Duke of Otranto, now once more the faithful Fouch&eacute; of
+the empire, was also to have been arrested, but he managed to
+effect his escape. General Lavalette--who was aware that the
+dwelling of the Duchess of St. Leu was no longer watched by the
+police, who had discovered that the duchess was no longer
+there--Lavalette took advantage of this circumstance, and concealed
+himself in her dwelling, and M. de Dandr&eacute;, the chief of
+police, who had vainly endeavored to catch the so-called
+conspirators, exclaimed in anguish: "It is impossible to find any
+one; it has been so much noised about that these Bonapartists were
+to be arrested, that they are now all hidden away."</p>
+<p>Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and
+doubting capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in
+Grenoble with exultation, and the troops that were to have been led
+against him have, together with their chieftain, Charles de
+Labedoy&egrave;re, gone over to the emperor. The gates of the city
+were thrown open, and the people advanced to meet him with shouts
+of welcome and applause; and now Napoleon stood no longer at the
+head of a little body of troops, but at the head of a small army
+that was increasing with every hour."</p>
+<p>The government still endeavored, through its officials and
+through the public press, to make the Parisians disbelieve this
+intelligence.</p>
+<p>But the government had lost faith in itself. It heard the old,
+the hated cry, "Vive l'empereur!" resounding through the air; it
+heard the fluttering of the victorious battle-flags of Marengo,
+Arcola, Jena, and Austerlitz! The Emperor Napoleon was still the
+conquering hero, who swayed destiny and compelled it to declare for
+him.</p>
+<p>A perfect frenzy of dismay took possession of the royalists; and
+when they learned that Napoleon had already arrived in Lyons, that
+its inhabitants had received him with enthusiasm, and that its
+garrison had also declared for him, their panic knew no bounds.</p>
+<p>The royalist leaders assembled at the house of Count de la Pere,
+for the purpose of holding a last great discussion and
+consultation. The most eminent persons, men and women, differing
+widely on other subjects, but a unit on this point, assembled here
+with the same feelings of patriotic horror, and with the same
+desire to promote the general welfare. There were Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, Benjamin Constant, Count Lain&eacute;, and
+Chateaubriand; there were the Duke de N&eacute;mours, and Count de
+la Pere, and around them gathered the whole troop of anxious
+royalists, expecting and hoping that the eloquent lips of these
+celebrated personages who stood in their midst would give them
+consolation and new life.</p>
+<p>Benjamin Constant spoke first. He said that, to Napoleon, that
+is, to force, force must be opposed. Bonaparte was armed with the
+love of the soldiers, they must arm themselves with the love of the
+citizens. His appearance was imposing, like the visage of Caesar;
+it would be necessary to oppose to him an equally sublime
+countenance. Lafayette should, therefore, be made
+commander-in-chief of the French army.</p>
+<p>M. de Chateaubriand exclaimed, with noble indignation, that the
+first step to be taken by the government was to punish severely a
+ministry that was so short-sighted, and had committed so many
+faults. Lain&eacute; declared, with a voice tremulous with emotion,
+that all was lost, and that but one means of confounding tyranny
+remained; a scene, portraying the whole terror, dismay and grief of
+the capital at the approach of the hated enemy, should be arranged.
+In accordance with this plan, the whole population of Paris--the
+entire National Guard, the mothers, the young girls, the children,
+the old and the young--were to pass out of the city, and await the
+tyrant; and this aspect of a million of men fleeing from the face
+of a single human being was to move or terrify him who came to rob
+them of their peace!</p>
+<p>In her enthusiastic and energetic manner, Madame de Sta&euml;l
+pronounced an anathema against the usurper who was about to kindle
+anew, in weeping, shivering France, the flames of war.</p>
+<p>All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do
+nothing but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent
+lips of these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were,
+nothing more than a bulletin concerning the condition of the
+patient, and concerning the mortal wounds which he had received.
+This patient was France; and the royalists, who were assembled in
+the house of Count de la Pere, now felt that the patient's case was
+hopeless, and that nothing remained to them but to go into exile,
+and bemoan his sad fate<a name="FNanchor47"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_47">[47]</a>!</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_47"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor47">[47]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 99.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.3"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and
+despairing, King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and
+sense of security. That is to say, they had taken care not to
+inform him of the real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had
+been informed that Bonaparte had been everywhere received with
+coldness and silence, and that the army would not respond to his
+appeal, but would remain true to the king. The exultation with
+which the people everywhere received the advancing emperor found,
+therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the crowd who pressed
+around the king when he repaired to the hall of the <i>Corps
+L&eacute;gislatif</i> to hold an encouraging address, was not the
+people, but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and
+gentlemen of the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the
+first entrance, acted the part to which the people were not
+disposed to adapt themselves, and transformed themselves for a
+moment into the people, in order to show to the king the
+demonstrations of his people's love.</p>
+<p>The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
+continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance
+was in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this
+deception so far that they had informed the king that Lyons had
+closed its gates to Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet
+him, vowing that he would bring the emperor back to Paris in an
+iron cage.</p>
+<p>The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute,
+when suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of
+Orleans, who, according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a
+victor, arrived in Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their
+soldiers and servants, and informed Louis that Lyons had received
+the emperor with open arms, and that no resource had been left them
+but to betake themselves to flight.</p>
+<p>And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence
+followed the first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his
+tottering throne, Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile
+position toward his old companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the
+emperor, and his army had followed him with exultation.</p>
+<p>The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and
+learned how greatly he had been deceived.</p>
+<p>"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not
+listen to the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell
+me the truth!"</p>
+<p>At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to
+his brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who
+surrounded him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and
+the Minister Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of
+victory, now stepped in pale and trembling.</p>
+<p>The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now
+plainly impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had
+desired to hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling
+minister.</p>
+<p>A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all
+were fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general
+silence, he was heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion:
+"Sire, all is lost; the army, as well as the people, betray your
+majesty. It will be necessary for your majesty to leave Paris."</p>
+<p>The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an
+inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared
+to return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down
+sorrowfully.</p>
+<p>The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his
+breast.</p>
+<p>"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile;
+"heretofore it has been your purpose to make me govern for you,
+hereafter I shall govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to
+the throne of my fathers once more, you will be made to understand
+that I will profit by the experience you have given me<a name=
+"FNanchor48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48">[48]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_48"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor48">[48]</a> The king's own words. M&eacute;moires d'une
+Femme de Qualit&eacute;, vol. i. p. 156.</blockquote>
+<p>A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count
+Blacas, without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing
+a torch, the king left the once more desolate and solitary
+Tuileries, and fled to Holland.</p>
+<p>Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March,
+Napoleon entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts
+of the people, and the thundering "<i>Vive l'empereur</i>" of the
+troops. On the same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had
+but yesterday fluttered, the <i>tricolore</i> of the empire now
+flung out its folds to the breeze.</p>
+<p>In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his
+generals, and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing
+and greeting him. An immense concourse of people surged around the
+entrance on the stair-ways and in the halls.</p>
+<p>Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor
+was carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while
+shouts of joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined
+the more fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his
+apartments, and rent the air with exulting cries of "<i>Vive
+l'empereur</i>!"</p>
+<p>In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was
+received by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen
+Hortense, who had abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried
+to the Tuileries to salute the emperor.</p>
+<p>Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the
+health of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have
+placed my nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain
+in the midst of my enemies."</p>
+<p>Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The
+emperor seemed not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship
+of my enemies," said he, "and have placed yourself under
+obligations to the Bourbons. I depend on Eugene; I hope he will
+soon be here. I wrote to him from Lyons."</p>
+<p>This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He
+was angry with her for having remained in France, and at the same
+time the flying Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of
+her: "The Duchess of St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues
+alone have brought Napoleon back to Paris."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.3"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE HUNDRED DAYS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a
+myth of the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes
+destroy worlds with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the
+ground with a stamp of the foot; in which nations perish, and new
+ones are born within the space of a minute.</p>
+<p>These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these
+hundred days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth
+can offer of fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as
+well as of all that the earth contains that is disgraceful,
+miserable, traitorous, and perfidious.</p>
+<p>Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed
+to hail the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to
+assure him of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that
+they had only obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.</p>
+<p>The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the
+Tuileries, where the emperor now held his glittering court again.
+There was, however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the
+honors of the court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who
+had not returned with her husband; and the emperor could not now
+show the people his own son, but could only point to his two
+nephews, the sons of Hortense.</p>
+<p>The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had
+been compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations;
+he had comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her
+children, in continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her
+reluctance. After this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon
+extended his hand to Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and
+begged her to name a wish, in order that he might fulfil it.</p>
+<p>Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned
+by the royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing
+Bourbons to be the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now
+entreated the emperor to permit the Duchess d'Orleans, who had not
+been able to leave Paris on account of a broken limb, to remain,
+and to accord her a pension besides. She told the emperor that she
+had received a letter from the duchess, in which she begged for her
+intercession in obtaining some assistance from the emperor,
+assuring her that it was urgently Deeded, in her depressed
+circumstances.</p>
+<p>The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter
+Hortense; and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon
+accorded a pension of four hundred thousand francs to the Duchess
+d'Orleans, the mother of King Louis Philippe<a name=
+"FNanchor49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49">[49]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_49"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor49">[49]</a> La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et
+en Angleterre. Ecrit par elle-m&ecirc;me, p. 185.</blockquote>
+<p>A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two
+hundred thousand francs was also accorded to the Duchess of
+Bourbon, who had also besought the queen to exert her influence in
+her behalf; and both ladies now hastened to assure Hortense of
+their everlasting gratitude. The fulfilment of her wish filled
+Hortense with delight; she was as proud of it as of a victory
+achieved.</p>
+<p>"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for
+these ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a
+few clays before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a
+state!"</p>
+<p>But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was
+now no longer the Duchess of St. Leu, but the queen and the
+ornament of the court once more; all heads now bowed before her
+again, and the high-born ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her
+existence during the past year, now hastened to do homage to the
+queen.</p>
+<p>"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen,
+"unfortunately, you were always absent in the country when I called
+to pay my respects during the past winter."</p>
+<p>The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which
+she accompanied with a smile.</p>
+<p>Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point
+of attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public
+officials now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in
+order to pay their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each
+day beheld new <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> and ceremonies.</p>
+<p>The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of
+the <i>Champ de Mai</i>, that took place on the first of June, and
+at which the emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace,
+presented to his army the new eagles and flags, which they were
+henceforth to carry into battle instead of the lilies of the
+Bourbons.</p>
+<p>It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of
+human beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made
+the welkin ring with their "<i>Vive l'empereur</i>!"--to behold the
+proud, triumphant soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles
+consecrated by the priests at the altar that stood before the
+emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle to behold the hundreds of
+richly-attired ladies glittering with diamonds, who occupied the
+tiers of seats that stood immediately behind the emperor's chair,
+and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the first
+seats.</p>
+<p>The air was so balmy, the sun shone so lustriously over all this
+splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and
+the strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while
+all were applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the
+emperor's chair covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay
+before her, the grand ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her,
+"might perhaps be the last of the empire<a name=
+"FNanchor50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50">[50]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_50"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor50">[50]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this
+universal delight and contentment.</p>
+<p>The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she
+already perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the
+mutterings of the storm that was soon, and this time forever, to
+hurl the emperor's throne to the ground. She knew that a day would
+suddenly come when all this brightness would grow dim, and when all
+those who now bowed so humbly before him, would turn from him
+again--a day when they would deny and desert the emperor as they
+had already done once before, and that, from that day on, the
+present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as a debt. But
+this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarrassment.</p>
+<p>The emperor was once more there; he was the lord and father left
+her by her mother Josephine, and it was her duty and desire to be
+true and obedient to him as long as she lived.</p>
+<p>The sun still shone lustrously over the restored empire, and in
+the parlors of Queen Hortense, where the diplomats, statesmen,
+artists, and all the notables of the empire were in the habit of
+assembling, gayety reigned supreme. There music and literature were
+discussed, and homage done to all the fine arts.</p>
+<p>Benjamin Constant, who had with great rapidity transformed
+himself from an enthusiastic royalist into an imperial
+state-councillor, came to the queen's parlors and regaled her
+guests by reading to them his romance Adolphe; and Metternich, the
+Austrian ambassador seemed to have no other destiny than to amuse
+the queen and the circle of ladies assembled around them, and to
+invent new social games for their entertainment.</p>
+<p>Metternich knew how to bring thousands of charming little
+frivolities into fashion; he taught the ladies the charming and
+poetic language of flowers, and made it a symbolic means of
+conversation and correspondence in the queen's circle. He also, to
+the great delight of the court, invented the alphabet of gems; in
+this alphabet each gem represented its initial letter, and, by
+combinations, names and devices were formed, which were worn in
+necklaces, bracelets, and rings.</p>
+<p>The little games with which the diplomatic Metternich occupied
+himself during the hundred days at the imperial court at Paris,
+were, it appears, of the most innocent and harmless nature.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.3"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S LAST ADIEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The storm, of the approach of which Queen Hortense had so long
+had a foreboding, was preparing to burst over France. All the
+princes of Europe who had once been Napoleon's allies had now
+declared against him. They all refused to acknowledge Napoleon as
+emperor, or to treat with him as one having any authority.</p>
+<p>"No peace, no reconciliation with this man," wrote the Emperor
+Alexander to Pozzo di Borgo; "all Europe is of the same opinion
+concerning him. With the exception of this man, any thing they may
+demand; no preference for any one; no war after this man shall have
+been set aside<a name="FNanchor51"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_51">[51]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_51"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor51">[51]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 90.</blockquote>
+<p>But, in order to "set this man aside," war was necessary. The
+allied armies therefore advanced toward the boundaries of France;
+the great powers declared war against France, or rather against the
+Emperor Napoleon; and France, which had so long desired peace, and
+had only accepted the Bourbons because it hoped to obtain it of
+them, France was now compelled to take up the gauntlet.</p>
+<p>On the 12th of June the emperor left Paris with his army, in
+order to meet the advancing enemy. Napoleon himself, who had
+hitherto gone into battle, his countenance beaming with an
+assurance of victory, now looked gloomy and dejected, for he well
+knew that on the fate of his army now depended his own, and the
+fate of France.</p>
+<p>This time it was not a question of making conquests, but of
+saving the national independence, and it was the mother-earth, red
+with the blood of her children, that was now to be defended.</p>
+<p>Paris, that for eighty days had been the scene of splendor and
+festivity, now put on its mourning attire. All rejoicings were at
+an end, and every one listened hopefully to catch the first tones
+of the thunder of a victorious battle.</p>
+<p>But the days of victory were over; the cannon thundered, the
+battle was fought, but instead of a triumph it was an
+overthrow.</p>
+<p>At Waterloo, the eagles that had been consecrated on the first
+of June, on the <i>Champ de Mai</i>, sank in the dust; the emperor
+returned to Paris, a fugitive, and broken down in spirit, while the
+victorious allies were approaching the capital.</p>
+<p>At the first intelligence of his return, Hortense hastened to
+the Elys&eacute;e, where he had taken up his residence, to greet
+him. During the last few days she had been a prey to gloomy
+thoughts; now that the danger had come, now when all were
+despairing, she was composed, resolute, and ready to stand at the
+emperor's side to the last.</p>
+<p>Napoleon was lost, and Hortense knew it; but he now had most
+need of friends, and she remained true, while so many of his
+nearest friends and relatives were deserting him.</p>
+<p>On the twenty-second day of June the emperor sent in his
+abdication in favor of his son, the King of Rome, to the chambers;
+and a week later the chambers proclaimed Napoleon's son Emperor of
+France, under the name of Napoleon II.</p>
+<p>But this emperor was a child of four years, and was, moreover,
+not in France, but in the custody of the Emperor of Austria, whose
+army was now marching on Paris with hostile intent!</p>
+<p>Napoleon, now no longer Emperor of France, had been compelled to
+take the crown from his head a second time; and for the second time
+he quitted Paris to await the destiny to be appointed him by the
+allies.</p>
+<p>This time he did not repair to Fontainebleau, but to
+Malmaison--to Malmaison, that had once been Josephine's paradise,
+and where her heart had at last bled to death. This charming resort
+had passed into the possession of Queen Hortense; and Napoleon, who
+but yesterday had ruled over a whole empire, and to-day could call
+nothing, not even the space of ground on which he stood, his own,
+Napoleon asked Hortense to receive him at Malmaison.</p>
+<p>Hortense accorded his request joyfully, and, when her friends
+learned this, and in their dismay and anxiety conjured her not to
+identify in this manner herself and children with the fate of the
+emperor, but to consider well the danger that would result from
+such a course, the queen replied resolutely: "That is an additional
+reason for holding firm to my determination. I consider it my
+sacred duty to remain true to the emperor to the last, and the
+greater the danger that threatens the emperor, the happier I shall
+be in having it in my power to show him my entire devotion and
+gratitude."</p>
+<p>And when, in this decision, when her whole future hung in the
+balance, one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind
+the queen of the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once
+been put in circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon,
+and suggested that she would give new strength to them by now
+receiving the emperor at Malmaison, Hortense replied with dignity:
+"What do I care for these calumnies? I fulfil the duty imposed on
+me by feeling and principle. The emperor has always treated me as
+his child; I shall therefore ever remain his devoted and grateful
+daughter; it is my first and greatest necessity to be at peace with
+myself<a name="FNanchor52"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_52">[52]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_52"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor52">[52]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 149.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense therefore repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and
+the faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune,
+gathered around him, watched over his life, and gave to his
+residence a fleeting reflection of the old grandeur and
+magnificence. For they who now stood around Napoleon, guarding his
+person from any immediate danger that threatened him at the hands
+of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were marshals, generals,
+dukes, and princes.</p>
+<p>But Napoleon's fate was already decided--it was an inevitable
+one, and when the intelligence reached Malmaison that the enemy was
+approaching nearer and nearer, and that resistance was no longer
+made anywhere, and when Napoleon saw that all was lost, his throne,
+his crown, and even the love which he imagined he had for ever
+built up for himself in the hearts of the French people by his
+great deeds and victories--when he saw this he determined to fly,
+no matter whither, but away from the France that would no longer
+rally to his call, the France that had abandoned him.</p>
+<p>The emperor resolved to fly to Rochefort, and to embark there in
+order to return to Elba. The provisional government that had
+established itself in Paris, and had sent an ambassador to Napoleon
+at Malmaison with the demand that he should depart at once, now
+instructed this ambassador to accompany the emperor on his journey,
+and not to leave him until he should have embarked.</p>
+<p>Napoleon was ready to comply with this demand. He determined to
+depart on the afternoon of the 30th of June. He had nothing more to
+do but to take leave of his friends and family. He did this with
+cold, tearless composure, with an immovable, iron countenance; no
+muscle of his face quivered, and his glance was severe and
+imperious.</p>
+<p>But, when Hortense brought in her two sons, when he had clasped
+them in his arms for the last time, then a shadow passed over his
+countenance; then his pale compressed lips quivered, and he turned
+away to conceal the tears that stood in his eyes.</p>
+<p>But Hortense had seen them, and in her heart she preserved the
+remembrance of these tears as the most precious gem of her departed
+fortune. As the emperor then turned to her to bid her adieu in his
+former cold and immovable manner, Hortense, who well knew that a
+volcano of torments must be glowing under this cold lava, entreated
+him to grant her a last favor.</p>
+<p>A painful smile illumined the emperor's countenance for a
+moment. There was, it seemed, still something that he could grant;
+he was not altogether powerless! With a mute inclination of the
+head he signified his assent. Hortense handed him a broad black
+belt.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, "wear this belt around your body and beneath
+your clothing. Conceal it carefully, but in the time of necessity
+remember it and open it."</p>
+<p>The emperor took the belt in his hand, and its weight startled
+him.</p>
+<p>"What does it contain?" asked he: "I must know what it
+contains!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said Hortense, blushing and hesitating: "Sire, it is my
+large diamond necklace that I have taken apart and sewed in this
+belt. Your majesty may need money in a critical moment, and you
+will not deny me this last happiness, your acceptance of this
+token."</p>
+<p>The emperor refused, but Hortense entreated him so earnestly
+that he was at last compelled to yield, and accept this
+love-offering.</p>
+<p>They then took a hasty and mute leave of each other, and
+Hortense, in order to hide her tears, hastened with her children
+from the room.</p>
+<p>The emperor summoned a servant, and ordered that no one else
+should be admitted; but at this moment the door was hastily thrown
+open, and a national guard entered the room.</p>
+<p>"Talma!" exclaimed the emperor, almost gayly, as he extended his
+hand.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Talma, sire," said he, pressing the emperor's hand to his
+lips. "I disguised myself in this dress, in order that I might get
+here to take leave of your majesty."</p>
+<p>"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor,
+sadly. "I shall never be able to admire you in your great
+<i>r&ocirc;les</i> again, Talma. I am about to depart, never to
+return again. You will play the emperor on many an evening, but not
+I, Talma! My part is at an end!"</p>
+<p>"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma,
+with generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown
+and the purple robe."</p>
+<p>"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a
+throne that is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected
+for yourself on the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the
+books of history. And every one, no matter to what nation he may
+belong, who reads of your great deeds, will be inspired by them,
+and will acknowledge himself to be one of your people, and bow down
+before the emperor in reverence."</p>
+<p>"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
+deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"</p>
+<p>"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will
+also one day regret, having deserted the great man he once called
+brother!" And, in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind
+Napoleon of one of his moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your
+majesty perhaps remembers that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor
+of Russia made you so tender a declaration of his love, publicly
+and before the whole world? But no, you cannot remember it; for you
+it was a matter of no moment; but I--I shall never forget it! It
+was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.' I looked up at the
+box in which your majesty sat, between the King of Prussia and the
+Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second Alexander of
+Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft and saw
+you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship of a
+great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
+Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears
+choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this
+applause was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor
+Alexander<a name="FNanchor53"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_53">[53]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_53"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor53">[53]</a> This scene is entirely historical. See
+Bossuet, M&eacute;moires; Bourrienne, M&eacute;moires; Cochelet and
+Une Femme de Qualit&eacute;.</blockquote>
+<p>While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes
+flashing, a rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for
+an instant, he smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised
+up the humiliated emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.</p>
+<p>Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand
+to bid him adieu.</p>
+<p>As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up
+in front of the house. It was Letitia, the emperor's mother, who
+had come to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless
+suspense; in his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to
+witness this leave-taking.</p>
+<p>"Madame m&egrave;re" walked past Talma in silence, and without
+observing him. She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the
+room, his sombre and flashing glance fastened on her with an
+unutterable expression. Now they stood face to face, mother and
+son. The emperor's countenance remained immovable as though hewn
+out of marble.</p>
+<p>They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly
+trickled down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background,
+weeping bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Letitia now raised
+both hands and extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said
+she, in full and sonorous tones.</p>
+<p>Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and
+fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother,
+adieu!"</p>
+<p>Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her
+hand fall. Letitia turned to go, and at this moment General
+Bertrand appeared at the door to announce that all was prepared for
+the journey<a name="FNanchor54"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_54">[54]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_54"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor54">[54]</a> This leave-taking was exactly as above
+described, and Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See
+her M&eacute;moires, vol. iii, P. 173.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IV."></a>BOOK IV.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU</i>.</h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.4"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE BANISHMENT OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the
+protection of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of
+France. But this time he did not return with his former mild and
+conciliatory disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came
+unaccompanied by mercy. The old generals and marshals of the
+empire, who had not been able to resist their chieftain's call,
+were now banished, degraded, or executed. Ney and
+Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re paid for their fidelity to the emperor
+with their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the
+Bonapartes were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been
+circulated in 1814 against the Duchess of St. Leu were now to bear
+bitter fruit. These were the dragon's teeth from which the armed
+warriors had sprung, who now levelled their swords at the breast of
+a defenceless woman.</p>
+<p>King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had
+not forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The Duchess of
+St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon
+back!" Now that he was again king, he thought of it, and determined
+to punish her. He requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he
+should this time not call on the Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation
+concerning Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering
+web with which Madame de Kr&uuml;dener had enveloped him, and
+separated from the reality of the world, acceded to the wishes of
+the Bourbons, and abandoned the queen. This was the signal that let
+loose the general wrath of the royalists; they could now freely
+utter their scorn and malice. By low calumnies they could now
+compensate themselves for their humiliation of the past, for having
+been compelled to approach the daughter of Viscountess de
+Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.</p>
+<p>They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with
+boundless fury, for this very fury proved their royalism, and to
+hate and calumniate Bonaparte and his family was to love and
+flatter the Bourbons.</p>
+<p>Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the
+duchess, whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of
+the empire, and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as
+well as the column on the <i>Place Vend&ocirc;me</i>.</p>
+<p>While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her
+apartments, in sadness and desolation, the report was circulated
+that she was again conspiring, and that she was in the habit of
+leaving her house every evening at twilight, in order to incite the
+populace to rise and demand the emperor's return, or at least the
+instalment of the little King of Rome on the throne instead of
+Louis de Bourbon.</p>
+<p>When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet,
+informed her of these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and
+indifferent.</p>
+<p>"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure
+as if I were reciting a story of the last century!"</p>
+<p>"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we
+have lost all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us,
+with the composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it
+natural that they should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear
+a name that has made the whole world tremble, and that will still
+be great, though we all be trodden in the dust. But I will shield
+myself and children from this hatred. We will leave France and go
+to Switzerland, where I possess a little estate on the Lake of
+Geneva."</p>
+<p>But time was not allowed the duchess to prepare for her
+departure. The dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her
+to drive her from the city. A defenceless woman with two young
+children seemed to be an object of anxiety and terror to the
+government, and it made haste to get rid of her.</p>
+<p>On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian
+General de M&uuml;ffling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to
+the dwelling of the Duchess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant,
+M. Deveaux, that the duchess must leave Paris within two hours, and
+it was only at the urgent solicitation of the intendant, that a
+further sojourn of four hours was allowed her.</p>
+<p>Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and
+depart without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for
+her journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she
+of course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a
+troop of enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching
+departure, had quitted Paris to lie in wait for her on her road,
+"in order to rob her of the millions in her custody."</p>
+<p>The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with
+her, but only that which was absolutely necessary.</p>
+<p>General de M&uuml;ffling offered her an escort of his soldiers;
+Hortense declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian
+officer might be allowed to accompany her for the protection of
+herself and children on the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of
+Prince Schwartzenberg, was selected for this purpose.</p>
+<p>On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the Duchess of St. Leu
+took her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet
+in Paris to arrange her affairs, and assure the safe-keeping of her
+jewelry. Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count
+Boyna, her children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been
+a queen left Paris to go into exile.</p>
+<p>It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her
+beloved France, that she could no longer call her country, and that
+now seemed as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it
+had once passionately loved them.</p>
+<p>In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had
+everywhere hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their
+real disposition beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom
+Hortense met on her journey were therefore all royalists, who
+thought they could give no better testimony to their patriotism
+than by persecuting with cries of scorn, with gestures of hatred,
+and with loud curses, the woman whose only crime was that she bore
+the name of him whom France had once adored, and whom the royalists
+hated.</p>
+<p>Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and
+her children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger
+against her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it
+necessary to call on the Austrian military stationed there for
+assistance in protecting the duchess and her children from the
+attacks of an infuriated crowd, led by royal guards and beautiful
+ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned with the lilies of the
+Bourbons<a name="FNanchor55"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_55">[55]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_55"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor55">[55]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.</blockquote>
+<p>Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced,
+Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being
+able to retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the
+storms of life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The
+French ambassador in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed
+the authorities of that city that his government would not tolerate
+the queen's sojourn so near the French boundary, and demanded that
+she should depart. The authorities of Geneva complied with this
+demand, and ordered the Duchess of St. Leu to leave the city
+immediately.</p>
+<p>When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the duchess, and
+asked her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed
+despair found utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into
+the lake, then we shall all be at rest!"</p>
+<p>But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly
+submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last
+possession, the charming little Pregny, from her "<i>r&ecirc;ve de
+chalet</i>."</p>
+<p>In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in
+Aix, where she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen,
+and where she was at least permitted to live in retirement with her
+children and a few faithful adherents.</p>
+<p>But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her
+fell upon her!</p>
+<p>Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814,
+shortly before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that
+she should deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody
+of his father. Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him,
+Louis demanded that this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron
+von Zuyten to Aix to bring back the prince to his father then
+residing in Florence.</p>
+<p>The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard
+command; she was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms
+to a father who was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore
+could not love.</p>
+<p>It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his
+mother, and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before
+been separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his
+neck, tearfully entreating him to stay with him.</p>
+<p>But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two
+weeping children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while
+Napoleon Louis followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as
+though his heart would break. When Hortense heard the carriage
+driving off, she uttered a cry of anguish and fell to the ground in
+a swoon, and a long and painful attack of illness was the
+consequence of this sorrowful separation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.4"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The Duchess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose
+in Aix; the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still
+fearing the name whose first and greatest representative was now
+languishing on a solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons
+considered it dangerous that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter,
+and her son, whose name of Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living
+monument of the past, should be permitted to sojourn so near the
+French boundary. They therefore instructed their ambassador to the
+government of Savoy to protest against the further sojourn of the
+queen in Aix, and Hortense was compelled to undertake a new
+pilgrimage, and to start out into the world again in search of a
+home.</p>
+<p>She first turned to Baden, whose duchess, Stephanie, was so
+nearly related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore
+well expect a kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify
+his cousin's hopes; he had not the courage to defy the jealous
+fears of France, and it was only at the earnest solicitation of his
+wife that he at last consented that Hortense should take up her
+residence at the extreme end of the grand-duchy, at Constance, on
+the Lake of Constance; and this permission was only accorded her on
+the express condition that neither the duchess nor her son should
+ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife, Stephanie, should never
+visit her cousin at Constance.</p>
+<p>Hortense accepted this offer with its conditions, contented to
+find a place where she could rest after her long wanderings, and
+let the bleeding wounds of her heart heal in the stillness and
+peace of beautiful natural scenery. She passed a few quiet, happy
+years in Constance desiring and demanding nothing but a little rest
+and peace, aspiring to but one thing--to make of the son whom
+Providence had given her as a compensation for all her sufferings,
+a strong, a resolute, and an intelligent man.</p>
+<p>Her most tender care and closest attention were devoted to the
+education of this son. An excellent teacher, Prof. Lebas, of Paris,
+officiated as instructor to the young prince. She herself gave him
+instruction in drawing, in music, and in dancing; she read with
+him, sang with him, and made herself a child, in order to replace
+to her lonely boy the playmate Fate had torn from his side.</p>
+<p>While reposing on her <i>chaise-longue</i> on the long quiet
+evenings, her boy seated on a cushion at her feet, she would speak
+to him of his great uncle, and of his heroic deeds, and of his
+country, of France that had discarded them, to be able to return to
+which was, however, her most ardent wish, and would continue to be
+while life lasted. She would then inspire the boy's soul with the
+description of the great battles which his uncle had won in Italy,
+on the Nile, on the Rhine, and on the Danube; and the quiet, pale
+boy, with the dark, thoughtful eyes, would listen in breathless
+suspense, his weak, slender body quivering with emotion when his
+mother told him how dearly his uncle had loved France, and that all
+his great and glorious deeds had been done for the honor and renown
+of France alone.</p>
+<p>One day, while he was sitting before her, pale and trembling
+with agitation, his mother pointed to David's splendid painting,
+representing Napoleon on the heights of the Alps, the genial
+conception of which painting is due to Napoleon's own
+suggestions.</p>
+<p>"Paint me tranquilly seated on a wild horse," Napoleon had said
+to David, and David had so painted him--on a rearing steed, on the
+summit of a rock which bears the inscription "Hannibal" and
+"Caesar." The emperor's countenance is calm, his large eyes full of
+a mysterious brilliancy, his hair fluttering in the wind, the whole
+expression thoughtful and earnest; the rider heedless of the
+rearing steed, which he holds firmly in check with the reins.</p>
+<p>A beautiful copy of this great painting hung in the parlor of
+the duchess; and to this she now pointed while narrating the
+history of the emperor's passage over the Great St. Bernard with an
+army, a feat never before performed except by Hannibal and Caesar,
+and perhaps never to be performed again.</p>
+<p>As she concluded her narrative, an almost angry expression
+flitted across the young prince's countenance. Rising from his
+seat, and holding himself perfectly erect, he exclaimed: "Oh,
+mamma, I shall also cross the Alps some day, as the emperor
+did!"</p>
+<p>And while thus speaking, a glowing color suffused his face; his
+lips trembled, and the feverish beating of his heart was quite
+audible.</p>
+<p>Hortense turned in some anxiety to her friend Louise de
+Cochelet, and begged her in a low voice to soothe the child with
+the recital of some merry narrative. As Louise looked around the
+room thoughtfully and searchingly, a cup that stood on the
+mantel-piece arrested her gaze. She hastened to the mantel, took
+the cup, and returned with it to little Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Mamma has been explaining a very grave picture to you, Louis,"
+said she; "I will now show you a merry one. Look at it--isn't it
+charming?"</p>
+<p>The prince cast a hasty, absent-minded look at the cup, and
+nodded gravely. Louise laughed gayly.</p>
+<p>"You see, Louis," said she, "that this is the exact counterpart
+of the picture of the Emperor Napoleon, who, while riding over the
+Alps, encounters on their summit the great spirits of Hannibal and
+Caesar. Here is a little Napoleon, who is not climbing up the Alps,
+but climbing down from his bed, and who, on this occasion, meets a
+black spirit, in the person of a chimney-sweep. This is the history
+of the great and of the little Napoleon; the great meets Hannibal,
+the little the chimney-sweep."</p>
+<p>"Am I the little Napoleon?" asked the boy, gravely.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Louis, you are, and I will now tell you the story of this
+cup. One day, when we were all still in Paris, and while your great
+uncle was still Emperor of France--one day, you met in your room a
+little Savoyard who had just crept out of the chimney in his black
+dress, his black broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and
+were about to run away, but I held you back and told you that these
+chimney-sweeps were poor boys, and that their parents were so poor
+that they could not support their children, but were compelled to
+send them to Paris to earn their bread by creeping into and
+cleaning our hot and dirty chimneys, with great trouble, and at the
+risk of their lives. My story touched you, and you promised me
+never to be afraid of the little chimney-sweeps again. A short time
+afterward, you were awakened early in the morning by a strange
+noise, your brother still lay asleep at your side, and your nurse
+was absent from the room. This noise was made by a chimney-sweep
+who had just come down the chimney and now stood in your room. As
+soon as you saw him, you remembered his poverty, jumped out of bed
+in your night-clothes, and ran to the chair on which your clothes
+lay. You took out of your pocket the purse you were compelled to
+carry with you on your walks to give money to the poor, and you
+emptied its entire contents into the black, sooty hand of the young
+Savoyard. You then tried to get back to bed, but it was too high
+for you; you could not climb over the railing. Seeing this, the
+chimney-sweep came to your assistance, and took the little prince
+in his arms to help him into bed. At this moment, your nurse
+entered the room, and your brother who had just awakened, cried
+loudly when he saw Louis in the arms of a chimney-sweep.</p>
+<p>"This is the story of little Napoleon and the chimney-sweep!
+Your grandmother, the Empress Josephine was so much pleased with
+this story, that your mother had the scene painted on a cup, and
+presented it to the empress, in order to afford her a
+gratification. And what do you think, Louis--this cup was also the
+cause of a punishment being remitted your cousin, the King of Rome,
+who now lives in Vienna!"</p>
+<p>"Tell me all about it, Louise," said the prince, smiling.</p>
+<p>"You shall hear it! Your mother had instructed me to take the
+cup to Malmaison to the empress. But before going, I endeavored to
+obtain some news about the little King of Rome for the empress.
+Your good grandmother loved him as though he had been her own
+child, although she had never seen him. I therefore went to the
+Tuileries to see the little King of Rome, with whose governess,
+Madame de Montesquieu, I was intimately acquainted. On entering the
+apartment, I saw the king cowering behind a chair in a corner of
+the room; Madame de Montesquieu intimated by a look that he was
+undergoing a punishment; I understood it, and first conversed with
+his governess for a short time. When I then turned and approached
+him, he concealed the tearful, flushed face, that his long blond
+curls covered as with a golden veil, whenever he moved behind the
+chair.</p>
+<p>"'Sire,' said Madame de Montesquieu to him, 'sire, do you not
+intend to bid Mademoiselle de Cochelet good-morning? She came here
+expressly to see you.'</p>
+<p>"'Your majesty does not recognize me,' said I, attempting to
+take his small hand in mine. He tore it from me, and cried in a
+voice almost choked with sobbing: 'She will not let me look at the
+soldiers of my papa!'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Montesquieu told me that it was the little prince's
+greatest pleasure to see the Guards exercising on the <i>Place de
+Carrousel</i>, but that she had deprived Mm of this pleasure
+to-day, because he had been naughty and disobedient; that, when he
+heard the music and drums, his despair and anger had become so
+great that she had been forced to resort to severe means, and make
+him stand in the corner behind a chair. I begged for the young
+king's pardon; I showed him the cup, and explained the scene that
+was painted on it. The king laughed, and Madame de Montesquieu
+pardoned him for the sake of his little cousin, Louis Napoleon, who
+was so well behaved, and who was always held up to him as a
+model<a name="FNanchor56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56">[56]</a>. Now
+you have heard the whole story, are you pleased with it,
+Louis?"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_56"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor56">[56]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 212.</blockquote>
+<p>"I like it very much," said the grave boy, "but I do not like my
+cousin's governess, for having intended to prevent him from looking
+at his father's soldiers. Oh, how handsome they must have been, the
+soldiers of the emperor! Mamma, I wish I were also an emperor, and
+had ever so many handsome soldiers."</p>
+<p>Hortense smiled sadly, and laid her hand on the boy's head as if
+to bless him. "Oh, my son," said she, "it is no enviable fortune to
+wear a crown. It is almost always fastened on our head with
+thorns!"</p>
+<p>From this day on, Prince Louis Napoleon would stand before his
+uncle's portrait, lost in thought, and after looking at it to his
+satisfaction, he would run out and call the boys of the
+neighborhood together, in order to play soldier and emperor with
+them in the large garden that surrounded his mother's house, and
+teach the boys the first exercise.</p>
+<p>One day, in the zeal of play, he had entirely forgotten his
+mother's command, not to go out of the garden, and had inarched
+into the open field with his soldiers. When his absence from the
+garden was noticed, all the servants were sent out to look for him,
+and the anxious duchess, together with her ladies, assisted in this
+search, walking about in every direction through the cold and the
+slush of the thawing snow. Suddenly they came upon the boy
+barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves, wading toward them through the
+mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused at this unexpected
+meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he had been
+playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor and
+ragged that it was painful to look at them. As he had no money to
+give them, he had put his shoes on one child, and his coat on
+another<a name="FNanchor57"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_57">[57]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_57"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor57">[57]</a> Cochelet, vol. iv., p. 303.</blockquote>
+<p>The duchess did not have the courage to scold him; she stooped
+down and kissed her son; but when her ladies commenced to praise
+him, she motioned to them to be silent, and said in a loud voice
+that what her son had done was quite a matter of course, and
+therefore deserved no praise.</p>
+<p>An ardent desire to gladden others and make them presents was
+characteristic of little Louis Napoleon. One day, Hortense had
+given him three beautiful studs for his shirt, and on the same day
+the prince transferred them to one of his friends who admired
+them.</p>
+<p>When Hortense reproached her son for doing so, and threatened to
+make him no more presents, as he always gave them away again
+directly, Louis Napoleon replied, "Ah, mamma, this is why your
+presents give me double pleasure--once when you give them to me,
+and the second time when I make others happy with them<a name=
+"FNanchor58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58">[58]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_58"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor58">[58]</a> Cochelet, vol. i, p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.4"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Fate seemed at last weary of persecuting the poor Duchess of St.
+Leu. It at least accorded her a few peaceful years of repose and
+comfort; it at least permitted her to rest from the weariness of
+the past on the bosom of Nature, and to forget her disappointments
+and sorrows. The Canton of Thurgau had had the courage to extend
+permission to the duchess to take up her residence within its
+borders, at the very moment when the Grand-duke of Baden, who had
+been urged to the step by Germany and France, had peremptorily
+ordered Hortense to leave Constance and his grand-duchy without
+delay.</p>
+<p>Hortense had thankfully accepted the offer of the Swiss canton,
+and had purchased, on the Swiss side of the Lake of Constance, an
+estate, whose beautiful situation on the summit of a mountain,
+immediately on the banks of the lake, with its magnificent view of
+the surrounding country, and its glittering glaciers on the distant
+horizon, made it a most delightful place of sojourn. Hortense now
+caused the furniture of her dwelling in Paris, that had been sold,
+to be sent to her. The sight of these evidences of her former
+grandeur awakened sweet and bitter emotions in her heart, as they
+were one after another taken out of the cases in which they had
+been packed--these sofas, chairs, divans, carpets, chandeliers,
+mirrors, and all the other ornaments of the parlors in which
+Hortense had been accustomed to receive kings and emperors, and
+which were now to adorn the Swiss villa that was outwardly so
+beautiful because of the vicinity, and inwardly so plain and
+simple.</p>
+<p>But Hortense knew how to make an elegant and tasteful
+disposition of all these articles; she herself arranged every thing
+in her house, and took true feminine delight in her task. And when
+all was at last arranged--when she walked, with her son at her
+side, through the suite of rooms, in which every ornament and piece
+of furniture reminded her of the past--when these things recalled
+the proud days of state when so many friends, relatives, and
+servants, had surrounded her--a feeling of unutterable loneliness,
+of painful desolation, came over her, and she sank down on a sofa
+and wept bitterly. But there was nevertheless a consolation in
+having these familiar articles in her possession once more; these
+mute friends often awakened in the solitary queen's heart memories
+that served to entertain and console her. Arenenberg was a perfect
+temple of memory; every chair, every table, every article of
+furniture, had its history, and this history spoke of Napoleon, of
+Josephine, and the great days of the empire.</p>
+<p>In Arenenberg Hortense had at last found a permanent home, and
+there she passed the greater part of the year; and it was only when
+the autumnal storms began to howl through her open and
+lightly-constructed villa, that Hortense repaired to Rome, to pass
+the winter months in a more genial climate, while her son Louis
+Napoleon was pursuing his studies at the artillery school at
+Thun.</p>
+<p>And thus the years passed on, quiet and peaceful, though
+sometimes interrupted by new losses and sorrows. In the year 1821
+the hero, the emperor, to whose laurel-crown the halo of a martyr
+had now also been added, died on the island-rock, St. Helena.</p>
+<p>In the year 1824 Hortense lost her only brother, Eugene, the
+Duke of Leuchtenberg.</p>
+<p>The only objects of Hortense's love were now her two sons, who
+were prospering in mind and body, and were the pride and joy of
+their mother, and an object of annoyance and suspicion to all the
+princes of Europe. For these children bore in their countenance, in
+their name, and in their disposition, too plain an impress of the
+great past, which they could never entirely ignore while Bonaparte
+still lived to testify to it.</p>
+<p>And they lived and prospered in spite of the Bourbons; they
+lived and prospered, although banished from their country, and
+compelled to lead an inactive life.</p>
+<p>But at last it seemed as though the hour of fortune and freedom
+had come for these Bonapartes--as though they, too, were to be
+permitted to have a country to which they might give their devotion
+and services.</p>
+<p>The thundering voice of the revolution of 1830 resounded
+throughout trembling Europe. France, on whom the allies had imposed
+the Bourbons, arose and shook its mane; with its lion's paw it
+overthrew the Bourbon throne, drove out the Jesuits who had stood
+behind it, and whom Charles X. had advised to tear the charter to
+pieces, to destroy the freedom of the press, and to reintroduce the
+<i>autos da f&eacute;</i> of the olden time.</p>
+<p>France had been treated as a child in 1815, and was now
+determined to assert its manhood; it resolved to break entirely
+with the past, and with its own strength to build up a future for
+itself.</p>
+<p>The lilies of the Bourbons were to bloom no more; these last
+years of fanatical Jesuit tyranny had deprived them of life, and
+France tore the faded lily from her bosom in order to replace it
+with a young and vigorous plant. The throne of the Bourbons was
+overthrown, but the people, shuddering at the recollection of the
+sanguinary republic, selected a king in preference. It stretched
+out its hand after him it held dearest; after him who in the past
+few years had succeeded in winning the sympathy of France. It
+selected the Duke of Orleans, the son of Philippe
+&Eacute;galit&eacute;, for its king.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe, the enthusiastic republican of 1790, who at that
+time had caused the three words "<i>Libert&eacute;,
+&Eacute;galit&eacute;, Fraternit&eacute;</i>" and the inscription
+"<i>Vive la R&eacute;publique,"</i> to be burnt on his arm, in
+order to prove his republicanism; the proscribed Louis Philippe,
+who had wandered through Europe a fugitive, earning his bread by
+teaching writing and languages--the same Louis Philippe now became
+King of France.</p>
+<p>The people called him to the throne; they tore the white flag
+from the roof of the Tuileries, but they knew no other or better
+one with which to replace it than the <i>tricolore</i> of the
+empire.</p>
+<p>Under the shadow of this <i>tricolore</i> Louis Philippe mounted
+the throne, and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the
+glorious era of the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in
+order to indulge their sympathies they demanded for France--not the
+son of Napoleon, not Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and
+the emperor's statue on the Palace Vend&ocirc;me. Louis Philippe
+accorded them both, but with these concessions he thought he had
+done enough. He had accepted the <i>tricolore</i> of the empire; he
+had promised that the emperor should watch over Paris from the
+summit of the Vend&ocirc;me monument, and to cause his ashes to be
+brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.</p>
+<p>They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it
+would be worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course
+might easily shake the new throne, and recall the allies to
+Paris.</p>
+<p>The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still
+continued against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich
+said, "a principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the
+throne."</p>
+<p>The European powers had signified to the King of France, through
+their diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but
+they exacted one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe
+should confirm or renew the decree of exile fulminated by the
+Bourbons against the Bonapartes.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes,
+whose only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of
+the deceased emperor, before whom not only France, but all the
+princes of Europe, had once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once
+more declared strangers to their country, and condemned to
+exile!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.4"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of
+banishment! Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts,
+annihilating their holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their
+joy over the glorious and heroic revolution of July gave place to a
+bitter sense of disappointment.</p>
+<p>Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life
+to which they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console
+themselves, for their new disappointment, with the arts and
+sciences.</p>
+<p>At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to
+leave Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the
+habit of doing every year.</p>
+<p>But this time she first went to Florence, where her elder son,
+Napoleon Louis, recently married to his cousin, the second daughter
+of King Joseph, was now living with his young wife. The heart of
+the tender mother was filled with anxiety and care; she felt and
+saw that this new French Revolution was likely to infect all
+Europe, and that Italy, above all, would be unable to avoid this
+infection. Italy was diseased to the core, and it was to be feared
+that it would grasp at desperate means in its agony, and proceed to
+the blood-letting of a revolution, in order to restore itself to
+health. Hortense felt this, and feared for her sons.</p>
+<p>She feared that the exiled, the homeless ones who had been
+driven from their country, and were not permitted to serve it,
+would devote their services to those who were unhappy and who
+suffered like themselves. She feared the enthusiasm, the generous
+courage, the energy of her sons, and she knew that, if a revolution
+should break out in Italy, it would gladly adorn itself with the
+name of Napoleon.</p>
+<p>Hortense, therefore, conjured her sons to hold themselves aloof
+from all dangerous undertakings, and not to follow those who might
+appeal to them with the old word of magic power, "liberty;" that,
+in spite of the tears and blood it has already caused mankind, can
+never lose its wondrous power.</p>
+<p>Her two sons promised compliance; and, much relieved, Hortense
+left Florence, and went, with her younger son, Louis Napoleon, to
+Rome.</p>
+<p>But Rome, otherwise so aristocratic and solemn, assumed an
+unusual, an entirely new, physiognomy this winter. In society the
+topics of conversation were no longer art and poetry, the Pantheon
+and St. Peter, or what the newest amusement should be; but politics
+and the French Revolution were the all-engrossing topics, and the
+populace listened anxiously for the signal that should announce
+that the revolution in Italy had at last begun.</p>
+<p>Even the populace of Rome, usually addicted to lying so
+harmlessly in the sunshine, now assembled in dense groups on the
+streets, and strange words were heard when the police cautiously
+approached these groups for the purpose of listening. But they now
+lacked the courage to arrest those who uttered those words; they
+felt that such a provocation might suffice to tear away the veil
+behind which the revolution still concealed itself.</p>
+<p>The whole energy and watchfulness of the Roman government was
+therefore employed in endeavoring to avert the revolution, if
+possible; not, however, by removing the cause and occasion, but by
+depriving the people of the means. The son of Hortense, Louis
+Napoleon, seemed to the government a means which the revolution
+might use for its purposes, and it was therefore determined that he
+should be removed.</p>
+<p>His name, and even the three-colored saddle-blanket of his
+horse, with which he rode through the streets of Rome, were
+exciting to the populace, in whose veins the fever of revolution
+was already throbbing. Louis Napoleon must therefore be
+removed.</p>
+<p>The Governor of Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle,
+Cardinal Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to
+remove the young prince from Rome for a few weeks.</p>
+<p>But the cardinal indignantly declared that his nephew, who had
+done nothing, should not be compelled to leave Rome merely on
+account of his name and his saddle-blanket, and that he would never
+advise the Duchess of St. Leu to do anything of the kind.</p>
+<p>The Roman government therefore determined to adopt energetic
+means. It caused the dwelling of the duchess to be surrounded by
+soldiers, while a papal office presented himself before Hortense,
+and announced that he had received orders to remove Prince Louis
+from the city at once, and to conduct him without the papal
+territory.</p>
+<p>The fear of approaching evil caused the government to forget the
+respect due to nobility in misfortune and the emperor's nephew was
+turned out of the city like a criminal!</p>
+<p>Hortense received this intelligence almost with joy. Far from
+Rome, it seemed to her that he would be safer from the revolution,
+whose approach she so much dreaded; and it therefore afforded her
+great satisfaction to send the prince to Florence, to his father,
+believing that he would there be shielded from the dangerous
+political calumnies that threatened him in Rome. She therefore
+permitted him to depart; and how could she have prevented his
+departure--she, the lone, powerless woman, to whom not even the
+French ambassador would have accorded protection! No one interceded
+for her--no one protested against the violent and brutal course
+pursued toward Louis Napoleon--no one, except the Russian
+ambassador.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia was the only one of all the sovereigns of
+Europe who felt himself strong enough not to ignore the name of
+Napoleon, and the consideration due to the family of a hero and of
+an emperor.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia had, therefore, never refused his
+protection and assistance to the Bonapartes, and his ambassador was
+now the only one who protested against the violent course taken by
+the Roman government.</p>
+<p>The revolution at last broke forth. Italy arose as France had
+done, resolved to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, and
+be free! The storm first broke out in Modena. The duke saw himself
+compelled to fly, and a provisional government under General
+Menotti placed itself in his stead. But, while this was taking
+place in Modena, the populace of Rome was holding high festival in
+honor of the newly-chosen Pope Gregory XVI., who had just taken his
+seat in the chair of the deceased Pope Pius VIII., and these
+festivities, and the Carnival, seemed to occupy the undivided
+attention of the Romans; under the laughing mask of these
+rejoicings the revolution hid its grave and threatening visage, and
+it was not until <i>mardi-gras</i> that it laid this mask aside and
+showed its true countenance.</p>
+<p>The people had been accustomed to throw confectionery and
+flowers on this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable
+by a shower of stones and bullets; this time they were not to
+appear in the harlequin jacket, but in their true form, earnest,
+grand, commanding, self-conscious, and self-asserting.</p>
+<p>But the government had been informed of the intention of the
+conspirators to avail themselves of the drive to the Corso, to
+begin the revolution, and this procession was prohibited an hour
+before the time appointed for its commencement.</p>
+<p>The people arose against this prohibition, and the revolution
+they had endeavored to repress by this means now broke out.</p>
+<p>The thunder of cannon and the rattling of musketry now resounded
+through the streets of Rome, and the people everywhere resisted the
+papal soldiery with energy and determination.</p>
+<p>The new pope trembled in the Quirinal, the old cardinals lost
+courage, and in dismay recoiled a step at every advancing stride of
+the insurgents. Gregory felt that the papal crown he had just
+achieved was already on the point of falling from his head, to be
+trodden in the dust by the victorious populace; he turned to
+Austria, and solicited help and assistance.</p>
+<p>But young Italy, the Italy of enthusiasm, of liberty, and of
+hope, looked to France for support. Old Italy had turned to Austria
+for help; young Italy looked for assistance to the free,
+newly-arisen France, in which the revolution had just celebrated a
+glorious victory. But France denied its Italian brother, and denied
+its own origin; scarcely had the revolution seated itself on the
+newly-erected kingly throne and invested itself with the crown and
+purple robe, when, for its own safety, it became reactionary, and
+denied itself.</p>
+<p>With all Italy, Rome was resolved to shake off the yoke of
+oppression; the whole people espoused this cause with enthusiasm;
+and in the streets of Rome--at other times filled with priests and
+monks and holy processions--in these streets, now alive with the
+triumphant youth of Rome, resounded exultant songs of freedom.</p>
+<p>The strangers, terrified by this change, now quitted the holy
+city in crowds, and hastened to their homes. Hortense desired to
+remain; she knew that she had nothing to fear from the people, for
+all the evil that had hitherto overtaken her, had come, not from
+the people, but always from the princes only<a name=
+"FNanchor59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59">[59]</a>. However, letters
+suddenly arrived from her sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and
+announcing that they would leave Florence within the hour, in order
+to hasten forward to meet their mother.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_59"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor59">[59]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 63.</blockquote>
+<p>Upon reading this, Hortense cried aloud with terror--she, who
+knew and desired no other happiness on earth than the happiness of
+her children, she whose only prayer to God had ever been, that her
+children might prosper and that she might die before them, now felt
+that a fearful danger threatened her sons, and that they were now
+about to be swept into the vortex of the revolution.</p>
+<p>They had left Florence, and their father, and were now on the
+way to Rome, that is, on the way to the revolution that would
+welcome them with joy, and inscribe the name Napoleon on its
+standards!</p>
+<p>But it was perhaps still time to save them; with her prayers and
+entreaties she might still succeed in arresting them on the verge
+of the abyss into which they were hastening in the intoxication of
+their enthusiasm. As this thought occurred to her, Hortense felt
+herself strong, determined, and courageous; and, on the same day on
+which she had received the letters, she left Rome, and hurried
+forward to meet her sons. She still hoped to be in time to save
+them; she fancied she saw her sons in every approaching
+carriage--but in vain!</p>
+<p>They had written that they would meet her on the road, but they
+were not there!</p>
+<p>Perhaps they had listened to the representations of their
+father; perhaps they had remained in Florence and were awaiting
+their mother's arrival there.</p>
+<p>Tormented by fear and hope, Hortense arrived in Florence and
+drove to the dwelling in which her son Louis Napoleon had resided.
+Her feet could scarcely bear her up; she hardly found strength to
+inquire after her son--he was not there!</p>
+<p>But he might be with his father, and Hortense now sent there for
+intelligence of her sons. The messenger returned, alone and
+dejected: her sons had left the city!</p>
+<p>The exultant hymn of liberty had struck on their delighted ear,
+and they had responded to the call of the revolution.</p>
+<p>General Menotti had appealed to them, in the name of Italy, to
+assist the cause of freedom with their name and with their swords,
+and they had neither the will nor the courage to disregard this
+appeal.</p>
+<p>A servant, left behind by her younger son, delivered to the
+duchess a letter from her son Louis Napoleon, a last word of adieu
+to his beloved mother.</p>
+<p>"Your love will understand us," wrote Louis Napoleon. "We cannot
+withdraw ourselves from duties that devolve upon us; the name we
+bear obliges us to listen to the appeal of unhappy nations. I beg
+you to represent this matter to my sister-in-law as though I had
+persuaded my brother to accompany me; it grieves him to have
+concealed from her one action of his life<a name=
+"FNanchor60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60">[60]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_60"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor60">[60]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 78.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.4"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>THE DEATH OF PRINCE NAPOLEON.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>That which Hortense most dreaded had taken place: the voice of
+enthusiasm had silenced every other consideration; and the two sons
+of the Duchess of St. Leu, the nephews of the Emperor Napoleon, now
+stood at the head of the revolution. From Foligno to Civita
+Castellano, they organized the defence, and from the cities and
+villages the young people joyously hurried forth to enroll
+themselves under their banners, and to obey the Princes Napoleon as
+their leaders; the crowds which the young princes now led were
+scarcely armed, but they nevertheless advanced courageously, and
+were resolved to attempt the capture of Civita Castellano, in order
+to liberate the state prisoners who had been languishing in its
+dungeons for eight years.</p>
+<p>This was the intelligence brought back by the couriers whom
+Hortense had dispatched to her sons with letters entreating them to
+return.</p>
+<p>It was too late--they neither would nor could return.</p>
+<p>Their father wrung his hands in despair, and conjured his wife,
+he being confined to his arm-chair by illness and the gout, to do
+all in her power to tear their sons from the fearful danger that
+menaced them. For the revolution was lost; all who were cool and
+collected felt and saw this. But the youth refused to see it; they
+still continued to flock to the revolutionary banners; they still
+sang exultant hymns of freedom, and, when their parents endeavored
+to hold them back, they fled from the parental house secretly, in
+order to answer the call that resounded on their ear in such divine
+notes.</p>
+<p>One of the sons of the Princess of Canino, the wife of Lucien
+Bonaparte, had fled from his father's castle in order to join the
+insurgents. They succeeded in finding, and forcing him to return,
+and as the family were under obligations to the pope for having
+created the principalities of Canino and Musignano, for Lucien
+Bonaparte and his eldest son, the most extreme measures were
+adopted to prevent the young prince from fighting against the
+troops of the pope;</p>
+<p>The Princess of Canino, as a favor, requested the Grand-duke of
+Tuscany to confine her son in one of the state prisons of Tuscany;
+her request was granted, and her son taken to a prison, where he
+was kept during the entire revolution. It was proposed to the
+Duchess of St. Leu to adopt this same means of prevention, but, in
+spite of her anxiety and care, and although, in her restlessness
+and feverish disquiet, she wandered through her rooms day and
+night, she declined to take such a course. She was not willing to
+subject her sons to the humiliation of such compulsion; if their
+own reason, if the prayers and entreaties of their mother, did not
+suffice, force should not be resorted to, to bring them back. The
+whole family was, however, still employing every means to induce
+the two Princes Napoleon to withdraw from the revolution, which
+must inevitably again draw down upon the name Napoleon the
+suspicion of the angry and distrustful princes of Europe.</p>
+<p>Cardinal Fesch and King Jerome conjured their nephews, first in
+entreating, and then in commanding letters, to leave the insurgent
+army.</p>
+<p>With the consent of their father, Louis Bonaparte, they wrote to
+the provisional government at Bologna that the name of the two
+princes was injuring the cause of the revolution, and to General
+Armandi, the minister of war of the insurgent government,
+entreating him to recall the princes from the army. Every one,
+friend and foe, combined to neutralize the zeal and efforts of the
+two princes, and to prove to them that they could only injure the
+cause to which they gave their names; that foreign powers,
+considering the revolution a matter to be decided by Italy alone,
+would perhaps refrain from intervening; but that they would become
+relentless should a Bonaparte place himself at the head of the
+revolution, in order perhaps to shake the thrones of Europe
+anew.</p>
+<p>The two princes at last yielded to these entreaties and
+representations; they gave up their commands, and resigned the rank
+that had been accorded them in the insurgent army; but, as it was
+no longer in their power to serve the revolution with their name
+and with their brains, they were at least desirous of serving it
+with their arms: they resigned their commands, but with the
+intention of remaining in the army as simple soldiers and
+volunteers without any rank.</p>
+<p>And when their father and their uncles, not yet satisfied with
+what they had done, urged them still further the two princes
+declared that, if these cruel annoyances were continued, they would
+go to Poland, and serve the revolution there<a name=
+"FNanchor61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61">[61]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_61"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor61">[61]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 93.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense had taken no part in these attempts and efforts of her
+family; she knew that it was all in vain; she understood her sons
+better than they, and she knew that nothing in the world could
+alter a resolution they had once formed. But she also knew that
+they were lost, that the revolution must be suppressed, that they
+would soon be proscribed fugitives, and she quietly prepared to
+assist them when the evil days should come. She armed herself with
+courage and determination, and made her soul strong, in order that
+she might not be overwhelmed by the misfortune that was so near at
+hand.</p>
+<p>While all about her were weeping and lamenting, while her
+husband was wringing his hands in despair, and complaining of the
+present, Hortense quietly and resolutely confronted the future, and
+prepared to defy it.</p>
+<p>That which she dreaded soon took place. An Austrian fleet sailed
+into the Adriatic; an Austrian army was marching on the
+insurrectionary Italian provinces. Modena had already been
+reconquered; the insurgents were already flying in crowds before
+the Austrian cannon, whose thundering salvos were destined to
+destroy once more the hopes of the youth of Italy.</p>
+<p>Like an enraged lioness glowing with enthusiasm and courage,
+Hortense now sprang up. The danger was there, and she must save her
+sons! She had long considered how it was to be done, and whither
+she was to go with them. She had first resolved to go with them to
+Turkey, and to take up her residence in Smyrna, but the presence of
+the Austrian fleet which ruled the Adriatic made this plan
+impracticable. At this moment of extreme danger, a volume of light
+suddenly beamed in upon her soul, and pointed out the way to
+safety. "I will take them by a road," said she to herself, "on
+which they will be least expected. I will conduct them through
+France, through Paris. The death-penalty will there hang suspended
+over them, but what care I for that? Liberty, justice, and
+humanity, still exercise too much control over France to make me
+apprehend such severe measures. I must save my sons; the way
+through France is the way of safety, and I shall therefore follow
+it!"</p>
+<p>And Hortense immediately began to carry her plan into execution.
+She requested an Englishman residing in Florence, to whose family
+she had once rendered important services in France, to call on her,
+and begged him to procure her a passport for an English lady and
+her two sons through France to England.</p>
+<p>The lord understood her, and gladly consented to assist her and
+her two sons.</p>
+<p>On the following day he brought her the required passport, and
+Hortense, who well knew that the best way to keep a secret was to
+have no confidants, now declared to her husband, as well as to her
+family and her friends that she was resolved to find her sons, and
+to embark with them from Ancona for Corfu!</p>
+<p>For this purpose she demanded a passport of the government of
+Tuscany, and it was accorded her.</p>
+<p>Her sons were still in Bologna, but it was known that this city
+must fall into the hands of the Austrians in a few days, and all
+was lost unless Hortense arrived there before them. She sent a
+trusty servant to her sons to announce her coming. Then, at
+nightfall, she herself departed, accompanied by one of her ladies
+only. She was courageous and resolute, for she knew that the safety
+of her sons, her only happiness, was at stake.</p>
+<p>Her rapidly-driven carriage had soon passed without the city,
+and she now found herself in a part of the country still occupied
+by the insurgents. Here all still breathed courage, joyousness, and
+confidence. The entire population, adorned with cockades and
+three-colored ribbons, seemed happy and contented, and refused to
+believe in the danger that threatened.</p>
+<p>Festivals were everywhere being held in honor of the revolution
+and of liberty, and those who spoke of the advancing Austrians and
+of dangers were ridiculed. Instead of making preparations for their
+defence, the insurgents folded their hands in contentment,
+rejoicing over that which they had already attained, and blind to
+the tide that was rolling down upon them.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, the insurgent army was in position near
+Bologna, and also still occupied the two cities of Terni and
+Soleta, which they had courageously defended against the papal
+troops. Every one expected that a decisive battle would soon take
+place, and every one looked forward to it with a joyous assurance
+of victory.</p>
+<p>Hortense was far from participating in this general confidence.
+In Foligno, where she had remained to await her sons, she passed
+several sorrowful days of expectancy and suspense, alarmed by every
+noise, and ever looking forward with an anxiously-throbbing heart
+to the moment when her sons should come to her as fugitives,
+perhaps covered with wounds, perhaps dying, to tell her that all
+was lost! Her anxiety at last became so great, that she could no
+longer remain in Foligno; she must be nearer her sons, she must
+view the dangers that encompassed them, and, if need be, share
+them. Hortense, therefore, left Foligno, and started for
+Ancona.</p>
+<p>On her arrival at the first station, she saw a man descend from
+a carriage and approach her. He was unknown to her, and yet she
+felt a dark foreboding at his approach. The mother's heart already
+felt the blow that awaited her.</p>
+<p>This man was a messenger from her sons. "Prince Napoleon is
+ill," said he.</p>
+<p>Hortense remembered that she had heard that a contagious disease
+was ravaging the vicinity. "Is he indeed ill?" cried she, in
+dismay.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and he earnestly desires to see you, madame!"</p>
+<p>"Oh," exclaimed Hortense, in terror, "if he calls for me, he
+must be very ill indeed!--Forward, forward, with all possible
+speed; I must see my son!"</p>
+<p>And onward they went with the speed of the wind from station to
+station, approaching nearer and nearer to their destination; but as
+they neared their destination, the faces they met grew sadder and
+sadder. At every station groups of people assembled about her
+carriage and gazed at her sorrowfully; everywhere she heard them
+murmur: "Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon is dead!" Hortense
+heard, but did not believe it! These words had not been spoken by
+men, but were the utterances of her anxious heart! Her son was not
+dead, he could not be dead. Napoleon lived, yes, he still lived!
+And again the people around her carriage murmured, "Napoleon is
+dead!"</p>
+<p>Hortense reclined in her carriage, pale and motionless. Her
+thoughts were confused, her heart scarcely beat.</p>
+<p>At last she reached her destination; her carriage drove up to
+the house in Pesaro, where her sons were awaiting her.</p>
+<p>At this moment a young man, his countenance of a deathly pallor,
+and flooded with tears, rushed out of the door and to her carriage.
+Hortense recognized him, and stretched out her arms to him. It was
+her son Louis Napoleon, and on beholding his pale, sorrowful
+countenance, and his tear-stained eyes, the unhappy mother learned
+the truth. Yes, it was not her heart, it was the people who had
+uttered the fearful words: "Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon
+is dead!"</p>
+<p>With a heart-rending cry, Hortense sank to the ground in a
+swoon.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.4"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>THE FLIGHT FROM ITALY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>But Hortense now had no leisure to weep over the son she had so
+dearly loved; the safety of the son who remained to her, whom she
+loved no less, and on whom her whole love must now be concentrated,
+was at stake.</p>
+<p>She still had a son to save, and she must now think of him--of
+Louis Napoleon, who stood in sorrow at her side, lamenting that
+Fate had not allowed him to die with his brother.</p>
+<p>Her son must be saved. This thought restored Hortense to health
+and strength. She is informed that the authorities of Bologna have
+already tendered submission to the Austrians; that the insurgent
+army is already scattering in every direction; that the Austrian
+fleet is already to be seen in the distance, approaching, perhaps
+with the intention of landing at Sinigaglia, in order to surround
+the insurgents and render flight impossible.</p>
+<p>This intelligence aroused Hortense from her grief and restored
+her energy. She ordered her carriage and drove with her son to
+Ancona, in full view of the people, in order that every one should
+know that it was her purpose to embark with her son for Corfu at
+that seaport. At Ancona, immediately fronting the sea, stood her
+nephew's palace, and there Hortense descended from her
+carriage.</p>
+<p>The waves of the storm-tossed sea sometimes rushed up to the
+windows of the room occupied by the duchess; from there she could
+see the port, and the crowds of fugitives who were pressing forward
+to save themselves on the miserable little vessels that there lay
+at anchor.</p>
+<p>And these poor people had but little time left them in which to
+seek safety. The Austrians were rapidly advancing; on entering the
+papal territory, they had proclaimed an amnesty, from the benefits
+of which Prince Louis Napoleon, General Zucchi, and the inhabitants
+of Modena, were, however, excepted. The strangers who had taken
+part in the insurrection were to be arrested and treated with all
+the severity of the law.</p>
+<p>The young people who had flocked from Modena, Milan, and from
+all Italy, to enroll themselves under the banner of the Roman
+revolution, now found it necessary to seek safety from the pursuing
+Austrians in flight.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon also had no time to lose; each moment lost might
+render flight impossible! Hortense was weary and ill, but she now
+had no time to think of herself; she must first save her son, then
+she could die, but not sooner.</p>
+<p>With perfect composure she prepared for her double (her feigned
+and her real) departure.</p>
+<p>Outwardly, she purposed embarking with her son at Corfu;
+secretly, it was her intention to fly to England through France!
+But the English passport that she had received for this purpose
+mentioned two sons, and Hortense now possessed but one; and it was
+necessary for her to provide a substitute for the one she had
+lost.</p>
+<p>She found one in the person of the young Marquis Zappi, who,
+compromised more than all the rest, joyfully accepted the
+proposition of the Duchess of St. Leu, promising to conform himself
+wholly to her arrangements, without knowing her plans and without
+being initiated in her secrets.</p>
+<p>Hortense then procured all that was necessary to the disguise of
+the young men as liveried servants, and ordered her carriage to be
+held in readiness for her departure.</p>
+<p>While this was being done in secret, she publicly caused all
+preparations to be made for her journey to Corfu. She sent her
+passport to the authorities for the purpose of obtaining the
+official <i>visa</i> for herself and sons, and had her trunks
+packed. Louis Napoleon had looked on, with cold and mute
+indifference, while these preparations were being made. He stood
+by, pale and dejected, without complaining or giving utterance to
+his grief.</p>
+<p>Becoming at last convinced that he was ill, Hortense sent for a
+physician.</p>
+<p>The latter declared that the prince was suffering from a severe
+attack of fever, which might become dangerous unless he sought
+repose at once. It was therefore necessary to postpone their
+departure for a day, and Hortense passed an anxious night at the
+bedside of her fever-shaken, delirious son.</p>
+<p>The morning at last dawned, the morning of the day on which they
+hoped to fly; but when the rising sun shed its light into the
+chamber in which Hortense stood at her son's bedside, who can
+describe the unhappy mother's horror when she saw her son's face
+swollen, disfigured, and covered with red spots!</p>
+<p>Like his brother, Louis Napoleon had also taken the same
+disease.</p>
+<p>For a moment Hortense was completely overwhelmed, and then, by
+the greatest effort of her life, she summoned her fortitude to her
+aid. She immediately sent for the physician again, and, trusting to
+a sympathetic human heart, she confided all to him, and he did not
+disappoint her. What is to be done must be done quickly,
+immediately, or it will be in vain!</p>
+<p>Hortense thinks of all, and provides for all. Especially, she
+causes her son's passport to Corfu to be signed by the authorities,
+and a passage to be taken for him on the only ship destined for
+Corfu now lying in the harbor. She instructs the servants, who are
+conveying trunks and packages to the vessel, to inform the curious
+spectators of her son's intended departure on this vessel. She at
+the same time causes the report to be circulated that she has
+suddenly been taken ill, and can therefore not accompany her
+son.</p>
+<p>The physician confirms this statement, and informs all Ancona of
+the dangerous illness of the Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>And after all this had been done, Hortense causes her son's bed
+to be carried into the little cabinet adjoining her room, and
+falling on her knees at his bedside, and covering her face with her
+hands, she prays to God to preserve the life of her child!</p>
+<p>On the evening of this day the vessel destined for Corfu hoisted
+its anchor. No one doubted that Louis Napoleon had embarked on it,
+and every one pitied the poor duchess, who, made ill by grief and
+anxiety, had not been able to accompany her son.</p>
+<p>In the mean while Hortense was sitting at the bedside of her
+delirious son. But she no longer felt weak or disquieted; nervous
+excitement sustained her, and gave her strength and presence of
+mind. Her son was at the same time threatened by two dangers--by
+the disease, which the slightest mistake might render mortal; and
+by the arrival of the Austrians, who had expressly excepted her son
+Louis Napoleon from the benefits of the amnesty. She must save her
+son from both these dangers--this thought gave her strength.</p>
+<p>Two days had now passed; the last two vessels had left the
+harbor, crowded with fugitives; and now the advance-guard of the
+Austrians was marching into Ancona.</p>
+<p>The commandant of the advance-guard, upon whom the duty of
+designating quarters for the following army devolved, selected the
+palace of Princess Canino, where the Duchess of St. Leu resided, as
+headquarters for the commanding general and his staff. Hortense had
+expected this, and had withdrawn to a few small rooms in advance,
+holding all the parlors and large rooms in readiness for the
+general. When they, however, demanded that the entire palace should
+be vacated, the wife of the janitor, the only person whom Hortense
+had taken into her confidence, informed them that Queen Hortense,
+who was ill and unhappy, was the sole occupant of these reserved
+rooms.</p>
+<p>Strange to relate, the Austrian captain who came to the palace
+to make the necessary preparations for his general's reception was
+one of those who, in the year 1815, had protected the queen and her
+children from the fury of the royalists. For the second time he now
+interested himself zealously in behalf of the duchess, and hastened
+forward to meet the general-in-chief, Baron Geppert, who was just
+entering the city, in order to acquaint him with the state of
+affairs. He, in common with all the world, convinced that her son,
+Louis Napoleon, had fled to Corfu, declared his readiness to permit
+the duchess to retain the rooms she was occupying, and begged
+permission to call on her. But the duchess was still ill, and
+confined to her bed, and could receive no one.</p>
+<p>The Austrians took up their quarters in the palace; and in the
+midst of them, separated from the general's room by a locked door
+only, were Hortense and her sick son. The least noise might betray
+him. When he coughed it was necessary to cover his head with the
+bedclothes, in order to deaden the sound; when he desired to speak
+he could only do so in a whisper, for his Austrian neighbors would
+have been astonished to hear a male voice in the room of the sick
+duchess, and their suspicions might have been thereby aroused.</p>
+<p>At last, after eight days of torment and anxiety, the physician
+declared that Louis Napoleon could now undertake the journey
+without danger, and consequently the duchess suddenly recovered!
+She requested the Austrian general, Baron Geppert, to honor her
+with a call, in order that she might thank him for his protection
+and sympathy; she told him that she was now ready to depart, and
+proposed embarking at Livorno, in order to join her son at Malta,
+and go with him to England. As she would be compelled to pass
+through the whole Austrian army-corps on her way, she begged the
+general to furnish her with a passport through his lines over his
+own signature; requesting in addition that, in order to avoid all
+sensation, the instrument should not contain her name.</p>
+<p>The general, deeply sympathizing with the unhappy woman who was
+about to follow her proscribed son, readily accorded her
+request.</p>
+<p>Hortense purposed beginning her journey on the following day,
+the first day of the Easter festival; and, on sending her farewell
+greeting to the Austrian general, she informed him that she would
+start at a very early hour, in order to hear mass at Loretto.</p>
+<p>During the night all necessary preparations for the journey were
+made, and Louis Napoleon was compelled to disguise himself in the
+dress of a liveried servant; a similar attire was also sent to
+Marquis Zappi, who had hitherto been concealed in the house of a
+friend, and in this attire he was to await the duchess below at the
+carriage.</p>
+<p>At last, day broke and the hour of departure came. The horn of
+the postilion resounded through the street. Through the midst of
+the sleeping Austrian soldiers who occupied the antechamber through
+which they were compelled to pass, Hortense walked, followed by her
+son loaded with packages, in his livery. Their departure was
+witnessed by no one except the sentinel on duty.</p>
+<p>Day had hardly dawned. In the first carriage sat the duchess,
+with a lady companion, and in front, on the box, her son, as a
+servant, at the side of the postilion; in the second carriage her
+maid, behind her the young Marquis Zappi.</p>
+<p>As the sun arose and shone down upon the beautiful Easter day,
+Ancona was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side
+of Louis Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her
+to succeed so far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be
+merciful in the future. But there were still many dangers to be
+overcome; the slightest accident might still betray them. The
+danger consisted not only in having to pass through all the places
+where the Austrian troops were stationed; General Geppert's pass
+was a sufficient protection against any thing that might threaten
+them from this quarter.</p>
+<p>The greatest danger was to be apprehended from their
+friends--from some one who might accidentally recognize her son,
+and unintentionally betray them.</p>
+<p>They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
+greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one,
+and every one might betray them. This part of the journey must
+therefore be made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom
+they had dispatched in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary
+relays of horses; their dismay was, therefore, great when they
+found no horses at the station Camoscia, on the boundary of
+Tuscany, and were informed that several hours must elapse before
+they could obtain any!</p>
+<p>These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense
+passed them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the
+slightest noise that broke upon the air.</p>
+<p>Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated
+himself on a stone bench that stood in front of the miserable
+little station-house. Worn out by grief and still weak from
+disease, indifferent to the dangers that menaced from all sides,
+heedless of the night wind that swept, with its icy breath, over
+his face, the prince sank down upon this stone bench, and went to
+sleep.</p>
+<p>Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a
+half-open carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France,
+on a stone bench, that served him as a couch!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.4"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>THE PILGRIMAGE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu.
+It heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted
+mother and son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every
+step in Italy.</p>
+<p>At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary
+without being recognized. They were now in their own country--in
+<i>la belle France</i>, which they still loved and proudly called
+their mother, although it had forsaken and discarded them. The
+death-penalty threatened the Bonapartes who should dare to set foot
+on French soil. But what cared they for that? Neither Hortense nor
+her son thought of it. They only knew that they were in their own
+country. They inhaled with delight the air that seemed to them
+better and purer than any other; with hearts throbbing with joy,
+they listened to the music of this beautiful language that greeted
+them with the sweet native melodies.</p>
+<p>At Cannes they passed the first night. What recollections did
+this place recall to Hortense! Here it was that Napoleon had landed
+on his return from Elba to France; from Cannes he had commenced his
+march to Paris with a handful of soldiers, and had arrived there
+with an army. For the people had everywhere received him with
+exultation; the regiments that had been sent out against the
+advancing general had everywhere joyously gone over to his
+standard. Charles de Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re, this enthusiastic
+adherent of the emperor, had been the first to do this. He was to
+have advanced against the emperor from Grenoble; but, with the
+exulting cry, "<i>Vive l'empereur!</i>" the entire regiment had
+gone over to its adored chieftain. Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re had
+paid dearly for the enthusiasm of those moments; for, the
+for-the-second-time restored Bourbons punished his fidelity with
+death. Like Marshal Ney, Charles de Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re was
+also shot; like the emperor himself, he paid for the triumph of the
+hundred days with his liberty and with his life!</p>
+<p>Of all these names and events of the past, Hortense thought,
+while enjoying the first hours of repose in their room at an hotel
+in Cannes. Leaning back in her chair, her large eyes gazing
+dreamily at the ceiling above her, she told the attentive prince of
+the days that had been, and spoke to him of the days in which they
+were now living--of these days of humiliation and obscurity--of
+those days in which the French nation had risen, and, shaking its
+lion's mane, hurled the Bourbons from their ancestral throne, and
+out of the land they had hitherto proudly called their own. On
+driving out the Bourbons, the people had freely chosen another
+king--not the King of Rome, who, in Vienna, as Duke of Reichstadt,
+had been made to forget the brilliant days of his childhood--not
+the son of the Emperor Napoleon. The people of France had chosen
+the Duke of Orleans as their king, and Louis Philippe's first act
+had been to renew the decree of banishment which the Bourbons had
+fulminated against the Bonapartes, and which declared it to be a
+capital crime if they should ever dare to set foot on the soil of
+France.</p>
+<p>"The people acted freely and according to their own will," said
+Hortense, with a sad smile, as she saw her son turn pale, and
+wrinkles gather on his brow. "Honor the will of the people, my son!
+In order to reward the emperor for his great services to the
+country, the people of France had unanimously chosen him their
+emperor. The people who give have also the right to take back
+again. The Bourbons, who consider themselves the owners of France,
+may reclaim it as an estate of which they have been robbed by the
+house of Orleans. But the Bonapartes must remember that they
+derived all their power from the will of the people. They must be
+content to await the future expression of its will, and then
+submit, and conform themselves to it<a name=
+"FNanchor62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62">[62]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_62"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor62">[62]</a> The duchess's own words. See La Reine
+Hortense en Italie, Suisse, France, etc., p. 79.</blockquote>
+<p>Louis Napoleon bowed his head and sighed. He must conform to the
+will of the people; cautiously, under a borrowed name, he must
+steal into the land of his longing and of his dreams; he must deny
+his nationality, and be indebted, for his name and passport, to the
+country that had bound his uncle, like a second Prometheus, to the
+rock, and left him there to die! But he did it with a sorrowful,
+with a bleeding heart; he wandered with his mother, who walked
+heavily veiled at his side, from place to place, listening to her
+reminiscences of the great past. At her relation of these
+reminiscences, his love and enthusiasm for the fatherland, from
+which he had so long been banished, burned brighter and brighter.
+The sight, the air of this fatherland, had electrified him; he
+entertained but one wish: to remain in France, and to serve France,
+although in the humble capacity of a private soldier.</p>
+<p>One day Louis Napoleon entered his mother's room with a letter
+in his hand, and begged her to read it. It was a letter addressed
+to Louis Philippe, in which Louis Napoleon begged the French king
+to annul his exile, and to permit him to enter the French army as a
+private soldier.</p>
+<p>Hortense read the letter, and shook her head sadly. It wounded
+her just pride that her son, the nephew of the great emperor,
+should ask a favor of him who had not hesitated to make the most of
+the revolution for himself, but had nevertheless lacked the courage
+to help the banished Bonapartes to recover their rights, and enable
+them to return to their country. In his ardent desire to serve
+France, Louis Napoleon had forgotten this insult of the King of
+France.</p>
+<p>"My children," says Hortense, in her memoirs, "my children, who
+had been cruelly persecuted by all the courts, even by those who
+owed every thing to the emperor, their uncle, loved their country
+with whole-souled devotion. Their eyes ever turned toward France,
+busied with the consideration of institutions that might make
+France happy; they knew that the people alone were their friends;
+the hatred of the great had taught them this. To conform to the
+will of the people with resignation was to them a duty, but to
+devote themselves to the service of France was their hearts'
+dearest wish. It was for this reason that my son had written to
+Louis Philippe hoping to be permitted to make himself useful to his
+country in some way."</p>
+<p>Hortense advised against this venturous step; and when she saw
+how much this grieved her son, and observed his eyes filling with
+tears, she begged that he would at least wait and reflect, and
+postpone his decision until their arrival in Paris.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon yielded to his mother's entreaties, and in
+silence and sadness these two pilgrims continued their wandering
+through the country and cities, that to Hortense seemed transformed
+into luminous monuments of departed glory.</p>
+<p>In Fontainebleau Hortense showed her son the palace that had
+been the witness of the greatest triumphs and also of the most
+bitter grief of his great uncle. Leaning on his arm, her
+countenance concealed by a heavy black veil, to prevent any one
+from recognizing her, Hortense walked through the chambers, in
+which she had once been installed as a mighty and honored queen,
+and in which she was now covertly an exile menaced with death. The
+servants who conducted her were the same who had been there during
+the days of the emperor! Hortense recognized them at once; she did
+not dare to make herself known, but she nevertheless felt that she,
+too, was remembered there. She saw this in the expression with
+which the servants opened the rooms she had once occupied; she
+heard it in the tone in which they mentioned her name! Every thing
+in this palace had remained as it then was! There was the same
+furniture in the rooms which the imperial family had occupied after
+the peace of Tilsit, and in which they had given such brilliant
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, and received the homage of so many of the kings
+and princes of Europe, all of whom had come to implore the
+assistance and favor of their vanquisher! There were also the
+apartments which the pope had occupied, once voluntarily;
+subsequently, under compulsion. Alas! and there was also the little
+cabinet, in which the emperor, the once so mighty and illustrious
+ruler of Europe, had abdicated the crown which his victories, his
+good deeds, and the love of the French people, had placed on his
+head! And, finally, there were also the chapel and the altar before
+which the Emperor Napoleon had stood god-father to his nephew Louis
+Napoleon! All was still as it had been, except that the garden,
+that Hortense and her mother had laid out and planted, had grown
+more luxuriant, and now sang to the poor banished pilgrim with its
+rustling tree-tops a melancholy song of her long separation from
+her home!</p>
+<p>The sorrowing couple wandered on, and at last arrived before the
+gates of Paris. At this moment, Hortense was a Frenchwoman, a
+Parisian only, and, forgetting every thing else, all her grief and
+sufferings, she sought only to do the honors of Paris for her son.
+She ordered the coachman to drive them through the boulevards to
+the Rue de la Paix, and then to stop at the first good hotel. This
+was the same way over which she had passed sixteen years before,
+escorted by an Austrian officer. Then she had quitted Paris by
+night, driven out in a measure by the allies, who so much feared
+her, the poor, weak woman with her little boys, that troops had
+been placed under arms at regular intervals on her way, in order,
+as it was given out, to secure her safe passage. Now, after sixteen
+years, Hortense returned to Paris by the same route, still exiled
+and homeless, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
+French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
+proscription.</p>
+<p>But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she
+wept with joy at beholding once more the streets and places about
+which the memories of her youth clustered.</p>
+<p>By a strange chance, it was at the "<i>H&ocirc;tel de
+Hollande</i>" that the former Queen of Holland descended from her
+carriage, and took up her residence, holding thus, in a measure,
+her entrance into Paris, under the fluttering banner of the past.
+In the little <i>H&ocirc;tel de Hollande</i>, the Queen of Holland
+took possession of the apartments of the first floor, which
+commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me.</i> "Say to the column on the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me</i> that I am dying, because I cannot embrace it,"
+the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the album of a French
+nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful spies, who
+surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his father and
+of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the emperor's
+son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was
+entirely unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He
+could go down into the square and hasten to the foot of the
+<i>Vend&ocirc;me</i> column, and in thought at least kneel down
+before the monument that immortalized the renown and grandeur of
+the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order to perform a sacred
+duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own honor and
+dignity.</p>
+<p>She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive
+criminal, in the city that in the exercise of its free will had
+chosen itself a king, but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to
+partake of French hospitality and enjoy French protection by
+stealth; she was not willing to go about in disguise, deceiving the
+government with a false pass and a borrowed name. She had the
+courage of truth and sincerity, and she resolved to say to the King
+of France that she had come, not to defy his decree of banishment
+by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing against his new
+crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
+forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no
+other means of saving her son; because she must pass through France
+with him in order to reach England.</p>
+<p>Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of
+men, had surrounded the new king almost entirely with the friends
+and servants of the emperor and of the Duchess of St. Leu. But, in
+order not to excite suspicion against these, Hortense now addressed
+herself to him with whom she had the slightest acquaintance and
+whose devotion to the Orleans family was too well known to be
+called in doubt by her undertaking. Hortense therefore addressed
+herself to M. de Houdetot, the adjutant of the king, or rather, she
+caused her friend Mlle. de Massuyer to write to him. She was
+instructed to inform the count that she had come to Paris with an
+English family, and was the bearer of a commission from the Duchess
+of St. Leu to M. de Houdetot.</p>
+<p>M. de Houdetot responded to her request, and came to the
+<i>H&ocirc;tel de Hollande</i> to see Mlle. Massuyer. With surprise
+and emotion, he recognized in the supposititious English lady the
+Duchess of St. Leu, who was believed by all the world to be on the
+way to Malta, and for whom her friends (who feared the fatigue of
+so long a journey would be too much for Hortense in her weak state
+of health) had already taken steps to obtain for her permission to
+pass through France on her way to England.</p>
+<p>Hortense informed Count Houdetot of the last strokes of destiny
+that had fallen upon her, and expressed her desire to see the king,
+in order to speak with him in person about the future of her
+son.</p>
+<p>M. de Houdetot undertook to acquaint the king with her desire,
+and came on the following day to inform the duchess of the result
+of his mission. He told the duchess that the king had loudly
+lamented her boldness in coming to France, and the impossibility of
+his seeing her. He told her, moreover, that, as the king had a
+responsible ministry at his side, he had been compelled to inform
+the premier of her arrival, and that Minister Casimir Perrier would
+call on her during the day.</p>
+<p>A few hours later, Louis Philippe's celebrated minister arrived.
+He came with an air of earnest severity, as it were to sit in
+judgment upon the accused duchess, but her artless sincerity and
+her gentle dignity disarmed him, and soon caused him to assume a
+more delicate and polite bearing.</p>
+<p>"I well know," said Hortense in the course of the conversation,
+"I well know that I have broken a law, by coming hither; I fully
+appreciate the gravity of this offence; you have the right to cause
+me to be arrested, and it would be perfectly just in you to do
+so!"--Casimir Perrier shook his head slowly, and replied: "Just,
+no! Lawful, yes<a name="FNanchor63"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_63">[63]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_63"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor63">[63]</a> La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc.,
+p. 110.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.4"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS PHILIIPE AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The visit which Casimir Perrier had paid the duchess seemed to
+have convinced him that the fears which the king and his ministry
+had entertained had really been groundless, that the step-daughter
+of Napoleon had not come to Paris to conspire and to claim the
+still somewhat unstable throne of France for the Duke de Reichstadt
+or for Louis Napoleon, but that she had only chosen the way through
+France, in the anxiety of maternal love in order to rescue her
+son.</p>
+<p>In accordance with this conviction, Louis Philippe no longer
+considered it impossible to see the Duchess of St. Leu, but now
+requested her to call. Perhaps the king, who had so fine a memory
+for figures and money-matters, remembered that it had been Hortense
+(then still Queen of Holland) who, during the hundred days of the
+empire in 1815, had procured for the Duchess
+Orleans-Penthi&egrave;vre, from the emperor, permission to remain
+in Paris and a pension of two hundred thousand francs per annum;
+that it had been Hortense who had done the same for the aunt of the
+present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in their joy
+over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written the
+duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
+assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable
+gratitude<a name="FNanchor64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64">[64]</a>.
+Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of
+rewarding Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_64"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor64">[64]</a> La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc.,
+p. 185.</blockquote>
+<p>He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of
+her sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St.
+Leu to the Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl,
+as the step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as
+the wife of the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once
+more, a poor, nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded
+countenance, imploring a little toleration and protection of those
+to whom she had once accorded toleration and protection.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the
+elegance and graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how
+to assume, and that had always been an inheritance of his house,
+with all the amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which
+he so well knew how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the
+point at once, he spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the
+duchess most, of the decree of banishment.</p>
+<p>"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile,
+and it is not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He
+assured her that this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte
+family was a heavy burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse
+himself for it by saying that the exile pronounced against the
+imperial family was only an article of the same law which the
+conventionists had abolished, and the renewal of which had been so
+vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it had seemed as though he
+had uttered a new decree of banishment, while in point of fact he
+had only renewed a law that had already existed under the consulate
+of Napoleon. "But," continued the king with exultation, "the time
+is no longer distant when there will be no more exiles; I will have
+none under my government!"</p>
+<p>Then, as if to remind the duchess that there had been exiles and
+decrees of banishment at all times, also under the republic, the
+consulate, and the kingdom, he spoke of his own exile, of the needy
+and humiliating situation in which he had found himself, and which
+had compelled him to hire himself out as a teacher and give
+instruction for a paltry consideration.</p>
+<p>The duchess had listened to the king with a gentle smile, and
+replied that she knew the story of his exile, and that it did him
+honor.</p>
+<p>Then the duchess informed the king that her son had accompanied
+her on her journey, and was now with her in Paris; she also told
+him that her son, in his glowing enthusiasm for his country, had
+written to the king, begging that he might be permitted to enter
+the army.</p>
+<p>"Lend me the letter," replied Louis Philippe; "Perrier shall
+bring it to me, and, if circumstances permit, I shall be perfectly
+willing to grant your son's request; and it will also give me great
+pleasure to serve you at all times. I know that you have legitimate
+claims on the government, and that you have appealed to the justice
+of all former ministries in vain. Write out a statement of all that
+France owes you, and send it <i>to me alone</i>. I understand
+business matters, and constitute myself from this time on your
+<i>charg&eacute; d'affaires</i><a name="FNanchor65"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_65">[65]</a>. The Duke of Rovigo," he continued, "has
+informed me that the other members of the imperial family have
+similar claims. It will afford me great pleasure to be of
+assistance to all of you, and I shall interest myself particularly
+for the Princess de Montfort<a name="FNanchor66"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_66">[66]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_65"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor65">[65]</a> The king's own words. See Voyage en Italie,
+etc., p. 201.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_66"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor66">[66]</a> The Princess de Montfort was the wife of
+Jerome, the sister of the King of W&uuml;rtemberg, and a cousin of
+the Emperor of Russia.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense had listened to the king, her whole face radiant with
+delight. The king's beneficent countenance, his friendly smile, his
+hearty and cordial manner, dispelled all doubt of his sincerity in
+Hortense's mind. She believed in his goodness and in his kindly
+disposition toward herself; and, in her joyous emotion, she thanked
+him with words of enthusiasm for his promised benefits, never
+doubting that it was his intention to keep his word.</p>
+<p>"Ah, sire!" she exclaimed, "the entire imperial family is in
+misfortune, and you will have many wrongs to redress. France owes
+us all a great deal, and it will be worthy of you to liquidate
+these debts."</p>
+<p>The king declared his readiness to do every thing. He who was so
+fond of taking in millions and of speculating, smilingly promised,
+in the name of France, to disburse millions, and to pay off the old
+state debt!</p>
+<p>The duchess believed him. She believed in his protestations of
+friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct
+her to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame
+Adelaide with the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in
+the course of the conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her
+cordial disposition. She asked the duchess how long she expected to
+remain in Paris, and when the latter replied that she intended
+remaining three days longer, Madame exclaimed, in a tone of anxious
+dismay: "So long! Three days still! And there are so many
+Englishmen here who have seen your son in Italy, and might
+recognize you here!"</p>
+<p>But Fate itself seemed to delay the departure of the duchess and
+her son. On returning home from her visit to the Tuileries, she
+found her son on his bed in a violent fever, and the physician who
+had been called in declared that he was suffering from inflammation
+of the throat.</p>
+<p>Hortense was to tremble once more for the life of a son, and
+this son was the last treasure Fate had left her.</p>
+<p>Once more the mother sat at the bedside of her son, watching
+over him, lovingly, day and night. That her son's life might be
+preserved was now her only wish, her only prayer; all else became
+void of interest, and was lost sight of. She only left her son's
+side when Casimir Perrier came, as he was in the habit of doing
+daily, to inquire after her son's condition in the name of the
+king, and to request the duchess to name the amount of her claims
+against France, and to impart to him all her wishes with regard to
+her future. Hortense now had but one ardent wish--the recovery of
+her son; and her only request was, that she might be permitted to
+visit the French baths of the Pyrenees during the summer, in order
+to restore her failing health.</p>
+<p>The minister promised to procure this permission of the king,
+and of the Chambers, that were soon to be convened. "In this way we
+shall gradually become accustomed to your presence," observed
+Casimir Perrier. "As far as you are personally concerned, we shall
+be inclined to throw open the gates of the country to you. But with
+your son it is different, his name will be a perpetual obstacle in
+his way. If he should really desire at any time to take service in
+the army, it would be, above all, necessary that he should lay
+aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the wishes of
+foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties, that a
+war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change his
+name, if--"</p>
+<p>But now the duchess, her cheeks glowing, blushing with
+displeasure and anger, interrupted him. "What!" exclaimed she, "lay
+aside the noble name with which France may well adorn itself,
+conceal it as though we had cause to be ashamed of it?"</p>
+<p>Beside herself with anger, regardless, in her agitation, even of
+the suffering condition of her son, she hastened to his bedside, to
+inform him of the proposition made to her by Louis Philippe's
+minister.</p>
+<p>The prince arose in his couch, his eyes flaming, and his cheeks
+burning at the same time with the fever-heat of disease and of
+anger.</p>
+<p>"Lay aside my name!" he exclaimed. "Who dares to make such a
+proposition to me? Let us think of all these things no more,
+mother. Let us go back to our retirement. Ah, you were right,
+mother: our time is passed, or it has not yet come!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.4"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS FROM PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Excitement had made the patient worse, and caused his fever to
+return with renewed violence. Hortense was now inseparable from his
+bedside; she herself applied ice to his burning throat, and
+assisted in applying the leeches ordered by the physician. But this
+continuous anxiety and excitement, all these troubles of the
+present, and sad remembrances of the past, had at last exhausted
+the strength of the delicate woman; the flush of fever now began to
+show itself on her cheeks also, and the physician urged her to take
+daily exercise in the open air if she desired to avoid falling
+ill.</p>
+<p>Hortense followed his advice. In the evening twilight, in plain
+attire, her face concealed by a heavy black veil, she now daily
+quitted her son's bedside, and went out into the street for a walk,
+accompanied by the young Marquis Zappi. No one recognized her, no
+one greeted her, no one dreamed that the veiled figure that walked
+so quietly and shyly was she who, as Queen of Holland, had formerly
+driven through these same streets in gilded coaches, hailed by the
+joyous shouts of the people.</p>
+<p>But, in these wanderings through Paris, Hortense also lived in
+her memories only. She showed the marquis the dwelling she had once
+occupied, and which had for her a single happy association: her
+sons had been born there. With a soft smile she looked up at the
+proud <i>fa&ccedil;ade</i> of this building, the windows of which
+were brilliantly illumined, and in whose parlors some banker or
+ennobled provision-dealer was now perhaps giving a ball; pointing
+to these windows with her slender white hand, she said: "I wished
+to see this house, in order to reproach myself for having been
+unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the midst of
+so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of the
+misfortune that was one day to come upon me<a name=
+"FNanchor67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67">[67]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_67"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor67">[67]</a> The duchess's own words: see Voyage, etc.,
+p. 225.</blockquote>
+<p>She looked down again and passed on, to seek the houses of
+several friends, of whom she knew that they had remained faithful;
+heavily veiled and enveloped in her dark cloak she stood in front
+of these houses, not daring to acquaint her friends with her
+presence, contented with the sweet sense of being near them!</p>
+<p>When, after having strengthened her heart with the consciousness
+of being near friends, she passed on through the streets, in which
+she, the daughter of France, was now unknown, homeless, and
+forgotten!--no, not forgotten!--as she chanced to glance in at a
+store she was just passing, she saw in the lighted window her own
+portrait at the side of that of the emperor.</p>
+<p>Overcome by a sweet emotion, Hortense stood still and gazed at
+these pictures. The laughing, noisy crowd on the sidewalk passed
+on, heedless of the shrouded woman who stood there before the
+shop-window, gazing with tearful eyes at her own portrait. "It
+seems we are still remembered," whispered she, in a low voice.
+"Those who wear crowns are not to be envied, and should not lament
+their loss; but is it possible that the love of the people, to
+receive which is so sweet, has not yet been wholly withdrawn from
+us?"</p>
+<p>The profound indifference with which France had accepted the
+exile of the Bonapartes had grieved her deeply. She had only longed
+for some token of love and fidelity in order that she might go back
+into exile consoled and strengthened. And now she found it. France
+proved to her through these portraits that she was not
+forgotten.</p>
+<p>Hortense stepped with her companion into the store to purchase
+the portraits of herself and of the emperor; and when she was told
+that these portraits were in great demand, and that many of them
+were sold to the people, she hardly found strength to repress the
+tears of blissful emotion that rose from her heart to her eyes. She
+took the portraits and hastened home, to show them to her son and
+to bring to him with them the love-greetings of France. While the
+duchess, her thoughts divided between the remembrances of the past
+and the cares and troubles of the present, had been sojourning in
+Paris for twelve days, all the papers were extolling the heroism of
+the duchess in having saved her son, and of her having embarked at
+Malta in order to take him to England.</p>
+<p>Even the king's ministerial council occupied itself with this
+matter, and thought it proper to make representations to his
+majesty on the subject. Marshal Sebastiani informed the king that
+the Duchess of St. Leu, to his certain knowledge, had landed at
+Corfu. With lively interest he spoke of the fatiguing journey at
+sea that the duchess would be compelled to make, and asked almost
+timidly if she might not be permitted to travel through France.</p>
+<p>The king's countenance assumed an almost sombre look, and he
+replied, dryly: "Let her continue her journey." Casimir Perrier
+bowed his head over the paper that lay before him, in order to
+conceal his mirth, and minister Barthe availed himself of the
+opportunity to give a proof of his eloquence and of his severity,
+by observing that a law existed against the duchess, and that a law
+was a sacred thing that no one should be permitted to evade.</p>
+<p>But the presence of the duchess, although kept a secret, began
+to cause the king and his premier Casimir Perrier more and more
+uneasiness. The latter had already once informed her through M. de
+Houdetot that her departure was absolutely necessary and must take
+place at once, and he had only been moved to consent to her further
+sojourn by the condition of the prince, whose inflammation of the
+throat had rendered a second application of leeches necessary.</p>
+<p>They were now, however, on the eve of a great and dangerous day,
+of the 5th of May<a name="FNanchor68"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_68">[68]</a>. The people of Paris were strangely moved,
+and the new government saw with much apprehension the dawn of this
+day of such great memories for France. There seemed to be some
+justification for this apprehension. Since the break of day,
+thousands of people had flocked to the column on the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me</i>. Silently and gravely they approached the
+monument, in order to adorn with wreaths of flowers the eagles, or
+to lay them at the foot of the column, and then to retire
+mournfully.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_68"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor68">[68]</a> The anniversary of Napoleon's
+death.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense stood at the window of her apartment, looking on with
+folded hands and tears of bliss at the impressive and solemn scene
+that was taking place on the <i>Place Vend&ocirc;me</i> beneath,
+when suddenly a violent knocking was heard at her door, and M. de
+Houdetot rushed in, a pale and sorrowful expression on his
+countenance.</p>
+<p>"Duchess," said he breathlessly, "you must depart immediately,
+without an hour's delay! I am ordered to inform you of this. Unless
+the life of your son is to be seriously endangered, you must leave
+at once!"</p>
+<p>Hortense listened to him tranquilly. She almost pitied the
+king--the government--to whom a weak woman and an invalid youth
+could cause such fear. How great must this fear be, when it caused
+them to disregard all the laws of hospitality and of decency! What
+had she done to justify this fear? She had not addressed herself to
+the people of France, in order to obtain help and protection for
+her son--for the nephew of the emperor; cautiously and timidly she
+had concealed herself from the people, and, far from being disposed
+to arouse or agitate her country, she had only made herself known
+to the King of France in order to solicit protection and toleration
+at his hands.</p>
+<p>She was distrusted, in spite of this candor; and her presence,
+although known to no one, awakened apprehensions in those in
+authority. Hortense pitied them; not a word of complaint or regret
+escaped her lips. She sent for her physician at once; and, after
+informing him that she must necessarily depart for London, she
+asked him if such a journey would endanger her son's life. The
+physician declared that, while he could have desired a few days
+more of repose, the prince would nevertheless, with proper care and
+attention, be able to leave on the following day.</p>
+<p>"Inform the king that I shall depart to-morrow," said Hortense;
+and, while M. de Houdetot was hastening to the king with this
+welcome intelligence, the duchess was making preparations for the
+journey, which she began with her son early on the following
+morning.</p>
+<p>In four days they reached Calais, where they found the ship that
+was to convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to
+leave her country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once
+more driven out, and condemned to live in a foreign country!
+Because the French people still refused to forget their emperor,
+the French kings hated and feared the imperial family. Under the
+old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis Philippe, who had attained
+his crown through the people, felt that it was necessary to flatter
+the people, and show some consideration for their sympathies. He
+declared to the people that he entertained the most profound
+admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree of
+banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the
+<i>Vend&ocirc;me</i> column, with its bronze statue of the emperor,
+should be adorned, and at the same time his decree banished the
+daughter and the nephew of the emperor from France, and drove them
+back into a foreign country.</p>
+<p>Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she
+was leaving her country--the country in which she had friends whom
+she had not seen again; the country in which lay her mother's
+grave, which she had not dared to visit; and, finally, the grave of
+her son! She once more left behind her all the remembrances of her
+youth--all the places she had loved; and her regret and her tears
+made known how dear these things still were to her; that the
+banished and homeless one was still powerless to banish the love of
+country from her heart, and that France was still her home!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.4"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>PILGRIMAGE THROUGH FRANCE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The sojourn of the Duchess of St. Leu in England where she
+arrived with her son after a stormy passage, was for both a
+succession of triumphs and ovations. The high aristocracy of London
+heaped upon her proofs of esteem, of reverence, and of love; every
+one seemed anxious to atone for the severity and cruelty with which
+England had treated the emperor, by giving proofs of their
+admiration and respect for his step-daughter. All these proud
+English aristocrats seemed desirous of proving to the duchess and
+her son that they were not of the same disposition as Hudson Lowe,
+who had slowly tormented the chained lion to death with petty
+annoyances.</p>
+<p>The Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Holland, and Lady Grey, in
+particular, were untiring in their efforts to do the honors of
+their country to Hortense, and to show her every possible
+attention. But Hortense declined their proffered invitations. She
+avoided all publicity; she feared, on her own and her son's
+account, that the tattle of the world and the newspapers might once
+more draw down upon her the distrust and ill-will of the French
+government. She feared that this might prevent her returning with
+her son, through France, to her quiet retreat on the Lake of
+Constance, in Switzerland, to her charming Arenenberg, where she
+had passed so many delightful and peaceful years of repose and
+remembrance.</p>
+<p>Hortense was right. Her sojourn in England excited, as soon as
+it became known, in every quarter, care, curiosity, and disquiet.
+All parties were seeking to divine the duchess's intention in
+residing in London. All parties were convinced that she entertained
+plans that might endanger and frustrate their own. The Duchess de
+Berri, who resided in Bath, had come to London as soon as she heard
+of the arrival of the Duchess of St. Leu, in order to inquire into
+Hortense's real intention. The bold and enterprising Duchess de
+Berri was preparing to go to France, in order to call the people to
+arms for herself and son, to hurl Louis Philippe from his usurped
+throne, and to restore to her son his rightful inheritance. They,
+therefore, thought it perfectly natural that Hortense should
+entertain similar plans for her son; that she, too, should purpose
+the overthrow of the French king in order to place her own son, or
+the son of the emperor, the Duke de Reichstadt, on the throne.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, it had been endeavored to persuade Prince
+Leopold, of Coburg, to whom the powers of Europe had just offered
+the crown of Belgium, that the Duchess of St. Leu had come to
+England in order to possess herself of Belgium by a <i>coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i>, and to proclaim Louis Napoleon its king. But
+this wise and magnanimous prince laughed at these intimations. He
+had known the duchess in her days of magnificence, and he now
+hastened to lay the same homage at the foot of the homeless woman
+that he had once devoted to the adored and powerful Queen of
+Holland. He called on the duchess, conversed with her of her
+beautiful and brilliant past, and told her of the hopes which he
+himself entertained for the future. Deeply bowed down by the death
+of his beloved wife, Princess Charlotte of England, it was his
+purpose to seek consolation in his misfortune by striving to make
+his people happy. He had therefore accepted the crown tendered him
+by the people, and was on the point of departing for Belgium.</p>
+<p>While taking leave of the duchess, after a long and cordial
+conversation, he remarked, with a gentle smile: "I trust you will
+not take my kingdom away from me on your journey through
+Belgium?"</p>
+<p>While the new government of France, as well as the exiled
+Bourbons, suspected the Duchess of St. Leu and her son of
+entertaining plans for the subversion of the French throne, the
+imperialists and republicans were hoping that Hortense's influence
+might be exerted upon the destinies of France. Everywhere in France
+as well as in England, the people were of the opinion that the new
+throne of Louis Philippe had no vitality, because it had no support
+in the heart of the people. The partisans of the Bourbons believed
+that France longed for the grandson of St. Louis, for its
+hereditary king, Henry V.; the imperialists were convinced that the
+new government was about to be overthrown, and that France was more
+anxious than ever to see the emperors son, Napoleon II., restored.
+The republicans, however, distrusted the people and the army, and
+began to perceive that they could only attain the longed-for
+republican institutions under a Bonaparte. They therefore sent
+their secret emissaries as well to the Duke de Reichstadt as to
+Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>The Duke de Reichstadt, to whom these emissaries proposed that
+he should come to France and present himself to the people,
+replied: "I cannot go to France as an adventurer; let the nation
+call me, and I shall find means to get there."</p>
+<p>To the propositions made to him, Louis Napoleon replied that he
+belonged to France under all circumstances; that he had proved this
+by asking permission to serve France, but he had been rejected. It
+would not become him to force to a decision by a <i>coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i> the nation whose decrees he would ever hold
+sacred.</p>
+<p>Hortense regarded these efforts of the imperialists and of the
+republicans to win her son to their purposes with a sorrowful and
+anxious heart. She hoped and longed for nothing more than the
+privilege of living in retirement with her memories; she felt
+exhausted and sobered by the few steps she had already taken into
+the great world; she, who had ever felt the most tender sympathy
+for the misfortunes of others, and the most ardent desire to
+alleviate them--she had nowhere found in her misfortune any thing
+but injustice, indifference, and calumny.</p>
+<p>Hortense longed to be back at Arenenberg, in her Swiss
+mountains. Thither she desired to return with her son, in order
+that she might there dream with him of the brilliant days that had
+been, and sing with him the exalted song of her remembrances! If
+the French government should permit her to journey with her son
+through France, she could easily and securely reach the Swiss
+Canton of Thurgau, where her little estate, Arenenberg, lay under
+the protection of the republic; the daughter of the emperor would
+there be certain to find peace and repose!</p>
+<p>The duchess there wrote to M. de Houdetot, begging him to
+procure for her from the French government a passport, permitting
+her to travel through France under some assumed name. It was
+promised her after long hesitation, but under the condition that
+she should not commence her journey until after July, until after
+the first anniversary of the coronation of Louis Philippe.</p>
+<p>Hortense agreed to this, and received on the first of August a
+passport, which permitted her, as Madame Arenenberg, to pass
+through France with her son in order to return to her estate in
+Switzerland.</p>
+<p>It was at first the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the
+unquiet movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey
+through Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and
+uninterested demeanor, that she had no share whatever in these
+movements and riots.</p>
+<p>But, on informing Louis Napoleon of her intention, he exclaimed,
+with sparkling eyes: "If we go to Paris, and if I should see the
+people sabred before my eyes, I shall not be able to resist the
+inclination to place myself on its side<a name=
+"FNanchor69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69">[69]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_69"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor69">[69]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 276.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense clasped her son anxiously in her arms, as if to protect
+him from all danger, on her maternal heart. "We shall not go to
+Paris," said she, "we will wander through France, and pray before
+the monuments of our happiness!"</p>
+<p>On the 7th of August the Duchess of St. Leu left England with
+her son, Louis Napoleon, and landed after a pleasant passage at
+Boulogne.</p>
+<p>Boulogne was for Hortense the first monument of her happiness,
+at the foot of which she wished to pray! There, during the most
+brilliant period of the empire, she had attended the military
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, in the midst of which the emperor was preparing
+to go forth to encounter new dangers, and to reap, perhaps, new
+renown. A high column designated the place where these
+camp-festivals had once taken place. It had been erected under the
+empire, but under the restoration the name of Louis XVIII. had been
+inscribed on it.</p>
+<p>Accompanied by the prince, the Duchess of St. Leu ascended this
+column, in order to show him from its summit the beautiful and
+flourishing France, that had once been her own and through which
+they must now pass with veiled countenances and borrowed names.
+From there she pointed out to him the situation of the different
+camps, the location of the imperial tent, then the place where the
+emperor's throne had stood, and where he had first distributed
+crosses of the legion of honor among the soldiers.</p>
+<p>With a glowing countenance and in breathless attention, Louis
+Napoleon listened to his mother's narrative. Hortense, lost in her
+recollections, had not noticed that two other visitors, a lady and
+a gentleman, were now also on the platform and had listened to a
+part of her narrative. As the duchess ceased speaking, they
+approached to tell her with what deep interest they had listened to
+her narrative of the most glorious period of French history. They
+were a young married couple from Paris, and had much to relate
+concerning the parties who were now arrayed against each other in
+France, and who made the future of the country so uncertain.</p>
+<p>In return for Hortense's so eloquent description of the past,
+they now told her of a <i>bon mot</i> of the present that was going
+the rounds of Parisian society. It was there said that the best
+means of satisfying everybody and all parties would be, to convert
+France into a republic and to give it three consuls, the Duke of
+Reichstadt, the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Bordeaux. "But,"
+added they, "it might easily end in the first consul's driving out
+the other two, and making himself emperor."</p>
+<p>Hortense found the courage to answer this jest with a smile, but
+she hastened to leave the place and to get away from the couple,
+who had perhaps recognized her, and told them of the <i>bon mot</i>
+with a purpose.</p>
+<p>Sadly and silently, mother and son returned to their hotel,
+which was situated on the sea-side, and commanded a fine view of
+the surging, foaming waters of the channel and of the lofty column
+of the empire.</p>
+<p>They both stepped out on the balcony. It was a beautiful
+evening; the setting sun shed its purple rays over the surface of
+the sea. Murmuring and in melodious <i>tace</i> the foaming waves
+rolled in upon the beach; on another side, the lofty column,
+glowing in the light of the setting sun, towered aloft like a
+pillar of fire, a memorial monument of fire!</p>
+<p>Hortense, who for some time had been silently gazing, first at
+the column, then at the sea, now turned with a sad smile to her
+son.</p>
+<p>"Let us spend an hour with recollections of the past," said she.
+"In the presence of this foaming sea and of this proud column, I
+will show you a picture of the past. Do you wish to see it?"</p>
+<p>His gaze fastened on the imperial column, Louis Napoleon
+silently nodded assent.</p>
+<p>Hortense went to her room, and soon returned to the balcony with
+a book, bound in red velvet. Often, during the quiet days of
+Arenenberg, the prince had seen her writing in this book, but never
+had Hortense yielded to his entreaties and permitted him to read
+any part of her memoirs. Unsolicited it was her intention to unfold
+before him to-day a brilliant picture; in view of the sad and
+desolate present, she wished to portray to him the bright and
+glittering past, perhaps only for the purpose of entertaining him,
+perhaps in order to console him with the hope that all that is
+passes away, and that the present would therefore also come to an
+end, and that which once was, again become reality for him, the
+heir of the emperor.</p>
+<p>She seated herself at her son's side, on a little sofa that
+stood on the balcony, and, opening her book, began to read.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.4"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>FRAGMENT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"The emperor had returned from Italy. The beautiful ceremony of
+the distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honor had taken
+place before his departure, and I had been present on the occasion;
+the emperor now repaired to Boulogne, in order to make a second
+distribution of the order in the army on his birthday. He had made
+my husband general of the army of the reserve, and sent him a
+courier, with the request that he should come with me and our son
+to the camp at Boulogne. My husband did not wish to interrupt the
+baths he was taking at St. Amand, but he requested me to go to
+Boulogne, to spend a week with the emperor.</p>
+<p>"The emperor resided at Boulogne in a little villa called
+<i>Pont de Brigue</i>. His sister, Caroline, and Murat, lived in
+another little villa near by. I lived with them, and every day we
+went to dine with the emperor. During two years, our troops had
+been concentrating in full view of England, and every one expected
+an attack. The camp at Boulogne was erected on the sea-side, and
+resembled a long and regularly-built city. Each hut had a little
+garden, flowers, and birds. In the middle of the camp, on an
+elevation, stood the emperor's tent; near by, that of Marshal
+Berthier. All the men-of-war on the water were drawn up in a line,
+only waiting the signal of departure. In the distance we could see
+England, and its beautiful ships that were cruising along the coast
+seemed to form an impenetrable barrier. This grand spectacle gave
+us for the first time an illustration of an unknown, hitherto
+not-dreamed-of power that stood opposed to us. Here every thing was
+calculated to excite the imagination. This boundless sea might soon
+transform itself into a battle-field, and swallow up the
+<i>&eacute;lite</i> of the two greatest nations. Our troops, proud
+in the feeling that there were no obstacles for them, made
+impatient by two years' repose, glowing with energy and bravery,
+already imagined themselves to have attained the opposite coast.
+When one considered their bravery and confidence, success seemed
+certain; but when the eye turned to the impenetrable forest of
+masts on the hostile ships, a feeling of anxiety and fear suddenly
+took possession of the heart. And yet nothing seemed to be wanting
+to the expedition but a favorable wind.</p>
+<p>"Of all the homage that a woman can receive, military homage has
+in the highest degree the chivalrous character, and it is
+impossible not to feel flattered by it.</p>
+<p>"There could not be any thing more delightful or imposing than
+the homage of which I was here the object, and it was only here
+that it made any impression on me.</p>
+<p>"The emperor gave me as an escort his equerry, General Defrance.
+Whenever I approached a camp division, the guard was called out and
+presented arms.</p>
+<p>"I had interceded for several soldiers who were undergoing
+punishment for breaches of discipline, and was on this account
+received everywhere with the liveliest enthusiasm. The entire
+mounted general staff escorted my carriage, and my approach was
+everywhere hailed by brilliant music. It was on such an occasion
+that I saw for the first time the urn which a grenadier wore
+attached to his belt; I was told that the emperor, in order to do
+honor to the memory of the gallant Latour d'Auvergne<a name=
+"FNanchor70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70">[70]</a>, had caused his
+heart to be enclosed in a leaden casket, which he had intrusted to
+the oldest soldier of the regiment, commanding that his name should
+always be called at the roll-call, as though he were present. He
+who bore the heart replied: 'Dead on the field of honor.'</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_70"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor70">[70]</a> Latour d'Auvergne, a descendant of the
+celebrated Turenne, was known and honored throughout the whole army
+on account of the lion-hearted courage which he had exhibited on so
+many occasions. As he invariably declined the many advancements and
+honors that were tendered him, Napoleon appointed him first
+grenadier of the army. He fell in the action at Neuburg, and the
+Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, afterward caused a monument
+to be erected there in his memory.</blockquote>
+<p>"One day, a breakfast was given me at the camp of Ambleteuse. I
+desired to go by water, and, notwithstanding a contrary wind, the
+admiral took me. I saw the English ships, and we passed so near
+them, that they might easily have captured our yacht. I also
+visited the Dutch fleet commanded by Admiral Versuelt, where I was
+received with great applause, the sailors little dreaming that I
+would be their queen within the space of a year<a name=
+"FNanchor71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71">[71]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_71"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor71">[71]</a> In order to reach the harbor of Ambleteuse
+to which they had been assigned, the Dutch had first been compelled
+to do battle with the English fleet, and in this combat they had
+acquitted themselves with the greatest honor.</blockquote>
+<p>"On another occasion, the emperor ordered a review. The English,
+who felt disquieted, by the appearance of so many troops drawn up
+before them, approached nearer and nearer to our coasts, and even
+fired a few cannon-shots at us; the emperor was at the head of his
+French columns when they replied to these shots, and was thus
+placed between two fires. As we had followed him, we were now
+compelled to remain at his side. To his uncle's great joy, my son
+exhibited no symptom of fear whatever. But the generals trembled at
+seeing the emperor exposed to such danger. The ramrod of some
+awkward soldier might prove as dangerous as a ball. In the midst of
+this imposing spectacle, I was struck with astonishment at the
+contrast presented by the troops under different circumstances.
+When drawn up in line of battle, they glowed with gallantry and
+determination, but, in the days of repose, they resembled
+well-behaved children, who could amuse themselves with a flower or
+a bird. The most daring warrior was then often converted into the
+most diligent and submissive scholar.</p>
+<p>"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent,
+the grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several
+songs, and came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young
+girls. In the most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song
+full of the fiercest and most daring threats against England.</p>
+<p>"From the emperor's parlor we often saw the soldiers of his
+guard assemble on the grass-plot before the castle; one of them
+would play the violin and instruct his comrades in dancing. The
+beginners would study the '<i>j&eacute;t&eacute;s</i>' and
+'<i>assembl&eacute;s</i>' with the closest attention; the more
+advanced ones would execute a whole contredance. From behind the
+window-blinds we watched them with the greatest pleasure. The
+emperor, who often surprised us at this occupation, would laugh
+with us and rejoice at the innocent amusements of his soldiers.</p>
+<p>"Was this project of a landing in England really intended? Or
+was it the emperor's purpose by these enormous preparations to
+divert attention from other points, and fix it on this one only?
+Even to-day this is a question which I cannot venture to decide;
+here, as elsewhere, I only report what I have seen.</p>
+<p>"Madame Ney also gave me a brilliant festival at Montreuil,
+where her husband the marshal was in command. During the forenoon
+the troops were manoeuvred before me, in the evening a ball took
+place. But this was suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that
+the emperor had just embarked.</p>
+<p>"A number of young officers, who had been present at the ball,
+rushed out on the road to Boulogne; I followed them with the
+rapidity of lightning, escorted as usual by General Defrance, who
+burned with impatience to be again at the emperor's side. I myself
+felt unutterable emotion at the prospect of witnessing so great an
+occurrence. I imagined myself observing the battle from the summit
+of the tower that stood near the emperor's tent; beholding our
+fleet advance and sink down into the waves, I shuddered in
+anticipation.</p>
+<p>"At last I arrived. I inquired after the emperor, and learned
+that he had actually attended the embarkation of all his troops
+during the night, but that he had just returned to his villa.</p>
+<p>"I did not see him until dinner, at which he asked Prince
+Joseph, who was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed
+in this pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the
+soldiers. Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed
+that a departure was really intended, and that the soldiers had
+doubted it so little that they had sold their watches. The emperor
+also often asked if the telegraph had not yet announced the
+approach of the French squadron; his adjutant, Lauriston, was with
+the squadron, and the emperor seemed only to be awaiting
+Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to set sail.</p>
+<p>"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired,
+and I took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and
+Dunkirk. I saw troops defiling before me everywhere; and with
+regret and fear I left this magnificent army, thinking that they
+might perhaps in a few days be exposed to the greatest dangers.</p>
+<p>"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage
+of our fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving
+in our neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the
+Rhine. Austria had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris,
+to see the emperor once more before his departure for
+Germany<a name="FNanchor72"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_72">[72]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_72"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor72">[72]</a> La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc.,
+p. 278.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.4"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE PILGRIM.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son,
+in order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
+her memories.</p>
+<p>It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although
+banished and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she
+still stood on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living
+in a foreign land, in a land whose language was unknown to her, and
+whose people she could therefore not understand. Now, on this
+journey through France, she rejoiced once more in being able to
+understand the conversation of the people in the streets, and of
+the peasants in the fields. It was a sensation of mingled
+bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a stranger among
+this people, and it therefore now afforded her the greatest delight
+to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
+<i>na&iuml;ve</i> and artless words.</p>
+<p>As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in
+which she purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out
+into the streets on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into
+a booth, seated herself, and conversed with the people who came to
+the store to purchase their daily necessaries; on another occasion,
+she accosted a child on the street, kissed it, and inquired after
+its parents; then, again, she would converse with the peasants in
+the villages about their farms, and the prospects of a plentiful
+harvest. The <i>na&iuml;ve</i>, strong, and healthy disposition of
+the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of a happy
+mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
+French people, to which they, though banished and cast off, still
+belonged.</p>
+<p>In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince
+Cond&eacute;. The forests that stood in the neighborhood had once
+belonged to the queen, or rather they had been a portion of the
+appendage which the emperor, since the union of Holland and France,
+had set apart for her second son, Louis Napoleon. Hortense had
+never been in the vicinity, and could therefore visit the castle
+without fear of being recognized.</p>
+<p>They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the
+garden, who had been the former possessor of the great forests of
+Chantilly.</p>
+<p>"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense,"
+replied the man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued
+to speak of her here for a long time; it was said that she was
+wandering about in the country in disguise, but for the last few
+years nothing has been heard of her, and I do not know what has
+become of her."</p>
+<p>"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad
+a smile that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with
+tears.</p>
+<p>From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine,
+for Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once
+seen in the days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These
+places now seemed as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How
+great the splendor that had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the
+emperor had visited the owner of the place in order to enjoy with
+him the delights of the chase! In the walks of the park, in which
+thousands of lamps had then shone, the grass now grew rankly; a
+miserable, leaky boat was now the only conveyance to the Poplar
+Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques, on whose monument
+Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names. Morfontaine
+appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in 1815, and
+it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense had
+attended a magnificent festival given by Joseph Bonaparte, then its
+owner, to his imperial brother.</p>
+<p>In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful
+remembrances for Hortense, for here was situated the great college
+for the daughters of high military officers, of which Hortense had
+been the protectress. She dared not show herself, for she well knew
+that she was not forgotten here; here there were many who still
+knew and loved her, and she could only show herself to strangers.
+But she nevertheless visited the church, and descended with Louis
+Napoleon into the vaults. Louis XVIII. alone reposed in the halls
+which the empire had restored for the reception of the new family
+of rulers, adopted by France. Alas! he who built these halls, the
+Emperor Napoleon, now reposed under a weeping-willow on a desolate
+island in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him now
+occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus of the emperor.</p>
+<p>While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls, Hortense
+thought of the day on which she had come hither with the emperor to
+inspect the building of the church. And that time she had been ill
+and suffering, and with the fullest conviction she had said to her
+mother that she, Queen Hortense, would be the first that would be
+laid to rest in the vault of St. Denis. Now, after so many years,
+she descended into it living and had hardly a right to visit
+it.</p>
+<p>But there was another grave, another monument to her memories,
+beside which Hortense desired to pray. This was the grave of the
+Empress Josephine, in the church at Ruelle.</p>
+<p>With what emotions did she approach this place and kneel down
+beside the grave-mound! Of all that Josephine had loved, there
+remained only Hortense and her son, a solitary couple, who were now
+secretly visiting the place where Hortense's mother reposed. The
+number of flowers that adorned the monument proved that Josephine
+was at least resting in the midst of friends, who still held her
+memory sacred, and this was a consolation for her daughter.</p>
+<p>From Ruelle and its consecrated grave they wandered on to
+Malmaison. Above all, Hortense wished to show this palace to her
+son! It was from this place that Napoleon had departed to leave
+France forever! Here Hortense had had the pleasure of sweetening
+for him, by her tender sympathy, the moment when all the world had
+abandoned him--the moment when he fell from the heights of renown
+into the abyss of misfortune. But, alas! the poor queen was not
+even to have the satisfaction of showing to her son the palace,
+sacred to so many memories that had once been her own! The present
+owner had given strict orders to give admission to the palace only
+upon presentation of permits that must be obtained of him
+beforehand, and, as Hortense had none, her entreaties were all in
+vain.</p>
+<p>She was cruelly repelled from the threshold of the palace in
+which in former days she had been so joyfully received by her
+devoted friends and servants!</p>
+<p>Sorrowfully, her eyes clouded with tears, she turned away and
+returned to her hotel, leaning on her son's arm.</p>
+<p>In silence she seated herself at his side on the stone bench
+that stood before the house, and gazed at the palace in which she
+had spent such happy and momentous days, lost in the recollections
+of the past!</p>
+<p>"It is, perhaps, natural," she murmured in a low voice, "that
+absence should cause those, who have the happiness to remain in
+their homes, to forget us. But, for those who are driven out into
+foreign lands, the life of the heart stands still, and the past is
+all to them; to the exiled the present and the future are
+unimportant. In France every thing has progressed, every thing is
+changed, I alone am left behind, with my sentiments of unchangeable
+love and fidelity! Alas! how sorrowful and painful it is to be
+forgotten<a name="FNanchor73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73">[73]</a>!
+How--"</p>
+<p>Suddenly she was interrupted by the tones of a piano, that
+resounded in her immediate vicinity. Behind the bench on which they
+were sitting, were the windows of the parlor of the hotel. These
+windows were open, and each tone of the music within could be heard
+with the greatest distinctness.</p>
+<p>The playing was now interrupted by a female voice, which said:
+"Sing us a song, my daughter."</p>
+<p>"What shall I sing?" asked another and more youthful voice.</p>
+<p>"Sing the beautiful, touching song your brother brought you from
+Paris yesterday. The song of Delphine Gay, set to music by M. de
+Beauplan."</p>
+<p>"Ah, you mean the song about Queen Hortense, who comes to Paris
+as a pilgrim? You are right, mamma, it is a beautiful and touching
+song, and I will sing it!"</p>
+<p>And the young lady struck the keys more forcibly, and began to
+play the prelude.</p>
+<p>Outside on the stone bench sat she who was once Queen Hortense,
+but was now the poor, solitary pilgrim. Nothing remained to her of
+the glorious past, but her son, who sat at her side! Hand in hand,
+both breathless with emotion, both pale and tearful, they listened
+until the young girl concluded her touching song.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_73"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor73">[73]</a> The duchess's own words. See Voyage en
+Italie, etc., p. 305.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.4"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>CONCLUSION.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was
+once more in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking
+the Lake of Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic
+lake, with its island and its surrounding cities and villages.</p>
+<br>
+<p>Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned
+its back on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny
+alike frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and
+the Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her
+residence in their territory--still had the courage to offer the
+Duchess of St. Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil
+of the little republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and
+distrust of the mighty could not drive her!</p>
+<p>In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a
+bleeding breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful
+blow, the loss of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and
+bowed down by the coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the
+cowardly fear of its egoism, had become faithless, even to the
+holiest and most imperishable of all religions, the religion of
+memory!</p>
+<p>How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned
+her! how many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour
+of peril!</p>
+<p>In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them
+all; and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied
+them! She had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her
+world--Arenenberg, in which her last and only happiness, her son,
+the heir of the imperial name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which
+was as a temple of memory, in which Hortense was the pious and
+believing priestess.</p>
+<p>At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her
+journey through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in
+the heroism of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The
+noblest womanhood, the most cultivated mind, the proudest and
+purest soul, speaks from out this book, with which Hortense has
+erected a monument to herself that is more imperishable than all
+the monuments of stone and bronze, for this monument speaks to the
+heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote this book with her
+heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her eyes; she
+concludes it with a touching appeal to the French people, which it
+may well be permitted us to repeat here; it is as follows:</p>
+<p>"The renewal of the law of exile, and the assimilation made
+between us and the Bourbons, testify to the sentiments and fears
+that are entertained respecting us. No friendly voice has been
+raised in our behalf; this indifference has doubled the bitterness
+of our banishment! May they, however, still be happy--those who
+forget! May they, above all, make France happy! This is my
+prayer!</p>
+<p>"As for the people, it will, if it remembers its glory, its
+grandeur, and the incessant care of which it was the object, ever
+hold our memory dear. This is my firm conviction, and this thought
+is the sweetest consolation of an exile, the sweetest consolation
+he can take with him to the grave<a name="FNanchor74"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_74">[74]</a>!"</p>
+<p>Hortense still lived a few years of peaceful tranquillity; far
+from all she loved--far also from the son who was her last hope,
+never dreaming that destiny had so brilliant a future in store for
+him, and that Louis Napoleon, whom the Bourbons had banished from
+France as a child, and the Orleans as a youth--that Louis Napoleon
+would one day be enthroned in Paris as emperor, while the Bourbons
+and Orleans languish in foreign lands as exiles!</p>
+<p>In the year 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Bonapartes,
+died!</p>
+<p>Weary, at last, of misfortune, and of the exile in which she
+languished, she bowed her head, and went home to her great
+dead--home to Napoleon and Josephine!</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_74"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor74">[74]</a> Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 324.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12019 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12019 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12019)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Mühlbach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Queen Hortense
+       A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+Author: L. Mühlbach
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2004 [EBook #12019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN HORTENSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE
+
+A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+BY
+
+L. MÜHLBACH
+
+AUTHOR OF PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES, JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,
+MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
+
+CHAPMAN COLEMAN
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--Days of Childhood.
+  II.--The Prophecy.
+ III.--Consequences of the Revolution.
+  IV.--General Bonaparte.
+   V.--The Marriage.
+  VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.
+ VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.
+VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from Egypt.
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--A First Love.
+  II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.
+ III--Consul and King.
+  IV.--The Calumny.
+   V.--King or Emperor.
+  VI.--Napoleon's Heir.
+ VII.--Premonitions.
+VIII.--The Divorce.
+  IX.--The King of Holland.
+   X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.
+  XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of Violets.
+ XII.--The Days of Misfortune.
+XIII.--The Allies in Paris.
+ XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and Louise de Cochelet.
+  XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor Alexander.
+ XVI.--The New Uncles.
+XVII.--Death of the Empress Josephine.
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Return of the Bourbons.
+  II.--The Bourbons and the Bonapartes.
+ III.--Madame de Staël.
+  IV.--Madame de Staël's Return to Paris.
+   V.--Madame de Staël's Visit to Queen Hortense.
+  VI.--The Old and New Era.
+ VII.--King Louis XVIII.
+VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his Wife.
+   X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.
+  XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and Napoleon's Arrival.
+ XII.--The Hundred Days.
+XIII.--Napoleon's Last Adieu.
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.
+ III.--The Revolution of 1830.
+  IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense.
+   V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.
+  VI.--The Flight from Italy.
+ VII.--The Pilgrimage.
+VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from Paris.
+   X.--Pilgrimage through France.
+  XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
+ XII.--The Pilgrim.
+XIII.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the Sections, _Frontispiece_.
+
+View of the Tuileries.
+
+Portrait of Queen Hortense.
+
+Portrait of Madame de Staël.
+
+
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.
+
+"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says our
+great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss purchased
+with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.
+
+And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
+Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy? Now,
+let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have tasted
+felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable
+and eternal!"
+
+Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an
+emperor to endure.
+
+In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and
+with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was
+not spared.
+
+A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was
+this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended
+from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of
+life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us
+as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen
+of Flowers.
+
+The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's beautiful
+daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she
+was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the
+daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued
+to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared
+to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his
+"_Fleurs Animées_." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of the
+Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a
+half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris. Farther in
+the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of
+the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot,
+but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial
+mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the
+train of a comet; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the
+golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a
+full-blooming branch of the crown imperial.
+
+It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming picture of
+Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant that sweeps by
+us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the
+life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her
+destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had
+seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems
+remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.
+
+When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none
+the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her poems are
+sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of
+impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds
+of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally
+melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, "_Va
+t'en, Guerrier_," which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at
+Napoleon's request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of
+France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
+march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same warlike
+harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant
+destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time
+everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had
+returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the _Invalides_ hummed it
+under their breath, while they whispered secretly to each other of the
+glory of _La Belle France_, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now
+gone forever.
+
+To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and mounts
+in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vendôme. The bronze
+visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous
+billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the
+queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews
+of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems,
+and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for
+France has won so holy a significance--holy because it is the
+master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should
+revere--the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "_Va t'en,
+Guerrier_," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the
+queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some
+brave soldier.
+
+She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable queen--but she
+ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to
+woman--the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on
+the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken
+heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged
+lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned
+kings and queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs,
+banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
+those to whom _they_ had been clement, a little spot of earth, where,
+far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in
+quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty
+sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy tale,
+which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to men and
+nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were
+eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.
+
+Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the
+mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the contrary, to
+teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the
+dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these
+wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the
+broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her
+bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but,
+even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to
+relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a
+constant charity; and when she died she could, like the Empress
+Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept much, but never have I made
+others weep."
+
+Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who, against
+the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de
+la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love
+alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy
+issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and
+jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the
+wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil
+bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not
+merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and
+cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine
+was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all
+those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her
+husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered
+in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived,
+then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter
+grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention
+and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet _blasée_ and
+hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and
+the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part
+to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she
+required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should
+not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose
+the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
+suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and both
+became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love
+they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their
+children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a
+son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy.
+Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness; and often
+when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the
+presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress
+from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and
+mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive
+attachment.
+
+But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment
+arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in
+her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had
+sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and
+little Hortense, quite disheartened by the absence of her brother, had
+no longer the means or the courage to allay the quarrels that raged
+between her parents, but would escape in terror and dismay, when they
+broke out, to some lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a
+misfortune, the extent of which her poor little childish heart could not
+yet estimate.
+
+In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young viscountess
+received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame
+Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors
+of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was
+no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and
+insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her
+with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her
+daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the
+last few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
+dazzling youth.
+
+Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a hint from
+destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and resolved to end them
+forever, she took her little daughter, Hortense, then scarcely four
+years old, and with her sailed away from France, to seek beyond the
+ocean and in her mother's arms the new happiness of undisturbed
+tranquillity.
+
+But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The mutterings
+and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A
+subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands; a dull
+thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change
+into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that would dash to atoms,
+and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and fiery cinder-showers, the
+happiness and peace of all humanity. And, finally, this terrific crater
+did, indeed, open and hurl destruction and death on all sides, over the
+whole world, uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations,
+and silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
+echoes of its awful voice!
+
+This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most fearful
+explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole world shook
+and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious masses from beneath
+overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse the order of things and
+place the lowest where the highest had been. Even away in Martinique
+this social earthquake was felt, which had already, in France, flung out
+the bloody guillotine from its relentless crater. This guillotine had
+become the altar of the so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon
+this altar the intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new
+idol those who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by
+whose death they now believed that they could purchase freedom
+for evermore.
+
+"_Egalité! fraternité! liberté!_" Such was the battle-cry of this
+howling, murdering populace. Such were the three words which burned in
+blood-red letters of fire above the guillotine, and their mocking emblem
+was the glittering axe, that flashed down, to sever from their bodies
+the heads of the aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion
+represented in those three words, they would not recognize as brethren
+and equals, or admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this
+battle-cry of the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as
+Martinique, where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience
+to the point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
+equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They, at
+last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their masters, and
+the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of the whites served
+as the bridal torches to their espousal of liberty.
+
+The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes in which
+these firebrands fell.
+
+One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames,
+which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror,
+she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the
+couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped her in the
+bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst,
+with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting
+crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of
+mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready
+to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the
+small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young
+woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with
+one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the
+deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and
+child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put
+out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.
+
+The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her
+child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed
+up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this moment all her
+thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it was only when she
+had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free
+from all danger--only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a
+mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and
+frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering
+night-clothes, without any other covering to her beautiful neck and
+bosom than her superb, luxuriant hair, which fell around her and partly
+hid them, like a thick black veil, stood the young Viscountess
+Josephine de Beauharnais, in the midst of a group of gazing men!
+
+However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so soon as
+her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine eagerly requested
+to be taken back to land, in order that she might fly to her mother's
+assistance.
+
+But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to give the
+young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins who were
+burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells could be
+distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast, so far as the
+eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea, though, of flame and
+smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in long tongues of fire far
+against the sky. It was a terrible, an appalling spectacle; and
+Josephine fled from it to the bedside of her little sleeping daughter.
+Then, kneeling there by the couch of her child, she uplifted to heaven
+her face, down which the tears were streaming, and implored God to spare
+her mother.
+
+But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and farther
+away from this blazing coast.
+
+Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's burning home,
+which gradually grew less to her sight, then glimmered only like a tiny
+star on the distant horizon, and finally vanished altogether. With that
+last ray her childhood and past life had sunk forever in the sea, and a
+new world and a new life opened for both mother and child. The past was,
+like the ships of Cortez, burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light
+far away over into her future, and as Josephine stood there with her
+little Hortense in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island
+where her early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
+mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:
+
+"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all France will
+be at your feet. You will be greater there than a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PROPHECY.
+
+It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with her little
+daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her residence in a
+small dwelling. There she soon received the intelligence of the rescue
+of her mother, and of the re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In
+France, however, the revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the
+banner of the Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody
+shadow over Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in
+the evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
+that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at every
+door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in every family.
+In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all her earlier griefs,
+all the insults and humiliations to which she had been subjected by her
+husband; the old love revived in her breast, and, as it might well be
+that on the morrow death would come knocking at her own door, she wished
+to devote the present moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a
+reunion with her son.
+
+But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The viscount had
+felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an injury, too great an
+insult, to be now willing to consent to a reconciliation with his wife.
+Sympathizing friends arranged a meeting between them, without, however,
+previously informing the viscount of their design. His anger was
+therefore great when, on entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in
+response to that gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had
+so obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
+when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in silvery
+tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was now powerless
+to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his heart, and when the
+child, with a winning smile, entreated him to kiss her mamma as he had
+kissed her; when he saw the beautiful countenance of Josephine wet with
+tears; when he heard his father's voice saying, "My son, reconcile
+yourself with my daughter! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not
+call her so if she were unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son,
+Eugene, gazing at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother's
+shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he
+stepped forward to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful
+greeting of love, Josephine sank on his bosom.
+
+Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united in a
+closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to have spent
+their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear and cloudless.
+But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the black shadow of the
+revolution.
+
+Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the new
+legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position, in order
+to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue. With the rank
+of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the North, accompanied
+by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread premonition told her that
+she would never see the general again, and this premonition did not
+deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and insurrection not only raged among
+the people of Paris, but also in the army. The aristocrats, who were
+given over to the guillotine in Paris, were also regarded with distrust
+and hatred in the army, and Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry
+on the battle-field of Soissons, had been promoted to the position of
+commanding general, was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of
+France and of the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to
+Paris, and thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
+victims of the revolution lay in confinement.
+
+The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached Josephine,
+and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf. She mentally
+vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her children, or to die
+with him. She courageously confronted all dangers, all suspicions, and
+was happy when she found him in his prison, where she visited him,
+whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.
+
+But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
+Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
+herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of an
+aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
+arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.
+
+Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
+prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only left
+their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all help,
+avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two children were
+threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger, for the estate of
+their parents had been confiscated, and, in the same hour in which
+Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances and doors of their
+dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left to find a sheltering
+roof for themselves. But yet they were not entirely helpless, not quite
+friendless, for a friend of Josephine, a Madame Ho1stein, had the
+courage to come to the rescue, and take the children into her
+own family.
+
+But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in order to
+avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who, coming from the
+scum of the people, were now the rulers of France. An imprudent word, a
+look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon, and render up to the
+guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this courageous friend of the two
+children. It was in itself a capital crime that she had taken the
+children of the accused into her house, and it was therefore necessary
+to adopt every means of conciliating the authorities. It was thought
+necessary that Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend
+the festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
+decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was never
+required to take an active part in these celebrations. She was not
+considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the people; she had
+not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a viscount, of an
+imprisoned _ci-devant._ Eugene had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and
+the son of the viscount was now often seen walking through the streets
+in a blouse, carrying a board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.
+
+While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary security,
+the future of their parents was growing darker and darker, and not only
+the life of the general, but also that of his wife, was now seriously
+endangered. Josephine had been removed from the prison of St. Pelagie to
+that of the Carmelites, and this brought her a step nearer the scaffold.
+But she did not tremble for herself, she thought only of her children
+and her husband; she wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she
+bribed her jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts
+to place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
+day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just been
+conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited for
+further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
+acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he already
+free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he were free, he
+would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead,
+his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the
+condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.
+Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
+misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
+face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.
+
+The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
+were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose
+seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the
+Marquise de Créqui, the intellectual lady who has often been called the
+last marquise of the _ancien régime_, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
+the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
+aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbé Téxier, who, when the
+revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
+to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will
+you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was
+yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his
+master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter
+full of water and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than
+seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.
+
+To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this
+day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of
+her husband.
+
+In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison
+now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an assignat of
+fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that
+his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as
+"dove," and had made all other preparations. A table stood in the middle
+of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water,
+around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as
+near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to
+see the better. The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought
+from her bed in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and
+behind her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
+the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
+ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their aristocratic
+manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly observant of
+etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the honor of the
+_tabouret_ in the Tuileries, were here accorded the same precedence, and
+all possible consideration shown them.
+
+On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her large, dark
+eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression, stood the unhappy
+Josephine, and, at some distance behind the ladies, the jailer with
+his wife.
+
+Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and cried in a
+loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"
+
+The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
+decanter.
+
+"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look into the
+prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"
+
+"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot lies a
+young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man, writing on a sheet
+of paper that lies on a large book."
+
+"Can you read?"
+
+"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the paper."
+
+"The one who sleeps?"
+
+"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing something on
+the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair; now he opens a
+little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it; they are assignats,
+he counts them and then puts them back in the pocket-book. Now he rises
+and walks softly, softly."
+
+"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest noise as
+yet, have you?"
+
+"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."
+
+"What do you see now?"
+
+"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be weeping."
+
+"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"
+
+"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in the
+pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."
+
+"Of what color is this coat?"
+
+"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk and
+covered with shining buttons."
+
+"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed, child."
+
+He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The little
+girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her parents, who
+led her from the hall.
+
+"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta, addressing
+Josephine.
+
+"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing for
+death[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
+Créqui, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol. vi.,
+p. 238.]
+
+Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received a
+package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La Force,
+named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General Beauharnais
+and had found the package and the letter, addressed to the duchess, in
+his pocket on the morning of the execution of the general.
+
+In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver to
+Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last adieus to
+wife and children.
+
+This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could bequeath
+to his Josephine and her unhappy children!
+
+Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and his
+last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of blood
+gushing from her mouth.
+
+Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her the most
+tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a physician should
+be called.
+
+"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the best
+physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will restore
+to him his wife."
+
+This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered from
+her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of Terror. This was
+the herald of certain death, and she courageously prepared for the
+grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children she must leave behind.
+
+A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
+revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as there was
+no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss which themselves
+had digged.
+
+The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty thousands
+of the already condemned victims of the revolution.
+
+Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to liberty, and
+could now hasten to her children, but she came back to them as a poor
+widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible republic" were on hers
+and her children's property as well as on that of all other aristocrats.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.
+
+France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an end, and a
+milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre over the poor
+land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death. It was no longer a
+capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to be better dressed than
+the _sans-culottes_, to wear no Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the
+emigrants. The guillotine, which had ruled over Paris during two years
+of blood and tears, now rested from its horrid work, and allowed the
+Parisians to think of something else besides making their wills and
+preparing for death.
+
+Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were disposed to
+make the most of this release from the fear of immediate death, and to
+enjoy themselves to the utmost while they could.
+
+They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once more; so
+long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently longed for
+amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris, who had been
+dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the reins had been
+torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins again, and reconquer
+the position from which the storm-wind of the revolution had
+hurled them.
+
+Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five directors who
+now swayed the destinies of France; Madame Récamier, the friend of all
+the eminent and distinguished men of that period; and Madame de Staël,
+the daughter of Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose
+government had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris
+its drawing-rooms, its reunions, its _fêtes_, its fashions, and its
+luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the Church had
+not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief in a Supreme
+Being was already re-established. Robespierre had already been bold
+enough to cause the inscription, "There is a Supreme Being," to be
+placed over the altars of the churches that had been converted into
+"Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who
+had first acknowledged its existence, was soon to experience in himself
+that such was the case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by
+them with desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the
+head of the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell
+a prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
+existence. While engaged in the Hôtel de Ville in signing
+death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the guillotine,
+he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards, who had stormed
+the gates and penetrated into the building, and the attempt to blow out
+his brains with his pistol miscarried. Bleeding, his jaw shattered by
+the bullet, he was dragged before Fouquier-Tainville to receive his
+sentence, and to be conducted thence to the scaffold. In order that the
+proceeding should be attended with all formalities, he was, however,
+first conducted to the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety
+was then sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
+bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the scaffold,
+the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged. Like a bundle of
+rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large table that stood in the
+middle of the room. But yesterday Robespierre had been enthroned at this
+table as almighty ruler over the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen;
+but yesterday he had here issued his decrees and signed the
+death-sentences, that lay on the table, unexecuted. These papers were
+now the only salve the ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in
+his face, from which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed
+by himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
+tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate _sans-culotte_, with which to
+bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat there in the
+midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding, groaning, and
+complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched arms, pointing to
+this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was right. There is a
+Supreme Being!"
+
+This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was dead;
+Théroigne de Méricourt was no longer the Goddess of Reason, and
+Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of Liberty and Virtue. Women had
+given up representing divinities, and desired to be themselves again,
+and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms of the capital, by means of their
+intellect and grace, the throne which had gone down in the revolution.
+
+Madame Tallien, Madame Récamier, and Madame de Staël, reorganized
+society, and all were anxious to obtain admission to their parlors. To
+be sure, these entertainments and reunions still wore a sufficiently
+strange and fantastic appearance. Fashion, which had so long been
+compelled to give way to the _carmagnole_ and red cap, endeavored to
+avenge its long banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in
+doing so assumed a political, reactionary aspect. _Coiffures à la
+Jacobine_ were now supplanted by _coiffures à la victime_ and _au
+repentir_. In order to exhibit one's taste for the fine arts, the
+draperies of the statues of Greece and ancient Rome were now worn.
+Grecian _fêtes_ were given, at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly
+honored, and Roman feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled
+those of Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
+palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now taken
+up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the new French
+society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud to wear the
+generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic, Madame Tallien chose
+the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and the gold-embroidered purple
+robes, and the golden tiara in her black, shining hair, gave to the
+charming and beautiful daughter of the republic the magnificence of an
+empress. She had also drawn around her a splendid court. All eagerly
+pressed forward to pay their respects to and obtain the good will of the
+mighty wife of the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of
+attraction to all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or
+aspired to such. While in the parlors of Madame Récamier, who, despite
+the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the good
+time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often sanguinary
+_bon mots_ at the expense of the republic uttered--while in Madame de
+Staël's parlors art and science had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and
+court lived for the present, and basked in the splendor with which she
+knew how to invest the palace of the dictators of France.
+
+In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been living,
+with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad memories. A day
+came, however, when she was compelled to tear herself from this last
+consolation of the unhappy, the brooding over the sorrows and losses of
+the past, or see her children become the victims of misery and want. The
+time had come when she must leave her retirement, and step, as a
+petitioner, before those who had the power to grant, as a favor, that
+which was hers by right, and restore to her, at least in part, her
+sequestered estate. Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was
+still Madame de Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might
+assist her in her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father.
+Madame Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
+admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being called
+on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished position at the
+court of King Louis. She therefore received her with great amiability,
+and endeavored to make the charming and beautiful viscountess her
+friend. But Josephine found that estates were more easily lost than
+recovered. The republic, one and indivisible, was always ready to take,
+but not to give; and, even with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien
+freely exerted in her behalf, it was some time before Josephine
+succeeded in recovering her estate. In the mean time, she really
+suffered want, and she and her children were compelled to bear the
+hardships and mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true
+friends still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
+delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with food
+and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was characteristic
+of this period that no one felt humiliated by accepting benefits of this
+kind from his friends. Those who had lost all had not done so through
+their own fault; and those who had saved their property out of the
+general wreck could not attribute their fortune to their own merit or
+wisdom, but merely to chance. They therefore considered it a sacred
+duty to divide with those who had been less fortunate; and the latter
+would point with pride to the poverty which proved that they had been
+true to themselves and principle, and accept what friendship offered.
+This was the result of a kind of community of property, to which the
+revolution had given birth. Those who had possessions considered it
+their duty to divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded
+this division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.
+
+Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends without
+blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de Montmorin to
+provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and she and Hortense
+could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to dine with her twice a
+week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were assembled, on certain days, a
+number of friends, who had been robbed of their fortunes by the storms
+of the revolution. Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor,
+gave these dinners to her friends, but each guest was expected to bring
+with him his own white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered
+one of the greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a
+law had been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain
+amount of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
+purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
+general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
+requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that no
+more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and that
+amount cost the purchaser dearly[2]. Josephine, however, had not even
+the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An exception to this
+rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and Hortense; and at
+Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always provided white bread for
+them, and for them alone of all her guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was
+soon, however, to be freed from this want. One day when she had been
+invited by Madame Tallien to dinner, and had walked to the palace with
+Hortense, Tallien informed her that the government had favorably
+considered her petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the
+widow of a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with
+his blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
+domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed from her
+furniture and other personal property, and that the republic had
+remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury for her relief,
+until the sequestration of her landed estates should be annulled, which
+he expected would soon take place.
+
+[Footnote 2: Mémoires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
+i., p. 80.]
+
+Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She pressed her
+daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in tears: "We shall
+at last be happy! My children shall no longer suffer want!" This time
+the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy, the first in long years.
+
+Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her children an
+education suitable to their rank; she could now once more assume the
+position in society to which her beauty, youth, amiability, and name
+entitled her. She no longer came to Madame Tallien's parlor as a
+suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all were eager to do homage to
+the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to the beautiful and charming
+viscountess. But Josephine preferred the quiet bliss of home-life in the
+circle of her children to the brilliant life of society; she gradually
+withdrew from the noisy circles of the outer world, in order that she
+might, in peaceful retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the
+hearts and minds of her promising children.
+
+Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal security
+no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had left his
+master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was preparing
+himself for military service under the instruction of excellent
+teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers of
+comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France filled him
+with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his teacher of the
+deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling eyes and glowing
+countenance: "I too will become a gallant general, some day!"
+
+Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who was
+scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an elder and
+younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature had given
+Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to this beauty
+grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's
+intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to
+care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition
+usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an
+insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence,
+not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls
+usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with
+the adornment of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath
+the yoke of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
+enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
+dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
+Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to
+amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if
+not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the
+brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the
+school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a
+womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet her noble and chaste
+features still wore the impress of childhood, and in her large blue eyes
+reposed a whole heaven of innocence and peace. When she sat with her
+harp at the window in the evening twilight, the last rays of the setting
+sun gilding her sweet countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her
+beautiful blond hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
+angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter portray.
+In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and melodies which
+Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with the silvery tones of
+her voice, in words composed by herself, half-childish prayer, half
+rhapsody of love, and revealing the most secret thoughts of the fair
+young being who stood on the threshold of womanhood, bidding adieu to
+childhood with a blissful smile, and dreaming of the future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GENERAL BUONAPARTE.
+
+While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long and
+stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and repose,
+the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to time in fits of
+fury, and tranquillity continued far from being permanently restored.
+The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution, still exercised their
+pestilential influence over the populace of Paris, and stirred the rude
+masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms of discontent and disorder.
+
+But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild masses in
+his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down into the dust
+with the flashing master-glance of his resistless eye.
+
+That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine years of
+age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero crowned with
+laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of victory. As
+commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of valor at the
+recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to the rank of
+general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the republic.
+Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the young general of
+five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the government, being
+still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished to remove him from
+Paris, and send him to La Vendée as a brigadier-general. Buonaparte
+declined this mission, because he preferred remaining in the artillery
+service, and, for that reason, the government of the republic relieved
+him of his duties and put him on half-pay.
+
+So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the brilliant
+star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and shed the fulness
+of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which
+whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of
+military glory, had already announced the rising of his star.
+
+So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed quiet,
+retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted friends only,
+who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted circumstances. For
+Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited means in the tempests of
+the revolution, and all that he possessed consisted of the laurels he
+had won on the battle-field, and his half pay as a brigadier-general.
+But, like the Viscountess de Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends
+who deemed it an honor to receive him as a guest at their table, and
+also, like Josephine, he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him
+to the dinners that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He
+often dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
+boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that time
+still his host, favored of the gods. The young general, instead of, like
+his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought only his ration, which
+was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned to his brother Louis, who
+was very fond of it, while Madame Bourrienne took care that he should
+invariably find his supply of white, bread at his plate. She had managed
+to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
+white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
+discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
+the scaffold.
+
+Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
+name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
+that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
+by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
+the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
+quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
+that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
+carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"
+
+He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
+little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
+when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
+and the famous 13th Vendémiaire, 1795, again summoned the famous general
+away from his meditations to stern practical activity. It was on that
+day, the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5th), that there came the outburst of
+the storm, the subterranean rumblings of which had been so long
+perceptible. The sections of Paris rose against the National Convention
+which had given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two
+thirds of the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
+legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
+accept the new constitution only when it provided that the legislative
+body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The Convention, thus
+assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was resolved to stand its
+ground, and called upon the representatives who commanded the armed
+forces, to defend the republic of their creation. Barras was appointed
+the first general commanding the Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the
+second. It was not long before a ferocious conflict broke out in the
+streets between the army and the insurgent sections. At that time the
+populace were not always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear
+up the pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
+terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the Church of
+St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but they were
+driven from them also; the struggle in the streets recommenced, and
+streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.
+
+After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras declared to
+the triumphant National Convention that the victory over the insurgents
+was chiefly due to the comprehensive and gallant conduct of General
+Bonaparte.
+
+The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon the
+latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of the
+Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on the day of
+peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from obscurity; his name had
+risen above the horizon!
+
+He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the whispering
+voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant song of his
+future career. He was now already conscious that he had a shining goal
+before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet assign a title, that
+flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale, and which he swore to make
+reality at last.
+
+One day, there came to the headquarters of the young general-in-chief a
+young man who very pressingly asked to see him. Bonaparte had him
+admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous, fiery glance, the
+noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at once prepossessed him in
+the young man's favor, and he forthwith questioned him in gentle,
+friendly tones, concerning the object of his visit.
+
+"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais, and I
+have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was denounced before
+the Committee of Public Safety as a _suspect_, and given over to the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, who had him murdered, three days before the fall
+of Robespierre."
+
+"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.
+
+"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I come now
+to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have the kindness to
+bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to induce them to give
+me back my father's sword. I will faithfully use it in fighting the
+enemies of my country and defending the cause of the republic."
+
+These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to the
+stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of his eyes
+grew softer.
+
+"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and this
+filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of General
+Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"
+
+With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the necessary
+commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the adjutant returned,
+bringing with him the sword of General Beauharnais.
+
+Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed with strong
+emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession of his father--to
+his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred emotion started into
+his eyes.
+
+Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white hand,
+which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as soft, as
+delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess, rested lightly on
+Eugene's shoulder.
+
+"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all hearts to
+him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you or
+your family."
+
+Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement. "Good
+general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will pray
+for you."
+
+This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly nod, he
+desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to call upon him
+soon again.
+
+This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the commencement of the
+acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and Josephine. The sword of the
+guillotined General Beauharnais placed an imperial crown upon the head
+of his widow, and adorned the brows of his son and his daughter with
+royal diadems.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MARRIAGE.
+
+A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene, Josephine
+met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant _soirées_ given by Barras, the
+first general-in-chief. She asked Barras to introduce her to the young
+general, and then, in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of
+all prudery, yet none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand
+to Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
+the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.
+
+The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and beautiful
+woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to manhood. Her
+enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a sea of warmth and
+passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while the gentle,
+love-enticing smile that played around her mouth revealed the tender
+feminine gentleness and amiability of her disposition. Bonaparte had
+never mastered the art of flattering women in the light, frivolous style
+of the fashionable coxcomb; and when he attempted it his compliments
+were frequently of so unusual and startling a character that they might
+just as well contain an affront as a tribute of eulogy.
+
+"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was emperor,
+to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red hair
+you have!"
+
+"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time that a
+man ever told me so."
+
+And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a very
+handsome blond[3].
+
+[Footnote 3: The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to
+Tours, because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen
+of Spain.]
+
+To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once said: "Ah,
+good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to another: "What
+beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress that is! Who could
+have put it up for you in such ridiculous style?"
+
+Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women with
+words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language that his
+eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very hour,
+conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy at the
+thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young hero had
+awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to livelier
+palpitations.
+
+From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and, ere long,
+Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing confession of his
+love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her hand. In vain her
+powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored to dissuade her from
+marrying this young, penniless general; in vain did they remind her that
+he might be killed in the very next battle, and that she might thus
+again be left a reduced widow. Josephine shook her handsome curls with
+a peculiar smile. Perhaps she was thinking of the prophecy of the
+negress at Martinique; perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of
+Bonaparte's eye, and on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the
+very man to bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved
+him ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
+any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
+friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
+determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he was.
+Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous impatience to
+make their modest little preparations for their new housekeeping
+establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to complete his dream of
+happiness; he possessed neither house nor carriage, and Josephine, too,
+was without an equipage.
+
+Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on foot
+through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their
+felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a
+scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications
+were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not
+obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting
+into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the
+promenades, he smiling proudly when the passers-by broke out in
+spontaneous exclamations of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy
+and exultant as she overheard the whispered admiration and respect with
+which the multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with
+the general through the throng.
+
+One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to Ragideau,
+the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had been the
+business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long time, and
+Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her own disposal, a
+sum of money belonging to her that had been deposited with him.
+Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while Josephine went into the
+adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's office.
+
+"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
+Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.
+
+The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do well,
+and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I am
+satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."
+
+"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with the proud
+and happy look of a person really in love. "My future husband is General
+Bonaparte!"
+
+The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm. "How?"
+said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this little
+General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has already
+deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and throw him back
+into insignificance?"
+
+Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."
+
+"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you are wrong
+in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are committing a
+folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who has nothing but his
+hat and his sword."
+
+"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then, turning
+the conversation, she began to speak of the practical matters that had
+brought her thither.
+
+When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine returned
+to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He came, smiling,
+to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the notary, who was with
+her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the latter shrank back in
+consternation. Josephine also remarked that Bonaparte's countenance was
+paler that day than usual, and that he was less communicative and less
+disposed to chat with her; but she had already learned that it was not
+advisable to question him as to the cause of his different moods. So,
+she kept silent on that score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon
+drove away the clouds that had obscured the general's brow.
+
+The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of March,
+1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense, Josephine's
+children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien, Calmelet, and Leclerq.
+The marriage-contract contained, along with the absolutely requisite
+facts of the case, a very pleasant piece of flattery for Josephine,
+since, in order to establish an equality of ages between the two
+parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a year older, and Josephine four
+years younger, than they really were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract
+states, born on the 5th of February, 1768 but on the 15th of August,
+1769; and Josephine not, as the document represents, on the 23d of July,
+1767, but on the 23d of June, 1763[4].
+
+[Footnote 4: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 350.]
+
+Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in queenly
+fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his appointment to
+the command of the Italian army, which Barras and Tallien had granted to
+her, at her own request.
+
+But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of activity,
+there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few happy weeks with
+his lovely wife and his new family, in the small residence in the Rue
+Chautereine, which he had purchased a short time before his marriage,
+and which Josephine had fitted up with that elevated and refined good
+taste that had always distinguished her.
+
+One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He had his
+house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There was now only
+a carriage to be procured in order to make the general the "happiest
+of men."
+
+But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the farther they
+advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the possession of a small
+house in Paris. He now wanted an establishment in the country also.
+
+"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the Yonne," he
+wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living on his property
+near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will buy it. Then I will
+retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not want any of the national
+domains[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 103.]
+
+As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the victorious
+General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses, which was a
+present to the general of the French Republic from the Emperor of
+Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years later, he would have
+him for a son-in-law.
+
+These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of Arcola,
+Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte brought back
+with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only gift which the
+general had not refused to accept.
+
+It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently hitched to
+a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look attached to the
+gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the first consul made his
+solemn entry into the Tuileries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BONAPARTE IN ITALY.
+
+Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few weeks in
+which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone in Paris,
+doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not only from her
+husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied his young step-father
+to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette,
+had, at that time, opened an establishment for the education of young
+ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest and most eminent families of
+newly-republicanized France liked to send their daughters to it, so that
+they might learn from the former court-lady the refined style and
+manners of old royalist times.
+
+Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and there, in the
+society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of Bonaparte, and afterward
+Queen of Naples--and the young Countess Stephanie Beauharnais, her
+cousin, passed a few happy years of work, of varied study, and of
+youthful maiden-dreams.
+
+Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm,
+to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of
+languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more
+in the mastering the so-called _bon ton_ and that aristocratic _savoir
+vivre_ of which Madame Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus
+receiving instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in
+painting from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and
+was playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
+the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating in the
+balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show off the
+talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in a word,
+Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments of a
+distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful all these
+little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time, would one day be to
+her, and how good a thing it was that she had learned to play parts at
+Madame Campan's, and to appear in society as a great lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and exulting
+triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending, brighter and
+brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the name of Bonaparte was
+echoing in louder and louder volume through the world, and filling all
+Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear and trembling, as the sea
+becomes agitated when the sun begins to rise. Victory after victory came
+joyfully heralded from Italy, as ancient states fell beneath the iron
+tread of the victor, and new ones sprang into being. The splendid old
+Republic of Venice, once the terror of the whole world, the victorious
+Queen of the Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell
+in fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
+Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the slender
+monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained to the
+shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in Candia,
+Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the old
+commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state, the
+Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the French
+Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin, laid his
+peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted away, another
+Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given Venice the
+greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to the front at the
+head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom Bonaparte had said that
+he was "a man."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how seldom one
+meets _men_ in the world! In Italy there are eighteen millions of
+inhabitants, but I have found only two _men_ among them all--Dandolo and
+Melzi[6]."
+
+[Footnote 6: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 139.]
+
+But, while Bonaparte was despairing of _men_, in the very midst of his
+victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned love for his wife,
+to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and most ardent letters, the
+answers to which he awaited with the most impatient longing.
+
+Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual and
+singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
+campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
+excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
+weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only on
+the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was more
+considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned _all_ the
+communications he received to the flames, _unread_, and--while the fire
+on his hearth was consuming the paper on which, perchance, was written
+the despairing appeal of a mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a
+disconsolate wife, beseeching pity for her husband; or the application
+of an ambitious statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with
+a sardonic smile, and say, "There's _my_ correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
+least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached him,
+indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary, Bourrienne,
+much time and labor, for, when they finally went to work on them, time
+and circumstances had already disposed of four fifths of them, and thus
+only one fifth required answers--a result that made Bonaparte laugh
+heartily, and filled him with justifiable pride in what he termed his
+"happy idea."
+
+Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to wait ere
+they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his heart bounding
+with delight, and invariably answered them, in such impassioned, glowing
+language as only his warm southern temperament could suggest, and
+contrasted with which even Josephine's missives seemed a little cool and
+passionless.
+
+Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting letters
+from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with him; and
+hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the general summoned
+his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his call with rapture, and
+hastened to Italy to join him. Now came proud days of triumph and
+gratified affection. All Italy hailed Bonaparte as the conquering hero;
+all Italy did homage to the woman who bore his name, and whose
+incomparable fascination and amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won
+all hearts. Her life now resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal
+pageant; a dazzling fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights"
+that had become reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine,
+sparkling with stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.
+
+Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte made his
+proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the front courtyard
+of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the _Corps Législatif_, was
+erected a vast amphitheatre, in which sat all the high authorities of
+France; in the centre of the amphitheatre stood the altar of the
+country, surmounted by three gigantic statues, representing Freedom,
+Equality, and Peace. As Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the
+dense crowd that occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their
+feet with uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the
+windows of the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who
+waved welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
+this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An officer of
+the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity, had clambered
+up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the palace, then
+undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the ground almost at
+Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost simultaneously from a
+thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale and shrank back,
+shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a moment before had
+exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these living flowers, now stood
+there bare, with empty, gaping casements. A perceptible thrill ran
+through the ranks of the _Corps Législatif_, and here and there the
+whisper passed that this fall of an officer portended the early
+overthrow of the Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like
+the unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies at
+the feet of General Bonaparte.
+
+But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of Arcola
+new _fêtes_ every day; and when these _fêtes_ were over, and Bonaparte,
+fatigued with the speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be
+on his way returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who
+beset his path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
+persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of the
+hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.
+
+A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
+individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on himself.
+Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation of his own
+inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him with a sort of
+reverential exultation.
+
+Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment of these
+glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely overwhelmed and
+disturbed, could have held aloof from these ovations of the people of
+Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the heart of his wife with pride
+and joy. While in the theatre, he shrank back, abashed, behind his
+wife's chair when the audience, learning his presence, filled their
+noisy plaudits and clamored to have a glimpse at him, Josephine would
+thank the crowd on his behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling
+with tears for this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a
+natural and appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero.
+But Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
+demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as though it
+would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their cries of "_Vive
+Bonaparte!_" while Josephine turned her face toward him, glowing with
+delight, and called out, exultingly--"See, how they love you, these good
+people of Paris!" he replied, with an almost melancholy expression
+"Bah! The crowd would be just as numerous and noisy if they were
+conducting me to the scaffold!"
+
+However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided, and his
+life resumed its more tranquil course.
+
+Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest and calm
+enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated) dwelling in the
+Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city authorities had changed to
+_Rue de la Victoire_, in honor of the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo.
+He could, after so many battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while
+in the arms of love and happiness.
+
+Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
+restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories. He
+felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of his
+conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the notes of
+the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and to other paths
+of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but could not completely
+satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning of death.
+
+"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he. "They retain
+the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one celebrity blots out
+another in this great Babylon; if I show myself much oftener to the
+public, they will cease to look at me, and if I do not soon undertake
+something new, they will forget me."
+
+And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented, that filled
+all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of France with an army
+to conquer, for the French Republic, that ancient land of Egypt, on
+whose pyramids the green moss of long-forgotten ages was flourishing.
+
+Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris; but she
+needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to sustain this
+separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to her might be just
+as likely to last six years as six months. And what could afford better
+consolation to a heart so tender as Josephine's than the presence of her
+beloved daughter? She had willingly given up her son to her husband, and
+he had accompanied the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and
+her she would not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school.
+
+Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who had come
+to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after two years'
+stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all the charms of
+innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.
+
+Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had retained
+the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a white sheet
+of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name.
+She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her
+young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his
+commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she
+reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to
+find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times the hero, the
+lord and master, the father to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she
+dared not love him; she could only look up to and honor him from
+a distance.
+
+Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of a child, upon
+the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to her, and from which
+she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling piece of good fortune
+without having any accurate idea in what it was to consist. She still
+loved all mankind, and believed in their truth and rectitude. No thorn
+had yet wounded her heart; no disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed
+to pieces, had yet left its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of
+transparent whiteness. The expression of her large blue eyes was still
+radiant and undimmed, and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it
+almost made her mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the
+last echo of some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too
+well knew that it would soon be hushed.
+
+But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling their
+melodies; the world still lay before her like an early morning dream,
+and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.
+
+Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
+boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of Plombières. But there
+it was that Hortense came near experiencing the greatest sorrow of her
+life, in nearly losing her mother.
+
+She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room of the
+house they occupied at Plombières. The doors facing the balcony were
+open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was sitting by the window
+painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she had gathered with her own
+hands on the hills of Plombières. Josephine found the atmosphere of the
+room too close, and invited some ladies to step out with her upon the
+balcony. A moment afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed
+by piercing shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate
+fright to the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her
+mother and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings
+had given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
+Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would have
+sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held back with
+the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared the young girl,
+and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded heaven of her youth.
+Her mother escaped with no other injury than the fright, and a slight
+wound on her arm, while one of the ladies had both legs broken.
+
+Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of the
+fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the
+wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet "something more than
+a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.
+
+Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had adorned
+his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the returning
+conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first time, Hortense
+was present at the festivities which the city of Paris dedicated to her
+step-father; for the first time she saw the homage that men and women,
+graybeards and children alike, paid to the hero of Italy and Egypt.
+These festivities and this homage filled her heart with a tremor of
+alarm, and yet, at the same time, with joyous exultation. In the midst
+of these triumphs and these ovations which were thus offered to her
+second father, the young girl recalled the prison in which her mother
+had once languished, the scaffold upon which the head of her own father
+had fallen; and frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered
+uniform of her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the
+time when Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice,
+through the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.
+
+These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
+Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune, preserved
+to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her from entertaining
+any overweening or domineering propensity in her day of prosperity, or
+from seeming cast down and hopeless when adversity came. She never
+lulled herself with the idea of good fortune that could not pass away,
+but her remembrances kept her eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune
+came, it did not take her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to
+confront it.
+
+Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days in full
+draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom she was so
+fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified love; and in the
+name of her murdered father she thanked General Bonaparte with double
+fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for having been the means of
+procuring for her mother, who had suffered so deeply in her first wedded
+life, so magnificent a glow of splendor and happiness in her
+second marriage.
+
+In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to dispel
+this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution convulsed
+all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two hostile camps,
+burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On one side stood the
+democratic republicans, who looked back with longing regret to the days
+of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving, as they did, that tranquillity
+and protracted peace must soon wrest the reins of power from their
+grasp, and therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the
+element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger,
+and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the _sans-culottes_ and
+the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of the
+imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the
+man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in
+the bonds of servitude.
+
+On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
+republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
+fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
+disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
+guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists and
+poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew that the
+days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic had brought not
+merely human beings, but also the arts and sciences, to the scaffold.
+With them, too, were arrayed the merchants and artisans, the bankers,
+the business-men, the property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the
+republic at least established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation,
+in order to have confidence in its durability and substantial character,
+and to commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success.
+And at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.
+
+The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was a
+fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in which
+little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were slaughtered.
+
+The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory,
+and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins
+of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate,
+rational republic of the year 1798. At its head were the three consuls,
+Bonaparte, Cambacères, and Lebrun.
+
+On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls entered the
+Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept, as conquerors,
+in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.
+
+From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the forms of
+etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic republic, had
+slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of the Luxembourg and
+the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and circumspectly, 'tis true,
+in broad daylight. People were no longer required, in accordance with
+the spirit of equality, to ignore all distinctions of condition and
+culture, by the use of the words "citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the
+name of brotherhood, to endure the close familiarities of every brawling
+street ruffian; or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal
+liberty and inclination be trampled under foot.
+
+Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners again; and
+the three consuls, who had taken possession of the Luxembourg, whispered
+the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and greeted Josephine and her
+daughter, who were installed in the apartments prepared for them in the
+palace on the next day, with the title of "madame." Yet, only a year
+earlier, the two words "monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in
+Paris, and brought about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had
+promulged the stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever
+should use the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on
+pretext whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable
+of ever again serving in the army of the republic[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.]
+
+Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry, along with
+the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg, which had been
+delivered from its democratic tyrants.
+
+Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense was
+"Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now required a
+larger retinue of servants, and a more showy establishment. Indeed,
+temerity could not yet go so far as to speak of the _court_ of Madame
+Bonaparte and the _court ladies_ of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had
+still to be content with the limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg,
+but they were soon to be compensated for all this, and, if they still
+had to call each other _monsieur_ and _madame_, they could, a few years
+later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in the
+Tuileries.
+
+The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the joint
+residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the ambition of
+Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the other two men
+who shared the supreme control of France with him. Too it was also for
+the longings that now spoke with ever louder and stronger accents in
+his breast, and pushed him farther and farther onward in this path of
+splendor and renown which, at first, had seemed to him but as the magic
+mirage of his dreams, but which now appeared as the glittering truth and
+reality of his waking hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the
+three consuls, but they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to
+work to prepare the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It
+would not do to oust the representatives of the people, who held their
+sessions there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be
+made to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
+France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed monster
+of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was necessary, before
+entering the Tuileries, to give the French people proof that men might
+still be very good republicans, even although they might wish to be
+housed in the bedchamber of a king.
+
+Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to the
+Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a residence worthy
+of the representatives of the republic. So, the first move made was to
+set up a handsome bust of the elder Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's,
+which he had brought with him from Italy--in one of the galleries of the
+Tuileries; and then David had to carve out some other statues of the
+republican heroes of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A
+number of democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the
+13th Vendémiaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of the
+death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans, arriving
+just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army should wear the
+badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were worn on the arm, and
+sable streamers waved from the standards, in honor of the deceased
+republican hero.
+
+However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army had
+sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered the
+Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which towered
+aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription of the
+republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend "August 10,
+1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France is overthrown and
+will never rise again." It was between these two significant symbols
+that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries. It was a very long and
+imposing procession of carriages which moved that day toward the palace,
+through the streets of the capital. They only lacked the outward pomp
+and magnificence which rendered the latter _fêtes_ of the empire so
+remarkable. With the exception of the splendid vehicle in which the
+three consuls rode, and which was drawn by the six grays presented by
+the Emperor of Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen.
+France of the new day had not had the opportunity to build any
+state-coaches, and those of old France had been too shamefully misused
+to admit of their ever serving again; for it would be out of the
+question to employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
+state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the vehicles
+in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs to their
+place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September days of the
+year 1793.
+
+The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at that
+time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the streets and
+slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down from the guillotine
+and dyed the ground with the purple of the new system of
+popular liberty.
+
+The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which the
+guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their original
+savage propensities, and hence those who had been so fortunate as to
+escape the murderous axe of the _sans-culottes_ had now to apprehend the
+danger of falling a victim to the sharp teeth of these wild
+blood-hounds; and as the ferocious brutes knew no difference between
+aristocrats and republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it
+became necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
+So, the Champs Elysées were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were
+driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed
+down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three
+thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they
+continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen
+among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At
+length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to
+representative Gasparin, who was shrewd enough to convert the removal of
+the dead animals into a republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the
+_ci-devants_ and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite
+proper, therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.
+
+Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the fugitive
+and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their stables, and the
+carcasses of the dogs were flung into these emblazoned and escutcheoned
+vehicles of old France. Six grand coaches that had belonged to the king
+opened the procession, and the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the
+luckless quadrupeds could be seen behind the glittering glass panels
+heaped together in wild disorder[8].
+
+[Footnote 8: Mémoires of the Marchioness de Créqui, vol. viii, p. 10.]
+
+After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and indivisible
+republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be consistently used for
+any human and less mournful occasion, and hence it was that the consular
+procession to the Tuileries was so deficient in carriages, and that
+public hacks on which the numbers were defaced had to be employed.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution was at an
+end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory, yawning chasm which
+had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and democrats; and of that sword
+he made a bridge over which society might pass from one century to the
+other, and from the republic to the empire.
+
+As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the Diana
+Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries, and was
+with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed there, both
+of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused in front of the
+statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius
+Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces;
+but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply
+raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon
+Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with
+blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts
+of both the ladies bound within their bosoms:
+
+"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there. And
+whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and conventionists
+have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how the savage Jacobins
+and cohorts of _sans-culottes_ surrounded the palace and led away the
+good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah! never mind, Josephine; have no
+fear for the future! Let them but dare to come hither once more[9]!"
+
+[Footnote 9: Bourrienne, vol. vi, p. 3.]
+
+And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the statues of
+Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry thunder through
+the long gallery, and made the figures of the heroes of the dead
+republic tremble on their pedestals.
+
+Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus, as
+though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar, challenge
+all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one he aspired to
+be, to mortal combat.
+
+The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in the
+Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and daughter of
+General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered, had now found
+another father, who was destined to avenge that murder on the
+republic itself.
+
+The revolution was over!
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A FIRST LOVE.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution closed,
+and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity followed. Josephine
+and Hortense were the cynosure of all these festivals, for they were,
+likewise, the animating centre whence the grace and beauty, the
+attractive charm, and the intellectual significance of them all,
+proceeded.
+
+Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the court of
+Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such enchanting
+delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people already began
+to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the powerful wife of the
+First Consul of France. Now, also, _audiences_ were held, and Josephine
+and Hortense already had a court retinue who approached them with the
+same subserviency and humility as though they had been princesses of
+the blood.
+
+Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets of
+Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and wherever
+the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the wife and daughter
+of the first consul with applauding shouts.
+
+Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made their
+appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons. There were
+chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid dinners and
+evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of foreign powers were
+received in solemn audience; for, now, all the European states had
+recognized the French Republic under the consulate, and, as Bonaparte
+had concluded peace with England and Austria, these two great powers
+also sent envoys to the court of the mighty consul.
+
+Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed contentions of
+the toilet, and _powder or no powder_ was one of the great questions of
+etiquette in which Josephine gave the casting vote when she said that
+"every one should dress as seemed best and most becoming to each, but
+yet endeavor to let good taste pervade the selection."
+
+For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less zest than
+formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for some time she had
+seemed to prefer being alone more than in previous years, and held
+herself aloof in the quiet retirement of her own apartments, where the
+melancholy, tender, and touching melodies which she drew from her harp
+in those lonely hours seemed to hold her better converse than all the
+gay and flattering remarks that she was accustomed to hear in her
+mother's grand saloons.
+
+Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she confide what
+was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she venture to confess that
+she was in love, and with all the innocent energy, all the warmth and
+absolute devotion of a first attachment. How blissful were those hours
+of reverie, of expectant peering into the future, which seemed to
+promise the rising of another sun of happiness to her beaming gaze! For
+this young girl's passion had the secret approbation of her mother and
+her step-father, and both of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the
+least degree, aware of the tender understanding that subsisted between
+Hortense and General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
+Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young girl's
+heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more serious meaning to
+it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea of a union between
+Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above all other things, to give
+Duroc a more important and imposing status, and therefore sent him as
+ambassador to St. Petersburg, to convey to the Emperor Alexander, who
+had just ascended his father's throne, the congratulations and good
+wishes of the First Consul of France.
+
+The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
+constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
+becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to them
+of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand, one last
+tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of each other. But
+they hoped in the future, and looked forward to Duroc's return, and to
+the precious recompense that Bonaparte had significantly promised to his
+friend. That recompense was the hand of Hortense Until then, they had to
+content themselves with that sole and sweetest solace of all parted
+lovers, the letters that they interchanged, and which Bourrienne,
+Bonaparte's secretary, faithfully and discreetly transmitted.
+
+"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his Mémoires, "I played a
+game of billiards with Mademoiselle Hortense, who was an adept at it.
+When I said, in a low tone to her, 'I have a letter,' the game would
+cease at once, and she would hasten to her room, whither I followed her,
+and took the letter to her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of
+emotion and delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she
+would go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.]
+
+Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent dreams
+of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking
+place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make
+her young heart the plaything of domestic and political intrigue.
+
+Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the beautiful
+and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first consul, as in the
+first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by separating Hortense
+from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of the strongest supports
+of her influence, and thus, by isolating Josephine, bring themselves
+nearer to their brother. They well knew the affection which Bonaparte,
+who was particularly fond of children, entertained for those of his
+wife, and they also knew that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by
+their entreaties or their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented
+Josephine and Bonaparte from separating.
+
+This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of Junot
+had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from Egypt.
+
+At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman, against
+whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply because he
+was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne implored him, at
+least, to hear Josephine before condemning her, and to see whether she
+could not clear herself, or he could not forgive her, he had replied:
+
+"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I would tear
+my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as Bonaparte spoke, his
+voice trembling the while with rage, he clutched his breast with his
+hand as though he would indeed rend it to pieces. This scene occurred in
+the evening, but, when Bourrienne came into the office next morning,
+Bonaparte stepped forward to meet him with a smile on his face, and a
+little confused.
+
+"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here! Don't
+suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I reproached her
+vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you have?--when she left
+me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she descended the stairs with her
+head drooping, I saw Eugene and Hortense, who went with her, sobbing
+violently. I have not the heart to look unmoved on any one in tears.
+Eugene had accompanied me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to
+regard him as my adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young
+man. Hortense is just coming out into the world of society, and every
+one who knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the
+sight of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
+made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims of
+their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned round and,
+along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the movement, and said
+nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal man without having his
+hours of weakness!"
+
+"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted children
+will reward you for it!"
+
+"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
+sacrifice that I have made for them[11]!"
+
+[Footnote 11: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.]
+
+This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for Josephine
+had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had joyfully become
+convinced that the accusations of his jealous brothers had been unjust.
+
+Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move Hortense, since
+they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that she, with her
+gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense, her penetrating
+and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young Mentor at the side
+of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive, somewhat vain, and very
+extravagant mother.
+
+It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first removed;
+and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because she interfered
+with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers. Since they could not
+become great and celebrated by their own merits, they desired to be so
+through their illustrious brother; and, in order that they might become
+kings, Bonaparte must, above all things, wear a crown. Josephine was
+opposed to this project; she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers
+that a usurpation of the crown must bring with it, and she had so little
+ambition as to prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the
+proud but perilous exaltation to a throne.
+
+For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and Bonaparte must
+choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there should course
+legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be content to see a
+crown upon the head of her consort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.
+
+The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above all
+things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of the
+burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they sent to each
+other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be transferred to the
+Italian army with a higher command, and that Hortense should then be
+given to him. They persuaded the unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was
+easy to deceive in these minor matters and thus easy because he was
+occupied with grand designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep
+the proposed union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early
+return to surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.
+
+But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her hostile
+brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her entire future,
+was imperilled, should she not succeed in making friends and allies in
+the family of Bonaparte itself. There was only one of Bonaparte's
+brothers who was not hostile to her, but loved her as the wife of his
+brother, to whom he was, at that time, still devoted with the most
+enthusiastic and submissive tenderness.
+
+This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious and
+sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a man of
+science than fit for the council-chamber and the drawing-room. His was
+a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character, which, notwithstanding its
+apparent gentleness, developed an inflexible determination and energy at
+the right, decisive moment, and then could not be shaken by either
+threats or entreaties. His external appearance was little calculated to
+please, nay, was even somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of
+others only in moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his
+large blue eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.
+
+Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained, undemonstrative,
+and by no means showy natures which are too rarely understood, because,
+in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the time and do not take the
+pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a mother is in a position to
+comprehend and love men of this stamp, because the confidential home
+relations of long years have revealed to them the hidden bloom of these
+sensitive plants which shrink back and close their leaves at every rude
+contact of the world. But rarely, however, do they find a loving heart
+outside, for, since their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no
+one gives himself the trouble to discover them.
+
+The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was the one
+who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a point of support
+in the Bonaparte family.
+
+Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them, next to
+her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole family of
+brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither egotistical nor
+ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly allowed them to have
+their way, and only asked that they would also leave him undisturbed to
+follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive inclinations. He was the
+confidant of his young and beautiful sisters, who were always sure to
+find in him a discreet counsellor, and never a betrayer. Finally, he was
+the one of the whole circle of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the
+sincerest and warmest inclination, because he could not help esteeming
+him for his noble qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as
+he was by his other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of
+Jerome, Joseph, and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and
+chagrin to Bonaparte.
+
+"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand fresh
+sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that I had
+consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said Bonaparte,
+one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between him and Jerome,
+which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting another draft on the
+private purse of the first consul.
+
+Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared thankfully
+content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him, unsolicited, and
+there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on his account, or any
+debts of his to pay.
+
+This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
+respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how to
+manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this was a
+quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she could never
+avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how much care and
+anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often Bonaparte had
+scolded her about them; how often she had promised to do differently,
+and make no more purchases until she should be in a condition to pay
+at once!
+
+But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
+impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing eyes
+and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she could not
+escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point precisely was it
+that the penitent sinner continually fell into fresh transgression--and
+again ran into debt!
+
+Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular as her
+own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two young,
+careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to each other,
+and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly as they did
+their purses.
+
+So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
+strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a premonitory
+distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have happened that she took
+the mighty eagle that fluttered above her head for a bird of evil omen
+whose warning cry she frequently fancied that she heard in the stillness
+of the night.
+
+The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more than a
+queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new fortune-teller, Madame
+Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to her, "You will wear a crown,
+but only for a short time."
+
+Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and too
+healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be something
+else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had no children,
+yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and his brothers
+repeated to him daily that this was for him a political necessity.
+
+Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her hands for
+help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her daughter to give
+up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure the real happiness of
+her mother.
+
+Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at the
+thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying an
+unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had scarcely
+noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked to sacrifice
+her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a cold-blooded calculation,
+an artificial family intrigue; and so, with all the enthusiasm of a
+first love, she swore rather to perish than to forego her lover.
+
+"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said Josephine.
+"What he is, he is only through the friendship of Bonaparte. He has no
+estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were Bonaparte to abandon him he
+would fall back into nothingness and obscurity again."
+
+Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and have no
+other ambition than to be his wife."
+
+"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to become
+your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own sake alone?"
+
+"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has told me
+that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal fidelity and love to
+me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to belong to each other."
+
+Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.
+
+"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is willing to
+marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that Bonaparte would
+then advance him the more rapidly?"
+
+"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing with
+honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far from all
+selfish calculation."
+
+"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine, irritated
+by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm for her
+own fortunes.
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated, so
+beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of death
+had passed over it.
+
+"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that Duroc loves
+me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give him up, and marry
+whom you will."
+
+Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey," she
+replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that he does
+not love you, but the family alliance which you present."
+
+Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc returns
+to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see him again--she
+should read consolation and love's assurance in his handsome manly face;
+not that she needed this to confirm her confidence, for she believed in
+him, and not the shadow of a doubt obscured her blissful greeting.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes of this
+intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a supporting ally
+in the family, _against_ the family itself; and for this reason Louis
+must become the husband of Hortense.
+
+Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved to
+marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake his
+resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and little
+endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to show that
+Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but wanted to make
+an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte resolved, at least,
+to put his friend to the test, and, if Josephine turned out to be right,
+to marry Hortense to his own brother.
+
+After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back into his
+office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the writing-desk.
+
+"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.
+
+"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."
+
+"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him Hortense--that
+he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days, at
+the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred thousand francs, and I
+appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth military division. On the day
+after his wedding he shall start with his wife for Toulon, and we shall
+live apart. I will not have a son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to
+see these matters brought to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether
+Duroc accepts my propositions."
+
+"I don't think that he will, general."
+
+"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother Louis."
+
+"Will she consent?"
+
+"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."
+
+Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told him, word
+for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.
+
+Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on with his
+communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.
+
+"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had got
+through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
+son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful it
+may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can remain in
+Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his hat, without a
+trace of excitement or concern, and departed.
+
+That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full consent
+to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.
+
+On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that Duroc
+had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished her,
+through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously feigned
+to love her.
+
+Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a word of
+complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely that a
+thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to atoms her love,
+her hopes, her future, and her happiness.
+
+But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the evil that
+had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to it. She had
+been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now for her future, her
+embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when _he_ had deceived her
+--_he_, the only one whom she had loved?
+
+The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling, into
+Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready to fulfil
+her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.
+
+Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight. She
+little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and of
+despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present smiling
+unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a worn-out
+heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in order that
+Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for him was dead,
+but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her tears, and
+conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too, enabled her to
+declare that she was ready to accept the husband whom her mother might
+present to her.
+
+Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one of
+Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question whether
+she should attain her other aim through that son, and whether she should
+find in him a support against the intrigues of the other brothers of the
+first consul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSUL AND KING.
+
+There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the young
+couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802, Hortense was
+married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but one of the first
+consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the civil ceremony, and
+had never given his own union with Josephine the sanction of the Church,
+was less careless and unconcerned with regard to this youthful alliance,
+which had, indeed, great need of the blessing of Heaven, in order to
+prove a source of any good fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he
+reasoned that the consciousness of the indissoluble character of their
+union would lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
+inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render their
+separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the Tuileries,
+after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow the blessing of
+God and of the Church upon the bride and bridegroom.
+
+Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged by the
+young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the ceremonies
+were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new home, in the
+same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which her mother had
+occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful union with Bonaparte.
+
+Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry into this
+dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and happiness did
+not shine in their faces, as had been the case with Bonaparte and
+Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with tears, and the
+countenance of her young husband was dark and gloomy. For, on his side,
+he, too, felt no love for this young woman; and, as she never forgave
+him for having accepted her hand, although he knew that she loved
+another, he, in like manner, could never forgive her having consented to
+be his wife, although he had not been the one to solicit it, and
+although he had never told her that he loved her. Both had bowed to the
+will of him who gave the law, not merely to all France, but also to his
+own family, and who had already become the lord and master of the
+republic. Both had married through obedience, not for love; and the
+consciousness of this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between
+these two otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the
+consciousness of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love
+one another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
+were forbidden to seek elsewhere.
+
+Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart, did
+Hortense make her appearance at the _fêtes_ which were given in honor of
+her marriage; and it was with a beclouded brow and averted face that
+Louis Bonaparte received the customary congratulations. While every one
+around them exhibited a cheerful and joyous bearing, while parties were
+given in their honor, and people danced and sang, the young couple only,
+of all present, were dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense,
+and she turned her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not
+read in it her deep and angry aversion.
+
+But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus indissolubly
+bound up with another, she had to try to live with that other. Hortense,
+externally so gentle and yielding, so full of maiden coyness and
+delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and resolute soul, and, in the
+noble pride of her wounded heart, was unwilling to give any one the
+right to pity her. Her soul wept, but she restrained her tears and still
+tried to smile, were it only that Duroc might not perceive the traces
+of her grief upon her sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her
+heart, and she rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim
+to happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted at
+the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth, and so
+she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a melancholy smile,
+"I must manage to be happy, without happiness. Let me try!"
+
+And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and again took
+part in the festivities which now were filling the halls of St. Cloud,
+Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were but the dying lay of
+the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the cradle-song of
+reviving monarchy.
+
+For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
+turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose between a
+seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already a republic but
+in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed, but a new-born,
+naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was wanting, that should
+possess the determined courage to clothe it with ermine and purple, in
+order to transform the helpless babe into a proud, triumphant man.
+
+That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher courage
+to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of monarchy, that lay
+there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver there a little longer; but,
+lest it should freeze altogether, he threw over it, for the time being,
+the mantle of his "consulship for life." Beneath it, the babe could
+slumber comfortably a few weeks longer, while waiting for its
+purple robes.
+
+Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for life. He
+stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only upon himself
+whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he
+would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his
+forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine
+implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a
+loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was
+too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every
+danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he
+would also have to think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in
+order to strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
+legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
+children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once, proposed
+to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it with the presence
+of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of royal dignity meant a
+separation from her; and Josephine still loved him too well, and too
+much with a young wife's love, to take so great a sacrifice upon her.
+
+Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the Count de
+Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had found an asylum
+at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of France.
+
+The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis XVIII.) had
+written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with emotion, and,
+with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had conjured her husband to,
+at least, give the brother of the beheaded king a mild and considerate
+answer. Yes, she had even ventured to beseech Bonaparte to comply with
+the request that Louis had made, and give him back the throne of his
+ancestors. But Bonaparte had laughed at this suggestion, as he would at
+some childish joke; for it had never entered into his head that any one
+could seriously ask him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot
+of a throne, which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom
+France had banished forever, should ascend.
+
+Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at
+Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and Egypt--would
+not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing
+precious time. _We_ can secure the glory of France; I say _we_, because
+I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot complete it
+without me."
+
+But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but "I," and
+to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille:
+"You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it
+over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to
+the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a
+grateful acknowledgment."
+
+Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position,
+and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose
+his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very
+one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself.
+
+Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could
+she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a
+diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to
+command admiration.
+
+"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said
+Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.
+
+Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any
+such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the
+first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him
+not to make himself king[12]."
+
+[Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell
+her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.
+
+One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at breakfast,
+and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered without having
+been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her husband, who sat with his
+back turned toward her, and had not yet noticed her. Lightly throwing
+her arm around his neck, and letting herself sink upon his breast, and
+then stroking his pale cheeks and glossy brown hair, with an expression
+of unutterable love and tenderness, she said:
+
+"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked brother
+Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."
+
+Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he said.
+"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La
+Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful
+stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now, don't bother me
+about them any more!"
+
+Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he
+nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate
+personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown. In the course
+of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to him:
+
+"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all Europe;
+whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be only the
+youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield precedence
+to them."
+
+Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that daring and
+imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and decisive moments,
+he responded:
+
+"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive _all_ the kings
+from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they will have to
+recognize me as the oldest prince of all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CALUMNY.
+
+The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been followed by
+such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated. She had made a
+most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was, of all the first
+consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself the least about
+politics, and was the least likely to engage in any intrigue. Besides,
+this alliance had materially diminished the affection which Louis had
+always previously manifested for Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths
+of his noble and upright heart, for having been so egotistic as to
+sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he
+blamed her, too, for having forced him into a marriage which love had
+not concluded, and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine
+had, at least, lost a friend in him.
+
+The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually strange.
+They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each other, and
+reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had been driven into
+this union against their own wishes. In this singular interchange of
+confidence, they went so far as to commiserate each other, and to
+condole with one another as friends, over the wretchedness they endured
+in their married bondage.
+
+They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that they
+detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual compassion, that
+out of that very compassion--that very hatred itself--love might
+possibly spring into being.
+
+Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife, busied with
+the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to drive away the
+clouds that obscured her brow; already, too, Hortense had come to regard
+it as her holiest and sweetest duty to endeavor to compensate her
+husband, by her kindly deportment toward him, and the delicate and
+attentive respect that distinguished her bearing, for the unhappiness he
+felt beside her; already had both, in fine, begun to console each other
+with the reflection that the child which Hortense now bore beneath her
+heart would, one day, be to them a compensation for their ill-starred
+marriage and their lost freedom.
+
+"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and when he
+calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive me for being
+his mother."
+
+"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that you love
+him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will pardon me for being
+your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at least, for I will be the
+father of your darling child."
+
+Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and innocent
+hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have overcome their
+unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last from hatred. But the
+world was pitiless to them; it had no compassion for their youth and
+their sufferings; with cruel hands it dashed away this tender blossoming
+of nascent affection, which was beginning to expand in their hearts.
+Josephine had wedded Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure
+in him an ally in the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and
+now that daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
+calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense from
+the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs by means
+of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the effect of calumny.
+
+They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had married
+his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was attached to her
+himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.
+
+These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child whose birth
+Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte than merely
+through the fact that his step-daughter was his brother's wife.
+
+This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those who
+devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such
+immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive
+it therefore would be to him to find himself made the object of such
+infamous slanders.
+
+The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these evil
+rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense away to a
+distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus isolated, could also
+be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte, being separated from his
+guardian angel, would no longer hear her whispering:
+
+"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory of the
+greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not make
+thyself a king!"
+
+In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very lightly
+whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard. Bonaparte's
+enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a weapon of it with
+which to assail him as a hero.
+
+One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had always
+been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the organ of Count
+d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued to read, a dark
+shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the paper in his clinched
+fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then as suddenly again his
+countenance cleared, and a proud smile flitted across it. He had his
+master of ceremonies summoned to his presence, and bade him issue the
+necessary invitations for a court ball to be given, on the evening of
+the next day, at St. Cloud. He then went to Josephine to inform her in
+person of the projected _fête_, and to say that he wished her to tell
+Hortense, who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly
+desired her to be present.
+
+Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
+requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch on
+which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining, busied
+with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women prepare her
+attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and seriously burdened by
+this festive attire, which harmonized so little with her feelings, and
+was so far from becoming to her figure, for she was only a few weeks
+from her confinement; but with her gentle and yielding disposition she
+did not venture, even in thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed
+upon her by her step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the
+appointed hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to
+meet her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
+at all, earnestly urged her to dance.
+
+Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto Bonaparte
+had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her condition; he had
+frequently said that he thought there was nothing more indecent than for
+a female to join in the dance under such circumstances, and now it was
+he who asked her to do that very thing.
+
+For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but Bonaparte
+grew only the more pressing and vehement in his request.
+
+"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with his
+irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take the floor
+only once, and that for but a single _contredance_."
+
+And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with shame at
+the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the gaze of all,
+obeyed and joined the dances.
+
+This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
+Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
+read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing flattery,
+and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her advanced state of
+pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure in the _contredance_, as
+a peculiar trait of amiability!
+
+Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very emphatic
+piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at once to the
+Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her how it was possible
+that, so early as the very next morning, there could be verses published
+in the newspapers concerning what had taken place at the ball on the
+preceding evening.
+
+Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came in, and
+was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an evasive and
+jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her mother, who was
+leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart
+oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but
+had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too
+full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble,
+for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.
+
+Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told
+her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses
+beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to
+dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have
+her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her
+pregnancy published in the next day's paper.
+
+Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for
+all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of
+the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and
+Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her
+participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read
+in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis
+Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some
+weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious
+statement.
+
+Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had
+not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this
+shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to
+take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of
+exertion to restore her to consciousness.
+
+A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so
+passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope
+of a better understanding between her and her husband.
+
+Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart. In those
+long, lonely days that she had passed during her confinement, she had
+the time and opportunity to meditate on many things, and keenly to
+estimate her whole present position and probable future. She had now
+become a mother, without having a child; yet the resolute energy of a
+mother remained to her. The youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl
+had now become transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman,
+that would no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would
+meet them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
+changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend to
+its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of resolution;
+and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious fireside at home was
+denied her, to at least make her house a pleasant gathering-point for
+her friends--for men of scientific and artistic attainments, for poets
+and singers, for painters and sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere
+long, all Paris was talking about Madame Louis Bonaparte's
+drawing-rooms, the agreeable and elegant entertainments that were given
+there, and the concerts there arranged, in which the first singers of
+the day executed pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited,
+with his wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written.
+Every one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which
+the participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
+themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or abuse,
+but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation; where, in
+fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists, and enjoy the
+newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.
+
+Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had resigned
+herself to accept the burden of existence, she would strive to render it
+as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of its hateful and
+repulsive features, but to turn away from them with a noble and
+disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the frightful calumnies
+which her mother had privately made known to her, nor had she deemed any
+defence or proof of her innocence at all necessary. She felt that there
+were certain accusations against which to even undertake defence is to
+admit their possibility, and which, therefore, could only be combated by
+silence. The slanders that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far
+beneath her, that they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell
+powerless at her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while
+to thrust them.
+
+But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this vile story,
+and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors were still spread
+abroad, and that his foes still bestirred themselves to keep him ever on
+the alert, and, if possible, to dim the lustre of his gloriously-won
+laurels by the shadow of an infamous crime.
+
+"There are still rumors abroad of a _liaison_ between me and Hortense,"
+said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even invented the most
+repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At the time, I thought
+that these calumnies were circulated among the public because the
+latter go earnestly desired that I might have a child to inherit my
+name. But it is still spoken of, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did not
+believe this calumny would be so long continued."
+
+"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes flashing with
+anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth there is in it. You
+have heard and seen all; not the smallest circumstance could escape you.
+You were her confidant in her love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to
+clear me of this infamous reproach if you should some day write my
+history. Posterity shall not associate my name with such infamy. I shall
+depend on you, Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have
+never believed in this abominable calumny?"
+
+"No, never, general."
+
+"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account, but for
+the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy enough, as is
+my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I love them both,
+and because this very circumstance gives color to the reports which idle
+chatterboxes have circulated regarding my relations to her. Therefore,
+bear this in mind when you write of me hereafter."
+
+"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but, unfortunately, I
+can not compel the world to believe the truth."
+
+Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the truth.
+With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it has been
+attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense, even down to
+our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the elegant and considerate
+language of the courteous diplomat, which is elsewhere always
+characteristic of his writings.
+
+"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that Bonaparte
+entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a step-father should
+entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense entertained for the first
+consul a feeling of reverential fear. She always spoke to him
+tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him with a petition. She was
+in the habit of coming to me, and I then submitted her wishes; and only
+when Bonaparte received them unfavorably did I mention the name of the
+petitioner. 'The silly thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not
+speak to me herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
+fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a father
+would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness of her
+actions in the most private relations of life, I declare that I have
+never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that would tend to
+convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider this calumny as
+belonging to the category of those which malice so willingly circulates
+about those persons whose career has been brilliant, and which credulity
+and envy so willingly believe. I declare candidly that, if I entertained
+the slightest doubt with regard to this horrible calumny, I would say
+so. But Bonaparte is no more! Impartial history must not and shall not
+give countenance to this reproach; she should not make of a father and
+friend a libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted,
+without, however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
+between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood! And
+this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
+throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
+exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession of a
+man, he can never be freed from it again?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KING OR EMPEROR.
+
+Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at least,
+only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said: "I entreat
+you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not make himself king,
+he made himself emperor. He did not take up the crown that had fallen
+from the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for himself--a crown
+which the French people and Senate had, however, offered him. The
+revolution still stood a threatening spectre behind the French people;
+its return was feared, and, since the discovery of the conspiracy of
+Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru, the people anxiously asked themselves
+what was to become of France if the conspirators should succeed in
+murdering Bonaparte; and when the republic should again be sent adrift,
+without a pilot, on the wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that
+their institutions should be securely established and maintained, and
+believed that this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a
+monarchical form of government. The consulate for life must therefore be
+changed into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One
+can be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
+terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor, because
+they flattered themselves that in so doing they should still be able to
+preserve the republic.
+
+On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so long and
+carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th of May, the
+Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in the name of the
+people and army, to accept the imperial dignity, and exchange the Roman
+chair of a consul for the French throne of an emperor.
+
+Cambacérès, the late second consul of the republic, stood at the head of
+the Senate, and upon him devolved the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the
+wishes of the French people. Cambacérès--who, as a member of the
+Convention, had voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that
+royalty should be forever banished from French soil--this same
+Cambacérès, was now the first to salute Bonaparte with "imperial
+majesty," and with the little word, so full of significance, "sire." He
+rewarded Cambacérès, for this by writing to him on the game day, and
+appointing him high constable of the empire, as the first act of his
+imperial rule. In this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte
+signed himself merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican
+style of writing. He addressed Cambacérès, as "citizen consul," and
+followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time, his letter being
+dated "the 20th Floréal, of the year 12."
+
+The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new dignity, was
+to invest the members of his family also with new dignities, and to
+confer upon them the rank of Princes of France, with the title "imperial
+highness." Moreover, he made his brother Joseph prince elector, and his
+brother Louis connétable. On the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his
+new dignity, to present the generals and staff officers to the emperor,
+and then to conduct them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.
+
+The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled. Josephine
+was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of the splendor of
+her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious heart, of the
+prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told her, "You will wear
+a crown, but only for a short time." She felt that this wondrous fortune
+could not last long--that the new emperor would have to do as the kings
+or old had done, and sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order
+to appease the hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would,
+therefore, sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his
+fortune and dynasty.
+
+It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and made her
+shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore, with a feeling
+of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new titles and honors
+that Fate had showered upon her, as from an inexhaustible horn of
+plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost with shame, she heard herself
+addressed with the titles with which she had addressed the Queen of
+France years before, in these same halls, when she came to the Tuileries
+as Marquise de Beauharnais, to do homage to the beautiful Marie
+Antoinette. She had died on the scaffold and now Josephine was the
+"majesty" that sat enthroned in the Tuileries, her brilliant court
+assembled around her, while in a retired nook of England the legitimate
+King of France was leading a lonely and gloomy life.
+
+Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as empress, she
+still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate Bourbons, and esteemed it
+her sacred duty to assist and advise those who, true to their principles
+and duties, had followed the royal family, or had emigrated, in order
+that they might, at least, not be compelled to do homage to the new
+system. Her purse was always at the service of the emigrants; and, if
+Josephine continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly
+allowance, her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her
+kindly, generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the
+half of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
+matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her creditors,
+she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of misfortune and
+the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other purpose[13].
+
+[Footnote 13: Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, par le Baron van Schelten,
+vol. i., p. 145.]
+
+Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the High
+Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant court of
+the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now a "Princess
+of France," an "imperial highness," who must be approached with
+reverence, who had her court and her maids of honor, and whose liberty
+and personal inclinations, as was also the case with her mother, were
+confined in the fetters of the strict etiquette which Napoleon required
+to be observed at the new imperial court.
+
+But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded by this
+new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no additional
+happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance Hortense's youth and
+beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She would have been contented
+to live in retirement, at the side of a beloved husband; her proud
+position could not indemnify her for her lost woman's happiness.
+
+But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to bear
+misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered her a
+recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a new
+hope--she promised to become a mother again.
+
+Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her daughter's
+hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give birth to a son, the
+gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be banished from the head of
+the empress. With this son, the dynasty of the new imperial family would
+be assured; this son could be the heir of the imperial crown, and
+Napoleon could well adopt as his own the child who was at the same time
+his nephew and his grandson.
+
+Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would rather
+content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of the emperor
+and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to separate himself from
+her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved his wife; he still
+compared with all he thought good and beautiful, the woman who shed
+around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and loveliness.
+
+When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy and
+thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
+exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These acclamations
+and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of Josephine! How
+proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a people[14]!"
+
+[Footnote 14: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.]
+
+But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said, upon
+entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to _be_ in
+the Tuileries; one must also _remain_ there"--he now said: "It is not
+enough to have been made emperor by the French people; one must also
+have received his consecration as emperor from the Pope of Rome."
+
+And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world; not only
+to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his will.
+
+Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the Pope left
+the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new emperor the
+blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. This was a new
+halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded triumph, which he
+celebrated over France, over the whole world and its prejudices, and
+over all the dynasties by the "grace of God." The Pope came to Paris to
+crown the emperor. The German emperors had been compelled to make a
+pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the papal benediction, and now the Pope
+made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge
+the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church. All
+France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France
+adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and
+converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his
+grandeur. Napoleon's journey with Josephine through France, undertaken
+while they awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single,
+continuous triumph. It was not only the people who received him with
+shouts of joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her
+_sanctus, sanctus_, and the priests received him at the doors of their
+churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of France.
+Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal exultation,
+with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and solemn addresses
+of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a transcendental nature.
+
+"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his enthusiastic
+address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and then He rested."
+And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet won over by the
+emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial court, whispered,
+quite audibly: "God would have done better had He rested a
+little sooner!"
+
+Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder, in which
+they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and that Pope
+Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was now approaching
+the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that had now arisen
+victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was everywhere received
+by the people and authorities with the greatest honor. The old royal
+palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the emperor, been refurnished
+with imperial magnificence, and, as a peculiarly delicate attention, the
+Pope's bedchamber had been arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber
+in the Quirinal at Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now
+repaired to Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony
+had, however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
+Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity with
+this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the approach of
+the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give himself the appearance
+of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way. The equipages and the
+imperial court had taken position in the forest of Nemours. Napoleon,
+however, attired in hunting-dress, rode, with his suite, to the summit
+of a little hill, which the Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope
+at once ordered a halt, and the emperor also brought his suite to a
+stand with a gesture of his hand. A brief interval of profound silence
+followed. All felt that a great historical event was taking place, and
+the eyes of all were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief
+figures of this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in
+his simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
+robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.
+
+As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his carriage,
+hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed his foot on
+the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already touched the earth.
+Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he must make up his mind to
+step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin slippers, on the wet soil,
+softened by a shower of rain, that had fallen on the previous day. The
+emperor's hunting-boots were certainly much better adapted to this
+meeting in the mud than the Pope's white satin slippers.
+
+Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly; then,
+through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the imperial
+equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance, interrupted this
+tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest accident that the emperor
+stood on the right, and the Pope on the left side of the equipage, that
+had now been brought to a stand again. The two doors of the carriage
+were simultaneously thrown open by the lackeys; at the same time, the
+Pope entered the carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right
+side, both seating themselves side by side at the same time. This
+settled the question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but
+the emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.
+
+The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of December,
+1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris, but all
+France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of people surged
+to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the houses were filled
+with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the bells were ringing in all
+the churches, and joyous music, intermixed with the shouts of the
+people, was heard in every direction. For a moment, however, these
+shouts were changed into laughter, and that was when the papal
+procession approached, headed by an ass led by the halter, in accordance
+with an ancient custom of Rome. While the Pope, with the high
+dignitaries of the Church, repaired to the cathedral to await there the
+coming of the imperial couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial
+insignia in the Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet
+mantle, bordered with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and
+arraying himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new
+dignity. When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his
+wife, who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
+gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the palace,
+as he desired to see him at once.
+
+A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring him from
+his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little notary Ragideau
+entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the imperial pair were
+alone, awaiting him in their glittering attire.
+
+His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon stepped
+forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau," said he,
+gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether General
+Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his sword, or
+whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for having married
+me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment, and Josephine asked
+the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte related how, while standing
+in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain occasion, he had heard the notary
+advising Josephine not to marry poor little Bonaparte; not to become the
+wife of the general, who possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.
+
+The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart like a
+dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no complaint, and
+made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his supreme triumph,
+to-day the emperor remembered that moment of humiliation, and, arrayed
+with the full insignia of the highest earthly dignity, he accorded
+himself the triumph of reminding the little notary that he had once
+advised Josephine not to marry him, because of his poverty.
+
+The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the mighty
+Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and his sword,
+but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, to place
+the golden imperial crown on his head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+NAPOLEON'S HEIR.
+
+Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities of the
+coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her in the
+retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son; and in this
+child the happy mother found consolation and a new hope.
+
+Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
+foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
+grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had been
+gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
+unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured her
+mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus given a
+first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no longer a
+reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a separation, for
+there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath the imperial throne
+of France.
+
+The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's wishes, and
+to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not requested the Pope to
+delay his departure for a few days, in order to baptize the child? The
+Pope performed this sacred rite at St. Cloud, the emperor holding the
+child, and Madame Letitia standing at his side as second witness.
+Hortense now possessed an object upon which she could lavish the whole
+wealth of love that had until now lain concealed in her heart. The
+little Napoleon Charles was Hortense's first happy love; and she gave
+way to this intoxicating feeling with the most intense delight.
+
+Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the word; she
+no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now bestow her
+undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon, the
+Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of Piedmont by
+Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health, had not been
+compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to remain in her
+little house in Paris, which she could exchange when summer came for
+her husband's new estate, the castle of Saint-Leu.
+
+But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in this
+charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The brother and
+sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be permitted to lead a
+life of retirement. They were rays of the sun that now dazzled the whole
+world; they must fulfil their destiny, and contribute their light to the
+ruling sun.
+
+An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned from
+Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see his son,
+to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a brilliant destiny; the
+Constable of France was to become a king. Delegates of the Republic of
+Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived in Paris, and requested their
+mighty neighbor, the Emperor Napoleon, to give them a king, who should
+unite them with the glittering empire, through the ties of blood.
+Napoleon intended to fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king,
+in the person of his brother Louis.
+
+But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and refused to
+accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also in perfect
+harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to strengthen his
+resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was proposed to place on
+their heads would be nothing more than a golden chain of dependence;
+that the King of Holland could be nothing more than the vassal of
+France; and their personal relations to each other added another
+objection to this political consideration.
+
+In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound them
+together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and could
+avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served to
+separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
+themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary union. In
+Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in Holland they would
+live in entire dependence on each other, and hear continually the
+rattling of the chain with which each had bound the other to the galley
+of a union without love.
+
+Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor to ward
+off this new misfortune that was suspended over their heads, in the form
+of a kingly crown.
+
+But how could they resist successfully the iron will of Napoleon?
+Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon directly on the
+subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine already felt that her
+wishes no longer exercised the power of earlier days over the emperor.
+She therefore avoided interceding where she was not sure of being
+successful.
+
+At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother openly; but
+Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and his gentle,
+yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence of the deputation
+of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed for a sceptre and
+crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to accept the crown which
+had been freely tendered him, and to be to his country a king who would
+respect and protect its liberties, its laws, and its religion.
+
+With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept this
+crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.
+
+And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single and
+sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and energy. The
+people of Holland having chosen him to be their king, he was determined
+to do honor to their choice; having been compelled to give up his own
+country and nationality, he determined to belong to his new country with
+his whole heart and being--to become a thorough Hollander, as he could
+no longer remain a Frenchman.
+
+This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an entirely
+new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the emperor, was
+now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man of action, who
+had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to devote all the
+powers of his being to its attainment. As King of Holland, he desired,
+above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and to be able to contribute
+to their welfare and happiness. He studied their language with untiring
+diligence, and made himself acquainted with their manners and customs,
+for the purpose of making them his own. He investigated the sources of
+their wealth and of their wants, and sought to develop the former and
+relieve the latter. He was restless in his efforts to provide for his
+country, and to merit the love and confidence which his subjects
+bestowed on him.
+
+His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and glittering
+position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had so unwillingly
+accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together, at brilliant
+entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new nobility of Holland, and
+taught the stiff society of that country the fine, unconstrained tone,
+and the vivacious intellectual conversation of Parisian society. It was
+under Hortense's fostering hand that art and science first made their
+way into the aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social
+reunions a higher and nobler importance.
+
+And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science, but also
+the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the unhappy, whose
+tears she dried, and whose misery she alleviated--and this royal pair,
+though adored and blessed by their subjects, could not find within their
+palaces the least reflection of the happiness they so well knew how to
+confer upon others without its walls. Between these two beings, so
+gentle and yielding to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist,
+and not even the birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up
+the chasm that separated them.
+
+And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of destiny.
+Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the presumptive heir to
+his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so dearly that he often played
+with him for hours on the terraces of St. Cloud, the child Josephine
+worshipped, because its existence seemed to assure her own happiness,
+the child that had awakened the first feeling of motherly bliss in
+Hortense's bosom, the child that had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte
+for the unenjoyable present with bright hopes for the future--the little
+Napoleon Charles died in the year 1807, of the measles.
+
+This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the imperial pair
+of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled with tears when this
+intelligence was brought him, and a cry of horror escaped
+Josephine's lips.
+
+"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is decided.
+He will put me away."
+
+But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she hastened
+to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away from the
+place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense returned with
+the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had almost succumbed to
+his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health in the baths of the
+Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now stood desolate again; death
+had banished life and joy from its halls; and, though the royal pair
+were subsequently compelled to return to it, joy and happiness came back
+with them no more.
+
+King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
+ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
+irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his young
+wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices, and excuse
+his irritable disposition. They were totally different in their views,
+desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their children, instead of
+being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange them the more, for each
+insisted on considering them his or her exclusive property, and in
+having them educated according to his or her views and wishes.
+
+But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and cares, in
+the greater misery of her mother. A letter from Josephine, an agonized
+appeal to her daughter for consolation, recalled Hortense to her
+mother's side, and she left the Hague and hastened to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PREMONITIONS.
+
+Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French clairvoyante, were
+now about to be fulfilled. The crown which Josephine had reluctantly and
+sorrowfully accepted, and which she had afterward worn with so much
+grace and amiability, with such natural majesty and dignity, was about
+to fall from her head. Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the
+dreamed-of future had been realized, to put away from him the woman who
+had loved him and chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his
+hopes for the future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave
+fidelity, had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation,
+was now to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
+widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should be
+done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
+pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to sacrifice
+to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good angel;" and
+he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the thought of her
+tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating gaze.
+
+But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
+threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
+countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from Vienna,
+had caused the door that connected his room with that of his wife to be
+locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers, who dared to address
+her with less reverence, but with a touch of compassionate sympathy; she
+heard it in the low whispering that ceased when she approached a group
+of persons in her parlors; it was betrayed to her in the covert,
+mysterious insinuations of the public press, which attached a deep and
+comprehensive significance to the emperor's journey to Vienna.
+
+She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too
+weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act her part as
+wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should not flow
+outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her
+sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.
+But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and
+show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.
+
+How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were
+shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
+daughter's ear!
+
+"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
+weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
+before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
+fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
+cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
+lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"
+
+[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]
+
+Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
+bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
+own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
+union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
+might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
+sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
+bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
+was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
+on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
+stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
+this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
+with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
+in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
+want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
+now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
+down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
+empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
+illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
+one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.
+
+A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
+to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
+gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
+now bowed, almost quailed.
+
+"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
+matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
+for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
+me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
+wife who can give the country an heir to the throne. Josephine has been
+living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end. You,
+Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more
+than all else in the world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother
+for this step? You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."
+
+Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her eyes on
+the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His glance again
+quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of a pure, innocent
+woman. Hortense had the courage to positively refuse the
+emperors request.
+
+"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then refuse my
+request?"
+
+"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears, "sire, I
+have not the strength to stab my mother to the heart[16]."
+
+[Footnote 16: Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.]
+
+And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the emperor's
+cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DIVORCE.
+
+Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through a third
+person, the distressing tidings of his determination with regard to
+herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come to Paris, and
+on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of his wish. Eugene,
+like his sister, received this intelligence in silent submissiveness,
+but like his sister, he refused to impart to his mother, tidings that
+must destroy her happiness forever.
+
+The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the distressing
+tidings in person.
+
+It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress dined, as
+usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering the room made
+Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance that the fatal hour
+had come. But she repressed the tears which were rushing to her eyes,
+and looked entreatingly at her daughter, who sat on the opposite side of
+the table, a deathly pallor on her countenance.
+
+Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The sighs and
+half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving breast were
+quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled dismally, and drove
+the rain violently against the window-panes; within, an ominous,
+oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of Nature contrasted, and
+yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely with this human silence.
+Napoleon broke this silence but once, and that was when, in a harsh
+voice, he asked the lackey, who stood behind him, what time it was. Then
+all was still as before.
+
+At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and coffee was
+then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then set the cup down
+with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it touched the table. With
+an angry gesture he dismissed the attendants.
+
+"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost inaudibly.
+
+"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a profound
+obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of tender
+compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.
+
+The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this being left
+alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in which they sat
+opposite each other! How strange the glance which the emperor fastened
+on his wife!
+
+She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that moved his
+soul, but she also read in them that her hour was come!
+
+As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and Josephine
+shudderingly recoiled.
+
+Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart, regarding her
+with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.
+
+"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
+Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you alone, do
+I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in this world.
+Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My dearest desires must
+yield to the interests of France[17]."
+
+[Footnote 17: The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+344.]
+
+"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand angrily--"no,
+speak no further. I understand you, and I expected this, but the blow is
+not the less deadly."
+
+She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of despair came
+over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last broke forth. She
+wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her heaving breast, and a loud
+cry of anguish burst from her lips. She at last fainted away, and was
+thus relieved from a consciousness of her sufferings.
+
+When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and her
+physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her trembling
+arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her mother's heart,
+sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew, feeling that he could be
+of no further assistance. It had only been in his power to recall
+Josephine to a consciousness of her misery; but for her misery itself he
+had no medicine; he knew that her tears and her daughter's sympathy
+could alone give relief.
+
+Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came in to
+inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her bedside, she
+shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased to flow, and her
+usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances of anger and offended
+love at the emperor. But love soon conquered anger. She extended her
+tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet smile, peculiar to woman,
+trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle, touching voice, she said: "Was
+I not right, my friend, when I shrank back in terror from the thought of
+becoming an empress[18]?"
+
+[Footnote 18: Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+342, _et seq_.]
+
+Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these farewell
+tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the emperor had
+already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the hand of the
+Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in Vienna. Nothing
+now remained to be done but to remove Josephine from the throne, and
+elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the vacant place!
+
+The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He assembled
+about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and princes, created
+by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of the Tuileries, in the
+presence of his court and the Senate, the emperor appeared; at his side
+the empress, arrayed for the last time in all the insignia of the
+dignity she was about to lay aside forever.
+
+In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
+determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
+trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
+words. The arch-chancellor, Cambacérès, then caused the appropriate
+paragraph of the _Code Civile_ to be read, applied it to the case under
+consideration, in a short, terse address, and pronounced the union of
+the emperor and empress dissolved.
+
+This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the law.
+Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the court,
+and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the graceful,
+sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few other women.
+
+As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward
+emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his iron
+countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then walked
+through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on either side,
+and greeted all with a last soft look, a last inclination of the head,
+nothing could be heard but weeping, and even those who rejoiced over her
+downfall, because they hoped much from the new empress and the new
+dynasty, were now moved to tears by this silent and yet so eloquent
+leave-taking.
+
+The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his dearest
+possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from Josephine.
+
+On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison, her
+future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and was now
+to be the widow's seat, of her love.
+
+Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who constituted this
+court did not leave her. During the next few weeks the crowds of the
+coming and going on the road from Paris to Malmaison presented the
+appearance of a procession; the equipages of all the kings and princes
+who were sojourning in Paris, and of all the nobles and dignitaries of
+the new France, were to be seen there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain,
+that still preserved its sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the
+empress at Malmaison. And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and
+humble, as well as by the rich and great. All wished to say to the
+empress that they still loved and honored her, and that she was still
+enthroned in their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at
+an end.
+
+The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
+whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that, with
+Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future would avenge
+her tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE KING OF HOLLAND.
+
+While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison, Hortense was
+seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother lamented as a
+misfortune, because she still loved her husband, would have conferred
+happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved her husband. Once again in
+harmony with her husband, Hortense entreated the emperor to permit them
+to be divorced, and the king united his entreaties with those of
+the queen.
+
+But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear before the
+people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage bond. For state
+reasons he had separated from his wife, and for state reasons he could
+not give his consent to the dissolution of the union of his brother and
+step-daughter. They must, therefore, continue to drag the chain that
+united them; and they did, but with angry hearts.
+
+Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than ever;
+while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to Napoleon's express
+command, remained in Paris for some time. They were to attend the
+festivities that were soon to take place at the imperial court in honor
+of the marriage of the emperor with the Archduchess Marie Louise of
+Austria. The daughter of the divorced empress, with the emperor's
+sisters, had been selected to carry the train of the new empress on the
+marriage-day. Napoleon wished to prove to France and to all Europe that
+there was no other law in his family than his will, and that the
+daughter of Josephine had never ceased to be his obedient daughter also.
+Napoleon wished, moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that
+she might have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
+inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
+womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court. Hortense
+mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April, 1810, the day
+of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she, together with his
+sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She alone did this without
+making any resistance, while it was only after the most violent
+opposition to Napoleon's command that his sisters, Queen Caroline of
+Naples, the Duchess Pauline of Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of
+Tuscany, consented to undergo the humiliation of walking behind their
+new sovereign as humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not
+the only persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the
+day of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
+dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
+grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration in the
+chapel in the Tuileries.
+
+The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
+opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and he
+did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had not
+appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red robes
+thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's dress.
+
+The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
+enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy forebodings;
+and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in
+honor of the imperial marriage, a short time afterward, the fearful fire
+occurred that cost so many human lives and destroyed so much family
+happiness, the people remembered with terror that other misfortune that
+had occurred on the day of the entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and
+called this fire an earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian"
+would bring upon France and the emperor.
+
+While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in honor of
+the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering over her
+husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his crown.
+
+When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of Holland, he
+had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new people, and to
+devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too honest a man not to
+keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was to make such
+arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare and prosperity of
+Holland seemed to require, without in the least considering whether
+these laws were conducive to the interests of France or not. He would
+not regard Holland as a province dependent upon France, of which he was
+the governor, but as an independent land that had chosen him to be its
+free and independent king. But Napoleon did not view the matter in the
+same light; in his eyes it was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to
+refuse to conform itself in every respect to the interests of its
+powerful neighbor, France.
+
+When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he had
+charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same time to
+remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of France." Louis
+had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander; and when the
+interests of France and Holland came into conflict, the king took the
+side of his new country, and acted as a Hollander. He was of the opinion
+that the welfare of Holland depended on its commerce and industry only,
+and that it could only be great through its commercial importance; he
+therefore reduced the army and navy, making merchantmen of the
+men-of-war, and peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.
+
+Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and angrily
+reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole squadrons,
+discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until Holland was
+without power, both on land and water, as though warehouses and clerks
+were the material elements of power." Napoleon reproached the king still
+more bitterly, however, for having re-established commercial relations
+with England, for having raised the blockade for Holland which France
+had established against England, and for having permitted the American
+ships, that had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor
+quietly in those of Holland.
+
+The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should conform
+himself to his will and to the interests of France unconditionally; that
+he should immediately break off all commercial relations between Holland
+and England; that he should re-establish a fleet, of forty
+ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and seven brigs, and an army of
+twenty-five thousand men, and that he should abolish all the privileges
+of the nobility that were contrary to the constitution.
+
+King Louis had the courage to resist these demands, in the name of
+Holland, and to refuse to obey instructions, the execution of which must
+necessarily have affected the material interests of Holland most
+injuriously.
+
+Napoleon responded to this refusal with a declaration of war. The
+ambassador of Holland received his passport, and a French army corps was
+sent to Holland, to punish the king's insolence.
+
+But the misfortune that threatened Holland had called the king's whole
+energy into activity, and Napoleon's anger and threats were powerless to
+break his resolution. As the commander of the French troops, the Duke of
+Reggio, approached Amsterdam, to lay siege to that city and thereby
+compel the king to yield, Louis determined rather to descend from his
+throne than to submit to the unjust demands of France. He, therefore,
+issued a proclamation to his people, in which he told them that he,
+convinced that he could do nothing more to promote their welfare, and,
+on the contrary, believing that he was an obstacle in the way of the
+restoration of friendly relations between his brother and Holland, had
+determined to abdicate in favor of his two sons, Napoleon Louis and
+Charles Louis Napoleon. Until they should attain their majority the
+queen, in conformity with the constitution, was to be regent. He then
+took leave of his subjects, in a short and touching address. He now
+repaired, in disguise, and under the name of Count de St. Leu, through
+the states of his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and through Saxony
+to Töplitz.
+
+Here he learned that Napoleon, far from respecting and fulfilling the
+conditions of his abdication, had united the kingdom of Holland with the
+empire. The king published a protest against this action of the emperor,
+in which, in the name of his son and heir, Napoleon Louis, he denounced
+this act of the emperor as a totally unjustifiable act of violence, and
+demanded that the kingdom of Holland should be re-established, in all
+its integrity, declaring the annexation of Holland to France to be null
+and void, in the name of himself and his sons.
+
+Napoleon responded to this protest by causing the king to be informed by
+the French ambassador in Vienna that unless he returned to France by the
+1st of December, 1810, he should be regarded and treated as a rebel, who
+dared to resist the head of his family and violate the constitution of
+the empire.
+
+Louis neither answered nor conformed to this threat. He repaired to
+Grätz, in Styria, and lived there as a private gentleman, beloved and
+admired, not only by those who came in contact with him there, but
+enjoying the esteem of all Europe, which he had won by the noble and
+truly magnanimous manner in which he had sacrificed his own grandeur to
+the welfare of his people. Even his and Napoleon's enemies could not
+withhold from the King of Holland the tribute of their respect, and even
+Louis XVIII. said of him: "By his abdication, Louis Bonaparte has become
+a true king; in renouncing his crown, he has shown himself worthy to
+wear it. He is the first monarch who has made so great a sacrifice but
+of pure love for his people; others have also relinquished their
+thrones, but they did it when weary of power. But in this action of the
+King of Holland there is something truly sublime--something that was not
+duly appreciated at first, but which will be admired by posterity, if I
+mistake not, greatly[19]."
+
+[Footnote 19: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+In Grätz, Louis Bonaparte, Count de St. Leu, lived a few peaceful,
+tranquil years, perhaps the first years of happiness he had enjoyed in
+his short and hitherto stormy life. Occupied with work and study, he
+easily forgot his former grandeur and importance. As it had once been
+his ambition to become a good king, it was now his ambition to become a
+good writer. He published his romance Marie, and, encouraged by the
+success which it met with in his circle of friends, he also gave his
+poems to the public--poems whose tender and passionate language proved
+that this so often misunderstood, so often repulsed, and, therefore, so
+timid and distrustful heart, could warm with a tenderness of love that
+Marie Pascal, the beautiful artist of the harp, could hardly have had
+the cruelty to withstand.
+
+But a day came when Louis Bonaparte closed his ear to all these sweet
+voices of happiness, of peace, and of love, to listen only to the voice
+of duty, that appealed to him to return to France, to his brother's
+side. While the sun of fortune shone over Napoleon, the king, who had
+voluntarily descended from a throne, remained in obscurity; but when the
+days of misfortune came upon the emperor, there could be but one place
+for his brave and faithful brother, and that was at Napoleon's side.
+
+Madame de St. Elme, who was at Grätz at this time, and who witnessed the
+farewell scene between Louis Bonaparte and the inhabitants of Grätz,
+says: "On the day when Austria so unexpectedly sundered its alliance
+with France, King Louis felt the necessity of abandoning an asylum, for
+which he would henceforth have been indebted to the enemies of France,
+and hastened to claim of the great unjust man who had repulsed him, the
+only place commensurate with the dignity of his character, the place
+at his side.
+
+"This was a subject of profound sorrow and regret for the inhabitants of
+Grätz, and of all Styria, for there was not a pious or useful
+institution, or a poor family in Styria, that had not been the object of
+his beneficence, and yet it was well known that the king who had
+descended from his throne so hastily, and with so little preparation,
+had but small means, and denied himself many of the enjoyments of life,
+in order that he might lend a helping hand to others. He was entreated,
+conjured with tears, to remain, but he held firm to his resolution. And
+when the horses, that they had at first determined to withhold from him,
+were at last, at his earnest and repeated solicitation, provided, the
+people unharnessed these horses from his carriage, in order that they
+might take their places, and accompany him to the gates of the city with
+this demonstration of their love. This departure had the appearance of a
+triumphal procession; and this banished king, without a country, was
+greeted with as lively plaudits on leaving his place of exile as when he
+mounted his throne[20]."
+
+[Footnote 20: Mémoires d'une contemporaine, vol. iv., p. 377.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+JUNOT, THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.
+
+While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render assistance to
+the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother Louis, forgetting
+the mortifications and injuries he had sustained at the emperor's hands,
+hastened to his side, there was one of the most devoted kept away from
+him by fate--one upon whom the emperor could otherwise have depended in
+life and death.
+
+This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who, descended from
+an humble family, had by his merit and heroism elevated himself to the
+rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed to respond when the ominous
+roll of the war-drum recalled all Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it
+was not his will, but fate, that kept him away.
+
+Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear and
+without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present governor of
+Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a visitation of the most
+fearful of all diseases--his brain was affected! The scars that covered
+his head and forehead, and testified so eloquently to his gallantry,
+announced at the same time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed
+by sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
+his brain.
+
+The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And yet,
+this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of Istria and
+Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these provinces, had
+invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the noble disposition,
+fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms, he had conferred upon him
+sovereign power to rule in his stead. There was, therefore, no one who
+could take the sceptre from his hand, and depose him from his high
+position. Napoleon had placed this sceptre in his hand, and he alone
+could demand it of him. Even the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers
+of Istria appealed for help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford
+them no relief. He could only say to them: "Send a courier to the
+emperor, and await his reply."
+
+But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a distance
+of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no telegraphs. The
+Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the emperor, with an entreaty
+for their relief, but the Russian proverb, "Heaven is high, and the
+emperor distant," applied to them also! Weeks must elapse before the
+courier could return with the emperor's reply; until then, there was no
+relief; and until then, there was no authority to obey but the Duke
+d'Abrantes, the poor madman!
+
+No other authority, no institution, had the right to place itself in his
+stead, or to assume his prerogatives for an instant even, without
+violating the seal of sovereignty that Napoleon had impressed on the
+brow of his governor!
+
+Napoleon, whose crown was already trembling on his head, who was
+already so near his own fall, still possessed such gigantic power that
+its reflection sufficed to protect, at a distance of a thousand miles
+from the boundaries of France, the inviolability of a man who had lost
+his reason, and no longer had the power of reflection and volition.
+
+How handsome, how amiable, how chivalrous, had Junot been in his earlier
+days! How well he had known how to charm beautiful women in the
+drawing-rooms, soldiers on the battle-field, and knights at the tourney!
+In all knightly accomplishments he was the master--always and everywhere
+the undisputed victor and hero. These accomplishments had won the heart
+of Mademoiselle de Premont. The daughter of the proud baroness of the
+Faubourg St. Germain had joyfully determined, in spite of her mother's
+dismay, to become the wife of the soldier of the republic, of Napoleon's
+comrade-in-arms. Although Junot had no possession but his pay, and no
+nobility but his sword and his renown, this nevertheless sufficed to win
+him the favor of the daughter of this aristocratic mother--of the
+daughter who was yet so proud of being the last descendant of the
+Comneni. Napoleon, who loved to see matrimonial alliances consummated
+between his generals and his nobility and the old legitimist nobility of
+France, rewarded the daughter of the Faubourg St. Germain richly for the
+sacrifice she had made for his comrade-in-arms, in giving up her
+illustrious name, and her coat-of-arms, to become the wife of a general
+without ancestors and without fortune. He made his friend a duke, and
+the Duchess d'Abrantes had no longer cause to be ashamed of her title;
+the descendant of the Comneni could content herself with the homage done
+her as the wife of the governor of Lisbon, contented with the laurels
+that adorned her husband's brow--laurels to which he added a new branch,
+but also new wounds, on every battle-field.
+
+The consequences of these wounds had veiled the hero's laurels with
+mourning-crape, and destroyed the domestic happiness of the poor duchess
+forever. She had first discovered her husband's sad condition, but she
+had known how to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. She had,
+however, refused to accompany the duke to Illyria, and had remained in
+Paris, still hoping that the change of climate and associations might
+restore him to health.
+
+But her hopes were not to be realized. The attacks of madness, that had
+hitherto occurred at long intervals only, now became more frequent, and
+were soon no longer a secret. All Illyria knew that its governor was a
+madman, and yet no one dared to oppose his will, or to refuse to obey
+his commands; all still bowed to his will, in humility and silent
+submissiveness, hopefully awaiting the return of the courier who had
+been dispatched to Napoleon at Paris.
+
+"But heaven is high, and the emperor distant!" And much evil could
+happen, and did happen, before the courier returned to Trieste, where
+Junot resided. The poor duke's condition grew worse daily; his attacks
+of madness became more frequent and more dangerous, and broke out on the
+slightest provocation.
+
+On one occasion a nightingale, singing in the bushes beneath his window,
+had disturbed his rest; on the following morning he caused the general
+alarm to be sounded, and two battalions of Croats to be drawn up in the
+park, to begin a campaign against the poor nightingale, who had dared to
+disturb his repose.
+
+On another occasion, Junot fancied he had discovered a grand conspiracy
+of all the sheep of Illyria; against this conspiracy he brought the
+vigilance of the police, all the means of the administration, and the
+whole severity of the law, into requisition for its suppression.
+
+At another time, he suddenly became desperately enamoured of a beautiful
+Greek girl, who belonged to his household. Upon her refusal to meet his
+advances favorably, a passionate desperation took possession of Junot,
+and he determined to set fire to his palace, and perish with his love in
+the flames. Fortunately, his purpose was discovered, and the fire he had
+kindled stifled at once.
+
+He would suddenly be overcome with a passionate distaste for the
+grandeur and splendor that surrounded him, and long to lay aside his
+brilliant position, and fly to the retirement of an humble and
+obscure life.
+
+It was his dearest wish to become a peasant, and be able to live in a
+hut; and, as there was no one who had the right to divest him of his
+high dignities and grant his desire, he formed the resolution to divest
+himself of this oppressive grandeur, by the exercise of his own fulness
+of power, and to withdraw himself from the annoyances imposed upon him
+by his high position.
+
+Under the pretence of visiting the provinces, he left Trieste, to lead
+for a few weeks an entirely new life--a life that seemed, for a brief
+period, to soothe his excited mind. He arrived, almost incognito, in the
+little city of Gorizia, and demanded to be conducted to the most
+unpretending establishment to which humble and honest laborers were in
+the habit of resorting for refreshment and relaxation. He was directed
+to an establishment called the Ice-house, a place to which poor daily
+laborers resorted, to repose after the labors of the day, and refresh
+themselves with a glass of beer or wine.
+
+In this Ice-house the governor of Illyria now took up his abode. He
+seldom quitted it, either by day or night; and here, like
+Haroun-al-Raschid, he took part in the harmless merriment of happy and
+contented poverty. And here this poor man was to find a last delight, a
+last consolation; here he was to find a last friend.
+
+This last friend of the Duke d'Abrantes--this Pylades of the poor
+Orestes--was--a madman!--a poor simpleton, of good family, who was so
+good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at large, and free
+scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however, possessed a kind of
+droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought to bear most effectively,
+sparing neither rank nor position. The half-biting, half-droll remarks
+of this Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the
+broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the
+social grandeur and distinctions that had cost him so dear made
+ridiculous by this half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to
+jeer at the pomp that surrounded the governor, and imitate French
+elegance in a highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor
+princely friend's delight knew no bounds.
+
+On one occasion, after the poor fellow had been entertaining him in this
+manner, the Duke d'Abrantes threw himself, in his enthusiasm, in his
+friend's arms, and invested him with the insignia of the Legion of
+Honor, by hanging around his neck the grand-cross of this order hitherto
+worn by himself. The emperor had given Junot authority to distribute
+this order to the deserving throughout the provinces of Illyria and
+Istria, and the governor himself having invested this mad Diogenes with
+the decoration, there was no one who was competent to deprive him of it.
+For weeks this mad fool was to be seen in the streets of Gorizia,
+parading himself like a peacock, with the grand-cross of the honorable
+order of the Emperor Napoleon, and, at the same time, uttering the most
+pointed and biting _bon mots_ at the expense of his own decoration. The
+duke often accompanied him in his wanderings through the town, sometimes
+laughing loudly at the fool's jests, sometimes listening with earnest
+attention, as though his utterances were oracles. Thus this strange
+couple passed the time, either lounging through the streets together, or
+seated side by side on a stone by the way, engaged in curious
+reflections on the passers-by, or philosophizing over the emptiness of
+all glory and grandeur, and over the littleness and malice of the world,
+realizing the heart-rending, impressive scenes between Lear and his
+fool, which Shakespeare's genius has depicted.
+
+After weeks of anxious suspense, the imperial message, relieving Junot
+of his authority, and placing the Duke of Otranto in his place, at last
+arrived. The poor Duke d'Abrantes left Illyria, and returned to France,
+where, in the little town of Maitbart, after long and painful struggles,
+he ended, in sadness and solitude, a life of renown, heroism, and
+irreproachable integrity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A VENDER OF VIOLETS.
+
+Gradually, the brilliancy of the sun that had so long dazzled the eyes
+of all Europe began to wax pale, and the luminous star of Napoleon to
+grow dim among the dark clouds that were gathering around him. Fortune
+had accorded him all that it could bestow upon a mortal. It had laid all
+the crowns of Europe at his feet, and made him master of all the
+monarchies and peoples. Napoleon's antechamber in Erfurt and in Dresden
+had been the rendezvous of the emperors, kings, and princes of Europe,
+and England alone had never disguised its hostility beneath the mask of
+friendship, and bent the knee to a hated and feared neighbor. Napoleon,
+the master of Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother,"
+could now proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no
+longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had now
+become a new triumph of his grandeur.
+
+On one occasion, during the congress at Erfurt, all the emperors, kings,
+and princes, were assembled around Napoleon's table. He occupied the
+seat between his enthusiastic friend the Emperor of Russia, and his
+father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria. Opposite them sat the King of
+Prussia, his ally, although Napoleon had deprived him of the Rhine
+provinces; and the Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg, to whom Napoleon had
+given crowns, whose electorate and duchy he had converted into kingdoms,
+and of whom the first had given his daughter in marriage to Napoleon's
+adopted son, Eugene, and the second his daughter to Napoleon's brother
+Jerome. There were, further, at the table, the King of Saxony and the
+Grand-duke of Baden, to the latter of whom Napoleon had given the hand
+of Josephine's niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais. All these were princes,
+"by the grace of God," of brilliant and haughty dynasties; and in their
+midst sat the son of the advocate of Corsica--he, the Emperor of
+France--he, upon whom the gaze of all these emperors and kings was
+fastened in admiration and respect. Napoleon's extraordinary memory had
+just been the topic of conversation, and the emperor was about to
+explain how he had brought it to such a state of perfection.
+
+"While I was still a sub-lieutenant," began Napoleon, and instantly his
+hearers let fall their gaze, and looked down in shame at their plates,
+while a cloud of displeasure passed over the brow of the emperor of
+Austria at this mention of the low origin of his son-in-law. Napoleon
+observed this, and for an instant his eagle glance rested on the
+embarrassed countenances that surrounded him; he then paused for a
+moment. He began again, speaking with sharp emphasis: "When I still had
+the honor of being a sub-lieutenant," said he, and the Emperor Alexander
+of Russia, the only one of the princes who had remained unembarrassed,
+laid his hand on the emperor's shoulder, smiled approvingly, and
+listened with interest and pleasure to the emperor's narrative of the
+time when he "still had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant[21]."
+
+[Footnote 21: Bossuet, Mémoires, vol. V.]
+
+Napoleon, as we have said, had already mounted so high that for him
+there was no longer a summit to be attained, and now his heart's last
+and dearest wish had been granted by destiny. His wife, Marie Louise,
+had given birth to a son on the 20th of May, 1811, and the advent of the
+little King of Rome had fulfilled the warmest desires of Napoleon and of
+France. The emperor now had an heir; Napoleon's dynasty was assured.
+
+Festivities were therefore held in honor of this event, in the
+Tuileries, at the courts, of the Queen of Naples, of the Grand-duchess
+de Guastalla, of all the dukes of the empire, and of the Queen
+of Holland.
+
+Hortense was ill and in pain; a nervous headache, that she had been
+suffering from for some time, betrayed the secret of the pain and grief
+she had so long concealed from observation. Her cheeks had grown pale,
+and her eyes had lost their lustre. Her mother wept over her lost
+happiness in Malmaison, and, when Hortense had wept with and consoled
+her mother, she was compelled to dry her eyes and hasten to the
+Tuileries, and appear, with a smiling countenance, before her who was
+now her empress and her mother's happy rival.
+
+But Hortense had accepted her destiny, and was determined to demean
+herself as became her own and her mother's dignity. She endeavored to be
+a true and sincere friend to the young empress, and fulfil the emperor's
+wishes, and to give brilliant entertainments in honor of the King of
+Rome, in spite of the pain it must cost her. "The emperor wills it, the
+emperor requires it;" that was sufficient for all who were about him,
+and it was sufficient for her. Her mother had gone because it was his
+will, she had remained because it was his will, and she now gave these
+entertainments for the same reason. But there was an element of sadness
+and gloom even in these festivities of the carnival of 1813; the
+presence of so many cripples and invalids recalled the memory of the
+reverses of the past year. At the balls there was a great scarcity of
+young men who could dance; incessant wars had made the youth of France
+old before their time, and had converted vigorous men into cripples.
+
+Her heart filled with dark forebodings, Hortense silently prepared
+herself against the days of misfortune which she knew must inevitably
+come. When these days should come, she wished to be ready to meet them
+with a brave heart and a resolute soul, and she also endeavored to
+impress on the minds of her two beloved sons the inconstancy of fortune,
+in order that they might look misfortune boldly in the face. She had no
+compassion with the tender youth of these boys, who were now eight and
+six years old; no compassion, because she loved them too well not to
+strive to prepare them for adversity.
+
+One day the Duchess of Bassano gave a ball in honor of the queen, and
+Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned her resolution
+to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion. Her blond hair, that
+reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed in the ancient Greek
+style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers, not natural flowers,
+however, but consisting of Hortensias in diamonds. Her dress was of
+pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias in silver. The hem of her dress
+and its train was encircled with a garland of flowers composed of roses
+and violets. A bouquet of Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom,
+and her necklace and bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias.
+In this rich and tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress
+Josephine the day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies
+and gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for
+the occasion.
+
+The parlor, filled with these ladies glittering with diamonds, and with
+these cavaliers in their rich, gold-embroidered uniforms, presented a
+brilliant spectacle. The queen's two sons, who came running into the
+room at this moment to bid their "bonne petite maman" adieu, stood still
+for an instant, dazzled by this magnificence, and then timidly
+approached the mother who seemed to them a queen from the fairy-realm
+floating in rosy clouds. The queen divined the thoughts of her boys,
+whose countenances were for her an open book in which she read
+every emotion.
+
+She extended a hand to each of her children, and led them to a sofa, on
+which she seated herself, taking the youngest, Louis Napoleon, who was
+scarcely six years old, in her lap, while his elder brother, Napoleon
+Louis, stood at her side, his curly head resting on Hortense's shoulder,
+gazing tenderly into the pale, expressive face of his beautiful mother.
+
+"I am very prettily dressed to-day, am I not, Napoleon?" said Hortense,
+laying her little hand, that sparkled with diamonds, on the head of her
+eldest son. "Would you like me less if I were poor, and wore no
+diamonds, but merely a plain black dress? Would you love me less then?"
+
+"No, _maman_!" exclaimed the boy, almost angrily, and little Louis
+Napoleon, who sat in his mother's lap, repeated in his shrill little
+voice: "No, _maman_!"
+
+The queen smiled. "Diamonds and dress do not constitute happiness, and
+we three would love each other just as much if we had no jewelry, and
+were poor. But tell me, Napoleon, if you had nothing, and were entirely
+alone in the world, what would you do for yourself?"
+
+"I would become a soldier," cried Napoleon, with sparkling eyes, "and I
+would fight so bravely that I should soon be made an officer."
+
+"And you, Louis, what would you do to earn your daily bread?"
+
+The little fellow had listened earnestly to his brother's words, and
+seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the knapsack
+and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and that he was, as
+yet, too weak to become a soldier.
+
+"I," said he, after a pause, "I would sell bouquets of violets, like the
+little boy who stands at the gates of the Tuileries, and from whom we
+buy our flowers every day."
+
+The ladies and cavaliers, who had listened to this curious conversation
+in silence, now laughed loudly at this naive reply of the little prince.
+
+"Do not laugh, ladies," said the queen, earnestly, as she now arose; "it
+was no jest, but a lesson that I gave my children, who were so dazzled
+by jewelry. It is the misfortune of princes that they believe that
+everything is subject to them, that they are made of another stuff than
+other men, and have no duties to perform. They know nothing of human
+suffering and want, and do not believe that they can ever be affected by
+anything of the kind. And this is why they are so astounded, and remain
+so helpless, when the hand of misfortune does strike them. I wish to
+preserve my sons from this[22]."
+
+[Footnote 22: The queen's own words.]
+
+She then stooped and kissed her boys, who, while she and her brilliant
+suite were driving to the Tuileries, busied their little heads,
+considering whether it was easier to earn one's bread as a soldier, or
+by selling violets at the gates of the Tuileries, like the little
+beggar-boy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE DAYS OF MISFORTUNE.
+
+The round of festivities with which the people of France endeavored to
+banish the shadow of impending misfortune, was soon to be abruptly
+terminated. The thunder of the cannon on the battle-fields of Hanau and
+Leipsic silenced the dancing-music in the Tuileries; and in the
+drawing-rooms of Queen Hortense, hitherto devoted to music and
+literature, the ladies were now busily engaged in picking lint for the
+wounded who were daily arriving at the hospitals of Paris from the army.
+The declaration of war of Austria and Russia had aroused France from its
+haughty sense of invincibility. All felt that a crisis was at hand. All
+were preparing for the ominous events that were gathering like
+storm-clouds over France. Each of the faithful hastened to assume the
+position to which honor and duty called him. And it was in response to
+such an appeal that Louis Bonaparte now returned from Grätz to Paris; he
+had heard the ominous tones of the voice that threatened the emperor,
+and wished to be at his side in the hour of danger.
+
+It was not as the wife, but in the spirit of a Frenchwoman and a queen,
+that Hortense received the intelligence of her husband's return. "I am
+delighted to hear it," said she; "my husband is a good Frenchman, and he
+proves it by returning at the moment when all Europe has declared
+against France. He is a man of honor, and if our characters could not be
+made to harmonize, it was probably because we both had defects that were
+irreconcilable.
+
+"I," added she, with a gentle smile, "I was too proud, I had been
+spoiled, and was probably too deeply impressed with a sense of my own
+worth; and this defect is not conducive to pleasant relations with one
+who is distrustful and low-spirited. But our interests were always the
+same, and his hastening to France, to enroll himself with all his
+brother Frenchmen, for the defence of his country, is worthy of the
+king's character. It is only by doing thus that we can testify our
+gratitude for the benefits the people have conferred upon our
+family[23]."
+
+[Footnote 23: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, vol. i., p.
+167.]
+
+In the first days of January, 1814, the news that the enemy had crossed
+the boundaries of France, and that the Austrians, Russians, and
+Prussians, were marching on Paris, created a panic throughout the entire
+city. For the first time, after so many years of triumph, France
+trembled for its proud army, and believed in the possibility of defeat.
+
+In the Tuileries, also, gloom and dejection ruled the hour for the first
+time; and while, when the army had heretofore gone forth, the question
+had been, "When shall we receive the first intelligence of victory?"
+there were now only mute, inquiring glances bent on the emperor's
+clouded countenance.
+
+On the 24th of January, Napoleon left Paris, in order to repair to the
+army. The empress, whom he had made regent, giving her a council,
+consisting of his brothers and the ministers, as a support--the empress
+had taken leave of him in a flood of tears, and Queen Hortense, who had
+alone been present on this occasion, had been compelled to remain for
+some time with the empress, in order to console and encourage her.
+
+But Hortense was far from feeling the confidence which she exhibited in
+the presence of the empress and of her own court. She had never believed
+in the duration of these triumphs and of this fortune; she had always
+awaited the coming evil in silent expectation, and she was therefore now
+ready to face it bravely, and to defend herself and her children against
+its attacks. She therefore was calm and self-possessed, while the entire
+imperial family was terror-stricken, while all Paris was in a panic,
+while the fearful intelligence, "The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks
+are marching on Paris!" was overrunning the city. "The Grand-duke
+Constantine has promised his troops that they shall warm themselves at
+the burning ruins of Paris, and the Emperor Alexander has sworn that he
+will sleep in the Tuileries."
+
+Nothing was now dreamed of but plundering, murder, and rapine; people
+trembled not only for their lives, but also for their property, and
+hastened to bury their treasures, their jewelry, their gold and silver,
+to secure it from the rapacious hands of the terrible Cossacks.
+Treasures were buried in cellars, or hid away in the walls of houses.
+The Duchess de Bassano caused all her valuable effects to be put in a
+hidden recess, and the entrance to the same to be walled up and covered
+with paper. There were among these valuable effects several large
+clocks, in golden cases, that were richly studded with precious stones,
+but it had unfortunately been forgotten to stop them, so that for the
+next week they continued to strike the hours regularly, and thereby
+betrayed to the neighbors the secret the duchess had so anxiously
+endeavored to conceal.
+
+But the cry, "The Cossacks are coming!" was not the only alarm-cry of
+the Parisians. Another, and a long-silent cry, was now heard in Paris--a
+strange cry, that had no music for the ear of the imperialist, but one
+that, to the royalist, had a sweet and familiar sound. This cry was,
+"The Count de Lille!" or, as the royalists said, "King Louis XVIII." The
+royalists no longer whispered this name, but proclaimed it loudly and
+with enthusiasm, and even those of them who had attached themselves to
+the imperial court, and played a part at the same, now dared to remove
+their masks a little, and show their true countenance.
+
+Madame Ducayla, one of the most zealous royalists, although attached to
+the court society of the Tuileries, had gone to Hartwell, to convey to
+him messages of love and respect in the name of all the royalists of
+Paris, and to tell him that they had now begun to smooth the way for his
+return to France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with
+authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them
+the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the
+glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in
+disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when
+Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from
+Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come from
+Hartwell, I have seen the king, and he has instructed me--" he
+interrupted her in loud and angry tones, exclaiming: "Are you mad,
+madame? You dare to confess such a crime to me?" He had, however, then
+added in a low voice: "You have seen him, then? Well, I am his most
+devoted servant[24]."
+
+[Footnote 24: Mémoires d'une femme de qualité, vol. i., p. 133.]
+
+The royalists held meetings and formed conspiracies with but little
+attempt at concealment, and the minister of police, Fouché, whose eyes
+and ears were always on the alert, and who knew of everything that
+occurred in Paris, also knew of these conspiracies of the royalists; he
+did not prevent them, however, but advised caution, endeavoring to
+prove to them thereby the deep reverence which he himself experienced
+for the unfortunate royal family.
+
+In the midst of all this confusion and anxiety, Queen Hortense alone
+preserved her composure and courage, and far from endeavoring, like
+others, to conceal and secure her treasures, jewelry, and other
+valuables, she determined to make no change or reduction whatever in her
+manner of living; she wished to show the Parisians that the confidence
+of the imperial family in the emperor and his invincibility was not to
+be shaken. She therefore continued to conduct her household in truly
+royal style, although she had received from the exhausted state treasury
+no payment of the appanage set apart for herself and children for a
+period of three months. But she thought little of this; her generous
+heart was occupied with entirely different interests than those of her
+own pecuniary affairs.
+
+She wished to inspire Marie Louise, whom the emperor had constituted
+empress-regent on his departure for the army, with the courage which she
+herself possessed. She conjured her to show herself worthy of the
+confidence the emperor had reposed in her at this critical time, and to
+adopt firm and energetic measures. When, on the 28th of March, the
+terror-inspiring news was circulated that the hostile armies were only
+five leagues from Paris, and while the people were flying from the city
+in troops, Hortense hastened to the Tuileries to conjure the empress to
+be firm, and not to leave Paris. She entreated Marie Louise, in the
+name of the emperor, her husband, and the King of Rome, her son, not to
+heed the voice of the state council, who, after a long sitting, had
+unanimously declared that Paris could not be held, and that the empress,
+with her son and her council, should therefore leave the capital.
+
+But Marie Louise had remained deaf to all these pressing and energetic
+representations, and the queen had not been able to inspire her young
+and weak sister-in-law with her own resolution.
+
+"My sister," Hortense had said to her, "you will at least understand
+that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and thereby endanger
+your crown, but I see that you are resigned to this sacrifice."
+
+"It is true," Marie Louise had sadly replied. "I well know that I should
+act differently, but it is too late. The state council has decided, and
+I can do nothing!"
+
+In sadness and dejection Hortense had then returned to her dwelling,
+where Lavalette, Madame Ney, and the ladies of her court, awaited her.
+
+"All is lost," said she, sadly. "Yes, all is lost. The empress has
+determined to leave Paris. She lightly abandons France and the emperor.
+She is about to depart."
+
+"If she does that," exclaimed General Lavalette, in despair, "then all
+is really lost, and yet her firmness and courage might now save the
+emperor, who is advancing toward Paris by forced marches. After all this
+weighing and deliberating, they have elected to take the worst course
+they could choose! But, as this has finally been determined on, what
+course will your majesty now pursue?"
+
+"I remain in Paris," said the queen, resolutely; "as I am permitted to
+be mistress of my own actions, I am resolved to remain here and share
+the fortunes of the Parisians, be they good or evil! This is at least a
+better and worthier course than to incur the risk of being made a
+prisoner on the public highway."
+
+Now that she had come to a decision, the queen exhibited a joyous
+determination, and her mind recovered from its depression. She hastened
+to dispatch a courier to Malmaison to the Empress Josephine, now
+forgotten and neglected by all, to conjure her to leave for Novara at
+once. She then retired to her bedchamber to seek the rest she so much
+needed after so many hours of excitement.
+
+But at midnight she was aroused from her repose to a sad awakening. Her
+husband, with whom she had held no kind of intercourse since his return,
+had now, in the hour of danger, determined to assert his marital
+authority over his wife and children. He wrote the queen a letter,
+requiring her to leave Paris with her children, and follow the empress.
+
+Hortense replied with a decided refusal. A second categoric message from
+her husband was the response. He declared that if she should not at once
+conform to his will, and follow the empress with her children, he would
+immediately take his children into his own custody, by virtue of his
+authority as husband and father.
+
+At this threat, the queen sprang up like an enraged lioness from her
+lair. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes she commanded that her
+children should be at once brought to her, and then, pressing her two
+boys to her heart with passionate tenderness, she exclaimed: "Tell the
+king that I shall leave the city within the hour!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ALLIES IN PARIS.
+
+The anxiety of motherly love had effected what neither the departure of
+the empress nor the news of the approach of the Cossacks could do.
+Hortense had taken her departure. She had quitted Paris, with her
+children and suite, which had already begun to grow sensibly smaller,
+and arrived, after a hurried flight, endangered by bands of marauding
+Cossacks, in Novara, where the Empress Josephine, with tears of sorrow
+and of joy alike, pressed her daughter to her heart. Although her own
+happiness and grandeur were gone, and although the misfortunes of the
+Emperor Napoleon--whom she still dearly loved--oppressed her heart,
+Josephine now had her daughter and dearest friend at her side, and that
+was a sweet consolation in the midst of all these misfortunes and cares.
+
+At Novara, Hortense received the intelligence of the fall of the empire,
+of the capitulation of Paris, of the entrance of the allies, and of the
+abdication of Napoleon.
+
+When the courier sent by the Duke of Bassano with this intelligence
+further informed the Empress Josephine that the island of Elba had been
+assigned Napoleon as a domicile, and that he was on the point of leaving
+France to go into exile, Josephine fell, amid tears of anguish, into her
+daughter's arms, crying: "Hortense, he is unhappy, and I am not with
+him! He is banished to Elba! Alas! but for his wife, I would hasten to
+his side, to share his exile!"
+
+While the empress was weeping and lamenting, Hortense had silently
+withdrawn to her apartments. She saw and fully appreciated the
+consequences that must ensue to the emperor's entire family, from his
+fall; she already felt the mortifications and insults to which the
+Bonapartes would now be exposed from all quarters, and she wished to
+withdraw herself and children from their influence. She formed a quick
+resolve, and determined to carry it out at once. She caused Mademoiselle
+de Cochelet, one of the few ladies of her court who had remained
+faithful, to be called, in order that she might impart to her her
+resolution.
+
+"Louise," said she, "I intend to emigrate. I am alone and defenceless,
+and ever threatened by a misfortune that would be more cruel than the
+loss of crown and grandeur--the misfortune of seeing my children torn
+from me by my husband. My mother can remain in France--her divorce has
+made her free and independent; but I bear a name that will no longer be
+gladly heard in France, now that the Bourbons are returning. I have no
+other fortune than my diamonds. These I shall sell, and then go, with my
+children, to my mother's estate in Martinique. I lived there when a
+child, and have retained a pleasant remembrance of the place. It is
+undoubtedly hard to be compelled to give up country, mother, and
+friends; but one must face these great strokes of destiny courageously.
+I will give my children a good education, and that shall be my
+consolation."
+
+Mademoiselle de Cochelet burst into tears, kissed the queen's extended
+hand, and begged so earnestly that she might be permitted to accompany
+her, that Hortense at last gave a reluctant consent. It was arranged
+between them that Louise should hasten to Paris, in order to make the
+necessary preparations for the queen's long journey; and she departed on
+this mission, under the protection of the courier, on the
+following morning.
+
+How changed and terrible was the aspect Paris presented on her arrival!
+At the gate through which they entered Cossacks stood on guard; the
+streets were filled with Russian, Austrian, and Prussian soldiery, at
+whose side the proud ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were to be seen
+walking, in joyous triumph, bestowing upon the vanquishers of France as
+great a devotion as they could have lavished upon the beloved Bourbons
+themselves, whose return was expected in a few days.
+
+A Swedish regiment was quartered in the queen's dwelling; her servants
+had fled; her glittering drawing-rooms now sheltered the conquerors of
+France; and in the Tuileries preparations were already being made for
+the reception of the Bourbons.
+
+No one dared to pronounce the name of Napoleon. Those who were formerly
+his most zealous flatterers were now the most ready to condemn him.
+Those upon whom he had conferred the greatest benefits were now the
+first to deny him, hoping thereby to wipe out the remembrance of the
+benefits they had received. The most zealous Napoleonists now became the
+most ardent royalists, and placed the largest white cockades in their
+hats, in order that they might the sooner attract the attention of the
+new rulers.
+
+But there was still one man who pronounced the name of Napoleon loudly,
+and with affectionate admiration, and publicly accorded him the tribute
+of his respect.
+
+This one was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. He had loved Napoleon so
+dearly, that even the position of hostility which policy compelled him
+to assume could not banish from his heart friendship for the hero who
+had so long ruled Europe.
+
+Napoleon's fate was decided; and it was attributable to the zealous
+efforts of the czar that the allies had consented to the emperor's
+demands, and appointed him sovereign of the island of Elba. Now that
+Alexander could do nothing more for Napoleon, he desired to make himself
+useful to his family, at least, and thereby testify the admiration which
+he still felt for the fallen Titan.
+
+The Empress Marie Louise and the little King of Rome had no need of his
+assistance. The empress had not availed herself of the permission of the
+allies to accompany her husband to Elba, but had placed herself and son
+under the protection of her father, the Emperor of Austria.
+
+The Emperor Alexander therefore bestowed his whole sympathy upon
+Napoleon's divorced wife and her children, the Viceroy of Italy and the
+Queen of Holland. He took so great an interest in the queen, that he
+declared his intention, in case Hortense should not come to Paris, of
+going to Novara to see her, in order to learn from her own lips in what
+manner he could serve her, and how she desired that her future should
+be shaped.
+
+Count Nesselrode, the emperor's minister, was also zealous in his
+endeavors to serve the queen. The count had long been the intimate
+friend of Louise de Cochelet; and, desirous of giving her a further
+proof of his friendship, he knew of no better way of doing so than by
+rendering a service to Queen Hortense and her children. Louise informed
+the count of the queen's intended departure for Martinique. Count
+Nesselrode smiled sadly over this desperate resolve of a brave mother's
+heart, and instructed Louise to beg the queen to impart to him, through
+her confidante, all her wishes and demands, in order that he might lay
+them before the emperor.
+
+The queen's fate was the subject of great sympathy in all quarters.
+When, in one of the sessions of the ministers of the allies, in which
+the fate of France, of the Bourbons, and of the Bonapartes, was to be
+the subject of deliberation, the question of making some provision for
+the emperor's family came up for consideration, the prince of Benevento
+exclaimed: "I plead for Queen Hortense alone; for she is the only one
+for whom I have any esteem." Count Nesselrode added: "Who would not be
+proud to claim her as a countrywoman? She is the pearl of her France!"
+And Metternich united with the rest in her praise[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: Cochelet, vol. i., p 279.]
+
+But it was in vain that Louise de Cochelet imparted this intelligence to
+the queen; the entreaties and representations of her friends were
+powerless to persuade Hortense to leave her retirement and come
+to Paris.
+
+The following letter of the queen, written to Louise, concerning her
+affairs, will testify to her beautiful and womanly sentiments. This
+letter is as follows:
+
+"My dear Louise,--You and all my friends write me the same questions:
+'What do you want? What do you demand?' I reply to all of you: I want
+nothing whatever! What should I desire? Is not my fate already
+determined? When one has the strength to form a great resolution, and
+when one can firmly and calmly contemplate the idea of making a journey
+to India or America, it is unnecessary to demand any thing of any one. I
+entreat you to take no steps that I should be compelled to disavow; I
+know that you love me, and this might induce you to do so. I am really
+not to be pitied; it was in the midst of grandeur and splendor that I
+have suffered! I shall now, perhaps, learn the happiness of retirement,
+and prefer it to all the magnificence that once surrounded me. I do not
+believe I can remain in France; the lively interest now shown in my
+behalf might eventually occasion mistrust. This idea is annihilating; I
+feel it, but I shall not willingly occasion sorrow to any one. My
+brother will be happy; my mother can remain in her country, and retain
+her estates. I, with my children, shall go to a foreign land, and, as
+the happiness of those I love is assured, I shall be able to bear the
+misfortune that strikes only at my material interests, but not at my
+heart. I am still deeply moved and confounded by the fate that has
+overtaken the Emperor Napoleon and his family. Is it true? Has all been
+finally determined? Write me on this subject. I hope that my children
+will not be taken from me; in that case I should lose all courage. I
+will so educate them that they shall be happy in any station of life. I
+shall teach them to bear fortune and misfortune with equal dignity, and
+to seek true happiness in contentment with themselves. This is worth
+more than crowns. Fortunately, they are healthy. Thank Count Nesselrode
+for his sympathy. I assure you there are days that are properly called
+days of misfortune, and that are yet not without a charm; such are those
+that enable us to discern the true sentiments people hold toward us. I
+rejoice over the affection which you show me, and it will always afford
+me gratification to tell you that I return it. HORTENSE[26]."
+
+[Footnote 26: Cochelet, vol. i., pp. 275-277.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND LOUISE DE COCHELET.
+
+In the meanwhile, Hortense was still living with her mother in Novara,
+firmly resolved to remain in her retirement, sorrowing over the fate of
+the imperial house, but quite indifferent as to her own fate.
+
+But her friends--and even in misfortune Hortense still had friends--and
+above all her truest friend, Louise de Cochelet, busied themselves all
+the more about her future, endeavoring to rescue out of the general
+wreck of the imperial house at least a few fragments for the queen.
+
+Louise de Cochelet was still sojourning in Paris, and the letters which
+she daily wrote to the queen at Novara, and in which she informed her of
+all that was taking place in the city, are so true a picture of that
+strange and confused era, that we cannot refrain from here inserting
+some of them.
+
+In one of her first letters Louise de Cochelet relates a conversation
+which she had had with Count Nesselrode, in relation to the
+queen's future.
+
+"The Bourbons," she writes, "have now been finally accepted. I asked
+Count Nesselrode, whom I have just left: 'Do you believe that the queen
+will be permitted to remain in France? Will the new rulers consider this
+proper?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'I am sure of it, for we will make it
+a condition with them, and without us they would never have come to the
+throne at all! It is not the Bourbons, but it is we, it is all Europe,
+that arranges and regulates these matters. I therefore trust that they
+will never violate the agreement. Rest assured that the Emperor
+Alexander will always support the right.'
+
+"All of these strangers here speak of you, madame, with great
+enthusiasm. Metternich, who doubtlessly recollects your great kindness
+to his wife and children, inquired after you with lively interest.
+Prince Leopold is devotedly attached to yourself and the Empress
+Josephine, and ardently desires to be able to serve you both. Count
+Nesselrode thinks it would be well for you to write to the Emperor
+Alexander, as he takes so warm an interest in your affairs.
+
+"The old nobility is already much discontented; it considers itself
+debased, because it sees itself mixed with so many new elements."
+
+"Come to Malmaison with the empress," she writes a few days later, "the
+Emperor Alexander will then go there at once to meet you; he is anxious
+to make your acquaintance, and you already owe him some thanks, as he
+devotes himself to your interests as though they were his own. The Duke
+of Vicenza, who demeans himself so worthily with regard to the Emperor
+Napoleon, requests me to inform you that the future of your children
+depends on your coming to Malmaison.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon has signed an agreement, that secures the future
+of all the members of his family; you can remain in France, and retain
+your titles. You are to have for yourself and children an income of four
+hundred thousand francs.
+
+"It is said here that the Faubourg St. Germain is furious over the
+brilliant positions provided for the imperial family and the empress.
+This is their gratitude for all her goodness to them.
+
+"You wish to make Switzerland your home. Count Nesselrode thinks you may
+be right, that it is a good retreat; but you should not give up the one
+you have here, and should in any event retain the right to return
+to France.
+
+"Fancy, madame, Count Nesselrode insists on my seeing his emperor! I
+have not yet consented, because I do not like to do any thing without
+your assent; but I confess I long to make his acquaintance. I am made
+quite happy by hearing you so well spoken of here.
+
+"Count Nesselrode said to me yesterday: 'Tell the queen that I shall be
+happy to fulfil all her wishes, and that I can do so, that I have the
+power.' For great security he wishes to have a future assured you that
+shall be independent of the treaty. I do not know what to say to him.
+Write to me, and demand something, I conjure you!"
+
+The queen's only response to this appeal was a letter addressed to the
+Emperor Napoleon, and sent to Count Nesselrode, with the request that it
+should be forwarded to its destination.
+
+"It is strange," wrote Louise de Cochelet in relation to this
+matter--"strange that all my efforts to serve you here have had no other
+result than your sending a commission to Count Nesselrode to forward to
+Fontainebleau a letter addressed to the Emperor Napoleon. He at first
+thought I was bringing him the letter he had solicited for his emperor;
+but he well knows how to appreciate all that is noble and great, and as
+he possesses the most admirable tact, he thinks the letter cannot well
+reach the emperor through him, and will therefore send it to the Duke of
+Vicenza, at Fontainebleau, to be delivered by him to the Emperor
+Napoleon."
+
+Another letter of Louise de Cochelet is as follows: "I have just seen
+Count Nesselrode again; he makes many inquiries concerning you; the
+Emperor of Russia now resides on the Elysée Bourbon. The count tells me
+a story that is in circulation here, and has reference to the Empress
+Marie Louise and the kings her brothers-in-law. They were about to force
+her to enter a carriage, in which they were to continue their journey
+with her; when she refused to enter, it is said the King of Westphalia
+became so violent that he gave her a little beating. She cried for help,
+and General Caffarelli[27], who commanded the guards, came to her
+rescue. On the following day she and her son were made prisoners, and
+all the crown diamonds in her possession seized by the authorities; but
+it seems as though capture was precisely what she wished.
+
+[Footnote 27: According to Napoleon's instructions, his brothers were to
+prevent the empress and the King of Rome from falling into the hands of
+the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene in his memoirs, and it is
+self-evident that it was not so stormy as the gossip of Paris
+portrayed it.]
+
+"The Queen of Westphalia has just arrived in Paris; the Emperor
+Alexander, her cousin, called on her immediately. It is supposed that
+she will return to her father.
+
+"Your brothers future is not yet determined on, but it will certainly be
+a desirable and worthy one. There are many intrigues going on in
+connection with it, as Count Nesselrode informs me. As for the kingdom
+of Naples, it is no longer spoken of. By the details of the last war
+with us, narrated to me by the count, I see that he despises many of our
+ministers and marshals, and that these must be very culpable; and yet he
+tells me that they considered the result uncertain a week before our
+overthrow; as late as the 10th of March they believed that peace had
+been made with Prussia at least.
+
+"Do not grieve over the fate of the emperor on the island of Elba. The
+emperor selected it himself; the allies would have preferred any
+other place.
+
+"All the mails arriving at Paris have been seized by the allies. Among
+the letters there was one from the Empress Marie Louise to her husband.
+She writes that her son is well, but that on awakening from a good
+night's rest he had cried and told her he had dreamed of his father;
+notwithstanding all her coaxing and promises of playthings, he had,
+however, refused to tell what he had dreamed of his father, and that
+this circumstance had made her uneasy in spite of her will.
+
+"Prince Leopold resides in the same house with Countess Tascher; he is
+incessantly busied with yours and your mother's affairs; he at least is
+not oblivious of the kindness you have both shown him. I know that it is
+his intention to speak to the Emperor of Russia, and then write to you.
+
+"All your friends say that you must consider the interest of your
+children, and accept the future offered you. M. de Lavalette and the
+Duke of Vicenza are also of this opinion. You lose enough without this,
+and you may well permit the victors to return a small portion of that
+which they have taken from you, and which is rightfully yours.
+
+"In short, all your friends demand that you shall repair to Malmaison as
+soon as the Emperor Napoleon shall have departed from Fontainebleau. I
+am assured that the Emperor Alexander intends to hunt you up in Novara
+if you should not come to Malmaison. It will therefore be impossible to
+avoid him. Consider that the fate of your children lies in his hands! In
+the treaty of Fontainebleau you and your children were provided for
+together; this is a great point for you, and proves how highly you are
+thought of.
+
+"It is to the Emperor of Russia alone that you owe this; and when the
+Duke of Vicenza submitted this article of the treaty to the Emperor
+Napoleon for his signature, it met with his entire approval. Your sole
+and undivided authority over your children is thereby acknowledged. You
+should, therefore, not reject the good offered you for your children. I
+do not think it would require much persuasion to induce others to accept
+that which is tendered you.
+
+"Madame Tascher, who has proved herself to be your true friend and
+relative, has just had her first interview with the Duke of Dalberg, the
+member of the provisional government. She spoke of you, and I will here
+give you his response, word for word: 'She is considered as being
+altogether foreign to the Bonaparte family, because she has separated
+herself from her husband. She will be the refuge of her children, who
+are left to her. She is so dearly beloved and highly esteemed, that she
+can be very happy. She can remain in France, and do whatever she
+pleases; but she must now return to Paris.' Countess Tascher came to me
+immediately after leaving the duke, in order to acquaint me with what
+he had said.
+
+"Friends and foes alike say this about you: 'Those who are not delighted
+with what is being done for the queen are bad people! And as for her,
+what has she to regret in all this? Only the good she has done! Now, the
+world will dare to love her, and to express their love; she has so few
+wishes, she is so perfect!'
+
+"In short, it would seem almost that the people are pleased with the
+misfortune that places you in the right light, and they say, 'She is far
+more worthy in herself than when surrounded by a glittering court!'
+
+"Yesterday I saw the new arrivals from Fontainebleau, M. de Lascour and
+M. de Lavoestine. They came to me to learn where you were to be found,
+and intend visiting you at once, either at Novara or at Malmaison, as
+the case may be. These two gentlemen are true knights. 'No matter what
+she is to become,' said they; 'we can now show our devotion, without
+incurring the risk of being considered flatterers.'
+
+"The last two weeks at Fontainebleau have been a period of the greatest
+interest. All these young men, together with M. de Labédoyère and M. de
+Montesquieu, wished to accompany the emperor; but he forbade their doing
+so, and, in taking leave of them, appealed to them to remain, and to
+continue to serve their country zealously.
+
+"Lascour and Lavoestine, together with many other officers of the army,
+are much displeased with the generals who left Fontainebleau without
+taking leave of the emperor.
+
+"Upon taking leave of the Empress Josephine, the emperor is reported to
+have said: 'She was right; my separation from her has brought misfortune
+upon my head.'
+
+"It is said that the Duchess of Montebello will leave the Empress Marie
+Louise."
+
+But all these entreaties and flatteries, and these appeals to a mother's
+heart, were, as yet, powerless to break the queen's pride. She still
+considered it more worthy and becoming to remain away from the city in
+which the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were celebrating the orgies
+of their victorious royalism with the soldiers of the allied armies.
+Instead of yielding to Louise de Cochelet's entreaties, the queen wrote
+her the following letter:
+
+"My dear Louise,--My resolution gives you pain! You all accuse me of
+childish waywardness. You are unjust! My mother can follow the Duke de
+Vicenza's counsel; she will go to Malmaison, but _I remain here,_ and I
+have good reasons for doing so. I cannot separate my interests from
+those of my children. It is they, it is their nearest relatives, who are
+being sacrificed by all that is taking place, and I am, therefore,
+determined not to approach those who are working our ruin. I must be
+saddened by our great misfortune, and I will appear so, and abstain from
+approaching those who would still consider me a supplicant, even though
+I should demand nothing of them.
+
+"I can readily believe that the Emperor Alexander is kindly disposed
+toward me; I have heard much good of him, even from the Emperor
+Napoleon. Although I was once anxious to make his acquaintance, I at
+this moment have no desire to see him. Is he not our vanquisher? In
+their hearts, your friends must all approve of my determination,
+whatever they may say. I find retirement congenial. When you have seen
+enough of your friends, you will return to me. I am suffering in my
+breast, and shall perhaps go to some watering-place. I do not know
+whether it is due to the air of Novara, but since I have been here I
+cannot breathe. My friends maintain that it is due to the mental shocks
+resulting from the great events that have transpired; but they are in
+error; death has spared us all, and the loss of a glittering position is
+not the greatest loss one can sustain. What personal happiness do I
+lose? My brother will, I trust, be well and suitably provided for, and
+he will be no longer exposed to danger. He must be very uneasy on our
+account, and yet I dare not write to him, as my letters would probably
+never reach him; if an opportunity should present itself, please let him
+know that we are no longer surrounded by dangers. Adieu. I entreat you
+once more to undertake nothing in my behalf. I fear your impetuosity and
+friendship, and yet I love to be able to count on you. My children are
+well. My mother opposes all my plans; she asserts that she has need of
+me; but I shall, nevertheless, go to her who must now be more unhappy
+than all of us.
+
+HORTENSE."
+
+She of whom Hortense thought that she must be more unhappy than all of
+them, was the wife of Napoleon, Marie Louise, who had now left Blois, to
+which place she had gone as empress-regent, and repaired to Rambouillet,
+to await the decision of the allies with regard to the future of herself
+and son. It was certainly one of the most peculiar features of this
+period, so rich in extraordinary occurrences, to see the sovereigns of
+Europe, the overthrown rulers of France, and those who were about to
+grasp the sceptre once more, thrown confusedly together in Paris, and
+within a circuit of some fifty miles around that city: a Bourbon in the
+Tuileries, Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, his wife and his son at
+Rambouillet, the divorced empress at Novara, the Emperors of Russia and
+Austria, and the King of Prussia, at Paris; moreover, a whole train of
+little German potentates and princes, and the Napoleonic kings and
+princes, who were all sojourning in Paris or its vicinity.
+
+The Queen of Holland considered it her duty, in these days of misfortune
+and danger, to stand at the side of her whom Napoleon had commanded them
+to consider the head of the family, and to serve faithfully in life and
+death. Hortense therefore determined to go to the Empress Marie Louise
+at Rambouillet, in accordance with the emperor's commands.
+
+This determination filled the hearts of the queen's friends with sorrow;
+and Louise had no sooner received the letter in which the queen
+announced her impending departure, than she hastened to reply, imploring
+her to abandon this intention. M. de Marmold, the queen's equerry,
+departed with all speed to bring this letter to the queen at Louis,
+where she was to pass the night, and to add his entreaties to those
+of Louise.
+
+"M. de Marmold, the bearer of this letter, will deliver it to you at
+Louis, if he arrives there in good time," wrote Louise de Cochelet. "If
+you go to Rambouillet, you will destroy your own position, and also that
+of your children; this is the conviction of all your friends. I was so
+happy, for Prince Leopold had written you, in the name of the Emperor
+Alexander, and begged you to come to Malmaison. You could not have
+avoided seeing him, as he would even have gone to Novara. Instead,
+however, of returning with the Empress Josephine, you are on the point
+of uniting yourself with a family that has never loved you. With them
+you will experience nothing but distress, and they will not be thankful
+for the sacrifice you are about to make. You will regret this step when
+it is too late. I conjure you, do not go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Your course will touch those to whom you are going but little, and will
+displease the allies, who take so much interest in you.
+
+"The empress is a thorough Austrian at heart, and the visits of members
+of her husband's family are regarded with disfavor. I tell you this at
+the request of Prince Leopold and Madame de Caulaincourt. The latter, if
+you do not come here soon, will go to you, in spite of her great age.
+She conjures you not to go to Rambouillet, as your lady of honor, and
+the friend of your mother; she even forbids your doing so.
+
+"When I informed Prince Leopold of your intention to go to the Empress
+Marie Louise at Rambouillet, his eyes filled with tears. 'It is
+beautiful to be proud,' said he, 'but she can no longer retreat; she is
+already under obligations to the Emperor of Russia, who effected the
+treaty of the 11th of April. I await her reply, to deliver it to the
+emperor: she owes him a reply.'
+
+"I passed an hour with our good friend Lavalette this morning. This
+excellent man knew nothing of the measures we have been taking to
+persuade you to return, and said to me: 'How fortunate it would be for
+her and her children, if the emperor should desire to see her!' Do come,
+do come; show your friends this favor; we shall all be in despair if you
+go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Prince Leopold will write you a few lines. He could not be more devoted
+to yourself and the Empress Josephine if you were his mother and his
+sister. Count Tschernitscheff has been to see me. The Emperor of Austria
+arrives here to-morrow, and the new French princes and the king will
+soon follow. What a change!
+
+"You must see the Emperor of Russia, because he so much desires it. I
+conjure you, on my knees, to do me this favor! The emperor conducts
+himself so handsomely that every one is constrained to respect him; one
+forgets that he is the conqueror, and can only remember him as the
+protector. He seems to be the refuge of all those who have lost all, and
+are in distress. His conduct is admirable; he receives none but business
+calls, and such others as are absolutely necessary. The fair ladies of
+the Faubourg St. Germain cannot boast of his attention to them, and this
+does him all the more credit, he being, as it is said, very susceptible
+to the fair sex. He told Prince Leopold that he intended going to
+Novara, adding: 'You know that I love and esteem this family; Prince
+Eugene is the prince of knights; I esteem the Empress Josephine, Queen
+Hortense, and Prince Eugene, all the more from the fact that her
+demeanor toward the Emperor Napoleon has been so much more noble than
+that of so many others, who should have shown him more devotion.' How
+could it be possible not to respect a man of such nobility of character?
+I trust you will soon have an opportunity of judging of this yourself.
+For God's sake, return!
+
+LOUISE."
+
+But these entreaties were all in vain. M. de Marmold arrived at Louis in
+time to see the queen; he delivered the letters of her friends, and did
+all that lay in his power to persuade her not to go to Rambouillet.
+
+But Hortense held firmly to her intention. "You are right," said she.
+"All this is true; but I shall, nevertheless, go to the Empress Marie
+Louise, for it is my duty to do so. If unpleasant consequences should
+result from this step for me, I shall pay no attention to them, but
+merely continue to do my duty. Of all of us, the Empress Marie Louise
+must be the most unhappy, and must stand most in need of consolation; it
+is, therefore, at her side that I can be of most use, and nothing can
+alter my determination."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.
+
+Queen Hortense had gone to Rambouillet, in spite of the entreaties and
+exhortations of her friends. The Empress Marie Louise had, however,
+received her with an air of embarrassment. She had told the queen that
+she was expecting her father, the Emperor of Austria, and that she
+feared the queen's presence might make him feel ill at ease. Moreover,
+the young empress, although dejected and grave, was by no means so
+sorrowful and miserable as Hortense expected. The fate of her husband
+had not wounded the heart of Marie Louise as deeply as that of the
+Empress Josephine.
+
+Hortense felt that she was not needed there; that the presence of the
+Emperor of Austria would suffice to console the Empress of France for
+her husband's overthrow. She thought of Josephine, who was so deeply
+saddened by Napoleon's fate; and finding that, instead of consoling, she
+only embarrassed the Empress Marie Louise, she hastened to relieve her
+of her presence.
+
+And now, at last, Hortense bowed her proud, pure heart beneath the yoke
+of necessity; now, at last, she listened to the prayers and
+representations of her mother, who had returned to Malmaison, and of her
+friends, and went to Paris. It had been too often urged upon her that
+she owed it to her sons to secure their fortune and future, not to
+overcome her personal repugnance, and conform herself to this new
+command of duty.
+
+She had, therefore, returned to Paris for a few days, and taken up her
+abode in her dwelling, whose present dreariness recalled, with sorrowful
+eloquence, the grandeur of the past.
+
+These drawing-rooms, once the rendezvous of so many kings and princes,
+were now desolate, and bore on their soiled floors the footprints of the
+hostile soldiers who had recently been quartered there. At the czar's
+solicitation, they had now been removed; but the queen's household
+servants had also left it. Faithless and ungrateful, they had turned
+their backs on the setting sun, and fled from the storm that had burst
+over the head of their mistress.
+
+The Emperor Alexander hastened to the queen's dwelling as soon as her
+arrival in Paris was announced, the queen advancing to meet him as far
+as the outermost antechamber.
+
+"Sire," said she, with a soft smile, "I have no means of receiving you
+with due ceremony; my antechambers are deserted."
+
+The appearance of this solitary woman, this queen without a crown,
+without fortune, and without protection and support, who nevertheless
+stood before him in all the charms of beauty and womanhood, a soft smile
+on her lips, made a deep impression on the emperor, and his eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+The queen observed this, and hastened to say, "But what of that? I do
+not think that antechambers filled with gold-embroidered liveries would
+make those who come to see me happier, and I esteem myself happy in
+being able to do you the honors of my house alone. I have, therefore,
+only won."
+
+The emperor took her hand, and, while conducting the queen to her room,
+conversed with her, with that soft, sad expression peculiar to him,
+lamenting with bitter self-reproaches almost that he was himself, in
+part, to blame for the misfortunes that had overtaken the emperor and
+his family. He then conjured her to abandon her intention of leaving
+France, and to preserve herself for her mother and friends. He told her
+that, in abandoning her country, her friends, and her rights, she would
+be guilty of a crime against her own children, against her two sons, who
+were entitled to demand a country and a fortune at her hands.
+
+The queen, overcome at last by these earnest and eloquent
+representations, declared her readiness to remain in France, if the
+welfare of her sons should require it.
+
+"Until now," said she, "I had formed all my resolutions with reference
+to misfortune. I was entirely resigned, and I never thought of the
+possibility of any thing fortunate happening for me; and even yet, I do
+not know what I can desire and demand. I am, however, determined to
+accept nothing for myself and children that would be unworthy of us, and
+I do not know what that could be."
+
+With an assuring smile, the emperor extended his hand to the queen.
+"Leave that to me," said he. "It is, then, understood, you are to remain
+in France?"
+
+"Sire, you have convinced me that the future of my sons requires it. I
+shall therefore remain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE NEW UNCLES.
+
+Malmaison, to which place Hortense had returned after a short stay in
+Paris, and where the Empress Josephine was also sojourning, was a kind
+of focus for social amusement and relaxation for the sovereigns
+assembled in Paris. Each of these kings and princes wished to pay his
+homage to the Empress Josephine and her daughter, and thereby, in a
+measure, show the last honors to the dethroned emperor.
+
+On one occasion, when the King of Prussia, with his two sons, Prince
+Frederick William (the late king) and William, had come to Malmaison,
+and announced their desire to call on the empress, she sent them an
+invitation to a family dinner, at which she also invited the Emperor of
+Russia and his two brothers to attend.
+
+The emperor accepted this invitation, and on entering, with the young
+archdukes, the parlor in which the Duchess de St. Leu was sitting, he
+took his two brothers by the hand and conducted them to Hortense.
+
+"Madame," said he, "I confide my brothers to your keeping. They are now
+making their _début_ in society. My mother fears their heads may be
+turned by the beauties of France; and in bringing them to Malmaison,
+where so many charming persons are assembled, I am certainly fulfilling
+my promise to preserve them from such a fate but poorly."
+
+"Reassure yourself, sire," replied the queen, gravely; "I will be their
+mentor, and I promise you a motherly surveillance."
+
+The emperor laughed, and, pointing to Hortense's two sons, who had just
+been brought in, he said: "Ah, madame, it would be much less dangerous
+for my brothers if they were of the age of these boys."
+
+He approached the two boys with extended hands, and while conversing
+with them in a kindly and affectionate manner, addressed them with the
+titles "monseigneur" and "imperial highness."
+
+The children regarded him wonderingly, for the Russian emperor was the
+first to address the little Napoleon and his younger brother, Louis
+Napoleon, with these imposing titles. The queen had never allowed them
+to be called by any but their own names. She wished to preserve them
+from vain pride, and teach them to depend on their own intrinsic merit.
+
+Shortly afterward the King of Prussia and his sons were announced, and
+the emperor and his brothers left the young princes, and advanced to
+meet the king.
+
+While the emperor and the king were exchanging salutations, Hortense's
+two sons inquired of their governess the names of the gentlemen who had
+just entered.
+
+"It is the King of Prussia," whispered the governess; "and the gentleman
+who has just spoken with you is the Emperor of Russia."
+
+The little Louis Napoleon regarded the tall figures of those princes
+thoughtfully for a moment, by no means impressed by their imposing
+titles. He was so accustomed to see his mother surrounded by kings, and
+these kings had always been his uncles.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said the little Louis Napoleon, after a short pause,
+"are these two new gentlemen, the emperor and the king, also our uncles,
+like all the others and must we call them so?"
+
+"No, Louis, you must simply call them 'sire.'"
+
+"But," said the boy, after a moment's reflection, "why is it that they
+are not our uncles?"
+
+The governess withdrew with the two children to the back of the parlor,
+and explained to them, in a low voice, that the emperors and kings then
+in Paris, far from being their uncles, were their vanquishers.
+
+"Then," exclaimed the elder boy, Napoleon Louis, his face flushing with
+anger, "then they are the enemies of my uncle, the emperor! Why did this
+Emperor of Russia embrace us?"
+
+"Because he is a noble and generous enemy, who is endeavoring to serve
+you and your mother in your present misfortune. Without him you would
+possess nothing more in the world, and the fate of your uncle, the
+emperor, would be much sadder than it already is."
+
+"Then we ought to love this emperor very dearly?" said the little Louis
+Napoleon.
+
+"Certainly; for you owe him many thanks."
+
+The young prince regarded the emperor, who was conversing with the
+empress Josephine, long and thoughtfully.
+
+When the emperor returned to Malmaison on the following day, and while
+he was sitting at his mother's side in the garden-house, little Louis
+Napoleon, walking on tiptoe, noiselessly approached the emperor from
+behind, laid a small glittering object in his hand, and ran away.
+
+The queen called him back, and demanded with earnest severity to know
+what he had done.
+
+The little prince returned reluctantly, hanging his head with
+embarrassment, and said, blushing deeply: "Ah, _maman,_ it is the ring
+Uncle Eugene gave me. I wished to give it to the emperor, because he is
+so good to my _maman_!"
+
+Deeply touched, the emperor took the boy in his arms, seated him on his
+knees, and kissed him tenderly.
+
+Then, in order to give the little prince an immediate reward, he
+attached the ring to his watch-chain, and swore that he would wear the
+token as long as he lived[28].
+
+[Footnote 28: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEATH OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
+
+Since Napoleon's star had grown pale, and himself compelled to leave
+France as an exile, life seemed to Josephine also to be enveloped in a
+gloomy mourning-veil; she felt that her sun had set, and night come upon
+her. But she kept this feeling a profound secret, and never allowed a
+complaint or sigh to betray her grief to her tenderly-beloved daughter.
+Her complaints were for the emperor, her sighs for the fate of her
+children and grandchildren. She seemed to have forgotten herself; her
+wishes were all for others. With the pleasing address and grace of which
+age could not deprive her, she did the honors of her house to the
+foreign sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a forced composure, in
+which her soul had no share. She would have preferred to withdraw with
+her grief to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought it her duty
+to make this sacrifice for the welfare of her daughter and
+grandchildren; and she, the loving mother, could do what Hortense's
+pride would not permit--she could entreat the Emperor Alexander to take
+pity on her daughter's fate.
+
+When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in establishing her
+future, and had received the letters-patent which secured to the queen
+the duchy of St. Leu Alexander hastened to Malmaison, to communicate
+this good news to the Empress Josephine.
+
+She did not reward him with words, but with gushing tears, as she
+extended to the emperor both hands. She then begged him, with touching
+earnestness, to accept from her a remembrance of this hour.
+
+The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait of Josephine was
+painted, and begged her to give him that.
+
+"_No_, sire," said she; "such a cup can be bought anywhere. But I wish
+to give you something that cannot be had anywhere else in the world,
+and that will sometimes remind you of me. It is a present that I
+received from Pope Pius VII., on the day of my coronation. I present you
+with this token in commemoration of the day on which you bring my
+daughter the ducal crown, in order that it may remind you of mother and
+daughter alike--of the dethroned empress and of the dethroned queen."
+
+This present, which she now extended to the emperor with a charming
+smile, was an antique cameo, of immense size, and so wondrously-well
+executed that the empress could well say its equal was nowhere to be
+found in the world. On this cameo the heads of Alexander the Great and
+of his father, Philip of Macedonia, were portrayed, side by side; and
+the beauty of the workmanship, as well as the size of the stone, made
+this cameo a gem of inestimable value. And for this reason the emperor
+at first refused to accept this truly imperial present, and he yielded
+only when he perceived that his refusal would offend the empress, who
+seemed to be more pale and irritable than usual.
+
+Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for the royal family of
+the Bourbons had on this day caused her heart to bleed anew. Josephine
+had read an article in the journals, in which, in the most contemptuous
+and cruel terms, attention was called to the fact that the eldest son of
+the Queen of Holland had been interred in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame,
+and that the Minister Blacas had now issued an order to have the coffin
+removed from its resting-place, and buried in an ordinary grave-yard.
+
+Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in order
+that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of her
+beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the Church of
+St. Leu.
+
+While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine's whole
+figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her countenance.
+Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her sufferings to-day, for the
+first time; Hortense was not present, and she might therefore, for once,
+allow herself the sad consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and
+its paint, the pale countenance, which death had already
+lightly touched.
+
+"Your majesty is ill!" exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.
+
+With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander's eyes, Josephine pointed
+to her breast, and whispered: "Sire, I have received the
+death-wound here!"
+
+Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her heart was
+bleeding to death.
+
+Terrified by Josephine's condition, the emperor hurried to Paris, and
+sent his own physician to inquire after her condition. When the latter
+returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine was dangerously ill,
+and that he did not believe her recovery possible.
+
+He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense and
+Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's bedside
+throughout the night. The best physicians were called in, but these
+only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the condition of the
+empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With strong hands, she had
+held it together as long as her children's welfare seemed to require.
+Now that Hortense's future was also assured--now that she knew that her
+grandchildren would, at least, not be compelled to wander about the
+world as exiled beggars--now Josephine withdrew her hands from her
+heart, and suffered it to bleed to death.
+
+On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an illness
+which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not heard her
+mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with Eugene, after her
+mother had received the sacrament from Abbé Bertrand--when she saw her
+mother, with outstretched arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to
+them--Hortense fainted away at her mother's bedside, and the empress
+breathed her last sigh in Eugene's arms.
+
+The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris profoundly.
+It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a day that Napoleon
+was no longer the ruler of France, and that the Bourbons had reascended
+the throne of their fathers. All Paris mourned; for the hearts of the
+French people had not forgotten this woman, who had so long been their
+benefactress, and of whom each could relate the most touching traits of
+goodness, of generosity, and of gentleness.
+
+Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as empress in
+the hearts of the French people and thousands poured into Malmaison, to
+pay their last homage to their deceased empress. Even the Faubourg St.
+Germain mourned with the Parisians; these haughty and insolent
+royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons, may, perhaps, for a
+moment, have recalled the benefits which the empress had shown them,
+when, as the mighty Empress of France, she employed the half of her
+allowance for the relief of the emigrants. They had returned without
+thinking of the thanks they owed their forgotten benefactress; now that
+she was dead, they no longer withheld the tribute of their admiration.
+
+"Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how
+interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness! How
+well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and good
+taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"
+
+Immediately after the death of the empress, Eugene had conducted the
+queen from the death-chamber, almost violently, and had taken her and
+her children to St. Leu. The body of the empress was interred in
+Malmaison, and followed to the grave by her two grandchildren only.
+Grief had made both of her children severely ill, and the little princes
+were followed, not by her relatives, but by the Russian General Von
+Sacken, who represented the emperor, and by the equipages of all those
+kings and princes who had helped to hurl the Bonapartes from their
+thrones and restore the Bourbons.
+
+The emperor passed his last night in France, before leaving for
+England, at St. Leu; and, on taking leave of Eugene and Hortense, who,
+at the earnest solicitation of her brother, had left her room for the
+first time since her mother's death, for the purpose of seeing the
+emperor, he assured them of his unchangeable friendship and attachment.
+As he knew that, among those whom he strongly suspected, Pozzo di
+Borgo[29], the ambassador he left behind him in Paris, was an
+irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon and his family, he had assigned to duty
+at the embassy as _attaché_, a gentleman selected for this purpose by
+Louise de Cochelet--M. de Boutiakin--and it was through him that the
+emperor directed that the letters and wishes of the queen and of her
+faithful young lady friend should be received and answered.
+
+[Footnote 29: Upon receiving the intelligence of the death of the
+emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill him, but I
+threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order that he might
+never rise again."]
+
+A few days later Eugene also left St. Leu and his sister Hortense, to
+return, with the King of Bavaria, to his new home in Germany. It was not
+until his departure that Hortense felt to its full extent the gloomy
+loneliness and dreary solitude by which she was surrounded. She had not
+wept over the downfall of all the grandeur and magnificence by which she
+had formerly been surrounded; she had not complained when the whirlwind
+of fate hurled to the ground the crowns of all her relations, but had
+bowed her head to the storm with resignation, and smiled at the loss of
+her royal titles; but now, as she stood in her parlor at St. Leu and saw
+none about her but her two little boys and the few ladies who still
+remained faithful--now, Hortense wept.
+
+"Alas!" she cried, bursting into tears, as she extended her hand to
+Louise de Cochelet, "alas! my courage is at an end! My mother is dead,
+my brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon forget his
+promised protection, and I alone must contend, with my two children,
+against all the annoyances and enmities to which the name I bear will
+subject me! I fear I shall live to regret that I allowed myself to be
+persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will the love I bear my country
+recompense me for the torments which are in store for me?"
+
+The queen's dark forebodings were to be only too fully realized. In the
+great and solemn hour of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal vision the
+veil that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan prophetess, we see
+the impending evil, powerless to avert it.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.
+
+On the 12th of April, Count d'Artois, whom Louis XVIII. had sent in
+advance, and invested with the dignity of a lieutenant-general of
+France, made his triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the city,
+he was received by the newly-formed provisional government, Talleyrand
+at its head; and here it was that Count d'Artois replied to the address
+of that gentleman in the following words: "Nothing is changed in France,
+except that from to-day there will be one Frenchman more in the land."
+The people received him with cold curiosity, and the allied troops
+formed a double line for his passage to the Tuileries, at which the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, adorned with white lilies and white
+cockades, received him with glowing enthusiasm. Countess Ducayla,
+afterward the well-known friend of Louis XVIII., had been one of the
+most active instruments of the restoration, and she it was who had first
+unfolded again in France the banner of the Bourbons--the white flag. A
+few days before the entrance of the prince, she had gone, with a number
+of her royalist friends, into the streets, in order to excite the people
+to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty. But the people and the
+army had still preserved their old love for the emperor, and the
+proclamation of Prince Schwartzenberg, read by Bauvineux in the streets,
+was listened to in silence. True, the royalists cried, _"Vive le roi!"_
+at the end of this reading, but the people remained indifferent
+and mute.
+
+This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed to indicate a
+secret discontent with the new order of things. She felt that this
+sullen people must be inflamed, and made to speak with energy and
+distinctness. To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and proclamations
+had been attempted in vain; now the countess determined to attempt to
+arouse them by another means--to astonish them by the display of a
+striking symbol--to show them the white flag of the Bourbons!
+
+She gave her companion, Count de Montmorency, her handkerchief, that he
+might wave it aloft, fastening it to the end of his cane, in order that
+it should be more conspicuous. This handkerchief of Countess Ducayla,
+fastened to the cane of a Montmorency, was the first royalist banner
+that fluttered over Paris, after a banishment of twenty years. The
+Parisians looked at this banner with a kind of reverence and shuddering
+wonder; they did not greet it with applause; they still remained silent,
+but they nevertheless followed the procession of royalists, who marched
+to the boulevards, shouting, _"Vive le roi!"_ They took no part in their
+joyful demonstration, but neither did they attempt to prevent it.
+
+This demonstration of the royalists, and particularly of the royalist
+ladies, transcended the bounds of propriety, and of their own dignity.
+In their fanaticism for the legitimate dynasty, they gave the allies a
+reception, which almost assumed the character of a declaration of love,
+on the part of the fair ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, for all the
+soldiers and officers of the allied army. In a strange confusion of
+ideas, these warriors, who had certainly entered France as enemies,
+seemed to these fair ones to be a part of the beloved Bourbons; and they
+loved them with almost the same love they lavished upon the royal family
+itself. During several days they were, in their hearts, the daughters of
+all countries except their own!
+
+Louis XVIII. was himself much displeased with this enthusiasm of the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and openly avowed to Countess
+Ducayla his dissatisfaction with the ridiculous and contemptible
+behavior of these ladies at that time. He was even of the opinion that
+it was calculated to injure his cause, as the nation had then not yet
+pronounced in his favor.
+
+"They should," said he, "have received the allies with a dignified
+reserve, without frivolous demonstrations, and without this
+inconsiderate devotion. Such a demeanor would have inspired them with
+respect for the nation, whereas they now leave Paris with the conviction
+that we are still--as we were fifty years ago--the most giddy and
+frivolous people of Europe. You particularly, ladies--you have
+compromised yourselves in an incomprehensible manner. The allies seemed
+to you so lovable _en masse,_ that you gave yourselves the appearance of
+also loving them _en détail_; and this has occasioned reports concerning
+you which do little honor to French ladies!"
+
+"But, _mon Dieu!_" replied Countess Ducayla to her royal friend, "we
+wished to show them a well-earned gratitude for the benefit they
+conferred in restoring to us your majesty; we wished to offer them
+freely what we, tired of resistance, were at last compelled to accord to
+the tyrants of the republic and the sabre-heroes of the empire! None of
+us can regret what we have done for our good friends the allies!"
+
+Nevertheless, that which the ladies "had done for their good friends the
+allies" was the occasion of many annoying family scenes, and the
+husbands who did not fully participate in the enthusiasm of their wives
+were of the opinion that they had good cause to complain of their
+inordinate zeal.
+
+Count G----, among others, had married a young and beautiful lady a few
+days before the restoration. She, in her youthful innocence, was
+entirely indifferent to political matters; but her step-father, her
+step-mother, and her husband, Count G----, were royalists of the
+first water.
+
+On the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris, step-father,
+step-mother, and husband, in common with all good legitimists, hurried
+forward to welcome "their good friends," and each of them returned to
+their dwelling with a stranger--the husband with an Englishman, the
+step-mother with a Prussian, and the step-father with an Austrian. The
+three endeavored to outdo each other in the attentions which they
+showered upon the guests they had the good fortune to possess. The
+little countess alone remained indifferent, in the midst of the joy of
+her family. They reproached her with having too little attachment for
+the good cause, and exhorted her to do everything in her power to
+entertain the gallant men who had restored to France her king.
+
+The husband requested the Englishman to instruct the young countess in
+riding; the marquise begged the Prussian to escort her daughter to the
+ball, and teach her the German waltz; and, finally, the marquis, who had
+discovered a fine taste for paintings in the Austrian, appealed to this
+gentleman to conduct the young wife through the picture-galleries.
+
+In short, every opportunity was given the young countess to commit a
+folly, or rather three follies, for she did not like to give the
+preference to any one of the three strangers. She was young, and
+inexperienced in matters of this kind. Her triple intrigue was,
+therefore, soon discovered, and betrayed to her family; and now husband,
+step-father, and step-mother, were exasperated. This exceeded even the
+demands of their royalism; and they showered reproaches on the head of
+the young wife.
+
+"It is not my fault!" cried she, sobbing. "I only did what you
+commanded. You ordered me to do everything in my power to entertain
+these gentlemen, and I could therefore refuse them nothing."
+
+But there were also cases in which the advances of the enthusiastic
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were repelled. Even the high-born and
+haughty Marquise M---- was to experience this mortification. She stepped
+before the sullen, sombre veterans of the Old Guard of the empire, who
+had just allowed Count d'Artois to pass before their ranks in dead
+silence. She ardently appealed to their love for the dynasty of their
+fathers, and, in her enthusiasm for royalism, went so far as to offer
+herself as a reward to him who should first cry _"Vive le roi!"_ But the
+faithful soldiers of the emperor stood unmoved by this generous offer,
+and the silence remained unbroken by the lowest cry!
+
+The princes who stood at the head of the allied armies were, of course,
+the objects of the most ardent enthusiasm of the royalist ladies; but it
+was, above all, with them that they found the least encouragement. The
+Emperor of Austria was too much occupied with the future of his daughter
+and grandson, and the King of Prussia was too grave and severe, to find
+any pleasure in the coquetries of women. The young Emperor Alexander of
+Russia, therefore, became the chief object of their enthusiasm and love.
+But their enthusiasm also met with a poor recompense in this quarter.
+Almost distrustfully, the czar held himself aloof from the ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain; and yet it was they who had decided the fate of
+France with him, and induced him to give his vote for the Bourbons; for
+until then it had remained undetermined whom the allies should call to
+the throne of France.
+
+In his inmost heart, the Emperor of Russia desired to see the
+universally-beloved Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, elevated to
+the vacant throne. The letter with which Eugene replied to the
+proposition of the allies, tendering him the ducal crown of Genoa, had
+won for Josephine's son the love and esteem of the czar for all time.
+Alexander had himself written to Eugene, and proffered him, in the name
+of the allies, a duchy of Genoa, if he would desert Napoleon, and take
+sides with the allies. Eugene Beauharnais had replied to him in the
+following letter:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"SIRE,--I have received your majesty's propositions. They are
+undoubtedly very favorable, but they are powerless to change my
+resolution. I must have known how to express my thoughts but poorly when
+I had the honor of seeing you, if your majesty can believe that I could
+sully my honor for any, even the highest, reward. Neither the prospect
+of possessing the crown of the duchy of Genoa, nor that of the kingdom
+of Italy, can induce me to become a traitor. The example of the King of
+Naples cannot mislead me; I will rather be a plain soldier than a
+traitorous prince.
+
+"The emperor, you say, has done me injustice; I have forgotten it; I
+only remember his benefits. I owe all to him--my rank, my titles, and
+my fortune, and I owe to him that which I prefer to all else--that which
+your indulgence calls my renown. I shall, therefore, serve him as long
+as I live; my person is his, as is my heart. May my sword break in my
+hands, if it could ever turn against the emperor, or against France! I
+trust that my well-grounded refusal will at least secure to me the
+respect of your imperial majesty. I am, etc."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor of Austria, on the other hand, ardently desired to secure
+the throne of France to his grandson, the King of Rome, under the
+regency of the Empress Marie Louise; but he did not venture to make this
+demand openly and without reservation of his allies, whose action he had
+promised to approve and ratify. The appeals of the Duke of Cadore, who
+had been sent to her father by Marie Louise from Blois, urging the
+emperor to look after her interests, and to demand of the allies that
+they should assure the crown to herself and son, were, therefore,
+fruitless.
+
+The emperor assured his daughter's ambassador that he had reason to hope
+for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist on any action
+in her behalf.
+
+"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my son-in-law,
+and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."
+
+"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice is
+required at your hands."
+
+"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor, "to
+sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised the allies
+to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to consent to all
+they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count Metternich, is at this
+moment with them, and I shall ratify everything which he has
+signed[30]."
+
+[Footnote 30: Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.]
+
+But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should sign for
+him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome was to be the
+King of France.
+
+But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this hope.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in Talleyrand's
+house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd French diplomat,
+who well knew how much easier it would be to bend the will of the
+Agamemnon of the holy alliance[31] to his wishes, when he should have
+him in hand, as it were, day and night. In offering the emperor his
+hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention to make him his prisoner,
+body and soul, and to use him to his own advantage.
+
+[Footnote 31: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité.]
+
+It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to concert
+measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had transformed himself
+into the zealous legitimist of to-day.
+
+Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the Russian
+emperor, and he succeeded.
+
+While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet,
+Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de Lemallé--endeavor
+to make a great stroke. The emperor is gallant, and what he denies to
+diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to the ladies."
+
+He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's cabinet
+alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees, and stretched
+out her arms.
+
+With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened forward to
+assist her to rise.
+
+"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A noble lady never has
+occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."
+
+"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it is my
+purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you alone can
+restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess Louis XVIII. once
+more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to us!"
+
+"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the Bourbon
+family?"
+
+"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole love!"
+
+"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies filled
+with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"
+
+"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis XVIII.,
+and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back. Let the
+legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be done[32]."
+
+[Footnote 32: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 179.]
+
+And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the legislative
+bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to communicate the hopes
+with which the emperor had inspired her to all Paris; on the evening
+after her interview with the emperor, she gave a grand _soirée_, to
+which she invited the most beautiful ladies of her party, and a number
+of senators.
+
+"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap the
+gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not know
+that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen vows?"
+
+On the following day the senate assembled, and elected a provisional
+government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of Dalberg, the Marquis
+of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the Abbé Montesquieu. The senate
+and the new provisional government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed
+from the throne, and recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus
+publicly and solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name
+of the French people, it at the same time testified to its own
+unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with its
+recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the salary
+which they had hitherto received, should be continued to them for life."
+While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took care to pay themselves
+for their trouble, and to secure their own future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.
+
+The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate and
+provisional government as the declaration of the people, and recalled to
+the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count de Lille, had so
+long languished in exile at Hartwell.
+
+The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to the
+decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of Rome, to be
+robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to fall from his
+daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as much astonished at
+this result as Marie Louise, for, until their entrance into Paris, the
+allies had flattered the Austrian emperor with the hope that the crown
+of France would be secured to his daughter and grandson. The emperor's
+astonishment at this turn of affairs was made the subject of a
+caricature, which, on the day of the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was
+affixed to the same walls on which Chateaubriand's enthusiastic
+_brochure_ concerning the Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of
+which thousands of copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the
+Emperor of Austria was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage;
+the Emperor Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England
+as postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up behind
+as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the carriage,
+holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of Austria,
+"Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And _taken me in_," was the
+reply of Francis I.
+
+The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was great, now
+that their king was at last restored to them, and they eagerly embraced
+every means of showing their gratitude to the Emperor of Russia. But
+Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to their homage; he even went
+so far as to avoid attending the entertainments given by the new king at
+the Tuileries, and society was shocked at seeing the emperor openly
+displaying his sympathy for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and
+repairing to Malmaison, instead of appearing at the Tuileries.
+
+Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet to
+inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the Faubourg St.
+Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's maid-of-honor, as he
+was in the habit of doing from time to time, for the purpose of
+discussing the queen's interests with her.
+
+"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards your
+majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It has even
+caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said he to me,
+recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high circles of
+society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay about it; it is
+feared that he is there subjected to influences to which policy
+requires he should not be exposed.'"
+
+"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor,
+laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the Faubourg
+St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that they have not
+made a conquest of me! I prefer the noble qualities of the soul to all
+outward appearances; and I find united in the Empress Josephine, in the
+Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene, all that is admirable and
+lovable. I am better pleased to be here with you in quiet, confidential
+intercourse, than with those who really demean themselves as though they
+were crazed, and who, instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared
+for them, are only intent on destroying their enemies, and have
+commenced with those who formerly accorded them such generous
+protection; they really weary one with their extravagances.
+
+"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of the
+conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew how far
+their amiability could extend; but their heart is undoubtedly no longer
+their own. I am therefore on my guard against being deceived by it, and
+I fancy these ladies love to please so well, that they are even angry
+with those who respond to the attentions which are so lavishly showered
+on them, with conventional politeness only."
+
+Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against the
+emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by the
+manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it was but
+natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm for a young
+emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light, and that they must
+necessarily, even without being coquettish, ardently desire to be
+noticed by him.
+
+"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these ladies
+only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart palpitate? I seek
+mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those who display a desire to
+exercise a control over my heart; in this I see nothing but self-love,
+and I hold myself aloof from such contact."
+
+While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
+lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the returned king of
+the boundless delight of his people, this people was already beginning
+to grumble. The allies had now completed their task, they had restored
+to France its legitimate king, and they now put the finishing-touch to
+their work by providing in the treaty, that France should be narrowed
+down to the boundaries it had had before the revolution.
+
+France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers. From the
+weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which they had been
+compelled to accord to the strength of the empire.
+
+All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much French
+blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be given up, and
+the great, extended France was to shrink back into the France it had
+been thirty years before! It was this that made the people murmur. The
+Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they had grown weary of endless
+wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the conquests they had made under
+their emperor. The surrender of these conquests wounded the national
+pride, and they were angry with their king for being so ready to put
+this shame upon France--for holding the crown of France in higher
+estimation than the honor of France!
+
+It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most bitterly felt
+the disgrace that attached to him in this re-establishment of France
+within its ancient boundaries, and he had endeavored to protest in every
+way against this demand of the allies. But his representative had been
+made to understand that if Louis XVIII. could not content himself with
+the France the allies were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to
+relinquish it to Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to
+yield to necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while
+his courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
+he was heard to whisper, "_Nos chers amis les ennemis_[33]!"
+
+[Footnote 33: "Our dear friends the enemies!"]
+
+Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great reluctance,
+and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII. consented to the
+demands made by the allies in behalf of the family of Napoleon. But the
+Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended the rights of the Queen of
+Holland and her children against the ill-will of the Bourbons, the
+dislike of the royalists, and the disinclination of the allies, alike.
+The family of the emperor owed it to him and to his firmness alone that
+the article of the treaty of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII.
+agreed "that the titles and dignities of all the members of the family
+of the Emperor Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not
+be deprived of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.
+
+It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last succeeded in
+obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate and a title, that
+secured her position. King Louis finally yielded to his urgent
+solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the title of Duchess of St.
+Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.
+
+But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under the
+pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given him his
+throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have forgotten as
+willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of the empire.
+
+For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep, and were
+not a little surprised to find that the world had progressed in the
+meanwhile.
+
+According to their ideas, every thing must have remained standing at the
+point where they had left it twenty years before; and they were at least
+determined to ignore all that had happened in the interval. King Louis
+therefore signed his first act as in "the nineteenth" year of his reign,
+and endeavored in all things to keep up a semblance of the continuation
+of his reign since the year 1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which
+King Louis appointed Hortense Duchess of St. Leu were drawn up in a
+manner offensive to the queen, for they contained the following: "The
+king appoints Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais Duchess of St. Leu."
+
+The queen refused to accept this title, under the circumstances, and
+rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had angrily
+demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier, consented to draw up
+the letters-patent in a different style. They read: "The king appoints
+Hortense Eugénie, included in the treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess
+of St. Leu." This was, to be sure, merely a negative and disguised
+recognition of the former rank of the queen; but it was, at least no
+longer a degradation to accept it.
+
+The Viceroy of Italy, the noble Eugene--who was universally beloved, and
+who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the czar, to secure his
+future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much annoyance and perplexity.
+
+The king could not refuse to recognize the brave hero of the empire and
+the son-in-law of the King of Bavaria, who was one of the allies; and,
+as Eugene desired an audience of the king, it was accorded him at once.
+
+But how was he to be received? With what title was Napoleon's step-son,
+the Viceroy of Italy, to be addressed? It would have been altogether too
+ridiculous to repeat the absurdity contained in Hortense's
+letters-patent, and call Eugene "Viscount de Beauharnais;" but to accord
+him the royal title would have compromised the dignity of the
+legitimate dynasty. A brilliant solution of this difficult question
+suggested itself to King Louis. When the Duke d'Aumont conducted Prince
+Eugene to the royal presence, the king advanced, with a cordial smile,
+and saluted him with the words, "M. Marshal of France, I am happy to
+see you."
+
+Eugene, who was on the point of making his salutation, remained silent,
+and looked over his shoulder to see whom the king was speaking with.
+Louis XVIII. smiled, and continued: "You, my dear sir, are a marshal of
+France. I appoint you to this dignity."
+
+"Sire," said Eugene, bowing profoundly, "I am much obliged to your
+majesty for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the rank to
+which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the high title
+with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I must
+decline it[34]."
+
+[Footnote 34: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 267.]
+
+The king's stratagem had thus come to grief, and Eugene left the royal
+presence with flying colors. He was not under the necessity of accepting
+benefits from the King of France, for his step-father, the King of
+Bavaria, made Eugene a prince of the royal house of Bavaria, and created
+for him the duchy of Leuchtenberg. Hither Eugene retired, and lived
+there, surrounded by his wife and children, in peace and tranquillity,
+until death tore him from the arms of his sorrowing family, in the
+year 1824.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL.
+
+The restoration, that had overthrown so many of the great, and that was
+destined to restore to the light so many names that had lain buried in
+obscurity, now brought back to Paris a person who had been banished by
+Napoleon, and who had been adding new lustre and renown to her name in a
+foreign land. This personage was Madame de Staël, the daughter of
+Necker, the renowned poetess of "Corinne" and "Delphine."
+
+It had been a long and bitter struggle between Madame de Staël and the
+mighty Emperor of the French; and Madame de Staël, with her genius and
+her impassioned eloquence, and adorned with the laurel-wreath of her
+exile, had perhaps done Napoleon more harm than a whole army of his
+enemies. Intense hatred existed on both sides, and yet it had depended
+on Napoleon alone to transform this hatred into love. For Madame de
+Staël had been disposed to lavish the whole impassioned enthusiasm of
+her heart upon the young hero of Marengo and Arcola--quite disposed to
+become the Egeria of this Numa Pompilius. In the warm impulse of her
+stormy imagination, Madame de Staël, in reference to Bonaparte, had
+even, in a slight measure, been regardless of her position as a lady,
+and had only remembered that she was a poetess, and that, as such, it
+became her well to celebrate the hero, and to bestow on the luminous
+constellation that was rising over France the glowing dithyrambic of her
+greetings.
+
+Madame de Staël had, therefore, not waited for Napoleon to seek her, but
+had made the first advances, and sought him.
+
+To the returning victor of Italy she wrote letters filled with
+impassioned enthusiasm; but these letters afforded the youthful general
+but little pleasure. In the midst of the din of battle and the grand
+schemes with which he was continually engaged, Bonaparte found but
+little time to occupy himself with the poetical works of Madame de
+Staël. He knew of her nothing more than that she was the daughter of the
+minister Necker, and that was no recommendation in Napoleon's eyes, for
+he felt little respect for Necker's genius, and even went so far as to
+call him the instigator of the great revolution. It was, therefore, with
+astonishment that the young general received the enthusiastic letter of
+the poetess; and, while showing it to some of his intimate friends, he
+said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "Do you understand these
+extravagances? This woman is foolish!"
+
+But Madame de Staël did not allow herself to be dismayed by Bonaparte's
+coldness and silence--she continued to write new and more
+glowing letters.
+
+In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate enthusiasm
+as to say, that it was a great error in human institutions that the
+gentle and quiet Josephine had united her faith with his; that she,
+Madame de Staël, and Bonaparte, were born for each other, and that
+Nature seemed to have created a soul of fire like hers, in order that it
+might worship a hero such as he was.
+
+Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he threw it
+in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of sentiment, should
+dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not answer these letters!"
+
+He did not answer them, but Madame de Staël did not, or rather would
+not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give up a resolution
+once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame de Staël was now also
+determined to have her way, and to approach Bonaparte despite his
+resistance.
+
+And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all obstacles, and
+the interview, so long wished for by her, and so long avoided by him, at
+last took place. Madame de Staël was introduced at the Tuileries, and
+received by Bonaparte and his wife. The personal appearance of this
+intellectual woman was, however, but little calculated to overcome
+Bonaparte's prejudice. The costume of Madame de Staël was on this
+occasion, as it always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and
+Napoleon loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired.
+In this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Staël gave free scope to her
+wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do, she only
+succeeded in depressing him.
+
+It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de Staël, in her
+ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay her a compliment, that
+Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat indiscreet question: "Who is
+in your eyes the greatest woman?" with the sarcastic reply, "She who
+bears the most children to the state."
+
+Madame de Staël had come with a heart full of enthusiasm; in her address
+to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to earth;" she had come
+an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an offended woman. Her wounded
+vanity never forgave the answer which seemed to make her ridiculous. She
+avenged herself, in her drawing-room, by the biting _bon mots_ which she
+hurled at Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully
+repeated to the first consul.
+
+But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded against the
+hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely than weapons of
+steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame de Staël was his
+superior, and the consciousness of this embittered Bonaparte all the
+more against the lady, who dared prick the heel of Achilles with the
+needle of her wit, and strike at the very point where he was most
+sensitive.
+
+A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest geniuses
+of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both with equal
+bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side, and could punish
+the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.
+
+He banished Madame de Staël from Paris, and soon afterward even from
+France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the praises of her
+"god descended from heaven," now went into exile his enemy and a
+royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius, in making
+proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the minds of men an
+invisible but none the less formidable army against her enemy the
+great Napoleon.
+
+Madame de Staël soon gave still greater weight to the flaming eruptions
+of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing renown and greatness;
+and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon became as redoubtable an
+opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia, or Austria, could be.
+
+But in the midst of the triumphs she was celebrating in her exile,
+Madame de Staël soon began to long ardently to return to France, which
+she loved all the more for having been compelled to leave it. She
+therefore used all the influence she possessed in Paris, to obtain from
+Napoleon permission to return to her home, but the emperor remained
+inexorable, even after having read Delphine.
+
+"I love," said he, "women who make men of themselves just as little as I
+love effeminate men. There is an appropriate _rôle_ for every one in the
+world. Of what use is this vagabondizing of fantasy? What does it
+accomplish? Nothing! All this is nothing but do rangement of mind and
+feeling. I dislike women who throw themselves in my arms, and for this
+reason, if for no other, I dislike this woman, who is certainly one of
+that number."
+
+Madame de Staël's petitions to be permitted to return to Paris were
+therefore rejected, but she was as little disposed to abandon her
+purpose now as she was at the time she sought to gain Bonaparte's
+good-will. She continued to make attempts to achieve her aim, for it was
+not only her country that she wished to reconquer, but also a million
+francs which she wished to have paid to her out of the French treasury.
+
+Her father, Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a million
+francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy bread for the
+starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in writing, that this
+"national debt of France" should be returned.
+
+But the revolution that shattered the throne of the unfortunate king,
+also buried beneath the ruins of the olden time the promises and oaths
+that had been written on parchment and paper.
+
+Madame de Staël now demanded that the emperor should fulfil the promises
+of the overthrown king, and that the heir of the throne of the Bourbons
+should assume the obligations into which a Bourbon had entered with
+her father.
+
+She had once called Napoleon a god descended from heaven; and she even
+now wished that he might still prove a god for her, namely, the god
+Pluto, who should pour out a million upon her from his horn of plenty.
+
+As she could not go to France herself, she sent her son to plead with
+the emperor, for herself and her children.
+
+Well knowing, however, how difficult it would be, even for her son to
+secure an audience of the emperor, she addressed herself to Queen
+Hortense in eloquent letters imploring her to exert her influence in her
+son's behalf.
+
+Hortense, ever full of pity for misfortune, felt the warmest sympathy
+and admiration for the genius of the great poetess, and interceded for
+Madame de Staël with great courage and eloquence. She alone ventured,
+regardless of Napoleon's frowns and displeasure, to plead the cause of
+the poor exile again and again, and to solicit her recall to France, as
+a simple act of justice; she even went so far in her generosity as to
+extend the hospitalities of her drawing-rooms to the poetess's son, who
+was avoided and fled from by every one else.
+
+Hortense's soft entreaties and representations were at last successful
+in soothing the emperor's anger. He allowed Madame de Staël to return to
+France, on the condition that she should never come to Paris or its
+vicinity; he then also accorded Madame de Staël's son the long-sought
+favor of an audience.
+
+This interview of Napoleon with Madame de Staël's son is as remarkable
+as it is original. On this occasion, Napoleon openly expressed his
+dislike and even his hatred as well of Madame de Staël as of her father,
+although he listened with generous composure to the warm defence of the
+son and grandson.
+
+Young Staël told the emperor of his mother's longing to return to her
+home, and touchingly portrayed the sadness and unhappiness of her exile.
+
+"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the emperor, "your mother is in a state of
+exaltation. I do not say that she is a bad woman. She has wit, and much
+intellect, perhaps too much, but hers is an inconsiderate, an
+insubordinate spirit. She has grown up in the chaos of a falling
+monarchy, and of a revolution, and she has amalgamized the two in her
+mind. This is all a source of danger; she would make proselytes, she
+must be watched; she does not love me. The interests of those whom she
+might compromise, require that I should not permit her to return to
+Paris. If I should allow her to do so, she would place me under the
+necessity of sending her to Bicétre, or of imprisoning her in the
+Temple, before six months elapsed; that would be extremely disagreeable,
+for it would cause a sensation, and injure me in the public opinion.
+Inform your mother that my resolution is irrevocable. While I live, she
+shall not return to Paris."
+
+It was in vain that young Staël assured him in his mother's name, that
+she would avoid giving him the least occasion for displeasure, and that
+she would live in complete retirement if permitted to return to Paris.
+
+"Ah, yes! I know the value of fine promises!" exclaimed the emperor. "I
+know what the result would be, and I repeat it, it cannot be! She would
+be the rallying-point of the whole Faubourg St. Germain. She live in
+retirement! Visits would be made her, and she would return them; she
+would commit a thousand indiscretions, and say a thousand humorous
+things, to which she attaches no importance, but which annoy me. My
+government is no jest, I take every thing seriously; I wish this to be
+understood, and you may proclaim it to the whole world!"
+
+Young Staël had, however, the courage to continue his entreaties; he
+even went so far as to inquire in all humility for the grounds of the
+emperor's ill-will against his mother. He said he had been assured that
+Necker's last work was more particularly the cause of the emperor's
+displeasure, and that he believed Madame de Staël had assisted in
+writing it. This was, however, not so, and he could solemnly assure the
+emperor that his mother had taken no part in it whatever. Besides,
+Necker had also done full justice to the emperor in this work.
+
+"Justice, indeed! He calls me the 'necessary man.' The necessary man!
+and yet, according to his book, the first step necessary to be taken,
+was to take off this necessary man's head! Yes, I was necessary to
+repair all that your grandfather had destroyed! It is he who overthrew
+the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold!"
+
+"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then not
+aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he defended
+the king!"
+
+"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when he lies
+in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then maintain that
+I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that M. Necker defended
+Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak prove nothing.
+Robespierre's property was also confiscated. Not even Robespierre,
+Marat, and Danton, have brought such misery upon France as Necker; he it
+is who made the revolution. You did not see it, but I was present in
+those days of horror and public distress; but I give you my word that
+they shall return no more while I live! Your schemers write out their
+utopias, the simple-minded read these dreams, they are printed and
+believed in; the common welfare is in everybody's mouth, and soon there
+is no more bread for the people; it revolts, and that is the usual
+result of all these fine theories! Your grandfather is to blame for the
+orgies that brought France to desperation."
+
+Then lowering his voice, from the excited, almost angry tone in which he
+had been speaking, to a milder one, the emperor approached the young
+man, who stood before him, pale, and visibly agitated. With that
+charming air of friendly intimacy that no one knew so well how to assume
+as Napoleon, he gently pinched the tip of the young man's ear, the
+emperor's usual way of making peace with any one to whom he wished well,
+after a little difficulty.
+
+"You are still young," said he; "if you possessed my age and experience,
+you would judge of these matters differently. Your candor has not
+offended, but pleased me; I like to see a son defend his mother's cause!
+Your mother has entrusted you with a very difficult commission, and you
+have executed it with much spirit. It gives me pleasure to have
+conversed with you, for I love the young when they are straightforward
+and not too 'argumentative.' But I can nevertheless give you no false
+hopes! You will accomplish nothing! If your mother were in prison, I
+should not hesitate to grant you her release. But she is in exile, and
+nothing can induce me to recall her."
+
+"But, sire, is one not quite as unhappy far from home and friends, as in
+prison?"
+
+"Ah, bah! those are romantic notions! You have heard that said about
+your mother. She is truly greatly to be pitied. With the exception of
+Paris, she has the whole of Europe for her prison!"
+
+"But, sire, all her friends are in Paris!"
+
+"With her intellect, she will be able to acquire new ones everywhere.
+Moreover, I cannot understand why she should desire to be in Paris. Why
+does she so long to place herself in the immediate reach of tyranny? You
+see I pronounce the decisive word! I am really unable to comprehend it.
+Can she not go to Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London
+would be the right place! There she can perpetrate libels whenever she
+pleases. At all of these places I will leave her undisturbed with the
+greatest pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate
+those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what would
+happen, if I should permit your mother to return to Paris. She would
+commit new follies; she would corrupt those who surround me; she would
+corrupt Garat, as she once corrupted the tribunal; of course, she would
+promise all things, but she would, nevertheless, not avoid engaging in
+politics."
+
+"Sire," I can assure you that my mother does not occupy herself with
+politics at all; she devotes herself exclusively to the society of her
+friends, and to literature."
+
+"That is the right word, and I fully understand it. One talks politics
+while talking of literature, of morals, of the fine arts, and of every
+conceivable thing! If your mother were in Paris, her latest _bon mots_
+and phrases would be recited to me daily; perhaps they would be only
+invented; but I tell you I will have nothing of the kind in the city in
+which I reside! It would be best for her to go to London; advise her to
+do so. As far as your grandfather is concerned, I have certainly not
+said too much; M. Necker had no administrative ability. Once more,
+inform your mother that I shall never permit her to return to Paris."
+
+"But if sacred interests should require her presence here for a few
+days, your majesty would at least--"
+
+"What? Sacred interests? What does that mean?"
+
+"Sire," the presence of my mother will be necessary, in order to procure
+from your majesty's government the return of a sacred debt."
+
+"Ah, bah! sacred! Are not all the debts of the state sacred?"
+
+"Without doubt, sire; but ours is accompanied by peculiar
+circumstances."
+
+"Peculiar circumstances!" exclaimed the emperor, rising to terminate
+the long interview, that began to weary him. "What creditor of the state
+does not say the same of his debt? Moreover, I know too little of your
+relations toward my government. This matter does not concern me, and I
+will not be mixed up in it. If the laws are for you, all will go well
+without my interference; but if it requires influence, I shall have
+nothing to do with it, for I should be rather against than for you!"
+
+"Sire," said young Staël, venturing to speak once more, as the emperor
+was on the point of leaving, "sire, my brother and I were anxious to
+settle in France; but how could we live in a land in which our mother
+would not be allowed to live with us everywhere?"
+
+Already standing on the threshold of the door, the emperor turned to him
+hastily. "I have no desire whatever to have you settle here," said he;
+"on the contrary. I advise you not to do so. Go to England. There they
+have a _penchant_ for Genevese, parlor-politicians, etc.; therefore, go
+to England; for I must say, I should be rather ill than well disposed
+toward you[35]!"
+
+[Footnote 35: Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL'S RETURN TO PARIS.
+
+Madame de Staël returned to her cherished France with the restoration.
+She came back thirsting for new honor and renown, and determined, above
+all, to have her work republished in Germany, its publication having
+been once suppressed by the imperial police. She entertained the
+pleasing hope that the new court would forget that she was Necker's
+daughter, receive her with open arms, and accord her the influence to
+which her active mind and genius entitled her.
+
+But she was laboring under an error, by which she was not destined to be
+long deceived. She was received at court with the cold politeness which
+is more terrible than insult. The king, while speaking of her with his
+friends, called Madame de Staël "a Chateaubriand in petticoats." The
+Duchess d'Angoulême seemed never to see the celebrated poetess, and
+never addressed a word to her; the rest of the court met Madame de Staël
+armed to the teeth with all the hatred and prejudices of the olden time.
+
+It was also in vain that Madame de Staël endeavored to act an important
+part at the new court; they refused to regard her as an authority or
+power, but treated her as a mere authoress; her counsel was ridiculed,
+and they dared even to question the renown of M. Necker.
+
+"I am unfortunate," said Madame de Staël to Countess Ducayla; "Napoleon
+hated me because he believed me to possess intellect; these people repel
+me because I at least possess ordinary human understanding! I can
+certainly get on very well without them; but, as my presence displeases
+them, I shall, at least, endeavor to get my money from them."
+
+The "sacred debt" had not been paid under the empire, and it was now
+Madame de Staël's intention to obtain from the king what the emperor
+had refused.
+
+She was well aware of the influence which Countess Ducayla exercised
+over Louis XVIII., and she now hastened to call on the beautiful
+countess--whose acquaintance she had made under peculiar circumstances,
+in a romantic love intrigue--in order to renew the friendship they had
+then vowed to each other.
+
+The countess had not forgotten this friendship, and she was now grateful
+for the service Madame de Staël had then shown her. She helped to secure
+the liquidation of the sacred debt, and, upon the order of King Louis,
+the million was paid over to Madame de Staël. "But," says the countess,
+in her memoirs, "I believe the recovery of this million cost Madame de
+Staël four hundred thousand francs, besides a set of jewelry that was
+worth at least one hundred thousand."
+
+The countess's purse and the jewelry case, however, doubtlessly bore
+evidence that she might as well have said "I know" as "I believe."
+
+Besides the four hundred thousand francs and the jewelry, Madame de
+Staël also gave the countess a piece of advice. "Make the most of the
+favor you now enjoy," said she to her; "but do so quickly, for, as
+matters are now conducted, I fear that the restoration will soon have to
+be restored."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked the countess, smiling.
+
+"I mean that, with the exception of the king, who perhaps does not say
+all he thinks, the others are still doing precisely as they always have
+done, and Heaven knows to what extremities their folly is destined to
+bring them! They mock at the old soldiers and assist the young priests,
+and this is the best means of ruining France."
+
+Countess Ducayla considered this prediction of her intellectual friend
+as a mere cloud with which discontent and disappointed ambition had
+obscured the otherwise clear vision of Madame de Staël, and ridiculed
+the idea, little dreaming how soon her words were to be fulfilled.
+
+Madame de Staël consoled herself for her cold reception at court, by
+receiving the best society of Paris in her parlors, and entertaining
+them with biting _bon mots_ and witty _persiflage_, at the expense of
+the grand notabilities, who had suddenly arisen with their imposing
+genealogical trees out of the ruins and oblivion of the past.
+
+Madame de Staël now also remembered the kindness Queen Hortense had
+shown her during her exile; and not to her only, but also to her friend,
+Madame Récamier, who had also been exiled by Napoleon, not, however, as
+his enemies said, "because she was Madame de Staël's friend," but
+simply because she patronized and belonged to the so-called "little
+church." The "little church" was an organization born of the spirit of
+opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a portion of the Catholic
+clergy, and was one of those things appertaining to the internal
+relations of France that were most annoying and disagreeable to
+the emperor.
+
+Queen Hortense had espoused the cause of Madame de Staël and of Madame
+Récamier with generous warmth. She had eloquently interceded for the
+recall of both from their exile; and, now that the course of events had
+restored them to their home, both ladies came to the queen to thank her
+for her kindness and generosity.
+
+Louise de Cochelet has described this visit of Madame de Staël so
+wittily, with so much _naïveté_, and with such peculiar local coloring,
+that we cannot refrain from laying a literal translation of the same
+before the reader.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MADAME DE STAËL'S VISIT TO QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+Louise de Cochelet relates as follows: "Madame de Staël and Madame
+Récamier had begged permission of the queen to visit her, for the
+purpose of tendering their thanks. The queen invited them to visit her
+at St. Leu, on the following day.
+
+"She asked my advice as to which of the members of her social circle
+were best qualified to cope with Madame de Staël.
+
+"'I, for my part,' said the queen, 'have not the courage to take the
+lead in the conversation; one cannot be very intellectual when sad at
+heart, and I fear my dullness will infect the others.'
+
+"We let quite a number of amiable persons pass before us in review, and
+I amused myself at the mention of each new name, by saying, 'He is too
+dull for Madame de Staël.'
+
+"The queen laughed, and the list of those who were to be invited was at
+last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two ladies in great
+suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the queen, of being
+intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of conjuring up a somewhat
+embarrassed and stupid expression to our faces. We presented the
+appearance of actors on the stage looking at each other, while awaiting
+the rise of the curtain. Jests and _bon mots_ followed each other in
+rapid succession until the arrival of the carriage recalled to our faces
+an expression of official earnestness.
+
+"Madame Récamier, still young, and very handsome, and with an expression
+of _naïveté_ in her charming countenance, made the impression on me of
+being a young lady in love, carefully watched over by too severe a
+_duenna,_ her timid, gentle manner contrasted so strongly with the
+somewhat too masculine self-consciousness of her companion. Madame de
+Staël is, however, generally admitted to have been good and kind,
+particularly to this friend, and I only speak of the impression she made
+on one to whom she was a stranger, at first sight.
+
+"Madame de Staël's extremely dark complexion, her original toilet, her
+perfectly bare shoulders, of which either might have been very
+beautiful, but which harmonized very poorly with each other; her whole
+_ensemble_ was far from approximating to the standard of the ideal I had
+formed of the authoress of Delphine and Corinne. I had almost hoped to
+find in her one of the heroines she had so beautifully portrayed, and I
+was therefore struck dumb with astonishment. But, after the first shock,
+I was at least compelled to acknowledge that she possessed very
+beautiful and expressive eyes; and yet it seemed impossible for me to
+find anything in her countenance on which love could fasten, although I
+have been told that she has often inspired that sentiment.
+
+"When I afterward expressed my astonishment to the queen, she replied:
+'It is, perhaps, because she is capable of such great love herself, that
+she succeeds in inspiring others with love; moreover, it flatters a
+man's self-love to be noticed by such a woman, and, in the end, one can
+dispense with beauty, when one has Madame de Staël's intellect.'
+
+"The queen inquired after Madame de Staël's daughter, who had not come
+with her, and who was said to be truly charming. I believe the young
+gentlemen of our party could have confronted the beautiful eyes of the
+daughter with still greater amiability than those of the mother, but an
+attack of toothache had prevented her coming.
+
+"After the first compliments and salutations, the queen proposed to the
+ladies to take a look at her park. They seated themselves on the
+cushions of the queen's large _char à banc_, which has become historic
+on account of the many high and celebrated personages who have been
+driven in it at different times. The Emperor Napoleon was, however, not
+one of this number, as he never visited St. Leu; but, with this
+exception, there are few of the great and celebrated who have not been
+seated in it at one time or another.
+
+"As they drove through the park and the forest of Montmorency, in a walk
+only, the conversation was kept up as in the parlor, and the consumption
+of intellectuality was continued. The beautiful neighborhood, that
+reminded one of Switzerland, as it was remarked, was duly admired. Then
+Italy was spoken of. The queen, who had been somewhat _distraite_, and
+had good cause to be somewhat sad, and disposed to commune with herself,
+addressed Madame de Staël with the question, 'You have been in
+Italy, then?'
+
+"Madame de Staël was, as it were, transfixed with dismay, and the
+gentlemen exclaimed with one accord: 'And Corinne? and Corinne?'
+
+"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarrassment, awakening, as it
+were, from her dreams.
+
+"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not read
+Corinne?'
+
+"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it again,'
+and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could understand, she
+abruptly changed the topic of conversation.
+
+"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that the book
+had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in Holland. The
+king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up to her grief,
+believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that it was necessary
+to arouse her from this state of mental dejection at all hazards. It was
+determined that I should read 'Corinne' to her. She was not in a
+condition to pay much attention to it, but she had involuntarily
+retained some remembrance of this romance. Since then, I had several
+times asked permission of the queen to read Corinne to her, but she had
+always refused. 'No, no,' said she, 'not yet; this romance has
+identified itself with my sorrow. Its name alone recalls the most
+fearful period of my whole life. I have not yet the courage to renew
+these painful impressions.'
+
+"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had embarrassed and
+moved the queen so much when she replied to the question addressed to
+her concerning Corinne. But the authoress could, of course, only
+interpret it as indicating indifference for her master-work, and I told
+the queen on the following day that it would have been better to have
+confessed the cause of her confusion to Madame de Staël.
+
+"'Madame de Staël would not have understood me,' said she; 'now, I am
+lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a simpleton, but it was
+not the time to speak of myself, and of my painful reminiscences.'
+
+"The large _char à banc_ was always preferred to the handsomest
+carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of two wooden
+benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each other), because it
+was more favorable for conversation. But it afforded no security against
+inclement weather, and this we were soon to experience. The rain poured
+in streams, and we all returned to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was
+there prepared and offered the ladies, in which they might repair the
+disarrangement of their toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them
+long, kept there by the questions of Madame de Staël concerning the
+queen and her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There
+was now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing,
+hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the display
+of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to admire but a
+moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face to face, like the
+rest of the world, with material life, these two celebrated women, who
+are everywhere sought after, and received with such marked
+consideration. There they are, as wet as myself, and as little poetic.'
+We were really behind the curtain, but it was shortly to rise again.
+
+"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a German accent
+was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed: 'Ah, that is
+Prince Augustus of Prussia!'
+
+"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two ladies had
+therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had come merely to pay
+the queen a visit, and it was so near dinner-time, that politeness
+required that he should be invited to remain. And this was doubtless
+what he wished.
+
+"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Staël on his left.
+The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig on her napkin,
+which she twisted between her fingers while speaking, as was her habit.
+The conversation was animated, and it was amusing to observe Madame de
+Staël gesticulating with the little twig in her fingers. One might have
+supposed that some fairy had given her this talisman, and that her
+genius was dependent upon this little twig.
+
+"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were well
+acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de Staël thought
+it would be a delightful task for an intellectual woman, to turn the
+sultan's head, and then to compel him to give his Turks a constitution.
+After dinner, freedom of the press was also a topic of conversation.
+
+"Madame de Staël astonished me, not only by the brilliancy of her
+genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she treated
+questions of that kind, for until then custom had not allowed women to
+discuss such matters. At entertainments, philosophy, morals, sentiment,
+heroism, and the like, had been the subjects of conversation, but the
+emperor monopolized politics. His era was that of actions, and, we may
+say it with pride, of great actions, while the era that followed was
+essentially that of great words, and of political and literary
+controversies.
+
+"Madame de Staël spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that which is
+right, happen what may.'
+
+"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,' said she,
+'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while doing so.'
+
+"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the reflection of
+inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no longer the woman
+of mind only, but also the woman of heart and feeling, and I
+comprehended at this moment how charming she could be.
+
+"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching the
+emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could not have
+known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go to Elba! Do you
+think he would receive me well? I was born to worship this man, and he
+has repelled me.'
+
+'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor say
+that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could compare his
+labors with the exertions of a man who, having the summit of a steep
+mountain ever before his eyes, strains every nerve to attain it, ever
+toiling painfully upward, and allowing his progress to be arrested by no
+obstacle whatever. "All the worse for those," said he, "who meet me on
+my course--I can show them no consideration."'
+
+"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have extended you
+a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his mountain.'
+
+"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Staël; 'I have been injured in
+his opinion.'
+
+"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him ill, if
+you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed you to be his
+enemy, and he feared you, which was something very unusual for him,'
+added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is unfortunate, you will show
+yourself his friend, and prove yourself to be such, and I am satisfied
+that he will receive you well.'
+
+"Madame de Staël also occupied herself a great deal with the young
+princes, but she met with worse success with them than with us. It was
+perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity, that she showered
+unsuitable questions upon them.
+
+"'Do you love your uncle?'
+
+"'Very much, madame!'
+
+"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'
+
+"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'
+
+'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing with the
+words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'
+
+"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not oftener than
+any other.'
+
+"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and
+precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest
+composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me and
+said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is that what
+you call being intellectual?'
+
+"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all indulged in
+an expression of opinion concerning them, and young Prince Napoleon was
+the one upon whom the ladies had made the least flattering impression,
+but he only ventured to intimate as much in a low voice.
+
+"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this visit. One
+could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its inconsiderateness,
+and its wanderings, but there was nothing pleasing, nothing graceful and
+womanly, in Madame de Staël's manner[36]."
+
+[Footnote 36: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. i., pp.
+429-440.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.
+
+The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last withdrawn from
+the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the independent ruler of France.
+In him, in the returned members of his family, and in the emigrants who
+were pouring into the country from all quarters, was represented the
+old era of France, the era of despotic royal power, of brilliant
+manners, of intrigues, of aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury.
+Opposed to them stood the France of the new era, the generation formed
+by Napoleon and the revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no
+other ancestors than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had
+nothing to relate of the _oeil de boeuf_ and the _petites maisons_, but
+an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the hospitals
+in which their wounds had been healed.
+
+These two parties stood opposed to each other.
+
+Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous warfare at the
+court of Louis XVIII., with this difference, however, that young France,
+hitherto ever victorious, now experienced a continuous series of
+reverses and humiliations. Old France was now victorious. Not victorious
+through its gallantry and merit, but through its past, which it
+endeavored to connect with the present, without considering the chasm
+which lay between.
+
+True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April, that
+none of his subjects should be deprived of their titles and dignities;
+and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and barons, could
+therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad and humiliating
+_rôle_, and they were made to feel that they were only tolerated, and
+not welcome.
+
+The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been entitled to seats in
+the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but the doors of
+these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of the new Napoleonic
+nobility. "The ladies of the old era still retained their _tabouret,_ as
+well as their grand and little _entrée_ to the Tuileries and the Louvre,
+and it would have been considered very arrogant if the duchesses of the
+new era had made claim to similar honors."
+
+It was the Duchess d'Angoulême who took the lead and set the Faubourg
+St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant pretensions in
+ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting enemy of the new era,
+born of the revolution, and of its representatives; it is true, however,
+that she, who was the daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had
+herself so long languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the
+horrors of the revolution in their saddest and most painful features.
+She now determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget
+this era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.
+
+At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the Duchess
+d'Angoulême, who sat next to the King of Bavaria, pointed to the
+Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the prince who married a
+princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness to ally one's self in
+such a manner with that general!"
+
+The duchess did not or would not remember that the King of Bavaria, as
+well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other side, and could
+well hear her words, had also allied themselves with General Bonaparte.
+
+After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had formerly
+occupied in the Tuileries, the duchess asked old Dubois, who had
+formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office under the empire,
+and who now showed her the new and elegant instruments provided by
+Josephine--she asked him: "What has become of my piano?"
+
+This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the duchess was
+surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty years had not
+passed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th of August, 1792,
+the day on which the populace demolished the Tuileries, had never been!
+
+But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and the
+Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than one night
+lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the levee of to-day of
+King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that persons they had known as
+children had grown up since they last saw them, and insisted on treating
+every one as they had done in 1789.
+
+After the Empress Josephine's death, Count d'Artois paid a visit to
+Malmaison, a place that had hardly existed before the revolution, and
+which owed its creation to Josephine's love and taste for art.
+
+The empress, who had a great fondness for botany, had caused magnificent
+greenhouses to be erected at Malmaison; in these all the plants and
+flowers of the world had been collected. Knowing her taste, all the
+princes of Europe had sent her, in the days of her grandeur, in order
+to afford her a moment's gratification, the rarest exotics. The Prince
+Regent of England had even found means, during the war with France, to
+send her a number of rare West-Indian plants. In this manner her
+collection had become the richest and most complete in all Europe.
+
+Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view this
+celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being conducted
+through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he recognized his old
+flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of Trianon!"
+
+And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also returned to
+France with the same ideas with which they had fled the country. They
+endeavored, in all their manners, habits, and pretensions, to begin
+again precisely where they had left off in 1789. They had so lively an
+appreciation of their own merit, that they took no notice whatever of
+other people's, and yet their greatest merit consisted in having
+emigrated.
+
+For this merit they now demanded a reward.
+
+All of these returned emigrants demanded rewards, positions, and
+pensions, and considered it incomprehensible that those who were already
+in possession were not at once deprived of them. Intrigues were the
+order of the day, and in general the representatives of the old era
+succeeded in supplanting those of the new era in offices and pensions as
+well as in court honors. All the high positions in the army were filled
+by the marquises, dukes, and counts, of the old era, who had sewed
+tapestry and picked silk in Coblentz, while the France of the new era
+was fighting on the battle-field, and they now began to teach the
+soldiers of the empire the old drill of 1780.
+
+The etiquette of the olden time was restored, and the same luxurious and
+lascivious disposition prevailed among these cavaliers of the former
+century which had been approved in the _oeil de boeuf_ and in the
+_petites maisons_ of the old era.
+
+These old cavaliers felt contempt for the young Frenchmen of the new era
+on account of their pedantic morality; they scornfully regarded men who
+perhaps had not more than one mistress, and to whom the wife of a friend
+was so sacred, that they never dared to approach her with a
+disrespectful thought even.
+
+These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
+reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of the
+many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which they
+unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their sweetest
+relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the remembrance of the old
+_régime_, and when they spoke of this era, they forgot their age and
+debility, and were once more the young _roués_ of the _oeil de boeuf_.
+
+Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis de
+Chimène and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the frivolous era,
+in which the boudoir and the _petites maisons_ were the battle-field,
+and the myrtle instead of the laurel the reward of victory, while these
+gentlemen were conversing of some occurrence under the old government,
+the Duke de Lauraguais, in order to more nearly fix the date of the
+occurrence of which they were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was
+in the year in which I had my _liaison_ with your wife."
+
+"Ah, yes," replied the marquis, with perfect composure, "that was in the
+year 1776."
+
+Neither of the gentlemen found anything strange in this allusion to the
+past. The _liaison_ in question had been a perfectly commonplace matter,
+and it would have been as ridiculous in the duke to deny it as for the
+marquis to have shown any indignation.
+
+The wisest and most enlightened of all these gentlemen was their head,
+King Louis XVIII. himself.
+
+He was well aware of the errors of those who surrounded him, and placed
+but little confidence in the representatives of the old court. But he
+was nevertheless powerless to withdraw himself from their influence, and
+after he had accorded the people the charter, in opposition to the will
+and opinion of the whole royal family, of his whole court and of his
+ministers, and had sworn to support it in spite of the opposition of
+"Monsieur" and the Prince de Condé, who was in the habit of calling the
+charter "_Mademoiselle la Constitution de 1791,_" Louis withdrew to the
+retirement of his apartments in the Tuileries, and left his minister
+Blacas to attend to the little details of government, the king deeming
+the great ones only worthy of his attention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KING LOUIS XVIII.
+
+King Louis XVIII. was, however, in the retirement of his palace, still
+the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the representatives of the old
+era; he clearly saw many things to which his advisers purposely closed
+their eyes. To his astonishment, he observed that the men who had risen
+to greatness under Bonaparte, and who had fallen to the king along with
+the rest of his inheritance, were not so ridiculous, awkward, and
+foolish, as they had been represented to be.
+
+"I had been made to suppose," said Louis XVIII., "that these generals of
+Bonaparte were peasants and ruffians, but such is not the case. He
+schooled these men well. They are polite, and quite as shrewd as the
+representatives of the old court. We must conduct ourselves very
+cautiously toward them."
+
+This kind of recognition of the past which sometimes escaped Louis
+XVIII., was a subject of bitter displeasure to the gentlemen of the old
+era, and they let the king perceive it.
+
+King Louis felt this, and, in order to conciliate his court, he often
+saw himself compelled to humiliate "the _parvenus_" who had forced
+themselves among the former.
+
+Incessant quarrelling and intriguing within the Tuileries was the
+consequence, and Louis was often dejected, uneasy, and angry, in the
+midst of the splendor that surrounded him.
+
+"I am angry with myself and the others," said he on one occasion to an
+intimate friend. "An invisible and secret power is ever working in
+opposition to my will, frustrating my plans, and paralyzing my
+authority."
+
+"And yet you are king!"
+
+"Undoubtedly I am king!" exclaimed Louis, angrily; "but am I also
+master? The king is he who all his life long receives ambassadors, gives
+tiresome audiences, listens to annihilating discourses, goes in state to
+Notre-Dame, dines in public once a year, and is pompously buried in St.
+Denis when he dies. The master is he who commands and can enforce
+obedience, who puts an end to intriguing, and can silence old women as
+well as priests. Bonaparte was king and master at the same time! His
+ministers were his clerks, the kings his brothers merely his agents, and
+his courtiers nothing more than his servants. His ministers vied with
+his senate in servility, and his _Corps Législatif_ sought to outdo his
+senate and the church in subserviency. He was an extraordinary and an
+enviable man, for he had not only devoted servants and faithful friends,
+but also an accommodating church[37]."
+
+[Footnote 37: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. v., p. 35.]
+
+King Louis XVIII., weary of the incessant intrigues with which his
+courtiers occupied themselves, withdrew himself more and more into the
+retirement of his palace, and left the affairs of state to the care of
+M. de Blacas, who, with all his arrogance and egotism, knew very little
+about governing.
+
+The king preferred to entertain himself with his friends, to read them
+portions of his memoirs, to afford them an opportunity of admiring his
+verses, and to regale them with his witty and not always chaste
+anecdotes; he preferred all these things to tedious and useless disputes
+with his ministers. He had given his people the charter, and his
+ministers might now govern in accordance with this instrument.
+
+"The people demand liberty," said the king. "I give them enough of it to
+protect them against despotism, without according them unbridled
+license. Formerly, the taxes appointed by my mere will would have made
+me odious; now the people tax themselves. Hereafter, I have nothing to
+do but to confer benefits and show mercy, for the responsibility for all
+the evil that is done will rest entirely with my ministers[38]."
+
+[Footnote 38: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 410.]
+
+While his ministers were thus governing according to the charter, and
+"doing evil," the king, who now had nothing but "good" to do, was
+busying himself in settling the weighty questions of the old etiquette.
+
+One of the most important features of this etiquette was the question of
+the fashions that should now be introduced at court; for it was, of
+course, absurd to think of adopting the fashions of the empire, and
+thereby recognize at court that there had really been a change
+since 1789.
+
+They desired to effect a counter-revolution, not only in politics, but
+also in fashions; and this important matter occupied the attention of
+the grand dignitaries of the court for weeks before the first grand
+levee that the king was to hold in the Tuilerics. But, as nothing was
+accomplished by their united wisdom, the king finally held a private
+consultation with his most intimate gentleman and lady friends on this
+important matter, that had, unfortunately, not been determined by
+the charter.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies, M. de Bregé, declared to the king that
+it was altogether improper to continue the fashions of the empire at the
+court of the legitimate King of France.
+
+"We are, therefore, to have powder, coats-of-mail, etc.," observed the
+king.
+
+M. de Bregé replied, with all gravity, that he had given this subject
+his earnest consideration day and night, but that he had not yet arrived
+at a conclusion worthy of the grand-master of ceremonies of the
+legitimate king.
+
+"Sire," said the Duke de Chartres, smiling, "I, for my part, demand
+knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and the cue."
+
+"But I," exclaimed the Prince de Poir, who had remained in France during
+the empire, "I demand damages, if we are to be compelled to return to
+the old fashions and clothing before the new ones are worn out!"
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies replied to this jest at his expense with
+a profound sigh only; and the king at last put an end to this great
+question, by deciding that every one should be permitted to follow the
+old or new fashions, according to his individual taste and inclination.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this royal
+decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness: "Your
+majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man; uniformity of
+attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads directly to an
+agrarian law."
+
+"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as Figaro. Many
+a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles before a
+procurator in a long gown[39]."
+
+[Footnote 39: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 384.]
+
+But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in fashions, he
+allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce the entire
+etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this etiquette, the king
+could not rise from his couch in the morning until the doors had been
+opened to all those who had the _grande entrée_--that is to say, to the
+officers of his household, the marshals of France, several favored
+ladies; further, to his _cafetier_, his tailor, the bearer of his
+slippers, his barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
+apothecaries.
+
+The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored individuals,
+etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie himself, but
+requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their contents of the
+previous day.
+
+The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal family," was
+also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies not only found it
+necessary to make preparations for this dinner weeks beforehand, but the
+king was also compelled to occupy himself with this matter, and to
+appoint for this great ceremony the necessary "officers of
+provisions"--that is to say, the wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand
+doorkeepers, and the cook-in-chief.
+
+At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and indispensable
+"ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in front of the king's
+seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an antique work of art which
+the city of Paris had once presented to a King of France, had also been
+lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792, and the grand-master of ceremonies
+had been compelled to have a new one made by the court jeweller for the
+occasion. This "ship" was a work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel
+deprived of its masts and rigging; and in the same, between two golden
+plates, were contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance
+with the old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and princesses,
+could pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
+were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.
+
+The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the fashion of the
+"royal lady-friends."
+
+Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
+lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess Ducayla
+occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the king, and
+dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be seen on the
+brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by ill-health,
+weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him the _chronique
+scandaleuse_ of the imperial court; she reminded him of the old affairs
+of his youth, which the king knew how to relate with so much wit and
+humor, and which he so loved to relate; it devolved upon her to examine
+the letters of the "black cabinet," and to read the more interesting
+ones to the king.
+
+King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he rewarded her
+in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing _ennui_ from his
+apartments. Finding that the countess had no intimate acquaintance with
+the contents of the Bible, he gave her the splendid Bible of Royaumont,
+ornamented with one hundred and fifty magnificent engravings, after
+paintings of Raphael. Instead of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note
+covered each of these engravings[40].
+
+[Footnote 40: Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France, par St. Edme,
+vol. ii., p. 383. Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 409.]
+
+On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;" and in
+this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note, as in
+the Bible.
+
+For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful countess,
+perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal snuff-box," which
+appellation had its origin in the habit which the king fondly indulged
+in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely shoulder, and then
+snuffing it up with his nose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being introduced
+anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was governing in
+complacent recklessness, time was progressing, notwithstanding his
+endeavors to turn it backward in his flight.
+
+While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new France,
+a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor of Elba, was
+forming great plans of conquest, and preparing in secret understanding
+with the faithful, to leave his place of exile and return to France.
+
+He well knew that he could rely on his old army--on the army who loudly
+cried, "_Vive le roi!_" and then added, _sotto voce_, "_de Rome, et son
+petit papa_[41]!"
+
+[Footnote 41: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. iii, p.
+121.]
+
+Hortense, the new Duchess of St. Leu, took but little part in all these
+things. She had, notwithstanding her youth and beauty, in a measure
+taken leave of the world. She felt herself to be no longer the woman,
+but only the mother; her sons were the objects of all her tenderness and
+love, and she lived for them only. In her retirement at St. Leu, her
+time was devoted to the arts, to reading, and to study; and, after
+having been thus occupied throughout the day, she passed the evening in
+her drawing-room, in unrestrained intellectual conversation with
+her friends.
+
+For she had friends who had remained true, notwithstanding the obscurity
+into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although they filled
+important positions at the new court, had retained their friendship for
+the solitary dethroned queen.
+
+With these friends the Duchess of St. Leu conversed, in the evening, in
+her parlor, of the grand and beautiful past, giving themselves up
+entirely to these recollections, little dreaming that this harmless
+relaxation could awaken suspicion.
+
+For the Duke of Otranto, who had succeeded in his shrewdness in
+retaining his position of minister of police, as well under Louis XVIII.
+as under Napoleon, had his spies everywhere; he knew of all that was
+said in every parlor of Paris; he knew also that it was the custom, in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu, to look from the dark present
+back at the brilliant past, and to console one's self for the littleness
+of the present, with the recollection of the grandeur of departed days!
+And Fouché, or rather the Duke of Otranto, knew how to utilize
+everything.
+
+In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of security,
+to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking place, Fouché
+told him that a conspiracy against the government was being formed in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu; that all those who were secret
+adherents of Bonaparte were in the habit of assembling there, and
+planning the deliverance of the emperor from Elba. In order, however, on
+the other hand, to provide against the possibility of Napoleon's return,
+the Duke of Otranto hastened to the Duchess of St. Leu, to warn her and
+conjure her to be on her guard against the spies by whom she was
+surrounded, as suspicion might be easily excited against her at court.
+
+Hortense paid no attention to this warning; she considered precaution
+unnecessary, and was not willing to deprive herself of her one
+happiness--that of seeing her friends, and of conversing with them in a
+free and unconstrained manner.
+
+The parlors of the duchess, therefore, continued to be thrown open to
+her faithful friends, who had also been the faithful servants of the
+emperor; and the Dukes of Bassano, of Friaul, of Ragusa, of the Moskwa,
+and their wives, as well as the gallant Charles de Labedoyère, and the
+acute Count Renault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, still continued to meet in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The voice of hostility was raised against them with ever-increasing
+hostility; the reunions that took place at St. Leu were day by day
+portrayed at the Tuileries in more hateful colors; and the poor duchess,
+who lived in sorrow and retirement in her apartments, became an object
+of hatred and envy to these proud ladies of the old aristocracy, who
+were unable to comprehend how this woman could be thought of while they
+were near, although she had been the ornament of the imperial court, and
+who was considered amiable, intellectual, and beautiful, even under the
+legitimate dynasty.
+
+Hortense heard of the ridiculous and malicious reports which had been
+circulated concerning her, and, for the sake of her friends and sons,
+she resolved to put an end to them.
+
+"I must leave my dear St. Leu and go to Paris," said she. "There they
+can better observe all my actions. Reason demands that I should conform
+myself to circumstances."
+
+She therefore abandoned her quiet home at St. Leu, and repaired with her
+children and her court to Paris, to again take up her abode in her
+dwelling in the Rue de la Victoire.
+
+But this step gave fresh fuel to the calumnies of her enemies, who saw
+in her the embodied remembrance of the empire which they hated and at
+the same time feared.
+
+The Bonapartists still continued their visits to her parlors, as before;
+and no appeals, no representations could induce Hortense to close her
+doors against her faithful friends, for fear that their fidelity might
+excite suspicion against herself.
+
+In order, however, to contradict the report that adherents of Napoleon
+only were in the habit of frequenting her parlors, the duchess also
+extended the hospitalities of her parlors to the strangers who brought
+letters of recommendation, and who desired to be introduced to her.
+Great numbers hastened to avail themselves of this permission.
+
+The most brilliant and select circle was soon assembled around the
+duchess. There, were to be found the great men of the empire, who came
+out of attachment; distinguished strangers, who came out of admiration;
+and, finally, the aristocrats of the old era, who came out of curiosity,
+who came to see if the Duchess of St. Leu was really so intelligent,
+amiable, and graceful, as she was said to be.
+
+The parlors of the duchess were therefore more talked of in Paris than
+they had been at St. Leu. The old duchesses and princesses of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, with all their ancestors, prejudices, and
+pretensions, were enraged at hearing this everlasting praise of the
+charming queen, and endeavored to appease their wrath by renewed
+hostilities against its object.
+
+It was not enough that she was calumniated, at court and in society, as
+a dangerous person; the arm of the press was also wielded against her.
+
+As we have said, Hortense was the embodied remembrance of the empire,
+and it was therefore determined that she should be destroyed.
+_Brochures_ and pamphlets were published, in which the king was appealed
+to, to banish from Paris, and even from France, the dangerous woman who
+was conspiring publicly, and even under the very eyes of the government,
+for Napoleon, and to banish with her the two children also, the two
+Napoleons; "for," said these odious accusers, "to leave these two
+princes here, means to raise in France wolves that would one day ravage
+their country[42]."
+
+[Footnote 42: Cochelet, Mémoires sur la Reins Hortense, vol. ii., p.
+330.]
+
+Hortense paid but little attention to these reports and calumnies. She
+was too much accustomed to being misunderstood and wrongly judged, to
+allow herself to be disquieted thereby. She knew that calumnies were
+never refuted by contradiction, and that it was therefore better to meet
+them with proud silence, and to conquer them by contempt, instead of
+giving them new life by combating and contradicting them.
+
+She herself entertained such contempt for calumny that she never allowed
+anything abusive to be said in her presence that would injure any one in
+her estimation. When, on one occasion, while she was still Queen of
+Holland, a lady of Holland took occasion to speak ill of another lady,
+on account of her political opinions, the queen interrupted her, and
+said: "Madame, here I am a stranger to all parties, and receive all
+persons with the same consideration, for I love to hear every one well
+spoken of; and I generally receive an unfavorable impression of those
+only who speak ill of others[43]."
+
+[Footnote 43: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+And, strange to say, she herself was ever the object of calumny and
+accusation.
+
+"During twenty-five years, I have never been separated from Princess
+Hortense," says Louise de Cochelet, "and I have never observed in her
+the slightest feeling of bitterness against any one; ever good and
+gentle, she never failed to take an interest in those who were unhappy;
+and she endeavored to help them whenever and wherever they presented
+themselves. And this noble and gentle woman was always the object of
+hatred and absurd calumnies, and against all this she was armed with the
+integrity and purity of her actions and intentions only[44]."
+
+[Footnote 44: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+Nor did Hortense now think of contradicting the calumnies that had been
+circulated concerning her. Her mind was occupied with other and far more
+important matters.
+
+An ambassador of her husband, who resided in Florence, had come to Paris
+in order to demand of Hortense, in the name of Louis Bonaparte, his
+two sons.
+
+After much discussion, he had finally declared that he would be
+satisfied, if his wife would send him his eldest son, Napoleon
+Louis, only.
+
+But the loving mother could not and would not consent to a separation
+from either of her children; and as, in spite of her entreaties, her
+husband persisted in refusing to allow her to retain both of them, she
+resolved, in the anguish of maternal love, to resort to the most extreme
+means to retain the possession of her sons.
+
+She informed her husband's ambassador that it was her fixed purpose to
+retain possession of her children, and appealed to the law to recognize
+and protect them, and not allow her sons to be deprived of their rights
+as Frenchmen, by going into a compulsory exile.
+
+While the Duchess of St. Leu was being accused of conspiring in favor of
+Napoleon, her whole soul was occupied with the one question, which was
+to decide whether one of her sons could be torn from her side or not;
+and, if she conspired at all, it was only with her lawyer in order to
+frustrate her husband's plans.
+
+But the calumnies and accusations of the press were nevertheless
+continued; and at last her friends thought it necessary to lay before
+the queen a journal that contained a violent and abusive article against
+her, and to request that they might be permitted to reply to it.
+
+"With a sad smile, Hortense read the article and returned the newspaper.
+
+"It is extremely mortifying to be scorned by one's countrymen," said
+she, "but it would be useless to make any reply. I can afford to
+disregard such attacks--they are powerless to harm me."
+
+But when on the following morning the same journal contained a venomous
+and odious article levelled at her husband, Louis Bonaparte, her
+generous indignation was aroused, and, oblivious of all their
+disagreements, and even of the process now pending between them, she
+remembered only that it was the father of her children whom they had
+dared to attack, and that he was not present to defend himself. It
+therefore devolved upon her to defend him.
+
+"I am enraged, and I desire that M. Després shall reply to this article
+at once," said Hortense. "Although paternal love on the one side, and
+maternal love on the other, has involved us in a painful process, it
+nevertheless concerns no one else, and it disgraces neither of us. I
+should be in despair, if this sad controversy were made the pretext for
+insulting the father of my children and the honored name he bears. For
+the very reason that I stand alone, am I called on to defend the absent
+to the best of my ability. Therefore let M. Després come to me; I will
+instruct him how to answer this disgraceful article!"
+
+On the following day, an able and eloquent article in defence of Louis
+Bonaparte appeared in the journal--an article that shamed and silenced
+his accusers--an article which the prince, whose cause it so warmly
+espoused, probably never thought of attributing to the wife to whose
+maternal heart be had caused such anguish[45].
+
+[Footnote 45: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 303.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE BURIAL OF LOUIS XVI. AND HIS WIFE.
+
+The earnest endeavors of the Bourbon court to find the resting-place of
+the remains of the royal couple who had died on the scaffold, and who
+had expiated the crimes of their predecessors rather than their own,
+were at last successful. The remains of the illustrious martyrs had
+been sought for in accordance with the directions of persons who had
+witnessed their sorrowful and contemptuous burial, and the body of Louis
+XVI. was found in a desolate corner of the grave-yard of St. Roch, and
+in another place also that of Queen Marie Antoinette.
+
+It was the king's wish, and a perfectly natural and just one, to inter
+these bodies in the royal vault at St. Denis, but he wished to do it
+quietly and without pomp; his acute political tact taught him that these
+sad remains should not be made the occasion of a political
+demonstration, and that it was unwise to permit the bones of Louis XVI.
+to become a new apple of discord.
+
+But the king's court, even his nearest relatives, his ministers, and the
+whole troop of arrogant courtiers, who desired, by means of an
+ostentatious interment, not only to show a proper respect for the
+beheaded royal pair, but also to punish those whom they covertly called
+"regicides," and whom they were nevertheless now compelled to
+tolerate--the king's entire court demanded a solemn and ceremonious
+interment; and Louis, who, as he himself had said, "was king, but not
+master," was compelled to yield to this demand.
+
+Preparations were therefore made for an ostentatious interment of the
+royal remains, and it was determined that the melancholy rites should
+take place on the 21st of January, 1815, the anniversary of painful
+memories and unending regret for the royal family.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand, the noble and intelligent eulogist and friend of
+the Bourbons, caused an article to be inserted in the _Journal des
+Débats_, in which he announced the impending ceremony. This article was
+then republished in pamphlet form; and so great was the sympathy of the
+Parisians in the approaching event, that thirty thousand copies were
+disposed of, in Paris alone, in one day.
+
+On the 20th of January the graves of the martyrs were opened, and all
+the princes of the royal house who were present, knelt down at the edge
+of the grave to mingle their prayers with those of the thousands who had
+accompanied them to the church-yard.
+
+But the king was right. This act, that appeared to some to be a mere act
+of justice, seemed an insult to others, and reminded them of the dark
+days of error and fanaticism, in which they had allowed themselves to be
+drawn into the vortex of the general delirium. Many of those who in the
+Assembly had voted for the death of the king, were now residing at
+Paris, and even at court, as for instance Fouché, and to them the
+approaching ceremony seemed an insult.
+
+"Are you aware," exclaimed Descourtis, as he rushed into the apartment
+of Cambacérès, who was at that moment conversing with the Count de Pere,
+"have you already been informed that this ceremony is really to take
+place to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, to-morrow is the fated day. To-morrow we are to be delivered over
+to the daggers of fanatics."
+
+"Is this the pardon that was promised us?"
+
+"As for that," exclaimed the Count de Pere (a good royalist), "I was
+not aware that there was an article in the constitution forbidding the
+reinterment of the mortal remains of the royal pair. The proceeding will
+be perfectly lawful."
+
+"It is their purpose to infuriate the populace," exclaimed Descourtis,
+pale with inward agitation. "Old recollections are to be recalled and a
+mute accusation hurled at us. But we shall some day be restored to power
+again, and then we will remember also!"
+
+Cambacérès, who had listened to this conversation in silence, now
+stepped forward, and, taking Descourtis's hand in his own, pressed
+it tenderly.
+
+"Ah, my friend," said he, in sad and solemn tones, "I would we were
+permitted to march behind the funeral-car in mourning-robes to-morrow!
+We owe this proof of repentance to France and to ourselves!"
+
+The solemn funeral celebration took place on the following day. All
+Paris took part in it. Every one, even the old republicans, the
+Bonapartists as well as the royalists, joined the funeral procession, in
+order to testify that they had abandoned the past and were repentant.
+
+Slowly and solemnly, amid the ringing of all the bells, the roll of the
+drum, the thunders of artillery, and the chants of the clergy, the
+procession moved onward.
+
+The golden crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, shone
+lustrously in the sunlight. It had fallen from the heads of the royal
+pair while they still lived; it now adorned them in death.
+
+Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived at the
+Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre. Suddenly a
+terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the air.
+
+The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen down,
+touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into fragments
+on the glittering snow of the street.
+
+This occurred on the 21st of January; two months later, at the same
+hour, and on the same day, the crown of Louis XVIII. fell from his head,
+and Napoleon placed it on his own!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.
+
+A cry of tremendous import reverberated through Paris, all France, and
+all Europe, in the first days of March, 1815. Napoleon, it was said, had
+quitted Elba, and would soon arrive in France!
+
+The royalists heard it with dismay, the Bonapartists with a delight that
+they hardly took the pains to conceal.
+
+Hortense alone took no part in the universal delight of the
+imperialists. Her soul was filled with profound sadness and dark
+forebodings. "I lament this step," said she; "I would have sacrificed
+every thing to prevent his return to France, because I am of the belief
+that no good can come of it. Many will declare for, and many against
+him, and we shall have a civil war, of which the emperor himself may be
+the victim[46]."
+
+[Footnote 46: Cochelet, vol. ii., p. 348.]
+
+In the meanwhile the general excitement was continually increasing; it
+took possession of every one, and at this time none would have been
+capable of giving cool and sensible advice.
+
+Great numbers of the emperor's friends came to the Duchess of St. Leu,
+and demanded of her counsel, assistance, and encouragement, accusing her
+of indifference and want of sympathy, because she did not share their
+hopes, and was sad instead of rejoicing with them.
+
+But the spies of the still ruling government, who lay in wait around the
+queen's dwelling, did not hear her words; they only saw that the
+emperor's former generals and advisers were in the habit of repairing to
+her parlors, and that was sufficient to stamp Hortense as the head of
+the conspiracy which had for its object the return of Napoleon
+to France.
+
+The queen perceived the danger of her situation, but she bowed her head
+to receive the blows of Fate in silent resignation. "I am environed by
+torments and perplexities," said she, "but I see no means of avoiding
+them. There is no resource for me but to arm myself with courage, and
+that I will do."
+
+The royal government, however, still hoped to be able to stem the
+advancing tide, and compel the waves of insurrection to surge backward
+and destroy those who had set them in motion.
+
+They proposed to treat the great event which made France glow with new
+pulsations, as a mere insurrection, that had been discovered in good
+time, and could therefore be easily repressed. They therefore
+determined, above all, to seize and render harmless the "conspirators,"
+that is to say, all those of whom it was known that they had remained
+faithful to the emperor in their hearts.
+
+Spies surrounded the houses of all the generals, dukes, and princes of
+the empire, and it was only in disguise and by the greatest dexterity
+that they could evade the vigilance of the police.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was at last also compelled to yield to the urgent
+entreaties of her friends, and seek an asylum during these days of
+uncertainty and danger. She quitted her dwelling in disguise, and,
+penetrating through the army of spies who lay in wait around the house
+and in the street in which she resided, she happily succeeded in
+reaching the hiding-place prepared for her by a faithful servant of her
+mother. She had already confided her children to another servant who had
+remained true to her in her time of trouble.
+
+The Duke of Otranto, now once more the faithful Fouché of the empire,
+was also to have been arrested, but he managed to effect his escape.
+General Lavalette--who was aware that the dwelling of the Duchess of St.
+Leu was no longer watched by the police, who had discovered that the
+duchess was no longer there--Lavalette took advantage of this
+circumstance, and concealed himself in her dwelling, and M. de Dandré,
+the chief of police, who had vainly endeavored to catch the so-called
+conspirators, exclaimed in anguish: "It is impossible to find any one;
+it has been so much noised about that these Bonapartists were to be
+arrested, that they are now all hidden away."
+
+Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and doubting
+capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in Grenoble with
+exultation, and the troops that were to have been led against him have,
+together with their chieftain, Charles de Labedoyère, gone over to the
+emperor. The gates of the city were thrown open, and the people advanced
+to meet him with shouts of welcome and applause; and now Napoleon stood
+no longer at the head of a little body of troops, but at the head of a
+small army that was increasing with every hour."
+
+The government still endeavored, through its officials and through the
+public press, to make the Parisians disbelieve this intelligence.
+
+But the government had lost faith in itself. It heard the old, the hated
+cry, "Vive l'empereur!" resounding through the air; it heard the
+fluttering of the victorious battle-flags of Marengo, Arcola, Jena, and
+Austerlitz! The Emperor Napoleon was still the conquering hero, who
+swayed destiny and compelled it to declare for him.
+
+A perfect frenzy of dismay took possession of the royalists; and when
+they learned that Napoleon had already arrived in Lyons, that its
+inhabitants had received him with enthusiasm, and that its garrison had
+also declared for him, their panic knew no bounds.
+
+The royalist leaders assembled at the house of Count de la Pere, for the
+purpose of holding a last great discussion and consultation. The most
+eminent persons, men and women, differing widely on other subjects, but
+a unit on this point, assembled here with the same feelings of patriotic
+horror, and with the same desire to promote the general welfare. There
+were Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Count Lainé, and Chateaubriand;
+there were the Duke de Némours, and Count de la Pere, and around them
+gathered the whole troop of anxious royalists, expecting and hoping that
+the eloquent lips of these celebrated personages who stood in their
+midst would give them consolation and new life.
+
+Benjamin Constant spoke first. He said that, to Napoleon, that is, to
+force, force must be opposed. Bonaparte was armed with the love of the
+soldiers, they must arm themselves with the love of the citizens. His
+appearance was imposing, like the visage of Caesar; it would be
+necessary to oppose to him an equally sublime countenance. Lafayette
+should, therefore, be made commander-in-chief of the French army.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand exclaimed, with noble indignation, that the first
+step to be taken by the government was to punish severely a ministry
+that was so short-sighted, and had committed so many faults. Lainé
+declared, with a voice tremulous with emotion, that all was lost, and
+that but one means of confounding tyranny remained; a scene, portraying
+the whole terror, dismay and grief of the capital at the approach of the
+hated enemy, should be arranged. In accordance with this plan, the whole
+population of Paris--the entire National Guard, the mothers, the young
+girls, the children, the old and the young--were to pass out of the
+city, and await the tyrant; and this aspect of a million of men fleeing
+from the face of a single human being was to move or terrify him who
+came to rob them of their peace!
+
+In her enthusiastic and energetic manner, Madame de Staël pronounced an
+anathema against the usurper who was about to kindle anew, in weeping,
+shivering France, the flames of war.
+
+All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do nothing
+but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent lips of
+these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were, nothing more
+than a bulletin concerning the condition of the patient, and concerning
+the mortal wounds which he had received. This patient was France; and
+the royalists, who were assembled in the house of Count de la Pere, now
+felt that the patient's case was hopeless, and that nothing remained to
+them but to go into exile, and bemoan his sad fate[47]!
+
+[Footnote 47: Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité, vol. i., p. 99.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.
+
+While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and despairing,
+King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and sense of
+security. That is to say, they had taken care not to inform him of the
+real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had been informed that
+Bonaparte had been everywhere received with coldness and silence, and
+that the army would not respond to his appeal, but would remain true to
+the king. The exultation with which the people everywhere received the
+advancing emperor found, therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the
+crowd who pressed around the king when he repaired to the hall of the
+_Corps Législatif_ to hold an encouraging address, was not the people,
+but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and gentlemen of
+the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the first entrance, acted
+the part to which the people were not disposed to adapt themselves, and
+transformed themselves for a moment into the people, in order to show to
+the king the demonstrations of his people's love.
+
+The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
+continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance was
+in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this deception so far
+that they had informed the king that Lyons had closed its gates to
+Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet him, vowing that he would
+bring the emperor back to Paris in an iron cage.
+
+The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute, when
+suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of Orleans, who,
+according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a victor, arrived in
+Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their soldiers and servants, and
+informed Louis that Lyons had received the emperor with open arms, and
+that no resource had been left them but to betake themselves to flight.
+
+And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence followed the
+first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his tottering throne,
+Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile position toward his old
+companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the emperor, and his army had
+followed him with exultation.
+
+The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and learned how
+greatly he had been deceived.
+
+"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not listen to
+the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell me the truth!"
+
+At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to his
+brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who surrounded
+him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and the Minister
+Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of victory, now stepped
+in pale and trembling.
+
+The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now plainly
+impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had desired to
+hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling minister.
+
+A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all were
+fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general silence, he was
+heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion: "Sire, all is lost; the
+army, as well as the people, betray your majesty. It will be necessary
+for your majesty to leave Paris."
+
+The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an
+inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared to
+return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down sorrowfully.
+
+The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his breast.
+
+"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile; "heretofore it
+has been your purpose to make me govern for you, hereafter I shall
+govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to the throne of my
+fathers once more, you will be made to understand that I will profit by
+the experience you have given me[48]!"
+
+[Footnote 48: The king's own words. Mémoires d'une Femme de Qualité,
+vol. i. p. 156.]
+
+A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count Blacas,
+without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing a torch, the
+king left the once more desolate and solitary Tuileries, and fled
+to Holland.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon
+entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts of the
+people, and the thundering "_Vive l'empereur_" of the troops. On the
+same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had but yesterday
+fluttered, the _tricolore_ of the empire now flung out its folds to
+the breeze.
+
+In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his generals,
+and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing and greeting
+him. An immense concourse of people surged around the entrance on the
+stair-ways and in the halls.
+
+Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor was
+carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while shouts of
+joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined the more
+fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his apartments, and rent the
+air with exulting cries of "_Vive l'empereur_!"
+
+In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was received
+by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen Hortense, who had
+abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried to the Tuileries to
+salute the emperor.
+
+Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the health
+of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have placed my
+nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain in the midst
+of my enemies."
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The emperor seemed
+not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship of my enemies," said
+he, "and have placed yourself under obligations to the Bourbons. I
+depend on Eugene; I hope he will soon be here. I wrote to him
+from Lyons."
+
+This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He was angry
+with her for having remained in France, and at the same time the flying
+Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of her: "The Duchess of
+St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues alone have brought Napoleon
+back to Paris."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE HUNDRED DAYS.
+
+The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a myth of
+the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds
+with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp
+of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within the
+space of a minute.
+
+These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these hundred
+days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth can offer of
+fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as well as of all
+that the earth contains that is disgraceful, miserable, traitorous, and
+perfidious.
+
+Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed to hail
+the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to assure him
+of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that they had only
+obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.
+
+The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the Tuileries,
+where the emperor now held his glittering court again. There was,
+however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the honors of the
+court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who had not returned
+with her husband; and the emperor could not now show the people his own
+son, but could only point to his two nephews, the sons of Hortense.
+
+The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had been
+compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations; he had
+comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her children, in
+continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her reluctance. After
+this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon extended his hand to
+Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and begged her to name a wish, in
+order that he might fulfil it.
+
+Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned by the
+royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing Bourbons to be
+the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now entreated the emperor
+to permit the Duchess d'Orleans, who had not been able to leave Paris on
+account of a broken limb, to remain, and to accord her a pension
+besides. She told the emperor that she had received a letter from the
+duchess, in which she begged for her intercession in obtaining some
+assistance from the emperor, assuring her that it was urgently Deeded,
+in her depressed circumstances.
+
+The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter Hortense;
+and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon accorded a pension
+of four hundred thousand francs to the Duchess d'Orleans, the mother of
+King Louis Philippe[49].
+
+[Footnote 49: La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et en Angleterre.
+Ecrit par elle-même, p. 185.]
+
+A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two hundred
+thousand francs was also accorded to the Duchess of Bourbon, who had
+also besought the queen to exert her influence in her behalf; and both
+ladies now hastened to assure Hortense of their everlasting gratitude.
+The fulfilment of her wish filled Hortense with delight; she was as
+proud of it as of a victory achieved.
+
+"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for these
+ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a few clays
+before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a state!"
+
+But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was now no
+longer the Duchess of St. Leu, but the queen and the ornament of the
+court once more; all heads now bowed before her again, and the high-born
+ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her existence during the past year,
+now hastened to do homage to the queen.
+
+"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen, "unfortunately, you
+were always absent in the country when I called to pay my respects
+during the past winter."
+
+The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which she
+accompanied with a smile.
+
+Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point of
+attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public officials
+now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in order to pay
+their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each day beheld new
+_fêtes_ and ceremonies.
+
+The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of the
+_Champ de Mai_, that took place on the first of June, and at which the
+emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace, presented to his
+army the new eagles and flags, which they were henceforth to carry into
+battle instead of the lilies of the Bourbons.
+
+It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of human
+beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made the welkin
+ring with their "_Vive l'empereur_!"--to behold the proud, triumphant
+soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles consecrated by the priests
+at the altar that stood before the emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle
+to behold the hundreds of richly-attired ladies glittering with
+diamonds, who occupied the tiers of seats that stood immediately behind
+the emperor's chair, and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the
+first seats.
+
+The air was so balmy, the sun shone so lustriously over all this
+splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and the
+strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while all were
+applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the emperor's chair
+covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay before her, the grand
+ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her, "might perhaps be the last
+of the empire[50]."
+
+[Footnote 50: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.]
+
+Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this universal
+delight and contentment.
+
+The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she already
+perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the mutterings of the
+storm that was soon, and this time forever, to hurl the emperor's throne
+to the ground. She knew that a day would suddenly come when all this
+brightness would grow dim, and when all those who now bowed so humbly
+before him, would turn from him again--a day when they would deny and
+desert the emperor as they had already done once before, and that, from
+that day on, the present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as
+a debt. But this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarrassment.
+
+The emperor was once more there; he was the lord and father left her by
+her mother Josephine, and it was her duty and desire to be true and
+obedient to him as long as she lived.
+
+The sun still shone lustrously over the restored empire, and in the
+parlors of Queen Hortense, where the diplomats, statesmen, artists, and
+all the notables of the empire were in the habit of assembling, gayety
+reigned supreme. There music and literature were discussed, and homage
+done to all the fine arts.
+
+Benjamin Constant, who had with great rapidity transformed himself from
+an enthusiastic royalist into an imperial state-councillor, came to the
+queen's parlors and regaled her guests by reading to them his romance
+Adolphe; and Metternich, the Austrian ambassador seemed to have no other
+destiny than to amuse the queen and the circle of ladies assembled
+around them, and to invent new social games for their entertainment.
+
+Metternich knew how to bring thousands of charming little frivolities
+into fashion; he taught the ladies the charming and poetic language of
+flowers, and made it a symbolic means of conversation and correspondence
+in the queen's circle. He also, to the great delight of the court,
+invented the alphabet of gems; in this alphabet each gem represented its
+initial letter, and, by combinations, names and devices were formed,
+which were worn in necklaces, bracelets, and rings.
+
+The little games with which the diplomatic Metternich occupied himself
+during the hundred days at the imperial court at Paris, were, it
+appears, of the most innocent and harmless nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+NAPOLEON'S LAST ADIEU.
+
+The storm, of the approach of which Queen Hortense had so long had a
+foreboding, was preparing to burst over France. All the princes of
+Europe who had once been Napoleon's allies had now declared against him.
+They all refused to acknowledge Napoleon as emperor, or to treat with
+him as one having any authority.
+
+"No peace, no reconciliation with this man," wrote the Emperor Alexander
+to Pozzo di Borgo; "all Europe is of the same opinion concerning him.
+With the exception of this man, any thing they may demand; no preference
+for any one; no war after this man shall have been set aside[51]."
+
+[Footnote 51: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 90.]
+
+But, in order to "set this man aside," war was necessary. The allied
+armies therefore advanced toward the boundaries of France; the great
+powers declared war against France, or rather against the Emperor
+Napoleon; and France, which had so long desired peace, and had only
+accepted the Bourbons because it hoped to obtain it of them, France was
+now compelled to take up the gauntlet.
+
+On the 12th of June the emperor left Paris with his army, in order to
+meet the advancing enemy. Napoleon himself, who had hitherto gone into
+battle, his countenance beaming with an assurance of victory, now looked
+gloomy and dejected, for he well knew that on the fate of his army now
+depended his own, and the fate of France.
+
+This time it was not a question of making conquests, but of saving the
+national independence, and it was the mother-earth, red with the blood
+of her children, that was now to be defended.
+
+Paris, that for eighty days had been the scene of splendor and
+festivity, now put on its mourning attire. All rejoicings were at an
+end, and every one listened hopefully to catch the first tones of the
+thunder of a victorious battle.
+
+But the days of victory were over; the cannon thundered, the battle was
+fought, but instead of a triumph it was an overthrow.
+
+At Waterloo, the eagles that had been consecrated on the first of June,
+on the _Champ de Mai_, sank in the dust; the emperor returned to Paris,
+a fugitive, and broken down in spirit, while the victorious allies were
+approaching the capital.
+
+At the first intelligence of his return, Hortense hastened to the
+Elysée, where he had taken up his residence, to greet him. During the
+last few days she had been a prey to gloomy thoughts; now that the
+danger had come, now when all were despairing, she was composed,
+resolute, and ready to stand at the emperor's side to the last.
+
+Napoleon was lost, and Hortense knew it; but he now had most need of
+friends, and she remained true, while so many of his nearest friends and
+relatives were deserting him.
+
+On the twenty-second day of June the emperor sent in his abdication in
+favor of his son, the King of Rome, to the chambers; and a week later
+the chambers proclaimed Napoleon's son Emperor of France, under the name
+of Napoleon II.
+
+But this emperor was a child of four years, and was, moreover, not in
+France, but in the custody of the Emperor of Austria, whose army was now
+marching on Paris with hostile intent!
+
+Napoleon, now no longer Emperor of France, had been compelled to take
+the crown from his head a second time; and for the second time he
+quitted Paris to await the destiny to be appointed him by the allies.
+
+This time he did not repair to Fontainebleau, but to Malmaison--to
+Malmaison, that had once been Josephine's paradise, and where her heart
+had at last bled to death. This charming resort had passed into the
+possession of Queen Hortense; and Napoleon, who but yesterday had ruled
+over a whole empire, and to-day could call nothing, not even the space
+of ground on which he stood, his own, Napoleon asked Hortense to receive
+him at Malmaison.
+
+Hortense accorded his request joyfully, and, when her friends learned
+this, and in their dismay and anxiety conjured her not to identify in
+this manner herself and children with the fate of the emperor, but to
+consider well the danger that would result from such a course, the queen
+replied resolutely: "That is an additional reason for holding firm to my
+determination. I consider it my sacred duty to remain true to the
+emperor to the last, and the greater the danger that threatens the
+emperor, the happier I shall be in having it in my power to show him my
+entire devotion and gratitude."
+
+And when, in this decision, when her whole future hung in the balance,
+one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind the queen of
+the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once been put in
+circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon, and suggested that
+she would give new strength to them by now receiving the emperor at
+Malmaison, Hortense replied with dignity: "What do I care for these
+calumnies? I fulfil the duty imposed on me by feeling and principle. The
+emperor has always treated me as his child; I shall therefore ever
+remain his devoted and grateful daughter; it is my first and greatest
+necessity to be at peace with myself[52]."
+
+[Footnote 52: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 149.]
+
+Hortense therefore repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and the
+faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune, gathered
+around him, watched over his life, and gave to his residence a fleeting
+reflection of the old grandeur and magnificence. For they who now stood
+around Napoleon, guarding his person from any immediate danger that
+threatened him at the hands of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were
+marshals, generals, dukes, and princes.
+
+But Napoleon's fate was already decided--it was an inevitable one, and
+when the intelligence reached Malmaison that the enemy was approaching
+nearer and nearer, and that resistance was no longer made anywhere, and
+when Napoleon saw that all was lost, his throne, his crown, and even the
+love which he imagined he had for ever built up for himself in the
+hearts of the French people by his great deeds and victories--when he
+saw this he determined to fly, no matter whither, but away from the
+France that would no longer rally to his call, the France that had
+abandoned him.
+
+The emperor resolved to fly to Rochefort, and to embark there in order
+to return to Elba. The provisional government that had established
+itself in Paris, and had sent an ambassador to Napoleon at Malmaison
+with the demand that he should depart at once, now instructed this
+ambassador to accompany the emperor on his journey, and not to leave him
+until he should have embarked.
+
+Napoleon was ready to comply with this demand. He determined to depart
+on the afternoon of the 30th of June. He had nothing more to do but to
+take leave of his friends and family. He did this with cold, tearless
+composure, with an immovable, iron countenance; no muscle of his face
+quivered, and his glance was severe and imperious.
+
+But, when Hortense brought in her two sons, when he had clasped them in
+his arms for the last time, then a shadow passed over his countenance;
+then his pale compressed lips quivered, and he turned away to conceal
+the tears that stood in his eyes.
+
+But Hortense had seen them, and in her heart she preserved the
+remembrance of these tears as the most precious gem of her departed
+fortune. As the emperor then turned to her to bid her adieu in his
+former cold and immovable manner, Hortense, who well knew that a volcano
+of torments must be glowing under this cold lava, entreated him to grant
+her a last favor.
+
+A painful smile illumined the emperor's countenance for a moment. There
+was, it seemed, still something that he could grant; he was not
+altogether powerless! With a mute inclination of the head he signified
+his assent. Hortense handed him a broad black belt.
+
+"Sire," said she, "wear this belt around your body and beneath your
+clothing. Conceal it carefully, but in the time of necessity remember it
+and open it."
+
+The emperor took the belt in his hand, and its weight startled him.
+
+"What does it contain?" asked he: "I must know what it contains!"
+
+"Sire," said Hortense, blushing and hesitating: "Sire, it is my large
+diamond necklace that I have taken apart and sewed in this belt. Your
+majesty may need money in a critical moment, and you will not deny me
+this last happiness, your acceptance of this token."
+
+The emperor refused, but Hortense entreated him so earnestly that he was
+at last compelled to yield, and accept this love-offering.
+
+They then took a hasty and mute leave of each other, and Hortense, in
+order to hide her tears, hastened with her children from the room.
+
+The emperor summoned a servant, and ordered that no one else should be
+admitted; but at this moment the door was hastily thrown open, and a
+national guard entered the room.
+
+"Talma!" exclaimed the emperor, almost gayly, as he extended his hand.
+
+"Yes, Talma, sire," said he, pressing the emperor's hand to his lips.
+"I disguised myself in this dress, in order that I might get here to
+take leave of your majesty."
+
+"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor, sadly.
+"I shall never be able to admire you in your great _rôles_ again, Talma.
+I am about to depart, never to return again. You will play the emperor
+on many an evening, but not I, Talma! My part is at an end!"
+
+"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma, with
+generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown and the
+purple robe."
+
+"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.
+
+"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a throne that
+is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected for yourself on
+the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the books of history. And
+every one, no matter to what nation he may belong, who reads of your
+great deeds, will be inspired by them, and will acknowledge himself to
+be one of your people, and bow down before the emperor in reverence."
+
+"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
+deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"
+
+"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will also one
+day regret, having deserted the great man he once called brother!" And,
+in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind Napoleon of one of his
+moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your majesty perhaps remembers
+that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor of Russia made you so tender a
+declaration of his love, publicly and before the whole world? But no,
+you cannot remember it; for you it was a matter of no moment; but I--I
+shall never forget it! It was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.'
+I looked up at the box in which your majesty sat, between the King of
+Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second
+Alexander of Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft
+and saw you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship
+of a great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
+Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears
+choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this applause
+was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor Alexander[53]!"
+
+[Footnote 53: This scene is entirely historical. See Bossuet, Mémoires;
+Bourrienne, Mémoires; Cochelet and Une Femme de Qualité.]
+
+While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes flashing, a
+rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for an instant, he
+smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised up the humiliated
+emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.
+
+Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand to bid
+him adieu.
+
+As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up in
+front of the house. It was Letitia, the emperor's mother, who had come
+to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless suspense; in
+his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to witness this
+leave-taking.
+
+"Madame mère" walked past Talma in silence, and without observing him.
+She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the room, his sombre
+and flashing glance fastened on her with an unutterable expression. Now
+they stood face to face, mother and son. The emperor's countenance
+remained immovable as though hewn out of marble.
+
+They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly trickled
+down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background, weeping
+bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Letitia now raised both hands and
+extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said she, in full and
+sonorous tones.
+
+Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and
+fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother, adieu!"
+
+Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her hand fall.
+Letitia turned to go, and at this moment General Bertrand appeared at
+the door to announce that all was prepared for the journey[54].
+
+[Footnote 54: This leave-taking was exactly as above described, and
+Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See her Mémoires, vol.
+iii, P. 173.]
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE BANISHMENT OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the protection
+of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of France. But this
+time he did not return with his former mild and conciliatory
+disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came unaccompanied by
+mercy. The old generals and marshals of the empire, who had not been
+able to resist their chieftain's call, were now banished, degraded, or
+executed. Ney and Labédoyère paid for their fidelity to the emperor with
+their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the Bonapartes
+were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been circulated in
+1814 against the Duchess of St. Leu were now to bear bitter fruit. These
+were the dragon's teeth from which the armed warriors had sprung, who
+now levelled their swords at the breast of a defenceless woman.
+
+King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had not
+forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The Duchess of St. Leu
+is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon back!" Now that
+he was again king, he thought of it, and determined to punish her. He
+requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he should this time not call
+on the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation concerning
+Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering web with which
+Madame de Krüdener had enveloped him, and separated from the reality of
+the world, acceded to the wishes of the Bourbons, and abandoned the
+queen. This was the signal that let loose the general wrath of the
+royalists; they could now freely utter their scorn and malice. By low
+calumnies they could now compensate themselves for their humiliation of
+the past, for having been compelled to approach the daughter of
+Viscountess de Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.
+
+They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with boundless fury,
+for this very fury proved their royalism, and to hate and calumniate
+Bonaparte and his family was to love and flatter the Bourbons.
+
+Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the duchess,
+whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of the empire,
+and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as well as the column
+on the _Place Vendôme_.
+
+While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her apartments, in
+sadness and desolation, the report was circulated that she was again
+conspiring, and that she was in the habit of leaving her house every
+evening at twilight, in order to incite the populace to rise and demand
+the emperor's return, or at least the instalment of the little King of
+Rome on the throne instead of Louis de Bourbon.
+
+When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet, informed her of
+these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and indifferent.
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure as if I
+were reciting a story of the last century!"
+
+"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we have lost
+all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us, with the
+composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it natural that they
+should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear a name that has made
+the whole world tremble, and that will still be great, though we all be
+trodden in the dust. But I will shield myself and children from this
+hatred. We will leave France and go to Switzerland, where I possess a
+little estate on the Lake of Geneva."
+
+But time was not allowed the duchess to prepare for her departure. The
+dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her to drive her from the
+city. A defenceless woman with two young children seemed to be an object
+of anxiety and terror to the government, and it made haste to get rid
+of her.
+
+On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian General
+de Müffling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to the dwelling of the
+Duchess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant, M. Deveaux, that the
+duchess must leave Paris within two hours, and it was only at the urgent
+solicitation of the intendant, that a further sojourn of four hours was
+allowed her.
+
+Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and depart
+without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for her
+journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she of
+course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a troop of
+enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching departure, had quitted
+Paris to lie in wait for her on her road, "in order to rob her of the
+millions in her custody."
+
+The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with her, but
+only that which was absolutely necessary.
+
+General de Müffling offered her an escort of his soldiers; Hortense
+declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian officer might be
+allowed to accompany her for the protection of herself and children on
+the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of Prince Schwartzenberg, was
+selected for this purpose.
+
+On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the Duchess of St. Leu took
+her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet in Paris
+to arrange her affairs, and assure the safe-keeping of her jewelry.
+Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count Boyna, her
+children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been a queen left
+Paris to go into exile.
+
+It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her beloved
+France, that she could no longer call her country, and that now seemed
+as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it had once
+passionately loved them.
+
+In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had everywhere
+hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their real disposition
+beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom Hortense met on her journey
+were therefore all royalists, who thought they could give no better
+testimony to their patriotism than by persecuting with cries of scorn,
+with gestures of hatred, and with loud curses, the woman whose only
+crime was that she bore the name of him whom France had once adored, and
+whom the royalists hated.
+
+Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and her
+children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger against
+her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it necessary to call
+on the Austrian military stationed there for assistance in protecting
+the duchess and her children from the attacks of an infuriated crowd,
+led by royal guards and beautiful ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned
+with the lilies of the Bourbons[55].
+
+[Footnote 55: Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.]
+
+Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced,
+Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being able to
+retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the storms of
+life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The French ambassador
+in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed the authorities of that
+city that his government would not tolerate the queen's sojourn so near
+the French boundary, and demanded that she should depart. The
+authorities of Geneva complied with this demand, and ordered the Duchess
+of St. Leu to leave the city immediately.
+
+When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the duchess, and asked
+her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed despair found
+utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into the lake, then we
+shall all be at rest!"
+
+But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly
+submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last possession,
+the charming little Pregny, from her "_rêve de chalet_."
+
+In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in Aix, where
+she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen, and where she was
+at least permitted to live in retirement with her children and a few
+faithful adherents.
+
+But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her fell
+upon her!
+
+Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814, shortly
+before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that she should
+deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody of his father.
+Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him, Louis demanded that
+this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron von Zuyten to Aix to bring
+back the prince to his father then residing in Florence.
+
+The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard command; she
+was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms to a father who
+was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore could not love.
+
+It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his mother,
+and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before been
+separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his neck,
+tearfully entreating him to stay with him.
+
+But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two weeping
+children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while Napoleon Louis
+followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as though his heart would
+break. When Hortense heard the carriage driving off, she uttered a cry
+of anguish and fell to the ground in a swoon, and a long and painful
+attack of illness was the consequence of this sorrowful separation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose in Aix;
+the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still fearing the
+name whose first and greatest representative was now languishing on a
+solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons considered it dangerous
+that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter, and her son, whose name of
+Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living monument of the past, should be
+permitted to sojourn so near the French boundary. They therefore
+instructed their ambassador to the government of Savoy to protest
+against the further sojourn of the queen in Aix, and Hortense was
+compelled to undertake a new pilgrimage, and to start out into the world
+again in search of a home.
+
+She first turned to Baden, whose duchess, Stephanie, was so nearly
+related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore well expect a
+kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify his cousin's hopes;
+he had not the courage to defy the jealous fears of France, and it was
+only at the earnest solicitation of his wife that he at last consented
+that Hortense should take up her residence at the extreme end of the
+grand-duchy, at Constance, on the Lake of Constance; and this permission
+was only accorded her on the express condition that neither the duchess
+nor her son should ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife,
+Stephanie, should never visit her cousin at Constance.
+
+Hortense accepted this offer with its conditions, contented to find a
+place where she could rest after her long wanderings, and let the
+bleeding wounds of her heart heal in the stillness and peace of
+beautiful natural scenery. She passed a few quiet, happy years in
+Constance desiring and demanding nothing but a little rest and peace,
+aspiring to but one thing--to make of the son whom Providence had given
+her as a compensation for all her sufferings, a strong, a resolute, and
+an intelligent man.
+
+Her most tender care and closest attention were devoted to the education
+of this son. An excellent teacher, Prof. Lebas, of Paris, officiated as
+instructor to the young prince. She herself gave him instruction in
+drawing, in music, and in dancing; she read with him, sang with him, and
+made herself a child, in order to replace to her lonely boy the playmate
+Fate had torn from his side.
+
+While reposing on her _chaise-longue_ on the long quiet evenings, her
+boy seated on a cushion at her feet, she would speak to him of his great
+uncle, and of his heroic deeds, and of his country, of France that had
+discarded them, to be able to return to which was, however, her most
+ardent wish, and would continue to be while life lasted. She would then
+inspire the boy's soul with the description of the great battles which
+his uncle had won in Italy, on the Nile, on the Rhine, and on the
+Danube; and the quiet, pale boy, with the dark, thoughtful eyes, would
+listen in breathless suspense, his weak, slender body quivering with
+emotion when his mother told him how dearly his uncle had loved France,
+and that all his great and glorious deeds had been done for the honor
+and renown of France alone.
+
+One day, while he was sitting before her, pale and trembling with
+agitation, his mother pointed to David's splendid painting, representing
+Napoleon on the heights of the Alps, the genial conception of which
+painting is due to Napoleon's own suggestions.
+
+"Paint me tranquilly seated on a wild horse," Napoleon had said to
+David, and David had so painted him--on a rearing steed, on the summit
+of a rock which bears the inscription "Hannibal" and "Caesar." The
+emperor's countenance is calm, his large eyes full of a mysterious
+brilliancy, his hair fluttering in the wind, the whole expression
+thoughtful and earnest; the rider heedless of the rearing steed, which
+he holds firmly in check with the reins.
+
+A beautiful copy of this great painting hung in the parlor of the
+duchess; and to this she now pointed while narrating the history of the
+emperor's passage over the Great St. Bernard with an army, a feat never
+before performed except by Hannibal and Caesar, and perhaps never to be
+performed again.
+
+As she concluded her narrative, an almost angry expression flitted
+across the young prince's countenance. Rising from his seat, and holding
+himself perfectly erect, he exclaimed: "Oh, mamma, I shall also cross
+the Alps some day, as the emperor did!"
+
+And while thus speaking, a glowing color suffused his face; his lips
+trembled, and the feverish beating of his heart was quite audible.
+
+Hortense turned in some anxiety to her friend Louise de Cochelet, and
+begged her in a low voice to soothe the child with the recital of some
+merry narrative. As Louise looked around the room thoughtfully and
+searchingly, a cup that stood on the mantel-piece arrested her gaze. She
+hastened to the mantel, took the cup, and returned with it to little
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+"Mamma has been explaining a very grave picture to you, Louis," said
+she; "I will now show you a merry one. Look at it--isn't it charming?"
+
+The prince cast a hasty, absent-minded look at the cup, and nodded
+gravely. Louise laughed gayly.
+
+"You see, Louis," said she, "that this is the exact counterpart of the
+picture of the Emperor Napoleon, who, while riding over the Alps,
+encounters on their summit the great spirits of Hannibal and Caesar.
+Here is a little Napoleon, who is not climbing up the Alps, but climbing
+down from his bed, and who, on this occasion, meets a black spirit, in
+the person of a chimney-sweep. This is the history of the great and of
+the little Napoleon; the great meets Hannibal, the little the
+chimney-sweep."
+
+"Am I the little Napoleon?" asked the boy, gravely.
+
+"Yes, Louis, you are, and I will now tell you the story of this cup.
+One day, when we were all still in Paris, and while your great uncle was
+still Emperor of France--one day, you met in your room a little Savoyard
+who had just crept out of the chimney in his black dress, his black
+broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and were about to run
+away, but I held you back and told you that these chimney-sweeps were
+poor boys, and that their parents were so poor that they could not
+support their children, but were compelled to send them to Paris to earn
+their bread by creeping into and cleaning our hot and dirty chimneys,
+with great trouble, and at the risk of their lives. My story touched
+you, and you promised me never to be afraid of the little chimney-sweeps
+again. A short time afterward, you were awakened early in the morning by
+a strange noise, your brother still lay asleep at your side, and your
+nurse was absent from the room. This noise was made by a chimney-sweep
+who had just come down the chimney and now stood in your room. As soon
+as you saw him, you remembered his poverty, jumped out of bed in your
+night-clothes, and ran to the chair on which your clothes lay. You took
+out of your pocket the purse you were compelled to carry with you on
+your walks to give money to the poor, and you emptied its entire
+contents into the black, sooty hand of the young Savoyard. You then
+tried to get back to bed, but it was too high for you; you could not
+climb over the railing. Seeing this, the chimney-sweep came to your
+assistance, and took the little prince in his arms to help him into bed.
+At this moment, your nurse entered the room, and your brother who had
+just awakened, cried loudly when he saw Louis in the arms of a
+chimney-sweep.
+
+"This is the story of little Napoleon and the chimney-sweep! Your
+grandmother, the Empress Josephine was so much pleased with this story,
+that your mother had the scene painted on a cup, and presented it to the
+empress, in order to afford her a gratification. And what do you think,
+Louis--this cup was also the cause of a punishment being remitted your
+cousin, the King of Rome, who now lives in Vienna!"
+
+"Tell me all about it, Louise," said the prince, smiling.
+
+"You shall hear it! Your mother had instructed me to take the cup to
+Malmaison to the empress. But before going, I endeavored to obtain some
+news about the little King of Rome for the empress. Your good
+grandmother loved him as though he had been her own child, although she
+had never seen him. I therefore went to the Tuileries to see the little
+King of Rome, with whose governess, Madame de Montesquieu, I was
+intimately acquainted. On entering the apartment, I saw the king
+cowering behind a chair in a corner of the room; Madame de Montesquieu
+intimated by a look that he was undergoing a punishment; I understood
+it, and first conversed with his governess for a short time. When I then
+turned and approached him, he concealed the tearful, flushed face, that
+his long blond curls covered as with a golden veil, whenever he moved
+behind the chair.
+
+"'Sire,' said Madame de Montesquieu to him, 'sire, do you not intend to
+bid Mademoiselle de Cochelet good-morning? She came here expressly
+to see you.'
+
+"'Your majesty does not recognize me,' said I, attempting to take his
+small hand in mine. He tore it from me, and cried in a voice almost
+choked with sobbing: 'She will not let me look at the soldiers of
+my papa!'
+
+"Madame de Montesquieu told me that it was the little prince's greatest
+pleasure to see the Guards exercising on the _Place de Carrousel_, but
+that she had deprived Mm of this pleasure to-day, because he had been
+naughty and disobedient; that, when he heard the music and drums, his
+despair and anger had become so great that she had been forced to resort
+to severe means, and make him stand in the corner behind a chair. I
+begged for the young king's pardon; I showed him the cup, and explained
+the scene that was painted on it. The king laughed, and Madame de
+Montesquieu pardoned him for the sake of his little cousin, Louis
+Napoleon, who was so well behaved, and who was always held up to him as
+a model[56]. Now you have heard the whole story, are you pleased with
+it, Louis?"
+
+[Footnote 56: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 212.]
+
+"I like it very much," said the grave boy, "but I do not like my
+cousin's governess, for having intended to prevent him from looking at
+his father's soldiers. Oh, how handsome they must have been, the
+soldiers of the emperor! Mamma, I wish I were also an emperor, and had
+ever so many handsome soldiers."
+
+Hortense smiled sadly, and laid her hand on the boy's head as if to
+bless him. "Oh, my son," said she, "it is no enviable fortune to wear a
+crown. It is almost always fastened on our head with thorns!"
+
+From this day on, Prince Louis Napoleon would stand before his uncle's
+portrait, lost in thought, and after looking at it to his satisfaction,
+he would run out and call the boys of the neighborhood together, in
+order to play soldier and emperor with them in the large garden that
+surrounded his mother's house, and teach the boys the first exercise.
+
+One day, in the zeal of play, he had entirely forgotten his mother's
+command, not to go out of the garden, and had inarched into the open
+field with his soldiers. When his absence from the garden was noticed,
+all the servants were sent out to look for him, and the anxious duchess,
+together with her ladies, assisted in this search, walking about in
+every direction through the cold and the slush of the thawing snow.
+Suddenly they came upon the boy barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves,
+wading toward them through the mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused
+at this unexpected meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he
+had been playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor
+and ragged that it was painful to look at them. As he had no money to
+give them, he had put his shoes on one child, and his coat on
+another[57].
+
+[Footnote 57: Cochelet, vol. iv., p. 303.]
+
+The duchess did not have the courage to scold him; she stooped down and
+kissed her son; but when her ladies commenced to praise him, she
+motioned to them to be silent, and said in a loud voice that what her
+son had done was quite a matter of course, and therefore deserved
+no praise.
+
+An ardent desire to gladden others and make them presents was
+characteristic of little Louis Napoleon. One day, Hortense had given him
+three beautiful studs for his shirt, and on the same day the prince
+transferred them to one of his friends who admired them.
+
+When Hortense reproached her son for doing so, and threatened to make
+him no more presents, as he always gave them away again directly, Louis
+Napoleon replied, "Ah, mamma, this is why your presents give me double
+pleasure--once when you give them to me, and the second time when I make
+others happy with them[58]."
+
+[Footnote 58: Cochelet, vol. i, p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.
+
+Fate seemed at last weary of persecuting the poor Duchess of St. Leu. It
+at least accorded her a few peaceful years of repose and comfort; it at
+least permitted her to rest from the weariness of the past on the bosom
+of Nature, and to forget her disappointments and sorrows. The Canton of
+Thurgau had had the courage to extend permission to the duchess to take
+up her residence within its borders, at the very moment when the
+Grand-duke of Baden, who had been urged to the step by Germany and
+France, had peremptorily ordered Hortense to leave Constance and his
+grand-duchy without delay.
+
+Hortense had thankfully accepted the offer of the Swiss canton, and had
+purchased, on the Swiss side of the Lake of Constance, an estate, whose
+beautiful situation on the summit of a mountain, immediately on the
+banks of the lake, with its magnificent view of the surrounding country,
+and its glittering glaciers on the distant horizon, made it a most
+delightful place of sojourn. Hortense now caused the furniture of her
+dwelling in Paris, that had been sold, to be sent to her. The sight of
+these evidences of her former grandeur awakened sweet and bitter
+emotions in her heart, as they were one after another taken out of the
+cases in which they had been packed--these sofas, chairs, divans,
+carpets, chandeliers, mirrors, and all the other ornaments of the
+parlors in which Hortense had been accustomed to receive kings and
+emperors, and which were now to adorn the Swiss villa that was outwardly
+so beautiful because of the vicinity, and inwardly so plain and simple.
+
+But Hortense knew how to make an elegant and tasteful disposition of all
+these articles; she herself arranged every thing in her house, and took
+true feminine delight in her task. And when all was at last
+arranged--when she walked, with her son at her side, through the suite
+of rooms, in which every ornament and piece of furniture reminded her
+of the past--when these things recalled the proud days of state when so
+many friends, relatives, and servants, had surrounded her--a feeling of
+unutterable loneliness, of painful desolation, came over her, and she
+sank down on a sofa and wept bitterly. But there was nevertheless a
+consolation in having these familiar articles in her possession once
+more; these mute friends often awakened in the solitary queen's heart
+memories that served to entertain and console her. Arenenberg was a
+perfect temple of memory; every chair, every table, every article of
+furniture, had its history, and this history spoke of Napoleon, of
+Josephine, and the great days of the empire.
+
+In Arenenberg Hortense had at last found a permanent home, and there she
+passed the greater part of the year; and it was only when the autumnal
+storms began to howl through her open and lightly-constructed villa,
+that Hortense repaired to Rome, to pass the winter months in a more
+genial climate, while her son Louis Napoleon was pursuing his studies at
+the artillery school at Thun.
+
+And thus the years passed on, quiet and peaceful, though sometimes
+interrupted by new losses and sorrows. In the year 1821 the hero, the
+emperor, to whose laurel-crown the halo of a martyr had now also been
+added, died on the island-rock, St. Helena.
+
+In the year 1824 Hortense lost her only brother, Eugene, the Duke of
+Leuchtenberg.
+
+The only objects of Hortense's love were now her two sons, who were
+prospering in mind and body, and were the pride and joy of their mother,
+and an object of annoyance and suspicion to all the princes of Europe.
+For these children bore in their countenance, in their name, and in
+their disposition, too plain an impress of the great past, which they
+could never entirely ignore while Bonaparte still lived to testify
+to it.
+
+And they lived and prospered in spite of the Bourbons; they lived and
+prospered, although banished from their country, and compelled to lead
+an inactive life.
+
+But at last it seemed as though the hour of fortune and freedom had come
+for these Bonapartes--as though they, too, were to be permitted to have
+a country to which they might give their devotion and services.
+
+The thundering voice of the revolution of 1830 resounded throughout
+trembling Europe. France, on whom the allies had imposed the Bourbons,
+arose and shook its mane; with its lion's paw it overthrew the Bourbon
+throne, drove out the Jesuits who had stood behind it, and whom Charles
+X. had advised to tear the charter to pieces, to destroy the freedom of
+the press, and to reintroduce the _autos da fé_ of the olden time.
+
+France had been treated as a child in 1815, and was now determined to
+assert its manhood; it resolved to break entirely with the past, and
+with its own strength to build up a future for itself.
+
+The lilies of the Bourbons were to bloom no more; these last years of
+fanatical Jesuit tyranny had deprived them of life, and France tore the
+faded lily from her bosom in order to replace it with a young and
+vigorous plant. The throne of the Bourbons was overthrown, but the
+people, shuddering at the recollection of the sanguinary republic,
+selected a king in preference. It stretched out its hand after him it
+held dearest; after him who in the past few years had succeeded in
+winning the sympathy of France. It selected the Duke of Orleans, the son
+of Philippe Égalité, for its king.
+
+Louis Philippe, the enthusiastic republican of 1790, who at that time
+had caused the three words "_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_" and the
+inscription "_Vive la République,"_ to be burnt on his arm, in order to
+prove his republicanism; the proscribed Louis Philippe, who had wandered
+through Europe a fugitive, earning his bread by teaching writing and
+languages--the same Louis Philippe now became King of France.
+
+The people called him to the throne; they tore the white flag from the
+roof of the Tuileries, but they knew no other or better one with which
+to replace it than the _tricolore_ of the empire.
+
+Under the shadow of this _tricolore_ Louis Philippe mounted the throne,
+and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the glorious era of
+the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in order to indulge
+their sympathies they demanded for France--not the son of Napoleon, not
+Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and the emperor's statue on the
+Palace Vendôme. Louis Philippe accorded them both, but with these
+concessions he thought he had done enough. He had accepted the
+_tricolore_ of the empire; he had promised that the emperor should watch
+over Paris from the summit of the Vendôme monument, and to cause his
+ashes to be brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.
+
+They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it would be
+worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course might easily
+shake the new throne, and recall the allies to Paris.
+
+The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still continued
+against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich said, "a
+principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the throne."
+
+The European powers had signified to the King of France, through their
+diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but they exacted
+one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe should confirm or renew
+the decree of exile fulminated by the Bourbons against the Bonapartes.
+
+Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes, whose
+only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of the deceased
+emperor, before whom not only France, but all the princes of Europe, had
+once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once more declared strangers to
+their country, and condemned to exile!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.
+
+It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of banishment!
+Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts, annihilating their
+holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their joy over the glorious
+and heroic revolution of July gave place to a bitter sense of
+disappointment.
+
+Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life to which
+they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console themselves, for
+their new disappointment, with the arts and sciences.
+
+At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to leave
+Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the habit of doing
+every year.
+
+But this time she first went to Florence, where her elder son, Napoleon
+Louis, recently married to his cousin, the second daughter of King
+Joseph, was now living with his young wife. The heart of the tender
+mother was filled with anxiety and care; she felt and saw that this new
+French Revolution was likely to infect all Europe, and that Italy, above
+all, would be unable to avoid this infection. Italy was diseased to the
+core, and it was to be feared that it would grasp at desperate means in
+its agony, and proceed to the blood-letting of a revolution, in order to
+restore itself to health. Hortense felt this, and feared for her sons.
+
+She feared that the exiled, the homeless ones who had been driven from
+their country, and were not permitted to serve it, would devote their
+services to those who were unhappy and who suffered like themselves. She
+feared the enthusiasm, the generous courage, the energy of her sons, and
+she knew that, if a revolution should break out in Italy, it would
+gladly adorn itself with the name of Napoleon.
+
+Hortense, therefore, conjured her sons to hold themselves aloof from all
+dangerous undertakings, and not to follow those who might appeal to them
+with the old word of magic power, "liberty;" that, in spite of the tears
+and blood it has already caused mankind, can never lose its
+wondrous power.
+
+Her two sons promised compliance; and, much relieved, Hortense left
+Florence, and went, with her younger son, Louis Napoleon, to Rome.
+
+But Rome, otherwise so aristocratic and solemn, assumed an unusual, an
+entirely new, physiognomy this winter. In society the topics of
+conversation were no longer art and poetry, the Pantheon and St. Peter,
+or what the newest amusement should be; but politics and the French
+Revolution were the all-engrossing topics, and the populace listened
+anxiously for the signal that should announce that the revolution in
+Italy had at last begun.
+
+Even the populace of Rome, usually addicted to lying so harmlessly in
+the sunshine, now assembled in dense groups on the streets, and strange
+words were heard when the police cautiously approached these groups for
+the purpose of listening. But they now lacked the courage to arrest
+those who uttered those words; they felt that such a provocation might
+suffice to tear away the veil behind which the revolution still
+concealed itself.
+
+The whole energy and watchfulness of the Roman government was therefore
+employed in endeavoring to avert the revolution, if possible; not,
+however, by removing the cause and occasion, but by depriving the people
+of the means. The son of Hortense, Louis Napoleon, seemed to the
+government a means which the revolution might use for its purposes, and
+it was therefore determined that he should be removed.
+
+His name, and even the three-colored saddle-blanket of his horse, with
+which he rode through the streets of Rome, were exciting to the
+populace, in whose veins the fever of revolution was already throbbing.
+Louis Napoleon must therefore be removed.
+
+The Governor of Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle, Cardinal
+Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to remove the
+young prince from Rome for a few weeks.
+
+But the cardinal indignantly declared that his nephew, who had done
+nothing, should not be compelled to leave Rome merely on account of his
+name and his saddle-blanket, and that he would never advise the Duchess
+of St. Leu to do anything of the kind.
+
+The Roman government therefore determined to adopt energetic means. It
+caused the dwelling of the duchess to be surrounded by soldiers, while
+a papal office presented himself before Hortense, and announced that he
+had received orders to remove Prince Louis from the city at once, and to
+conduct him without the papal territory.
+
+The fear of approaching evil caused the government to forget the respect
+due to nobility in misfortune and the emperor's nephew was turned out of
+the city like a criminal!
+
+Hortense received this intelligence almost with joy. Far from Rome, it
+seemed to her that he would be safer from the revolution, whose approach
+she so much dreaded; and it therefore afforded her great satisfaction to
+send the prince to Florence, to his father, believing that he would
+there be shielded from the dangerous political calumnies that threatened
+him in Rome. She therefore permitted him to depart; and how could she
+have prevented his departure--she, the lone, powerless woman, to whom
+not even the French ambassador would have accorded protection! No one
+interceded for her--no one protested against the violent and brutal
+course pursued toward Louis Napoleon--no one, except the Russian
+ambassador.
+
+The Emperor of Russia was the only one of all the sovereigns of Europe
+who felt himself strong enough not to ignore the name of Napoleon, and
+the consideration due to the family of a hero and of an emperor.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had, therefore, never refused his protection and
+assistance to the Bonapartes, and his ambassador was now the only one
+who protested against the violent course taken by the Roman government.
+
+The revolution at last broke forth. Italy arose as France had done,
+resolved to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, and be free!
+The storm first broke out in Modena. The duke saw himself compelled to
+fly, and a provisional government under General Menotti placed itself in
+his stead. But, while this was taking place in Modena, the populace of
+Rome was holding high festival in honor of the newly-chosen Pope Gregory
+XVI., who had just taken his seat in the chair of the deceased Pope Pius
+VIII., and these festivities, and the Carnival, seemed to occupy the
+undivided attention of the Romans; under the laughing mask of these
+rejoicings the revolution hid its grave and threatening visage, and it
+was not until _mardi-gras_ that it laid this mask aside and showed its
+true countenance.
+
+The people had been accustomed to throw confectionery and flowers on
+this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable by a shower of
+stones and bullets; this time they were not to appear in the harlequin
+jacket, but in their true form, earnest, grand, commanding,
+self-conscious, and self-asserting.
+
+But the government had been informed of the intention of the
+conspirators to avail themselves of the drive to the Corso, to begin the
+revolution, and this procession was prohibited an hour before the time
+appointed for its commencement.
+
+The people arose against this prohibition, and the revolution they had
+endeavored to repress by this means now broke out.
+
+The thunder of cannon and the rattling of musketry now resounded through
+the streets of Rome, and the people everywhere resisted the papal
+soldiery with energy and determination.
+
+The new pope trembled in the Quirinal, the old cardinals lost courage,
+and in dismay recoiled a step at every advancing stride of the
+insurgents. Gregory felt that the papal crown he had just achieved was
+already on the point of falling from his head, to be trodden in the dust
+by the victorious populace; he turned to Austria, and solicited help and
+assistance.
+
+But young Italy, the Italy of enthusiasm, of liberty, and of hope,
+looked to France for support. Old Italy had turned to Austria for help;
+young Italy looked for assistance to the free, newly-arisen France, in
+which the revolution had just celebrated a glorious victory. But France
+denied its Italian brother, and denied its own origin; scarcely had the
+revolution seated itself on the newly-erected kingly throne and invested
+itself with the crown and purple robe, when, for its own safety, it
+became reactionary, and denied itself.
+
+With all Italy, Rome was resolved to shake off the yoke of oppression;
+the whole people espoused this cause with enthusiasm; and in the streets
+of Rome--at other times filled with priests and monks and holy
+processions--in these streets, now alive with the triumphant youth of
+Rome, resounded exultant songs of freedom.
+
+The strangers, terrified by this change, now quitted the holy city in
+crowds, and hastened to their homes. Hortense desired to remain; she
+knew that she had nothing to fear from the people, for all the evil that
+had hitherto overtaken her, had come, not from the people, but always
+from the princes only[59]. However, letters suddenly arrived from her
+sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and announcing that they would leave
+Florence within the hour, in order to hasten forward to meet
+their mother.
+
+[Footnote 59: La Reine Hortense, p. 63.]
+
+Upon reading this, Hortense cried aloud with terror--she, who knew and
+desired no other happiness on earth than the happiness of her children,
+she whose only prayer to God had ever been, that her children might
+prosper and that she might die before them, now felt that a fearful
+danger threatened her sons, and that they were now about to be swept
+into the vortex of the revolution.
+
+They had left Florence, and their father, and were now on the way to
+Rome, that is, on the way to the revolution that would welcome them with
+joy, and inscribe the name Napoleon on its standards!
+
+But it was perhaps still time to save them; with her prayers and
+entreaties she might still succeed in arresting them on the verge of the
+abyss into which they were hastening in the intoxication of their
+enthusiasm. As this thought occurred to her, Hortense felt herself
+strong, determined, and courageous; and, on the same day on which she
+had received the letters, she left Rome, and hurried forward to meet
+her sons. She still hoped to be in time to save them; she fancied she
+saw her sons in every approaching carriage--but in vain!
+
+They had written that they would meet her on the road, but they were not
+there!
+
+Perhaps they had listened to the representations of their father;
+perhaps they had remained in Florence and were awaiting their mother's
+arrival there.
+
+Tormented by fear and hope, Hortense arrived in Florence and drove to
+the dwelling in which her son Louis Napoleon had resided. Her feet could
+scarcely bear her up; she hardly found strength to inquire after her
+son--he was not there!
+
+But he might be with his father, and Hortense now sent there for
+intelligence of her sons. The messenger returned, alone and dejected:
+her sons had left the city!
+
+The exultant hymn of liberty had struck on their delighted ear, and they
+had responded to the call of the revolution.
+
+General Menotti had appealed to them, in the name of Italy, to assist
+the cause of freedom with their name and with their swords, and they had
+neither the will nor the courage to disregard this appeal.
+
+A servant, left behind by her younger son, delivered to the duchess a
+letter from her son Louis Napoleon, a last word of adieu to his
+beloved mother.
+
+"Your love will understand us," wrote Louis Napoleon. "We cannot
+withdraw ourselves from duties that devolve upon us; the name we bear
+obliges us to listen to the appeal of unhappy nations. I beg you to
+represent this matter to my sister-in-law as though I had persuaded my
+brother to accompany me; it grieves him to have concealed from her one
+action of his life[60]."
+
+[Footnote 60: La Reine Hortense, p. 78.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DEATH OF PRINCE NAPOLEON.
+
+That which Hortense most dreaded had taken place: the voice of
+enthusiasm had silenced every other consideration; and the two sons of
+the Duchess of St. Leu, the nephews of the Emperor Napoleon, now stood
+at the head of the revolution. From Foligno to Civita Castellano, they
+organized the defence, and from the cities and villages the young people
+joyously hurried forth to enroll themselves under their banners, and to
+obey the Princes Napoleon as their leaders; the crowds which the young
+princes now led were scarcely armed, but they nevertheless advanced
+courageously, and were resolved to attempt the capture of Civita
+Castellano, in order to liberate the state prisoners who had been
+languishing in its dungeons for eight years.
+
+This was the intelligence brought back by the couriers whom Hortense had
+dispatched to her sons with letters entreating them to return.
+
+It was too late--they neither would nor could return.
+
+Their father wrung his hands in despair, and conjured his wife, he
+being confined to his arm-chair by illness and the gout, to do all in
+her power to tear their sons from the fearful danger that menaced them.
+For the revolution was lost; all who were cool and collected felt and
+saw this. But the youth refused to see it; they still continued to flock
+to the revolutionary banners; they still sang exultant hymns of freedom,
+and, when their parents endeavored to hold them back, they fled from the
+parental house secretly, in order to answer the call that resounded on
+their ear in such divine notes.
+
+One of the sons of the Princess of Canino, the wife of Lucien Bonaparte,
+had fled from his father's castle in order to join the insurgents. They
+succeeded in finding, and forcing him to return, and as the family were
+under obligations to the pope for having created the principalities of
+Canino and Musignano, for Lucien Bonaparte and his eldest son, the most
+extreme measures were adopted to prevent the young prince from fighting
+against the troops of the pope;
+
+The Princess of Canino, as a favor, requested the Grand-duke of Tuscany
+to confine her son in one of the state prisons of Tuscany; her request
+was granted, and her son taken to a prison, where he was kept during the
+entire revolution. It was proposed to the Duchess of St. Leu to adopt
+this same means of prevention, but, in spite of her anxiety and care,
+and although, in her restlessness and feverish disquiet, she wandered
+through her rooms day and night, she declined to take such a course.
+She was not willing to subject her sons to the humiliation of such
+compulsion; if their own reason, if the prayers and entreaties of their
+mother, did not suffice, force should not be resorted to, to bring them
+back. The whole family was, however, still employing every means to
+induce the two Princes Napoleon to withdraw from the revolution, which
+must inevitably again draw down upon the name Napoleon the suspicion of
+the angry and distrustful princes of Europe.
+
+Cardinal Fesch and King Jerome conjured their nephews, first in
+entreating, and then in commanding letters, to leave the insurgent army.
+
+With the consent of their father, Louis Bonaparte, they wrote to the
+provisional government at Bologna that the name of the two princes was
+injuring the cause of the revolution, and to General Armandi, the
+minister of war of the insurgent government, entreating him to recall
+the princes from the army. Every one, friend and foe, combined to
+neutralize the zeal and efforts of the two princes, and to prove to them
+that they could only injure the cause to which they gave their names;
+that foreign powers, considering the revolution a matter to be decided
+by Italy alone, would perhaps refrain from intervening; but that they
+would become relentless should a Bonaparte place himself at the head of
+the revolution, in order perhaps to shake the thrones of Europe anew.
+
+The two princes at last yielded to these entreaties and representations;
+they gave up their commands, and resigned the rank that had been
+accorded them in the insurgent army; but, as it was no longer in their
+power to serve the revolution with their name and with their brains,
+they were at least desirous of serving it with their arms: they resigned
+their commands, but with the intention of remaining in the army as
+simple soldiers and volunteers without any rank.
+
+And when their father and their uncles, not yet satisfied with what they
+had done, urged them still further the two princes declared that, if
+these cruel annoyances were continued, they would go to Poland, and
+serve the revolution there[61].
+
+[Footnote 61: La Reine Hortense, p. 93.]
+
+Hortense had taken no part in these attempts and efforts of her family;
+she knew that it was all in vain; she understood her sons better than
+they, and she knew that nothing in the world could alter a resolution
+they had once formed. But she also knew that they were lost, that the
+revolution must be suppressed, that they would soon be proscribed
+fugitives, and she quietly prepared to assist them when the evil days
+should come. She armed herself with courage and determination, and made
+her soul strong, in order that she might not be overwhelmed by the
+misfortune that was so near at hand.
+
+While all about her were weeping and lamenting, while her husband was
+wringing his hands in despair, and complaining of the present, Hortense
+quietly and resolutely confronted the future, and prepared to defy it.
+
+That which she dreaded soon took place. An Austrian fleet sailed into
+the Adriatic; an Austrian army was marching on the insurrectionary
+Italian provinces. Modena had already been reconquered; the insurgents
+were already flying in crowds before the Austrian cannon, whose
+thundering salvos were destined to destroy once more the hopes of the
+youth of Italy.
+
+Like an enraged lioness glowing with enthusiasm and courage, Hortense
+now sprang up. The danger was there, and she must save her sons! She had
+long considered how it was to be done, and whither she was to go with
+them. She had first resolved to go with them to Turkey, and to take up
+her residence in Smyrna, but the presence of the Austrian fleet which
+ruled the Adriatic made this plan impracticable. At this moment of
+extreme danger, a volume of light suddenly beamed in upon her soul, and
+pointed out the way to safety. "I will take them by a road," said she to
+herself, "on which they will be least expected. I will conduct them
+through France, through Paris. The death-penalty will there hang
+suspended over them, but what care I for that? Liberty, justice, and
+humanity, still exercise too much control over France to make me
+apprehend such severe measures. I must save my sons; the way through
+France is the way of safety, and I shall therefore follow it!"
+
+And Hortense immediately began to carry her plan into execution. She
+requested an Englishman residing in Florence, to whose family she had
+once rendered important services in France, to call on her, and begged
+him to procure her a passport for an English lady and her two sons
+through France to England.
+
+The lord understood her, and gladly consented to assist her and her two
+sons.
+
+On the following day he brought her the required passport, and Hortense,
+who well knew that the best way to keep a secret was to have no
+confidants, now declared to her husband, as well as to her family and
+her friends that she was resolved to find her sons, and to embark with
+them from Ancona for Corfu!
+
+For this purpose she demanded a passport of the government of Tuscany,
+and it was accorded her.
+
+Her sons were still in Bologna, but it was known that this city must
+fall into the hands of the Austrians in a few days, and all was lost
+unless Hortense arrived there before them. She sent a trusty servant to
+her sons to announce her coming. Then, at nightfall, she herself
+departed, accompanied by one of her ladies only. She was courageous and
+resolute, for she knew that the safety of her sons, her only happiness,
+was at stake.
+
+Her rapidly-driven carriage had soon passed without the city, and she
+now found herself in a part of the country still occupied by the
+insurgents. Here all still breathed courage, joyousness, and confidence.
+The entire population, adorned with cockades and three-colored ribbons,
+seemed happy and contented, and refused to believe in the danger that
+threatened.
+
+Festivals were everywhere being held in honor of the revolution and of
+liberty, and those who spoke of the advancing Austrians and of dangers
+were ridiculed. Instead of making preparations for their defence, the
+insurgents folded their hands in contentment, rejoicing over that which
+they had already attained, and blind to the tide that was rolling down
+upon them.
+
+In the mean while, the insurgent army was in position near Bologna, and
+also still occupied the two cities of Terni and Soleta, which they had
+courageously defended against the papal troops. Every one expected that
+a decisive battle would soon take place, and every one looked forward to
+it with a joyous assurance of victory.
+
+Hortense was far from participating in this general confidence. In
+Foligno, where she had remained to await her sons, she passed several
+sorrowful days of expectancy and suspense, alarmed by every noise, and
+ever looking forward with an anxiously-throbbing heart to the moment
+when her sons should come to her as fugitives, perhaps covered with
+wounds, perhaps dying, to tell her that all was lost! Her anxiety at
+last became so great, that she could no longer remain in Foligno; she
+must be nearer her sons, she must view the dangers that encompassed
+them, and, if need be, share them. Hortense, therefore, left Foligno,
+and started for Ancona.
+
+On her arrival at the first station, she saw a man descend from a
+carriage and approach her. He was unknown to her, and yet she felt a
+dark foreboding at his approach. The mother's heart already felt the
+blow that awaited her.
+
+This man was a messenger from her sons. "Prince Napoleon is ill," said
+he.
+
+Hortense remembered that she had heard that a contagious disease was
+ravaging the vicinity. "Is he indeed ill?" cried she, in dismay.
+
+"Yes; and he earnestly desires to see you, madame!"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Hortense, in terror, "if he calls for me, he must be
+very ill indeed!--Forward, forward, with all possible speed; I must
+see my son!"
+
+And onward they went with the speed of the wind from station to station,
+approaching nearer and nearer to their destination; but as they neared
+their destination, the faces they met grew sadder and sadder. At every
+station groups of people assembled about her carriage and gazed at her
+sorrowfully; everywhere she heard them murmur: "Napoleon is dead! Poor
+mother! Napoleon is dead!" Hortense heard, but did not believe it! These
+words had not been spoken by men, but were the utterances of her anxious
+heart! Her son was not dead, he could not be dead. Napoleon lived, yes,
+he still lived! And again the people around her carriage murmured,
+"Napoleon is dead!"
+
+Hortense reclined in her carriage, pale and motionless. Her thoughts
+were confused, her heart scarcely beat.
+
+At last she reached her destination; her carriage drove up to the house
+in Pesaro, where her sons were awaiting her.
+
+At this moment a young man, his countenance of a deathly pallor, and
+flooded with tears, rushed out of the door and to her carriage. Hortense
+recognized him, and stretched out her arms to him. It was her son Louis
+Napoleon, and on beholding his pale, sorrowful countenance, and his
+tear-stained eyes, the unhappy mother learned the truth. Yes, it was not
+her heart, it was the people who had uttered the fearful words:
+"Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon is dead!"
+
+With a heart-rending cry, Hortense sank to the ground in a swoon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FLIGHT FROM ITALY.
+
+But Hortense now had no leisure to weep over the son she had so dearly
+loved; the safety of the son who remained to her, whom she loved no
+less, and on whom her whole love must now be concentrated, was at stake.
+
+She still had a son to save, and she must now think of him--of Louis
+Napoleon, who stood in sorrow at her side, lamenting that Fate had not
+allowed him to die with his brother.
+
+Her son must be saved. This thought restored Hortense to health and
+strength. She is informed that the authorities of Bologna have already
+tendered submission to the Austrians; that the insurgent army is already
+scattering in every direction; that the Austrian fleet is already to be
+seen in the distance, approaching, perhaps with the intention of landing
+at Sinigaglia, in order to surround the insurgents and render flight
+impossible.
+
+This intelligence aroused Hortense from her grief and restored her
+energy. She ordered her carriage and drove with her son to Ancona, in
+full view of the people, in order that every one should know that it was
+her purpose to embark with her son for Corfu at that seaport. At Ancona,
+immediately fronting the sea, stood her nephew's palace, and there
+Hortense descended from her carriage.
+
+The waves of the storm-tossed sea sometimes rushed up to the windows of
+the room occupied by the duchess; from there she could see the port, and
+the crowds of fugitives who were pressing forward to save themselves on
+the miserable little vessels that there lay at anchor.
+
+And these poor people had but little time left them in which to seek
+safety. The Austrians were rapidly advancing; on entering the papal
+territory, they had proclaimed an amnesty, from the benefits of which
+Prince Louis Napoleon, General Zucchi, and the inhabitants of Modena,
+were, however, excepted. The strangers who had taken part in the
+insurrection were to be arrested and treated with all the severity
+of the law.
+
+The young people who had flocked from Modena, Milan, and from all Italy,
+to enroll themselves under the banner of the Roman revolution, now found
+it necessary to seek safety from the pursuing Austrians in flight.
+
+Louis Napoleon also had no time to lose; each moment lost might render
+flight impossible! Hortense was weary and ill, but she now had no time
+to think of herself; she must first save her son, then she could die,
+but not sooner.
+
+With perfect composure she prepared for her double (her feigned and her
+real) departure.
+
+Outwardly, she purposed embarking with her son at Corfu; secretly, it
+was her intention to fly to England through France! But the English
+passport that she had received for this purpose mentioned two sons, and
+Hortense now possessed but one; and it was necessary for her to provide
+a substitute for the one she had lost.
+
+She found one in the person of the young Marquis Zappi, who, compromised
+more than all the rest, joyfully accepted the proposition of the Duchess
+of St. Leu, promising to conform himself wholly to her arrangements,
+without knowing her plans and without being initiated in her secrets.
+
+Hortense then procured all that was necessary to the disguise of the
+young men as liveried servants, and ordered her carriage to be held in
+readiness for her departure.
+
+While this was being done in secret, she publicly caused all
+preparations to be made for her journey to Corfu. She sent her passport
+to the authorities for the purpose of obtaining the official _visa_ for
+herself and sons, and had her trunks packed. Louis Napoleon had looked
+on, with cold and mute indifference, while these preparations were being
+made. He stood by, pale and dejected, without complaining or giving
+utterance to his grief.
+
+Becoming at last convinced that he was ill, Hortense sent for a
+physician.
+
+The latter declared that the prince was suffering from a severe attack
+of fever, which might become dangerous unless he sought repose at once.
+It was therefore necessary to postpone their departure for a day, and
+Hortense passed an anxious night at the bedside of her fever-shaken,
+delirious son.
+
+The morning at last dawned, the morning of the day on which they hoped
+to fly; but when the rising sun shed its light into the chamber in which
+Hortense stood at her son's bedside, who can describe the unhappy
+mother's horror when she saw her son's face swollen, disfigured, and
+covered with red spots!
+
+Like his brother, Louis Napoleon had also taken the same disease.
+
+For a moment Hortense was completely overwhelmed, and then, by the
+greatest effort of her life, she summoned her fortitude to her aid. She
+immediately sent for the physician again, and, trusting to a sympathetic
+human heart, she confided all to him, and he did not disappoint her.
+What is to be done must be done quickly, immediately, or it will be
+in vain!
+
+Hortense thinks of all, and provides for all. Especially, she causes her
+son's passport to Corfu to be signed by the authorities, and a passage
+to be taken for him on the only ship destined for Corfu now lying in the
+harbor. She instructs the servants, who are conveying trunks and
+packages to the vessel, to inform the curious spectators of her son's
+intended departure on this vessel. She at the same time causes the
+report to be circulated that she has suddenly been taken ill, and can
+therefore not accompany her son.
+
+The physician confirms this statement, and informs all Ancona of the
+dangerous illness of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+And after all this had been done, Hortense causes her son's bed to be
+carried into the little cabinet adjoining her room, and falling on her
+knees at his bedside, and covering her face with her hands, she prays to
+God to preserve the life of her child!
+
+On the evening of this day the vessel destined for Corfu hoisted its
+anchor. No one doubted that Louis Napoleon had embarked on it, and every
+one pitied the poor duchess, who, made ill by grief and anxiety, had not
+been able to accompany her son.
+
+In the mean while Hortense was sitting at the bedside of her delirious
+son. But she no longer felt weak or disquieted; nervous excitement
+sustained her, and gave her strength and presence of mind. Her son was
+at the same time threatened by two dangers--by the disease, which the
+slightest mistake might render mortal; and by the arrival of the
+Austrians, who had expressly excepted her son Louis Napoleon from the
+benefits of the amnesty. She must save her son from both these
+dangers--this thought gave her strength.
+
+Two days had now passed; the last two vessels had left the harbor,
+crowded with fugitives; and now the advance-guard of the Austrians was
+marching into Ancona.
+
+The commandant of the advance-guard, upon whom the duty of designating
+quarters for the following army devolved, selected the palace of
+Princess Canino, where the Duchess of St. Leu resided, as headquarters
+for the commanding general and his staff. Hortense had expected this,
+and had withdrawn to a few small rooms in advance, holding all the
+parlors and large rooms in readiness for the general. When they,
+however, demanded that the entire palace should be vacated, the wife of
+the janitor, the only person whom Hortense had taken into her
+confidence, informed them that Queen Hortense, who was ill and unhappy,
+was the sole occupant of these reserved rooms.
+
+Strange to relate, the Austrian captain who came to the palace to make
+the necessary preparations for his general's reception was one of those
+who, in the year 1815, had protected the queen and her children from the
+fury of the royalists. For the second time he now interested himself
+zealously in behalf of the duchess, and hastened forward to meet the
+general-in-chief, Baron Geppert, who was just entering the city, in
+order to acquaint him with the state of affairs. He, in common with all
+the world, convinced that her son, Louis Napoleon, had fled to Corfu,
+declared his readiness to permit the duchess to retain the rooms she was
+occupying, and begged permission to call on her. But the duchess was
+still ill, and confined to her bed, and could receive no one.
+
+The Austrians took up their quarters in the palace; and in the midst of
+them, separated from the general's room by a locked door only, were
+Hortense and her sick son. The least noise might betray him. When he
+coughed it was necessary to cover his head with the bedclothes, in order
+to deaden the sound; when he desired to speak he could only do so in a
+whisper, for his Austrian neighbors would have been astonished to hear a
+male voice in the room of the sick duchess, and their suspicions might
+have been thereby aroused.
+
+At last, after eight days of torment and anxiety, the physician declared
+that Louis Napoleon could now undertake the journey without danger, and
+consequently the duchess suddenly recovered! She requested the Austrian
+general, Baron Geppert, to honor her with a call, in order that she
+might thank him for his protection and sympathy; she told him that she
+was now ready to depart, and proposed embarking at Livorno, in order to
+join her son at Malta, and go with him to England. As she would be
+compelled to pass through the whole Austrian army-corps on her way, she
+begged the general to furnish her with a passport through his lines over
+his own signature; requesting in addition that, in order to avoid all
+sensation, the instrument should not contain her name.
+
+The general, deeply sympathizing with the unhappy woman who was about to
+follow her proscribed son, readily accorded her request.
+
+Hortense purposed beginning her journey on the following day, the first
+day of the Easter festival; and, on sending her farewell greeting to the
+Austrian general, she informed him that she would start at a very early
+hour, in order to hear mass at Loretto.
+
+During the night all necessary preparations for the journey were made,
+and Louis Napoleon was compelled to disguise himself in the dress of a
+liveried servant; a similar attire was also sent to Marquis Zappi, who
+had hitherto been concealed in the house of a friend, and in this attire
+he was to await the duchess below at the carriage.
+
+At last, day broke and the hour of departure came. The horn of the
+postilion resounded through the street. Through the midst of the
+sleeping Austrian soldiers who occupied the antechamber through which
+they were compelled to pass, Hortense walked, followed by her son loaded
+with packages, in his livery. Their departure was witnessed by no one
+except the sentinel on duty.
+
+Day had hardly dawned. In the first carriage sat the duchess, with a
+lady companion, and in front, on the box, her son, as a servant, at the
+side of the postilion; in the second carriage her maid, behind her the
+young Marquis Zappi.
+
+As the sun arose and shone down upon the beautiful Easter day, Ancona
+was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side of Louis
+Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her to succeed so
+far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be merciful in the
+future. But there were still many dangers to be overcome; the slightest
+accident might still betray them. The danger consisted not only in
+having to pass through all the places where the Austrian troops were
+stationed; General Geppert's pass was a sufficient protection against
+any thing that might threaten them from this quarter.
+
+The greatest danger was to be apprehended from their friends--from some
+one who might accidentally recognize her son, and unintentionally
+betray them.
+
+They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
+greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one, and
+every one might betray them. This part of the journey must therefore be
+made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom they had dispatched
+in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary relays of horses; their
+dismay was, therefore, great when they found no horses at the station
+Camoscia, on the boundary of Tuscany, and were informed that several
+hours must elapse before they could obtain any!
+
+These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense passed
+them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the slightest noise that
+broke upon the air.
+
+Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated himself on a
+stone bench that stood in front of the miserable little station-house.
+Worn out by grief and still weak from disease, indifferent to the
+dangers that menaced from all sides, heedless of the night wind that
+swept, with its icy breath, over his face, the prince sank down upon
+this stone bench, and went to sleep.
+
+Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a half-open
+carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France, on a stone
+bench, that served him as a couch!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE PILGRIMAGE.
+
+Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu. It
+heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted mother and
+son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every step in Italy.
+
+At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary without being
+recognized. They were now in their own country--in _la belle France_,
+which they still loved and proudly called their mother, although it had
+forsaken and discarded them. The death-penalty threatened the Bonapartes
+who should dare to set foot on French soil. But what cared they for
+that? Neither Hortense nor her son thought of it. They only knew that
+they were in their own country. They inhaled with delight the air that
+seemed to them better and purer than any other; with hearts throbbing
+with joy, they listened to the music of this beautiful language that
+greeted them with the sweet native melodies.
+
+At Cannes they passed the first night. What recollections did this place
+recall to Hortense! Here it was that Napoleon had landed on his return
+from Elba to France; from Cannes he had commenced his march to Paris
+with a handful of soldiers, and had arrived there with an army. For the
+people had everywhere received him with exultation; the regiments that
+had been sent out against the advancing general had everywhere joyously
+gone over to his standard. Charles de Labédoyère, this enthusiastic
+adherent of the emperor, had been the first to do this. He was to have
+advanced against the emperor from Grenoble; but, with the exulting cry,
+"_Vive l'empereur!_" the entire regiment had gone over to its adored
+chieftain. Labédoyère had paid dearly for the enthusiasm of those
+moments; for, the for-the-second-time restored Bourbons punished his
+fidelity with death. Like Marshal Ney, Charles de Labédoyère was also
+shot; like the emperor himself, he paid for the triumph of the hundred
+days with his liberty and with his life!
+
+Of all these names and events of the past, Hortense thought, while
+enjoying the first hours of repose in their room at an hotel in Cannes.
+Leaning back in her chair, her large eyes gazing dreamily at the ceiling
+above her, she told the attentive prince of the days that had been, and
+spoke to him of the days in which they were now living--of these days of
+humiliation and obscurity--of those days in which the French nation had
+risen, and, shaking its lion's mane, hurled the Bourbons from their
+ancestral throne, and out of the land they had hitherto proudly called
+their own. On driving out the Bourbons, the people had freely chosen
+another king--not the King of Rome, who, in Vienna, as Duke of
+Reichstadt, had been made to forget the brilliant days of his
+childhood--not the son of the Emperor Napoleon. The people of France had
+chosen the Duke of Orleans as their king, and Louis Philippe's first act
+had been to renew the decree of banishment which the Bourbons had
+fulminated against the Bonapartes, and which declared it to be a
+capital crime if they should ever dare to set foot on the soil
+of France.
+
+"The people acted freely and according to their own will," said
+Hortense, with a sad smile, as she saw her son turn pale, and wrinkles
+gather on his brow. "Honor the will of the people, my son! In order to
+reward the emperor for his great services to the country, the people of
+France had unanimously chosen him their emperor. The people who give
+have also the right to take back again. The Bourbons, who consider
+themselves the owners of France, may reclaim it as an estate of which
+they have been robbed by the house of Orleans. But the Bonapartes must
+remember that they derived all their power from the will of the people.
+They must be content to await the future expression of its will, and
+then submit, and conform themselves to it[62]."
+
+[Footnote 62: The duchess's own words. See La Reine Hortense en Italie,
+Suisse, France, etc., p. 79.]
+
+Louis Napoleon bowed his head and sighed. He must conform to the will of
+the people; cautiously, under a borrowed name, he must steal into the
+land of his longing and of his dreams; he must deny his nationality, and
+be indebted, for his name and passport, to the country that had bound
+his uncle, like a second Prometheus, to the rock, and left him there to
+die! But he did it with a sorrowful, with a bleeding heart; he wandered
+with his mother, who walked heavily veiled at his side, from place to
+place, listening to her reminiscences of the great past. At her
+relation of these reminiscences, his love and enthusiasm for the
+fatherland, from which he had so long been banished, burned brighter and
+brighter. The sight, the air of this fatherland, had electrified him; he
+entertained but one wish: to remain in France, and to serve France,
+although in the humble capacity of a private soldier.
+
+One day Louis Napoleon entered his mother's room with a letter in his
+hand, and begged her to read it. It was a letter addressed to Louis
+Philippe, in which Louis Napoleon begged the French king to annul his
+exile, and to permit him to enter the French army as a private soldier.
+
+Hortense read the letter, and shook her head sadly. It wounded her just
+pride that her son, the nephew of the great emperor, should ask a favor
+of him who had not hesitated to make the most of the revolution for
+himself, but had nevertheless lacked the courage to help the banished
+Bonapartes to recover their rights, and enable them to return to their
+country. In his ardent desire to serve France, Louis Napoleon had
+forgotten this insult of the King of France.
+
+"My children," says Hortense, in her memoirs, "my children, who had been
+cruelly persecuted by all the courts, even by those who owed every thing
+to the emperor, their uncle, loved their country with whole-souled
+devotion. Their eyes ever turned toward France, busied with the
+consideration of institutions that might make France happy; they knew
+that the people alone were their friends; the hatred of the great had
+taught them this. To conform to the will of the people with resignation
+was to them a duty, but to devote themselves to the service of France
+was their hearts' dearest wish. It was for this reason that my son had
+written to Louis Philippe hoping to be permitted to make himself useful
+to his country in some way."
+
+Hortense advised against this venturous step; and when she saw how much
+this grieved her son, and observed his eyes filling with tears, she
+begged that he would at least wait and reflect, and postpone his
+decision until their arrival in Paris.
+
+Louis Napoleon yielded to his mother's entreaties, and in silence and
+sadness these two pilgrims continued their wandering through the country
+and cities, that to Hortense seemed transformed into luminous monuments
+of departed glory.
+
+In Fontainebleau Hortense showed her son the palace that had been the
+witness of the greatest triumphs and also of the most bitter grief of
+his great uncle. Leaning on his arm, her countenance concealed by a
+heavy black veil, to prevent any one from recognizing her, Hortense
+walked through the chambers, in which she had once been installed as a
+mighty and honored queen, and in which she was now covertly an exile
+menaced with death. The servants who conducted her were the same who had
+been there during the days of the emperor! Hortense recognized them at
+once; she did not dare to make herself known, but she nevertheless felt
+that she, too, was remembered there. She saw this in the expression
+with which the servants opened the rooms she had once occupied; she
+heard it in the tone in which they mentioned her name! Every thing in
+this palace had remained as it then was! There was the same furniture in
+the rooms which the imperial family had occupied after the peace of
+Tilsit, and in which they had given such brilliant _fêtes_, and received
+the homage of so many of the kings and princes of Europe, all of whom
+had come to implore the assistance and favor of their vanquisher! There
+were also the apartments which the pope had occupied, once voluntarily;
+subsequently, under compulsion. Alas! and there was also the little
+cabinet, in which the emperor, the once so mighty and illustrious ruler
+of Europe, had abdicated the crown which his victories, his good deeds,
+and the love of the French people, had placed on his head! And, finally,
+there were also the chapel and the altar before which the Emperor
+Napoleon had stood god-father to his nephew Louis Napoleon! All was
+still as it had been, except that the garden, that Hortense and her
+mother had laid out and planted, had grown more luxuriant, and now sang
+to the poor banished pilgrim with its rustling tree-tops a melancholy
+song of her long separation from her home!
+
+The sorrowing couple wandered on, and at last arrived before the gates
+of Paris. At this moment, Hortense was a Frenchwoman, a Parisian only,
+and, forgetting every thing else, all her grief and sufferings, she
+sought only to do the honors of Paris for her son. She ordered the
+coachman to drive them through the boulevards to the Rue de la Paix,
+and then to stop at the first good hotel. This was the same way over
+which she had passed sixteen years before, escorted by an Austrian
+officer. Then she had quitted Paris by night, driven out in a measure by
+the allies, who so much feared her, the poor, weak woman with her little
+boys, that troops had been placed under arms at regular intervals on her
+way, in order, as it was given out, to secure her safe passage. Now,
+after sixteen years, Hortense returned to Paris by the same route, still
+exiled and homeless, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
+French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
+proscription.
+
+But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she wept with
+joy at beholding once more the streets and places about which the
+memories of her youth clustered.
+
+By a strange chance, it was at the "_Hôtel de Hollande_" that the former
+Queen of Holland descended from her carriage, and took up her residence,
+holding thus, in a measure, her entrance into Paris, under the
+fluttering banner of the past. In the little _Hôtel de Hollande_, the
+Queen of Holland took possession of the apartments of the first floor,
+which commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the _Place
+Vendôme._ "Say to the column on the _Place Vendôme_ that I am dying,
+because I cannot embrace it," the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the
+album of a French nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful
+spies, who surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his
+father and of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the
+emperor's son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.
+
+Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was entirely
+unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He could go down
+into the square and hasten to the foot of the _Vendôme_ column, and in
+thought at least kneel down before the monument that immortalized the
+renown and grandeur of the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order
+to perform a sacred duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own
+honor and dignity.
+
+She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive criminal, in
+the city that in the exercise of its free will had chosen itself a king,
+but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to partake of French
+hospitality and enjoy French protection by stealth; she was not willing
+to go about in disguise, deceiving the government with a false pass and
+a borrowed name. She had the courage of truth and sincerity, and she
+resolved to say to the King of France that she had come, not to defy his
+decree of banishment by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing
+against his new crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
+forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no other
+means of saving her son; because she must pass through France with him
+in order to reach England.
+
+Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of men, had
+surrounded the new king almost entirely with the friends and servants
+of the emperor and of the Duchess of St. Leu. But, in order not to
+excite suspicion against these, Hortense now addressed herself to him
+with whom she had the slightest acquaintance and whose devotion to the
+Orleans family was too well known to be called in doubt by her
+undertaking. Hortense therefore addressed herself to M. de Houdetot, the
+adjutant of the king, or rather, she caused her friend Mlle. de Massuyer
+to write to him. She was instructed to inform the count that she had
+come to Paris with an English family, and was the bearer of a commission
+from the Duchess of St. Leu to M. de Houdetot.
+
+M. de Houdetot responded to her request, and came to the _Hôtel de
+Hollande_ to see Mlle. Massuyer. With surprise and emotion, he
+recognized in the supposititious English lady the Duchess of St. Leu,
+who was believed by all the world to be on the way to Malta, and for
+whom her friends (who feared the fatigue of so long a journey would be
+too much for Hortense in her weak state of health) had already taken
+steps to obtain for her permission to pass through France on her way
+to England.
+
+Hortense informed Count Houdetot of the last strokes of destiny that had
+fallen upon her, and expressed her desire to see the king, in order to
+speak with him in person about the future of her son.
+
+M. de Houdetot undertook to acquaint the king with her desire, and came
+on the following day to inform the duchess of the result of his mission.
+He told the duchess that the king had loudly lamented her boldness in
+coming to France, and the impossibility of his seeing her. He told her,
+moreover, that, as the king had a responsible ministry at his side, he
+had been compelled to inform the premier of her arrival, and that
+Minister Casimir Perrier would call on her during the day.
+
+A few hours later, Louis Philippe's celebrated minister arrived. He came
+with an air of earnest severity, as it were to sit in judgment upon the
+accused duchess, but her artless sincerity and her gentle dignity
+disarmed him, and soon caused him to assume a more delicate and
+polite bearing.
+
+"I well know," said Hortense in the course of the conversation, "I well
+know that I have broken a law, by coming hither; I fully appreciate the
+gravity of this offence; you have the right to cause me to be arrested,
+and it would be perfectly just in you to do so!"--Casimir Perrier shook
+his head slowly, and replied: "Just, no! Lawful, yes[63]!"
+
+[Footnote 63: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 110.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LOUIS PHILIIPE AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+The visit which Casimir Perrier had paid the duchess seemed to have
+convinced him that the fears which the king and his ministry had
+entertained had really been groundless, that the step-daughter of
+Napoleon had not come to Paris to conspire and to claim the still
+somewhat unstable throne of France for the Duke de Reichstadt or for
+Louis Napoleon, but that she had only chosen the way through France, in
+the anxiety of maternal love in order to rescue her son.
+
+In accordance with this conviction, Louis Philippe no longer considered
+it impossible to see the Duchess of St. Leu, but now requested her to
+call. Perhaps the king, who had so fine a memory for figures and
+money-matters, remembered that it had been Hortense (then still Queen of
+Holland) who, during the hundred days of the empire in 1815, had
+procured for the Duchess Orleans-Penthièvre, from the emperor,
+permission to remain in Paris and a pension of two hundred thousand
+francs per annum; that it had been Hortense who had done the same for
+the aunt of the present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in
+their joy over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written
+the duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
+assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable gratitude[64].
+Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of rewarding
+Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.
+
+[Footnote 64: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 185.]
+
+He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of her
+sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St. Leu to the
+Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl, as the
+step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as the wife of
+the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once more, a poor,
+nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded countenance, imploring a
+little toleration and protection of those to whom she had once accorded
+toleration and protection.
+
+Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the elegance and
+graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how to assume, and
+that had always been an inheritance of his house, with all the
+amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which he so well knew
+how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the point at once, he
+spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the duchess most, of the
+decree of banishment.
+
+"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile, and it is
+not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He assured her that
+this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte family was a heavy
+burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse himself for it by
+saying that the exile pronounced against the imperial family was only an
+article of the same law which the conventionists had abolished, and the
+renewal of which had been so vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it
+had seemed as though he had uttered a new decree of banishment, while in
+point of fact he had only renewed a law that had already existed under
+the consulate of Napoleon. "But," continued the king with exultation,
+"the time is no longer distant when there will be no more exiles; I will
+have none under my government!"
+
+Then, as if to remind the duchess that there had been exiles and
+decrees of banishment at all times, also under the republic, the
+consulate, and the kingdom, he spoke of his own exile, of the needy and
+humiliating situation in which he had found himself, and which had
+compelled him to hire himself out as a teacher and give instruction for
+a paltry consideration.
+
+The duchess had listened to the king with a gentle smile, and replied
+that she knew the story of his exile, and that it did him honor.
+
+Then the duchess informed the king that her son had accompanied her on
+her journey, and was now with her in Paris; she also told him that her
+son, in his glowing enthusiasm for his country, had written to the king,
+begging that he might be permitted to enter the army.
+
+"Lend me the letter," replied Louis Philippe; "Perrier shall bring it to
+me, and, if circumstances permit, I shall be perfectly willing to grant
+your son's request; and it will also give me great pleasure to serve you
+at all times. I know that you have legitimate claims on the government,
+and that you have appealed to the justice of all former ministries in
+vain. Write out a statement of all that France owes you, and send it _to
+me alone_. I understand business matters, and constitute myself from
+this time on your _chargé d'affaires_[65]. The Duke of Rovigo," he
+continued, "has informed me that the other members of the imperial
+family have similar claims. It will afford me great pleasure to be of
+assistance to all of you, and I shall interest myself particularly for
+the Princess de Montfort[66]."
+
+[Footnote 65: The king's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 201.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The Princess de Montfort was the wife of Jerome, the
+sister of the King of Würtemberg, and a cousin of the Emperor
+of Russia.]
+
+Hortense had listened to the king, her whole face radiant with delight.
+The king's beneficent countenance, his friendly smile, his hearty and
+cordial manner, dispelled all doubt of his sincerity in Hortense's mind.
+She believed in his goodness and in his kindly disposition toward
+herself; and, in her joyous emotion, she thanked him with words of
+enthusiasm for his promised benefits, never doubting that it was his
+intention to keep his word.
+
+"Ah, sire!" she exclaimed, "the entire imperial family is in misfortune,
+and you will have many wrongs to redress. France owes us all a great
+deal, and it will be worthy of you to liquidate these debts."
+
+The king declared his readiness to do every thing. He who was so fond of
+taking in millions and of speculating, smilingly promised, in the name
+of France, to disburse millions, and to pay off the old state debt!
+
+The duchess believed him. She believed in his protestations of
+friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct her
+to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame Adelaide with
+the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in the course of the
+conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her cordial disposition. She
+asked the duchess how long she expected to remain in Paris, and when the
+latter replied that she intended remaining three days longer, Madame
+exclaimed, in a tone of anxious dismay: "So long! Three days still! And
+there are so many Englishmen here who have seen your son in Italy, and
+might recognize you here!"
+
+But Fate itself seemed to delay the departure of the duchess and her
+son. On returning home from her visit to the Tuileries, she found her
+son on his bed in a violent fever, and the physician who had been called
+in declared that he was suffering from inflammation of the throat.
+
+Hortense was to tremble once more for the life of a son, and this son
+was the last treasure Fate had left her.
+
+Once more the mother sat at the bedside of her son, watching over him,
+lovingly, day and night. That her son's life might be preserved was now
+her only wish, her only prayer; all else became void of interest, and
+was lost sight of. She only left her son's side when Casimir Perrier
+came, as he was in the habit of doing daily, to inquire after her son's
+condition in the name of the king, and to request the duchess to name
+the amount of her claims against France, and to impart to him all her
+wishes with regard to her future. Hortense now had but one ardent
+wish--the recovery of her son; and her only request was, that she might
+be permitted to visit the French baths of the Pyrenees during the
+summer, in order to restore her failing health.
+
+The minister promised to procure this permission of the king, and of the
+Chambers, that were soon to be convened. "In this way we shall gradually
+become accustomed to your presence," observed Casimir Perrier. "As far
+as you are personally concerned, we shall be inclined to throw open the
+gates of the country to you. But with your son it is different, his name
+will be a perpetual obstacle in his way. If he should really desire at
+any time to take service in the army, it would be, above all, necessary
+that he should lay aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the
+wishes of foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties,
+that a war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change his
+name, if--"
+
+But now the duchess, her cheeks glowing, blushing with displeasure and
+anger, interrupted him. "What!" exclaimed she, "lay aside the noble name
+with which France may well adorn itself, conceal it as though we had
+cause to be ashamed of it?"
+
+Beside herself with anger, regardless, in her agitation, even of the
+suffering condition of her son, she hastened to his bedside, to inform
+him of the proposition made to her by Louis Philippe's minister.
+
+The prince arose in his couch, his eyes flaming, and his cheeks burning
+at the same time with the fever-heat of disease and of anger.
+
+"Lay aside my name!" he exclaimed. "Who dares to make such a proposition
+to me? Let us think of all these things no more, mother. Let us go back
+to our retirement. Ah, you were right, mother: our time is passed, or it
+has not yet come!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS FROM PARIS.
+
+Excitement had made the patient worse, and caused his fever to return
+with renewed violence. Hortense was now inseparable from his bedside;
+she herself applied ice to his burning throat, and assisted in applying
+the leeches ordered by the physician. But this continuous anxiety and
+excitement, all these troubles of the present, and sad remembrances of
+the past, had at last exhausted the strength of the delicate woman; the
+flush of fever now began to show itself on her cheeks also, and the
+physician urged her to take daily exercise in the open air if she
+desired to avoid falling ill.
+
+Hortense followed his advice. In the evening twilight, in plain attire,
+her face concealed by a heavy black veil, she now daily quitted her
+son's bedside, and went out into the street for a walk, accompanied by
+the young Marquis Zappi. No one recognized her, no one greeted her, no
+one dreamed that the veiled figure that walked so quietly and shyly was
+she who, as Queen of Holland, had formerly driven through these same
+streets in gilded coaches, hailed by the joyous shouts of the people.
+
+But, in these wanderings through Paris, Hortense also lived in her
+memories only. She showed the marquis the dwelling she had once
+occupied, and which had for her a single happy association: her sons had
+been born there. With a soft smile she looked up at the proud _façade_
+of this building, the windows of which were brilliantly illumined, and
+in whose parlors some banker or ennobled provision-dealer was now
+perhaps giving a ball; pointing to these windows with her slender white
+hand, she said: "I wished to see this house, in order to reproach myself
+for having been unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the
+midst of so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of
+the misfortune that was one day to come upon me[67]."
+
+[Footnote 67: The duchess's own words: see Voyage, etc., p. 225.]
+
+She looked down again and passed on, to seek the houses of several
+friends, of whom she knew that they had remained faithful; heavily
+veiled and enveloped in her dark cloak she stood in front of these
+houses, not daring to acquaint her friends with her presence, contented
+with the sweet sense of being near them!
+
+When, after having strengthened her heart with the consciousness of
+being near friends, she passed on through the streets, in which she, the
+daughter of France, was now unknown, homeless, and forgotten!--no, not
+forgotten!--as she chanced to glance in at a store she was just passing,
+she saw in the lighted window her own portrait at the side of that of
+the emperor.
+
+Overcome by a sweet emotion, Hortense stood still and gazed at these
+pictures. The laughing, noisy crowd on the sidewalk passed on, heedless
+of the shrouded woman who stood there before the shop-window, gazing
+with tearful eyes at her own portrait. "It seems we are still
+remembered," whispered she, in a low voice. "Those who wear crowns are
+not to be envied, and should not lament their loss; but is it possible
+that the love of the people, to receive which is so sweet, has not yet
+been wholly withdrawn from us?"
+
+The profound indifference with which France had accepted the exile of
+the Bonapartes had grieved her deeply. She had only longed for some
+token of love and fidelity in order that she might go back into exile
+consoled and strengthened. And now she found it. France proved to her
+through these portraits that she was not forgotten.
+
+Hortense stepped with her companion into the store to purchase the
+portraits of herself and of the emperor; and when she was told that
+these portraits were in great demand, and that many of them were sold to
+the people, she hardly found strength to repress the tears of blissful
+emotion that rose from her heart to her eyes. She took the portraits and
+hastened home, to show them to her son and to bring to him with them the
+love-greetings of France. While the duchess, her thoughts divided
+between the remembrances of the past and the cares and troubles of the
+present, had been sojourning in Paris for twelve days, all the papers
+were extolling the heroism of the duchess in having saved her son, and
+of her having embarked at Malta in order to take him to England.
+
+Even the king's ministerial council occupied itself with this matter,
+and thought it proper to make representations to his majesty on the
+subject. Marshal Sebastiani informed the king that the Duchess of St.
+Leu, to his certain knowledge, had landed at Corfu. With lively
+interest he spoke of the fatiguing journey at sea that the duchess would
+be compelled to make, and asked almost timidly if she might not be
+permitted to travel through France.
+
+The king's countenance assumed an almost sombre look, and he replied,
+dryly: "Let her continue her journey." Casimir Perrier bowed his head
+over the paper that lay before him, in order to conceal his mirth, and
+minister Barthe availed himself of the opportunity to give a proof of
+his eloquence and of his severity, by observing that a law existed
+against the duchess, and that a law was a sacred thing that no one
+should be permitted to evade.
+
+But the presence of the duchess, although kept a secret, began to cause
+the king and his premier Casimir Perrier more and more uneasiness. The
+latter had already once informed her through M. de Houdetot that her
+departure was absolutely necessary and must take place at once, and he
+had only been moved to consent to her further sojourn by the condition
+of the prince, whose inflammation of the throat had rendered a second
+application of leeches necessary.
+
+They were now, however, on the eve of a great and dangerous day, of the
+5th of May[68]. The people of Paris were strangely moved, and the new
+government saw with much apprehension the dawn of this day of such great
+memories for France. There seemed to be some justification for this
+apprehension. Since the break of day, thousands of people had flocked to
+the column on the _Place Vendôme_. Silently and gravely they approached
+the monument, in order to adorn with wreaths of flowers the eagles, or
+to lay them at the foot of the column, and then to retire mournfully.
+
+[Footnote 68: The anniversary of Napoleon's death.]
+
+Hortense stood at the window of her apartment, looking on with folded
+hands and tears of bliss at the impressive and solemn scene that was
+taking place on the _Place Vendôme_ beneath, when suddenly a violent
+knocking was heard at her door, and M. de Houdetot rushed in, a pale and
+sorrowful expression on his countenance.
+
+"Duchess," said he breathlessly, "you must depart immediately, without
+an hour's delay! I am ordered to inform you of this. Unless the life of
+your son is to be seriously endangered, you must leave at once!"
+
+Hortense listened to him tranquilly. She almost pitied the king--the
+government--to whom a weak woman and an invalid youth could cause such
+fear. How great must this fear be, when it caused them to disregard all
+the laws of hospitality and of decency! What had she done to justify
+this fear? She had not addressed herself to the people of France, in
+order to obtain help and protection for her son--for the nephew of the
+emperor; cautiously and timidly she had concealed herself from the
+people, and, far from being disposed to arouse or agitate her country,
+she had only made herself known to the King of France in order to
+solicit protection and toleration at his hands.
+
+She was distrusted, in spite of this candor; and her presence, although
+known to no one, awakened apprehensions in those in authority. Hortense
+pitied them; not a word of complaint or regret escaped her lips. She
+sent for her physician at once; and, after informing him that she must
+necessarily depart for London, she asked him if such a journey would
+endanger her son's life. The physician declared that, while he could
+have desired a few days more of repose, the prince would nevertheless,
+with proper care and attention, be able to leave on the following day.
+
+"Inform the king that I shall depart to-morrow," said Hortense; and,
+while M. de Houdetot was hastening to the king with this welcome
+intelligence, the duchess was making preparations for the journey, which
+she began with her son early on the following morning.
+
+In four days they reached Calais, where they found the ship that was to
+convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to leave her
+country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once more driven out,
+and condemned to live in a foreign country! Because the French people
+still refused to forget their emperor, the French kings hated and feared
+the imperial family. Under the old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis
+Philippe, who had attained his crown through the people, felt that it
+was necessary to flatter the people, and show some consideration for
+their sympathies. He declared to the people that he entertained the most
+profound admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree
+of banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the _Vendôme_
+column, with its bronze statue of the emperor, should be adorned, and at
+the same time his decree banished the daughter and the nephew of the
+emperor from France, and drove them back into a foreign country.
+
+Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she was
+leaving her country--the country in which she had friends whom she had
+not seen again; the country in which lay her mother's grave, which she
+had not dared to visit; and, finally, the grave of her son! She once
+more left behind her all the remembrances of her youth--all the places
+she had loved; and her regret and her tears made known how dear these
+things still were to her; that the banished and homeless one was still
+powerless to banish the love of country from her heart, and that France
+was still her home!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+PILGRIMAGE THROUGH FRANCE.
+
+The sojourn of the Duchess of St. Leu in England where she arrived with
+her son after a stormy passage, was for both a succession of triumphs
+and ovations. The high aristocracy of London heaped upon her proofs of
+esteem, of reverence, and of love; every one seemed anxious to atone for
+the severity and cruelty with which England had treated the emperor, by
+giving proofs of their admiration and respect for his step-daughter. All
+these proud English aristocrats seemed desirous of proving to the
+duchess and her son that they were not of the same disposition as Hudson
+Lowe, who had slowly tormented the chained lion to death with petty
+annoyances.
+
+The Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Holland, and Lady Grey, in
+particular, were untiring in their efforts to do the honors of their
+country to Hortense, and to show her every possible attention. But
+Hortense declined their proffered invitations. She avoided all
+publicity; she feared, on her own and her son's account, that the tattle
+of the world and the newspapers might once more draw down upon her the
+distrust and ill-will of the French government. She feared that this
+might prevent her returning with her son, through France, to her quiet
+retreat on the Lake of Constance, in Switzerland, to her charming
+Arenenberg, where she had passed so many delightful and peaceful years
+of repose and remembrance.
+
+Hortense was right. Her sojourn in England excited, as soon as it became
+known, in every quarter, care, curiosity, and disquiet. All parties were
+seeking to divine the duchess's intention in residing in London. All
+parties were convinced that she entertained plans that might endanger
+and frustrate their own. The Duchess de Berri, who resided in Bath, had
+come to London as soon as she heard of the arrival of the Duchess of St.
+Leu, in order to inquire into Hortense's real intention. The bold and
+enterprising Duchess de Berri was preparing to go to France, in order
+to call the people to arms for herself and son, to hurl Louis Philippe
+from his usurped throne, and to restore to her son his rightful
+inheritance. They, therefore, thought it perfectly natural that Hortense
+should entertain similar plans for her son; that she, too, should
+purpose the overthrow of the French king in order to place her own son,
+or the son of the emperor, the Duke de Reichstadt, on the throne.
+
+On the other hand, it had been endeavored to persuade Prince Leopold, of
+Coburg, to whom the powers of Europe had just offered the crown of
+Belgium, that the Duchess of St. Leu had come to England in order to
+possess herself of Belgium by a _coup d'état_, and to proclaim Louis
+Napoleon its king. But this wise and magnanimous prince laughed at these
+intimations. He had known the duchess in her days of magnificence, and
+he now hastened to lay the same homage at the foot of the homeless woman
+that he had once devoted to the adored and powerful Queen of Holland. He
+called on the duchess, conversed with her of her beautiful and brilliant
+past, and told her of the hopes which he himself entertained for the
+future. Deeply bowed down by the death of his beloved wife, Princess
+Charlotte of England, it was his purpose to seek consolation in his
+misfortune by striving to make his people happy. He had therefore
+accepted the crown tendered him by the people, and was on the point of
+departing for Belgium.
+
+While taking leave of the duchess, after a long and cordial
+conversation, he remarked, with a gentle smile: "I trust you will not
+take my kingdom away from me on your journey through Belgium?"
+
+While the new government of France, as well as the exiled Bourbons,
+suspected the Duchess of St. Leu and her son of entertaining plans for
+the subversion of the French throne, the imperialists and republicans
+were hoping that Hortense's influence might be exerted upon the
+destinies of France. Everywhere in France as well as in England, the
+people were of the opinion that the new throne of Louis Philippe had no
+vitality, because it had no support in the heart of the people. The
+partisans of the Bourbons believed that France longed for the grandson
+of St. Louis, for its hereditary king, Henry V.; the imperialists were
+convinced that the new government was about to be overthrown, and that
+France was more anxious than ever to see the emperors son, Napoleon II.,
+restored. The republicans, however, distrusted the people and the army,
+and began to perceive that they could only attain the longed-for
+republican institutions under a Bonaparte. They therefore sent their
+secret emissaries as well to the Duke de Reichstadt as to
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+The Duke de Reichstadt, to whom these emissaries proposed that he should
+come to France and present himself to the people, replied: "I cannot go
+to France as an adventurer; let the nation call me, and I shall find
+means to get there."
+
+To the propositions made to him, Louis Napoleon replied that he belonged
+to France under all circumstances; that he had proved this by asking
+permission to serve France, but he had been rejected. It would not
+become him to force to a decision by a _coup d'état_ the nation whose
+decrees he would ever hold sacred.
+
+Hortense regarded these efforts of the imperialists and of the
+republicans to win her son to their purposes with a sorrowful and
+anxious heart. She hoped and longed for nothing more than the privilege
+of living in retirement with her memories; she felt exhausted and
+sobered by the few steps she had already taken into the great world;
+she, who had ever felt the most tender sympathy for the misfortunes of
+others, and the most ardent desire to alleviate them--she had nowhere
+found in her misfortune any thing but injustice, indifference,
+and calumny.
+
+Hortense longed to be back at Arenenberg, in her Swiss mountains.
+Thither she desired to return with her son, in order that she might
+there dream with him of the brilliant days that had been, and sing with
+him the exalted song of her remembrances! If the French government
+should permit her to journey with her son through France, she could
+easily and securely reach the Swiss Canton of Thurgau, where her little
+estate, Arenenberg, lay under the protection of the republic; the
+daughter of the emperor would there be certain to find peace and repose!
+
+The duchess there wrote to M. de Houdetot, begging him to procure for
+her from the French government a passport, permitting her to travel
+through France under some assumed name. It was promised her after long
+hesitation, but under the condition that she should not commence her
+journey until after July, until after the first anniversary of the
+coronation of Louis Philippe.
+
+Hortense agreed to this, and received on the first of August a passport,
+which permitted her, as Madame Arenenberg, to pass through France with
+her son in order to return to her estate in Switzerland.
+
+It was at first the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the unquiet
+movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey through
+Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and uninterested
+demeanor, that she had no share whatever in these movements and riots.
+
+But, on informing Louis Napoleon of her intention, he exclaimed, with
+sparkling eyes: "If we go to Paris, and if I should see the people
+sabred before my eyes, I shall not be able to resist the inclination to
+place myself on its side[69]!"
+
+[Footnote 69: La Reine Hortense, p. 276.]
+
+Hortense clasped her son anxiously in her arms, as if to protect him
+from all danger, on her maternal heart. "We shall not go to Paris," said
+she, "we will wander through France, and pray before the monuments of
+our happiness!"
+
+On the 7th of August the Duchess of St. Leu left England with her son,
+Louis Napoleon, and landed after a pleasant passage at Boulogne.
+
+Boulogne was for Hortense the first monument of her happiness, at the
+foot of which she wished to pray! There, during the most brilliant
+period of the empire, she had attended the military _fêtes_, in the
+midst of which the emperor was preparing to go forth to encounter new
+dangers, and to reap, perhaps, new renown. A high column designated the
+place where these camp-festivals had once taken place. It had been
+erected under the empire, but under the restoration the name of Louis
+XVIII. had been inscribed on it.
+
+Accompanied by the prince, the Duchess of St. Leu ascended this column,
+in order to show him from its summit the beautiful and flourishing
+France, that had once been her own and through which they must now pass
+with veiled countenances and borrowed names. From there she pointed out
+to him the situation of the different camps, the location of the
+imperial tent, then the place where the emperor's throne had stood, and
+where he had first distributed crosses of the legion of honor among
+the soldiers.
+
+With a glowing countenance and in breathless attention, Louis Napoleon
+listened to his mother's narrative. Hortense, lost in her recollections,
+had not noticed that two other visitors, a lady and a gentleman, were
+now also on the platform and had listened to a part of her narrative. As
+the duchess ceased speaking, they approached to tell her with what deep
+interest they had listened to her narrative of the most glorious period
+of French history. They were a young married couple from Paris, and had
+much to relate concerning the parties who were now arrayed against each
+other in France, and who made the future of the country so uncertain.
+
+In return for Hortense's so eloquent description of the past, they now
+told her of a _bon mot_ of the present that was going the rounds of
+Parisian society. It was there said that the best means of satisfying
+everybody and all parties would be, to convert France into a republic
+and to give it three consuls, the Duke of Reichstadt, the Duke of
+Orleans, and the Duke of Bordeaux. "But," added they, "it might easily
+end in the first consul's driving out the other two, and making
+himself emperor."
+
+Hortense found the courage to answer this jest with a smile, but she
+hastened to leave the place and to get away from the couple, who had
+perhaps recognized her, and told them of the _bon mot_ with a purpose.
+
+Sadly and silently, mother and son returned to their hotel, which was
+situated on the sea-side, and commanded a fine view of the surging,
+foaming waters of the channel and of the lofty column of the empire.
+
+They both stepped out on the balcony. It was a beautiful evening; the
+setting sun shed its purple rays over the surface of the sea. Murmuring
+and in melodious _tace_ the foaming waves rolled in upon the beach; on
+another side, the lofty column, glowing in the light of the setting sun,
+towered aloft like a pillar of fire, a memorial monument of fire!
+
+Hortense, who for some time had been silently gazing, first at the
+column, then at the sea, now turned with a sad smile to her son.
+
+"Let us spend an hour with recollections of the past," said she. "In the
+presence of this foaming sea and of this proud column, I will show you
+a picture of the past. Do you wish to see it?"
+
+His gaze fastened on the imperial column, Louis Napoleon silently nodded
+assent.
+
+Hortense went to her room, and soon returned to the balcony with a book,
+bound in red velvet. Often, during the quiet days of Arenenberg, the
+prince had seen her writing in this book, but never had Hortense yielded
+to his entreaties and permitted him to read any part of her memoirs.
+Unsolicited it was her intention to unfold before him to-day a brilliant
+picture; in view of the sad and desolate present, she wished to portray
+to him the bright and glittering past, perhaps only for the purpose of
+entertaining him, perhaps in order to console him with the hope that all
+that is passes away, and that the present would therefore also come to
+an end, and that which once was, again become reality for him, the heir
+of the emperor.
+
+She seated herself at her son's side, on a little sofa that stood on the
+balcony, and, opening her book, began to read.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FRAGMENT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+"The emperor had returned from Italy. The beautiful ceremony of the
+distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honor had taken place
+before his departure, and I had been present on the occasion; the
+emperor now repaired to Boulogne, in order to make a second
+distribution of the order in the army on his birthday. He had made my
+husband general of the army of the reserve, and sent him a courier, with
+the request that he should come with me and our son to the camp at
+Boulogne. My husband did not wish to interrupt the baths he was taking
+at St. Amand, but he requested me to go to Boulogne, to spend a week
+with the emperor.
+
+"The emperor resided at Boulogne in a little villa called _Pont de
+Brigue_. His sister, Caroline, and Murat, lived in another little villa
+near by. I lived with them, and every day we went to dine with the
+emperor. During two years, our troops had been concentrating in full
+view of England, and every one expected an attack. The camp at Boulogne
+was erected on the sea-side, and resembled a long and regularly-built
+city. Each hut had a little garden, flowers, and birds. In the middle of
+the camp, on an elevation, stood the emperor's tent; near by, that of
+Marshal Berthier. All the men-of-war on the water were drawn up in a
+line, only waiting the signal of departure. In the distance we could see
+England, and its beautiful ships that were cruising along the coast
+seemed to form an impenetrable barrier. This grand spectacle gave us for
+the first time an illustration of an unknown, hitherto not-dreamed-of
+power that stood opposed to us. Here every thing was calculated to
+excite the imagination. This boundless sea might soon transform itself
+into a battle-field, and swallow up the _élite_ of the two greatest
+nations. Our troops, proud in the feeling that there were no obstacles
+for them, made impatient by two years' repose, glowing with energy and
+bravery, already imagined themselves to have attained the opposite
+coast. When one considered their bravery and confidence, success seemed
+certain; but when the eye turned to the impenetrable forest of masts on
+the hostile ships, a feeling of anxiety and fear suddenly took
+possession of the heart. And yet nothing seemed to be wanting to the
+expedition but a favorable wind.
+
+"Of all the homage that a woman can receive, military homage has in the
+highest degree the chivalrous character, and it is impossible not to
+feel flattered by it.
+
+"There could not be any thing more delightful or imposing than the
+homage of which I was here the object, and it was only here that it made
+any impression on me.
+
+"The emperor gave me as an escort his equerry, General Defrance.
+Whenever I approached a camp division, the guard was called out and
+presented arms.
+
+"I had interceded for several soldiers who were undergoing punishment
+for breaches of discipline, and was on this account received everywhere
+with the liveliest enthusiasm. The entire mounted general staff escorted
+my carriage, and my approach was everywhere hailed by brilliant music.
+It was on such an occasion that I saw for the first time the urn which a
+grenadier wore attached to his belt; I was told that the emperor, in
+order to do honor to the memory of the gallant Latour d'Auvergne[70],
+had caused his heart to be enclosed in a leaden casket, which he had
+intrusted to the oldest soldier of the regiment, commanding that his
+name should always be called at the roll-call, as though he were
+present. He who bore the heart replied: 'Dead on the field of honor.'
+
+[Footnote 70: Latour d'Auvergne, a descendant of the celebrated Turenne,
+was known and honored throughout the whole army on account of the
+lion-hearted courage which he had exhibited on so many occasions. As he
+invariably declined the many advancements and honors that were tendered
+him, Napoleon appointed him first grenadier of the army. He fell in the
+action at Neuburg, and the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais,
+afterward caused a monument to be erected there in his memory.]
+
+"One day, a breakfast was given me at the camp of Ambleteuse. I desired
+to go by water, and, notwithstanding a contrary wind, the admiral took
+me. I saw the English ships, and we passed so near them, that they might
+easily have captured our yacht. I also visited the Dutch fleet commanded
+by Admiral Versuelt, where I was received with great applause, the
+sailors little dreaming that I would be their queen within the space of
+a year[71].
+
+[Footnote 71: In order to reach the harbor of Ambleteuse to which they
+had been assigned, the Dutch had first been compelled to do battle with
+the English fleet, and in this combat they had acquitted themselves with
+the greatest honor.]
+
+"On another occasion, the emperor ordered a review. The English, who
+felt disquieted, by the appearance of so many troops drawn up before
+them, approached nearer and nearer to our coasts, and even fired a few
+cannon-shots at us; the emperor was at the head of his French columns
+when they replied to these shots, and was thus placed between two fires.
+As we had followed him, we were now compelled to remain at his side. To
+his uncle's great joy, my son exhibited no symptom of fear whatever. But
+the generals trembled at seeing the emperor exposed to such danger. The
+ramrod of some awkward soldier might prove as dangerous as a ball. In
+the midst of this imposing spectacle, I was struck with astonishment at
+the contrast presented by the troops under different circumstances. When
+drawn up in line of battle, they glowed with gallantry and
+determination, but, in the days of repose, they resembled well-behaved
+children, who could amuse themselves with a flower or a bird. The most
+daring warrior was then often converted into the most diligent and
+submissive scholar.
+
+"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent, the
+grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several songs, and
+came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young girls. In the
+most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song full of the fiercest
+and most daring threats against England.
+
+"From the emperor's parlor we often saw the soldiers of his guard
+assemble on the grass-plot before the castle; one of them would play the
+violin and instruct his comrades in dancing. The beginners would study
+the '_jétés_' and '_assemblés_' with the closest attention; the more
+advanced ones would execute a whole contredance. From behind the
+window-blinds we watched them with the greatest pleasure. The emperor,
+who often surprised us at this occupation, would laugh with us and
+rejoice at the innocent amusements of his soldiers.
+
+"Was this project of a landing in England really intended? Or was it
+the emperor's purpose by these enormous preparations to divert attention
+from other points, and fix it on this one only? Even to-day this is a
+question which I cannot venture to decide; here, as elsewhere, I only
+report what I have seen.
+
+"Madame Ney also gave me a brilliant festival at Montreuil, where her
+husband the marshal was in command. During the forenoon the troops were
+manoeuvred before me, in the evening a ball took place. But this was
+suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that the emperor had
+just embarked.
+
+"A number of young officers, who had been present at the ball, rushed
+out on the road to Boulogne; I followed them with the rapidity of
+lightning, escorted as usual by General Defrance, who burned with
+impatience to be again at the emperor's side. I myself felt unutterable
+emotion at the prospect of witnessing so great an occurrence. I imagined
+myself observing the battle from the summit of the tower that stood near
+the emperor's tent; beholding our fleet advance and sink down into the
+waves, I shuddered in anticipation.
+
+"At last I arrived. I inquired after the emperor, and learned that he
+had actually attended the embarkation of all his troops during the
+night, but that he had just returned to his villa.
+
+"I did not see him until dinner, at which he asked Prince Joseph, who
+was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed in this
+pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the soldiers.
+Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed that a departure
+was really intended, and that the soldiers had doubted it so little that
+they had sold their watches. The emperor also often asked if the
+telegraph had not yet announced the approach of the French squadron; his
+adjutant, Lauriston, was with the squadron, and the emperor seemed only
+to be awaiting Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to
+set sail.
+
+"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired, and I
+took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and Dunkirk. I saw
+troops defiling before me everywhere; and with regret and fear I left
+this magnificent army, thinking that they might perhaps in a few days be
+exposed to the greatest dangers.
+
+"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage of our
+fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving in our
+neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the Rhine. Austria
+had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris, to see the emperor
+once more before his departure for Germany[72]."
+
+[Footnote 72: La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc., p. 278.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PILGRIM.
+
+On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son, in
+order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
+her memories.
+
+It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although banished
+and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she still stood
+on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living in a foreign land,
+in a land whose language was unknown to her, and whose people she could
+therefore not understand. Now, on this journey through France, she
+rejoiced once more in being able to understand the conversation of the
+people in the streets, and of the peasants in the fields. It was a
+sensation of mingled bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a
+stranger among this people, and it therefore now afforded her the
+greatest delight to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
+_naïve_ and artless words.
+
+As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in which she
+purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out into the streets
+on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into a booth, seated
+herself, and conversed with the people who came to the store to purchase
+their daily necessaries; on another occasion, she accosted a child on
+the street, kissed it, and inquired after its parents; then, again, she
+would converse with the peasants in the villages about their farms, and
+the prospects of a plentiful harvest. The _naïve_, strong, and healthy
+disposition of the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of
+a happy mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
+French people, to which they, though banished and cast off,
+still belonged.
+
+In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince Condé. The
+forests that stood in the neighborhood had once belonged to the queen,
+or rather they had been a portion of the appendage which the emperor,
+since the union of Holland and France, had set apart for her second son,
+Louis Napoleon. Hortense had never been in the vicinity, and could
+therefore visit the castle without fear of being recognized.
+
+They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the garden, who
+had been the former possessor of the great forests of Chantilly.
+
+"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense," replied the
+man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued to speak of her
+here for a long time; it was said that she was wandering about in the
+country in disguise, but for the last few years nothing has been heard
+of her, and I do not know what has become of her."
+
+"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad a smile
+that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with tears.
+
+From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine, for
+Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once seen in the
+days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These places now seemed
+as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How great the splendor that
+had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the emperor had visited the owner
+of the place in order to enjoy with him the delights of the chase! In
+the walks of the park, in which thousands of lamps had then shone, the
+grass now grew rankly; a miserable, leaky boat was now the only
+conveyance to the Poplar Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques,
+on whose monument Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names.
+Morfontaine appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in
+1815, and it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense
+had attended a magnificent festival given by Joseph Bonaparte, then its
+owner, to his imperial brother.
+
+In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful remembrances for
+Hortense, for here was situated the great college for the daughters of
+high military officers, of which Hortense had been the protectress. She
+dared not show herself, for she well knew that she was not forgotten
+here; here there were many who still knew and loved her, and she could
+only show herself to strangers. But she nevertheless visited the church,
+and descended with Louis Napoleon into the vaults. Louis XVIII. alone
+reposed in the halls which the empire had restored for the reception of
+the new family of rulers, adopted by France. Alas! he who built these
+halls, the Emperor Napoleon, now reposed under a weeping-willow on a
+desolate island in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him now
+occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus of the emperor.
+
+While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls, Hortense thought
+of the day on which she had come hither with the emperor to inspect the
+building of the church. And that time she had been ill and suffering,
+and with the fullest conviction she had said to her mother that she,
+Queen Hortense, would be the first that would be laid to rest in the
+vault of St. Denis. Now, after so many years, she descended into it
+living and had hardly a right to visit it.
+
+But there was another grave, another monument to her memories, beside
+which Hortense desired to pray. This was the grave of the Empress
+Josephine, in the church at Ruelle.
+
+With what emotions did she approach this place and kneel down beside the
+grave-mound! Of all that Josephine had loved, there remained only
+Hortense and her son, a solitary couple, who were now secretly visiting
+the place where Hortense's mother reposed. The number of flowers that
+adorned the monument proved that Josephine was at least resting in the
+midst of friends, who still held her memory sacred, and this was a
+consolation for her daughter.
+
+From Ruelle and its consecrated grave they wandered on to Malmaison.
+Above all, Hortense wished to show this palace to her son! It was from
+this place that Napoleon had departed to leave France forever! Here
+Hortense had had the pleasure of sweetening for him, by her tender
+sympathy, the moment when all the world had abandoned him--the moment
+when he fell from the heights of renown into the abyss of misfortune.
+But, alas! the poor queen was not even to have the satisfaction of
+showing to her son the palace, sacred to so many memories that had once
+been her own! The present owner had given strict orders to give
+admission to the palace only upon presentation of permits that must be
+obtained of him beforehand, and, as Hortense had none, her entreaties
+were all in vain.
+
+She was cruelly repelled from the threshold of the palace in which in
+former days she had been so joyfully received by her devoted friends
+and servants!
+
+Sorrowfully, her eyes clouded with tears, she turned away and returned
+to her hotel, leaning on her son's arm.
+
+In silence she seated herself at his side on the stone bench that stood
+before the house, and gazed at the palace in which she had spent such
+happy and momentous days, lost in the recollections of the past!
+
+"It is, perhaps, natural," she murmured in a low voice, "that absence
+should cause those, who have the happiness to remain in their homes, to
+forget us. But, for those who are driven out into foreign lands, the
+life of the heart stands still, and the past is all to them; to the
+exiled the present and the future are unimportant. In France every thing
+has progressed, every thing is changed, I alone am left behind, with my
+sentiments of unchangeable love and fidelity! Alas! how sorrowful and
+painful it is to be forgotten[73]! How--"
+
+Suddenly she was interrupted by the tones of a piano, that resounded in
+her immediate vicinity. Behind the bench on which they were sitting,
+were the windows of the parlor of the hotel. These windows were open,
+and each tone of the music within could be heard with the greatest
+distinctness.
+
+The playing was now interrupted by a female voice, which said: "Sing us
+a song, my daughter."
+
+"What shall I sing?" asked another and more youthful voice.
+
+"Sing the beautiful, touching song your brother brought you from Paris
+yesterday. The song of Delphine Gay, set to music by M. de Beauplan."
+
+"Ah, you mean the song about Queen Hortense, who comes to Paris as a
+pilgrim? You are right, mamma, it is a beautiful and touching song, and
+I will sing it!"
+
+And the young lady struck the keys more forcibly, and began to play the
+prelude.
+
+Outside on the stone bench sat she who was once Queen Hortense, but was
+now the poor, solitary pilgrim. Nothing remained to her of the glorious
+past, but her son, who sat at her side! Hand in hand, both breathless
+with emotion, both pale and tearful, they listened until the young girl
+concluded her touching song.
+
+[Footnote 73: The duchess's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p.
+305.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was once more
+in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking the Lake of
+Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic lake, with its
+island and its surrounding cities and villages.
+
+Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned its back
+on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny alike
+frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and the
+Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her residence
+in their territory--still had the courage to offer the Duchess of St.
+Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil of the little
+republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and distrust of the mighty
+could not drive her!
+
+In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a bleeding
+breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful blow, the loss
+of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and bowed down by the
+coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the cowardly fear of its
+egoism, had become faithless, even to the holiest and most imperishable
+of all religions, the religion of memory!
+
+How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned her! how
+many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour of peril!
+
+In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them all;
+and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied them! She
+had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her world--Arenenberg,
+in which her last and only happiness, her son, the heir of the imperial
+name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which was as a temple of memory, in
+which Hortense was the pious and believing priestess.
+
+At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her journey
+through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in the heroism
+of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The noblest womanhood, the
+most cultivated mind, the proudest and purest soul, speaks from out this
+book, with which Hortense has erected a monument to herself that is more
+imperishable than all the monuments of stone and bronze, for this
+monument speaks to the heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote
+this book with her heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her
+eyes; she concludes it with a touching appeal to the French people,
+which it may well be permitted us to repeat here; it is as follows:
+
+"The renewal of the law of exile, and the assimilation made between us
+and the Bourbons, testify to the sentiments and fears that are
+entertained respecting us. No friendly voice has been raised in our
+behalf; this indifference has doubled the bitterness of our banishment!
+May they, however, still be happy--those who forget! May they, above
+all, make France happy! This is my prayer!
+
+"As for the people, it will, if it remembers its glory, its grandeur,
+and the incessant care of which it was the object, ever hold our memory
+dear. This is my firm conviction, and this thought is the sweetest
+consolation of an exile, the sweetest consolation he can take with him
+to the grave[74]!"
+
+Hortense still lived a few years of peaceful tranquillity; far from all
+she loved--far also from the son who was her last hope, never dreaming
+that destiny had so brilliant a future in store for him, and that Louis
+Napoleon, whom the Bourbons had banished from France as a child, and the
+Orleans as a youth--that Louis Napoleon would one day be enthroned in
+Paris as emperor, while the Bourbons and Orleans languish in foreign
+lands as exiles!
+
+In the year 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Bonapartes, died!
+
+Weary, at last, of misfortune, and of the exile in which she languished,
+she bowed her head, and went home to her great dead--home to Napoleon
+and Josephine!
+
+[Footnote 74: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 324.]
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Mühlbach
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Queen Hortense, by L.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Mühlbach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Queen Hortense
+       A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+Author: L. Mühlbach
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2004 [EBook #12019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN HORTENSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+</pre>
+
+<a name="389.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/389.jpg"><img src="images/389.jpg"
+width="75%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the
+Sections.</b></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>QUEEN HORTENSE</h1>
+<h2>A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era</h2>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>L. M&Uuml;HLBACH</h2>
+<br>
+<h5>AUTHOR OF</h5>
+<h4>PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES,<br>
+JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,<br>
+MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.</h4>
+<br>
+<h5>TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY</h5>
+<h3>CHAPMAN COLEMAN</h3>
+<h4>1910</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_I.">BOOK I.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.1">I.--Days of Childhood.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.1">II.--The Prophecy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.1">III.--Consequences of the
+Revolution.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.1">IV.--General Bonaparte.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.1">V.--The Marriage.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.1">VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.1">VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.1">VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from
+Egypt.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_II.">BOOK II.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.2">I.--A First Love.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.2">II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.2">III--Consul and King.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.2">IV.--The Calumny.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.2">V.--King or Emperor.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.2">VI.--Napoleon's Heir.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.2">VII.--Premonitions.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.2">VIII.--The Divorce.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.2">IX.--The King of Holland.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.2">X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.2">XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of
+Violets.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.2">XII.--The Days of Misfortune.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.2">XIII.--The Allies in Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV.2">XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and
+Louise de Cochelet.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV.2">XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor
+Alexander.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI.2">XVI.--The New Uncles.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII.2">XVII.--Death of the Empress
+Josephine.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_III.">BOOK III.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE RESTORATION.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.3">I.--The Return of the
+Bourbons.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.3">II.--The Bourbons and the
+Bonapartes.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.3">III.--Madame de Sta&euml;l.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.3">IV.--Madame de Sta&euml;l's Return to
+Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.3">V.--Madame de Sta&euml;l's Visit to Queen
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.3">VI.--The Old and New Era.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.3">VII.--King Louis XVIII.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.3">VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.3">IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his
+Wife.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.3">X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.3">XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and
+Napoleon's Arrival.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.3">XII.--The Hundred Days.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.3">XIII.--Napoleon's Last
+Adieu.</a></center>
+<br>
+<h2><a href="#BOOK_IV.">BOOK IV.</a></h2>
+<h3><i>THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</i></h3>
+<h4>CHAPTER</h4>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I.4">I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II.4">II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III.4">III.--The Revolution of 1830.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV.4">IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V.4">V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI.4">VI.--The Flight from Italy.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII.4">VII.--The Pilgrimage.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII.4">VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of
+St. Leu.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX.4">IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from
+Paris.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X.4">X.--Pilgrimage through France.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI.4">XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen
+Hortense.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII.4">XII.--The Pilgrim.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII.4">XIII.--Conclusion.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<center>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#389.jpg">General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of
+the Sections, <i>Frontispiece</i>.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#390.jpg">View of the Tuileries.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#391.jpg">Portrait of Queen Hortense.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#392.jpg">Portrait of Madame de Sta&euml;l.</a></li>
+</ul>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>QUEEN HORTENSE.</h2>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I."></a>BOOK I.</h2>
+<h3><i>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION.</i></h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.1"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says
+our great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss
+purchased with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far
+too costly.</p>
+<p>And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
+Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy?
+Now, let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have
+tasted felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is
+imperishable and eternal!"</p>
+<p>Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of
+an emperor to endure.</p>
+<p>In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune
+and with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother,
+she was not spared.</p>
+<p>A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic
+days was this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had
+descended from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign,
+exhausted and weary of life, found refuge at length in the grave,
+yet still survived among us as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen
+of nations, but the Queen of Flowers.</p>
+<p>The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's
+beautiful daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race,
+deny her when she was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful
+emperor, but merely the daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers
+the lovely Hortense continued to live on, and Gavarni, the great
+poet of the floral realm, has reared to her, as Hortensia, the
+Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his "<i>Fleurs
+Anim&eacute;es</i>." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of
+the Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of
+a half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris.
+Farther in the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the
+carved likeness of the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness
+reigns around the spot, but above it, in the air, hovers the
+imperial eagle. The imperial mantle, studded with its golden bees,
+undulates behind him, like the train of a comet; the dark-red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the golden cross, hangs around
+his neck, and in his beak he bears a full-blooming branch of the
+crown imperial.</p>
+<p>It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming
+picture of Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant
+that sweeps by us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow,
+when we scan the life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and
+meditate upon her destiny. She had known all the grandeur and
+splendor of earth, and had seen them all crumble again to dust. No,
+not all! Her ballads and poems remain, for genius needs no diadem
+to be immortal.</p>
+<p>When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she
+none the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her
+poems are sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness
+and full of impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance
+oversteps the bounds of womanly gentleness. Her musical
+compositions, too, are equally melodious and attractive to the
+heart. Who does not know the song, "<i>Va t'en, Guerrier</i>,"
+which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at Napoleon's
+request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of France
+once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
+march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same
+warlike harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the
+same distant destination. This ballad, written by Hortense,
+survived. At one time everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then,
+when the Bourbons had returned, the scarred and crippled veterans
+of the <i>Invalides</i> hummed it under their breath, while they
+whispered secretly to each other of the glory of <i>La Belle
+France</i>, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now gone forever.</p>
+<p>To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and
+mounts in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place
+Vend&ocirc;me. The bronze visage of the emperor seems to melt into
+a smile as these tremulous billows of melody go sweeping around his
+brow, and the Hortensias on the queen's grave raise dreamingly
+their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of
+the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth
+lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so
+holy a significance--holy because it is the master-chant of a
+religion which all men and all nations should revere--the "religion
+of our memories." Thus, this "<i>Va t'en, Guerrier</i>," which
+France now sings, resounds over the grave of the queen, like a
+salute of honor over the last resting-place of some brave
+soldier.</p>
+<p>She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable
+queen--but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of
+courage that belongs to woman--the courage to smile through her
+tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the
+doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken heart; her step-father,
+the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged lion, on a lone
+rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned kings and
+queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs, banished
+from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
+those to whom <i>they</i> had been clement, a little spot of earth,
+where, far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might
+live in quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their
+mighty sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy
+tale, which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to
+men and nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed
+stings, were eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned
+Napoleon race.</p>
+<p>Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia
+had the mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the
+contrary, to teach her children to love them and do good to them.
+The heart of the dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but
+she did not allow these wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her
+heart to harden under the broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to
+bleed. She cherished her bereavements and her wounds, and kept them
+open with her tears; but, even while she suffered measureless woes,
+it solaced her heart to relieve the woes and dry the tears of
+others. Thus was her life a constant charity; and when she died she
+could, like the Empress Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept
+much, but never have I made others weep."</p>
+<p>Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who,
+against the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful
+Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique.
+This alliance, which love alone had brought about, seemed destined,
+nevertheless, to no happy issue. While both were young, and both
+inexperienced, passionate, and jealous, both lacked the strength
+and energy requisite to restrain the wild impulses of their fiery
+temperaments within the cool and tranquil bounds of quiet married
+life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and
+tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor
+in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine was too innocent,
+too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all those things
+that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her husband
+an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered in
+the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be
+conceived, then, that such a state of things soon led to violent
+scenes and bitter grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable
+not to attract attention and admiration wherever she went, and she
+was not yet <i>blas&eacute;e</i> and hackneyed enough to take no
+pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and the admiration so
+universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part to win them.
+But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she required of her
+husband that these trifling outside coquetries should not disquiet
+him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose the most
+unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
+suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and
+both became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding
+the love they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts,
+had not their children rendered such a separation impossible. These
+children were a son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years
+younger than the boy. Both parents loved these children with
+passionate tenderness; and often when one of the stormy scenes at
+which we have hinted took place in the presence of the young
+people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress from little
+Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and mother, whose
+anger, after all, was but the result of excessive attachment.</p>
+<p>But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the
+moment arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his
+little sister in her efforts to soothe the irritation of her
+parents. The viscount had sent Eugene, who was now seven years of
+age, to a boarding-school; and little Hortense, quite disheartened
+by the absence of her brother, had no longer the means or the
+courage to allay the quarrels that raged between her parents, but
+would escape in terror and dismay, when they broke out, to some
+lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a misfortune, the
+extent of which her poor little childish heart could not yet
+estimate.</p>
+<p>In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young
+viscountess received a letter from Martinique. It was from her
+mother, Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her
+daughter the terrors of her lonely situation in her huge, silent
+residence, where there was no one around her but servants and
+slaves, whose singularly altered and insubordinate manner had, of
+late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her with secret
+apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her daughter
+to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the last
+few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
+dazzling youth.</p>
+<p>Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a
+hint from destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and
+resolved to end them forever, she took her little daughter,
+Hortense, then scarcely four years old, and with her sailed away
+from France, to seek beyond the ocean and in her mother's arms the
+new happiness of undisturbed tranquillity.</p>
+<p>But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The
+mutterings and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on
+all sides. A subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all
+lands; a dull thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were
+about to change into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that
+would dash to atoms, and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and
+fiery cinder-showers, the happiness and peace of all humanity. And,
+finally, this terrific crater did, indeed, open and hurl
+destruction and death on all sides, over the whole world,
+uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations, and
+silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
+echoes of its awful voice!</p>
+<p>This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most
+fearful explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole
+world shook and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious
+masses from beneath overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse
+the order of things and place the lowest where the highest had
+been. Even away in Martinique this social earthquake was felt,
+which had already, in France, flung out the bloody guillotine from
+its relentless crater. This guillotine had become the altar of the
+so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon this altar the
+intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new idol those
+who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by whose
+death they now believed that they could purchase freedom for
+evermore.</p>
+<p>"<i>Egalit&eacute;! fraternit&eacute;! libert&eacute;!</i>" Such
+was the battle-cry of this howling, murdering populace. Such were
+the three words which burned in blood-red letters of fire above the
+guillotine, and their mocking emblem was the glittering axe, that
+flashed down, to sever from their bodies the heads of the
+aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion represented in those
+three words, they would not recognize as brethren and equals, or
+admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this battle-cry of
+the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as Martinique,
+where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience to the
+point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
+equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They,
+at last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their
+masters, and the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of
+the whites served as the bridal torches to their espousal of
+liberty.</p>
+<p>The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes
+in which these firebrands fell.</p>
+<p>One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the
+flames, which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek
+of terror, she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in
+her arms from the couch where the child lay quietly slumbering,
+wrapped her in the bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire,
+from the house. She burst, with the lion-like courage of a mother,
+through the shouting, fighting crowds of soldiers and blacks
+outside, and fled, with all the speed of mortal terror, toward the
+harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready to weigh anchor. An
+officer, who at that moment was stepping into the small boat that
+was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young woman, as,
+holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with one
+last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with
+the deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both
+mother and child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then
+instantly put out from land, and bounded away over the billows with
+its lovely burden.</p>
+<p>The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping
+her child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel,
+climbed up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this
+moment all her thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and
+it was only when she had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed
+in the cabin and free from all danger--only after she had fulfilled
+all the duties of a mother, that the woman revived in her breast,
+and she cast shamed and frightened glances around her. Only
+half-clad, in light, fluttering night-clothes, without any other
+covering to her beautiful neck and bosom than her superb, luxuriant
+hair, which fell around her and partly hid them, like a thick black
+veil, stood the young Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais, in the
+midst of a group of gazing men!</p>
+<p>However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so
+soon as her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine
+eagerly requested to be taken back to land, in order that she might
+fly to her mother's assistance.</p>
+<p>But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to
+give the young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins
+who were burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells
+could be distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast,
+so far as the eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea,
+though, of flame and smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in
+long tongues of fire far against the sky. It was a terrible, an
+appalling spectacle; and Josephine fled from it to the bedside of
+her little sleeping daughter. Then, kneeling there by the couch of
+her child, she uplifted to heaven her face, down which the tears
+were streaming, and implored God to spare her mother.</p>
+<p>But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and
+farther away from this blazing coast.</p>
+<p>Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's
+burning home, which gradually grew less to her sight, then
+glimmered only like a tiny star on the distant horizon, and finally
+vanished altogether. With that last ray her childhood and past life
+had sunk forever in the sea, and a new world and a new life opened
+for both mother and child. The past was, like the ships of Cortez,
+burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light far away over into
+her future, and as Josephine stood there with her little Hortense
+in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island where her
+early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
+mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:</p>
+<p>"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all
+France will be at your feet. You will be greater there than a
+queen."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.1"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>THE PROPHECY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with
+her little daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her
+residence in a small dwelling. There she soon received the
+intelligence of the rescue of her mother, and of the
+re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In France, however, the
+revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the banner of the
+Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody shadow over
+Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in the
+evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
+that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at
+every door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in
+every family. In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all
+her earlier griefs, all the insults and humiliations to which she
+had been subjected by her husband; the old love revived in her
+breast, and, as it might well be that on the morrow death would
+come knocking at her own door, she wished to devote the present
+moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a reunion with her
+son.</p>
+<p>But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The
+viscount had felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an
+injury, too great an insult, to be now willing to consent to a
+reconciliation with his wife. Sympathizing friends arranged a
+meeting between them, without, however, previously informing the
+viscount of their design. His anger was therefore great when, on
+entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in response to that
+gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had so
+obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
+when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in
+silvery tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was
+now powerless to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his
+heart, and when the child, with a winning smile, entreated him to
+kiss her mamma as he had kissed her; when he saw the beautiful
+countenance of Josephine wet with tears; when he heard his father's
+voice saying, "My son, reconcile yourself with my daughter!
+Josephine is my daughter, and I would not call her so if she were
+unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son, Eugene, gazing at him
+wistfully, his head resting on his mother's shoulder, his heart
+relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he stepped forward
+to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful greeting of
+love, Josephine sank on his bosom.</p>
+<p>Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united
+in a closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to
+have spent their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear
+and cloudless. But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the
+black shadow of the revolution.</p>
+<p>Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the
+new legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position,
+in order to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue.
+With the rank of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the
+North, accompanied by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread
+premonition told her that she would never see the general again,
+and this premonition did not deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and
+insurrection not only raged among the people of Paris, but also in
+the army. The aristocrats, who were given over to the guillotine in
+Paris, were also regarded with distrust and hatred in the army, and
+Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry on the battle-field of
+Soissons, had been promoted to the position of commanding general,
+was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of France and of
+the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to Paris, and
+thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
+victims of the revolution lay in confinement.</p>
+<p>The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached
+Josephine, and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf.
+She mentally vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her
+children, or to die with him. She courageously confronted all
+dangers, all suspicions, and was happy when she found him in his
+prison, where she visited him, whispering words of consolation and
+hope in his ear.</p>
+<p>But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
+Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
+herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of
+an aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
+arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.</p>
+<p>Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
+prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only
+left their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all
+help, avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two
+children were threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger,
+for the estate of their parents had been confiscated, and, in the
+same hour in which Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances
+and doors of their dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left
+to find a sheltering roof for themselves. But yet they were not
+entirely helpless, not quite friendless, for a friend of Josephine,
+a Madame Ho1stein, had the courage to come to the rescue, and take
+the children into her own family.</p>
+<p>But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in
+order to avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who,
+coming from the scum of the people, were now the rulers of France.
+An imprudent word, a look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon,
+and render up to the guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this
+courageous friend of the two children. It was in itself a capital
+crime that she had taken the children of the accused into her
+house, and it was therefore necessary to adopt every means of
+conciliating the authorities. It was thought necessary that
+Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend the
+festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
+decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was
+never required to take an active part in these celebrations. She
+was not considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the
+people; she had not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a
+viscount, of an imprisoned <i>ci-devant.</i> Eugene had been
+apprenticed to a carpenter, and the son of the viscount was now
+often seen walking through the streets in a blouse, carrying a
+board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.</p>
+<p>While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary
+security, the future of their parents was growing darker and
+darker, and not only the life of the general, but also that of his
+wife, was now seriously endangered. Josephine had been removed from
+the prison of St. Pelagie to that of the Carmelites, and this
+brought her a step nearer the scaffold. But she did not tremble for
+herself, she thought only of her children and her husband; she
+wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she bribed her
+jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts to
+place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
+day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just
+been conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited
+for further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
+acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he
+already free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he
+were free, he would have found means to inform her of the fact; and
+if he were dead, his name would certainly have been mentioned in
+the list of the condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine
+passed the long day. Night came, but brought no rest for her and
+her companions in misery--the other occupants of the prison--who
+also looked death in the face, and who watched with her throughout
+the long night.</p>
+<p>The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select.
+There were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de
+Maille, whose seventeen-years-old daughter had just been
+guillotined; there was the Marquise de Cr&eacute;qui, the
+intellectual lady who has often been called the last marquise of
+the <i>ancien r&eacute;gime</i>, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
+the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
+aristocratic standpoint. There was Abb&eacute; T&eacute;xier, who,
+when the revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he
+had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution,
+replied: "Will you see any better after having hung me to the
+lantern?" And there was yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of
+Cagliostro, who, like his master, could read the future, and with
+the assistance of a decanter full of water and a "dove," that is,
+an innocent young girl of less than seven, could solve the
+mysteries of fate.</p>
+<p>To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself
+after this day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of
+the fate of her husband.</p>
+<p>In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the
+prison now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an
+assignat of fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had
+consented that his little six-years-old daughter should serve the
+Grand Cophta as "dove," and had made all other preparations. A
+table stood in the middle of the hall, on which was a decanter
+filled with clear, fresh water, around which were three candles in
+the form of a triangle, and placed as near the decanter as
+possible, in order that the dove should be able to see the better.
+The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought from her bed
+in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and behind
+her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
+the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
+ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their
+aristocratic manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly
+observant of etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the
+honor of the <i>tabouret</i> in the Tuileries, were here accorded
+the same precedence, and all possible consideration shown them.</p>
+<p>On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her
+large, dark eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression,
+stood the unhappy Josephine, and, at some distance behind the
+ladies, the jailer with his wife.</p>
+<p>Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and
+cried in a loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"</p>
+<p>The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
+decanter.</p>
+<p>"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look
+into the prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"</p>
+<p>"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot
+lies a young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man,
+writing on a sheet of paper that lies on a large book."</p>
+<p>"Can you read?"</p>
+<p>"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the
+paper."</p>
+<p>"The one who sleeps?"</p>
+<p>"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing
+something on the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair;
+now he opens a little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it;
+they are assignats, he counts them and then puts them back in the
+pocket-book. Now he rises and walks softly, softly."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest
+noise as yet, have you?"</p>
+<p>"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."</p>
+<p>"What do you see now?"</p>
+<p>"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be
+weeping."</p>
+<p>"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in
+the pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."</p>
+<p>"Of what color is this coat?"</p>
+<p>"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk
+and covered with shining buttons."</p>
+<p>"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed,
+child."</p>
+<p>He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The
+little girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her
+parents, who led her from the hall.</p>
+<p>"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta,
+addressing Josephine.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing
+for death<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_1">[1]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
+Cr&eacute;qui, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol.
+vi., p. 238.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received
+a package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La
+Force, named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General
+Beauharnais and had found the package and the letter, addressed to
+the duchess, in his pocket on the morning of the execution of the
+general.</p>
+<p>In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver
+to Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last
+adieus to wife and children.</p>
+<p>This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could
+bequeath to his Josephine and her unhappy children!</p>
+<p>Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and
+his last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of
+blood gushing from her mouth.</p>
+<p>Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her
+the most tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a
+physician should be called.</p>
+<p>"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the
+best physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will
+restore to him his wife."</p>
+<p>This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered
+from her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of
+Terror. This was the herald of certain death, and she courageously
+prepared for the grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children
+she must leave behind.</p>
+<p>A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
+revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as
+there was no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss
+which themselves had digged.</p>
+<p>The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty
+thousands of the already condemned victims of the revolution.</p>
+<p>Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to
+liberty, and could now hasten to her children, but she came back to
+them as a poor widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible
+republic" were on hers and her children's property as well as on
+that of all other aristocrats.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.1"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an
+end, and a milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre
+over the poor land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death.
+It was no longer a capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to
+be better dressed than the <i>sans-culottes</i>, to wear no
+Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the emigrants. The guillotine,
+which had ruled over Paris during two years of blood and tears, now
+rested from its horrid work, and allowed the Parisians to think of
+something else besides making their wills and preparing for
+death.</p>
+<p>Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were
+disposed to make the most of this release from the fear of
+immediate death, and to enjoy themselves to the utmost while they
+could.</p>
+<p>They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once
+more; so long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently
+longed for amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris,
+who had been dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the
+reins had been torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins
+again, and reconquer the position from which the storm-wind of the
+revolution had hurled them.</p>
+<p>Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five
+directors who now swayed the destinies of France; Madame
+R&eacute;camier, the friend of all the eminent and distinguished
+men of that period; and Madame de Sta&euml;l, the daughter of
+Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose government
+had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris its
+drawing-rooms, its reunions, its <i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, its fashions,
+and its luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the
+Church had not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief
+in a Supreme Being was already re-established. Robespierre had
+already been bold enough to cause the inscription, "There is a
+Supreme Being," to be placed over the altars of the churches that
+had been converted into "Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a
+Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who had first acknowledged its
+existence, was soon to experience in himself that such was the
+case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by them with
+desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the head of
+the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell a
+prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
+existence. While engaged in the H&ocirc;tel de Ville in signing
+death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the
+guillotine, he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards,
+who had stormed the gates and penetrated into the building, and the
+attempt to blow out his brains with his pistol miscarried.
+Bleeding, his jaw shattered by the bullet, he was dragged before
+Fouquier-Tainville to receive his sentence, and to be conducted
+thence to the scaffold. In order that the proceeding should be
+attended with all formalities, he was, however, first conducted to
+the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety was then
+sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
+bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the
+scaffold, the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged.
+Like a bundle of rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large
+table that stood in the middle of the room. But yesterday
+Robespierre had been enthroned at this table as almighty ruler over
+the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen; but yesterday he had
+here issued his decrees and signed the death-sentences, that lay on
+the table, unexecuted. These papers were now the only salve the
+ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in his face, from
+which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed by
+himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
+tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate <i>sans-culotte</i>, with
+which to bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat
+there in the midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding,
+groaning, and complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched
+arms, pointing to this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was
+right. There is a Supreme Being!"</p>
+<p>This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was
+dead; Th&eacute;roigne de M&eacute;ricourt was no longer the
+Goddess of Reason, and Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of
+Liberty and Virtue. Women had given up representing divinities, and
+desired to be themselves again, and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms
+of the capital, by means of their intellect and grace, the throne
+which had gone down in the revolution.</p>
+<p>Madame Tallien, Madame R&eacute;camier, and Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, reorganized society, and all were anxious to obtain
+admission to their parlors. To be sure, these entertainments and
+reunions still wore a sufficiently strange and fantastic
+appearance. Fashion, which had so long been compelled to give way
+to the <i>carmagnole</i> and red cap, endeavored to avenge its long
+banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in doing so
+assumed a political, reactionary aspect. <i>Coiffures &agrave; la
+Jacobine</i> were now supplanted by <i>coiffures &agrave; la
+victime</i> and <i>au repentir</i>. In order to exhibit one's taste
+for the fine arts, the draperies of the statues of Greece and
+ancient Rome were now worn. Grecian <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> were given,
+at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly honored, and Roman
+feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled those of
+Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
+palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now
+taken up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the
+new French society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud
+to wear the generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic,
+Madame Tallien chose the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and
+the gold-embroidered purple robes, and the golden tiara in her
+black, shining hair, gave to the charming and beautiful daughter of
+the republic the magnificence of an empress. She had also drawn
+around her a splendid court. All eagerly pressed forward to pay
+their respects to and obtain the good will of the mighty wife of
+the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of attraction to
+all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or aspired to
+such. While in the parlors of Madame R&eacute;camier, who, despite
+the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the
+good time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often
+sanguinary <i>bon mots</i> at the expense of the republic
+uttered--while in Madame de Sta&euml;l's parlors art and science
+had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and court lived for the
+present, and basked in the splendor with which she knew how to
+invest the palace of the dictators of France.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been
+living, with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad
+memories. A day came, however, when she was compelled to tear
+herself from this last consolation of the unhappy, the brooding
+over the sorrows and losses of the past, or see her children become
+the victims of misery and want. The time had come when she must
+leave her retirement, and step, as a petitioner, before those who
+had the power to grant, as a favor, that which was hers by right,
+and restore to her, at least in part, her sequestered estate.
+Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was still Madame de
+Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might assist her in
+her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father. Madame
+Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
+admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being
+called on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished
+position at the court of King Louis. She therefore received her
+with great amiability, and endeavored to make the charming and
+beautiful viscountess her friend. But Josephine found that estates
+were more easily lost than recovered. The republic, one and
+indivisible, was always ready to take, but not to give; and, even
+with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien freely exerted in her
+behalf, it was some time before Josephine succeeded in recovering
+her estate. In the mean time, she really suffered want, and she and
+her children were compelled to bear the hardships and
+mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true friends
+still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
+delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with
+food and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was
+characteristic of this period that no one felt humiliated by
+accepting benefits of this kind from his friends. Those who had
+lost all had not done so through their own fault; and those who had
+saved their property out of the general wreck could not attribute
+their fortune to their own merit or wisdom, but merely to chance.
+They therefore considered it a sacred duty to divide with those who
+had been less fortunate; and the latter would point with pride to
+the poverty which proved that they had been true to themselves and
+principle, and accept what friendship offered. This was the result
+of a kind of community of property, to which the revolution had
+given birth. Those who had possessions considered it their duty to
+divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded this
+division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.</p>
+<p>Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends
+without blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de
+Montmorin to provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and
+she and Hortense could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to
+dine with her twice a week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were
+assembled, on certain days, a number of friends, who had been
+robbed of their fortunes by the storms of the revolution. Madame
+Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor, gave these dinners to
+her friends, but each guest was expected to bring with him his own
+white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered one of the
+greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a law had
+been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain amount
+of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
+purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
+general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
+requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that
+no more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and
+that amount cost the purchaser dearly<a name=
+"FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a>. Josephine, however,
+had not even the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An
+exception to this rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and
+Hortense; and at Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always
+provided white bread for them, and for them alone of all her
+guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was soon, however, to be freed from
+this want. One day when she had been invited by Madame Tallien to
+dinner, and had walked to the palace with Hortense, Tallien
+informed her that the government had favorably considered her
+petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the widow of
+a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with his
+blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
+domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed
+from her furniture and other personal property, and that the
+republic had remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury
+for her relief, until the sequestration of her landed estates
+should be annulled, which he expected would soon take place.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+M&eacute;moires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
+i., p. 80.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She
+pressed her daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in
+tears: "We shall at last be happy! My children shall no longer
+suffer want!" This time the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy,
+the first in long years.</p>
+<p>Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her
+children an education suitable to their rank; she could now once
+more assume the position in society to which her beauty, youth,
+amiability, and name entitled her. She no longer came to Madame
+Tallien's parlor as a suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all
+were eager to do homage to the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to
+the beautiful and charming viscountess. But Josephine preferred the
+quiet bliss of home-life in the circle of her children to the
+brilliant life of society; she gradually withdrew from the noisy
+circles of the outer world, in order that she might, in peaceful
+retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the hearts and
+minds of her promising children.</p>
+<p>Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal
+security no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had
+left his master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was
+preparing himself for military service under the instruction of
+excellent teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers
+of comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France
+filled him with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his
+teacher of the deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling
+eyes and glowing countenance: "I too will become a gallant general,
+some day!"</p>
+<p>Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who
+was scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an
+elder and younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature
+had given Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to
+this beauty grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her
+daughter's intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early
+accustomed to care and want, this child had not the giddy,
+thoughtless disposition usually characteristic of girls of her age.
+She had too early gained an insight into the uncertainty and
+emptiness of all earthly magnificence, not to appreciate the
+littleness of those things upon which young girls usually place so
+high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with the adornment
+of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath the yoke
+of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
+enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
+dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
+Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at
+home, to amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more
+useful, if not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done
+in the brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early
+matured in the school of experience and suffering, the girl of
+twelve had acquired a womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet
+her noble and chaste features still wore the impress of childhood,
+and in her large blue eyes reposed a whole heaven of innocence and
+peace. When she sat with her harp at the window in the evening
+twilight, the last rays of the setting sun gilding her sweet
+countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her beautiful blond
+hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
+angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter
+portray. In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and
+melodies which Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with
+the silvery tones of her voice, in words composed by herself,
+half-childish prayer, half rhapsody of love, and revealing the most
+secret thoughts of the fair young being who stood on the threshold
+of womanhood, bidding adieu to childhood with a blissful smile, and
+dreaming of the future.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.1"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>GENERAL BUONAPARTE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long
+and stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and
+repose, the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to
+time in fits of fury, and tranquillity continued far from being
+permanently restored. The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution,
+still exercised their pestilential influence over the populace of
+Paris, and stirred the rude masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms
+of discontent and disorder.</p>
+<p>But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild
+masses in his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down
+into the dust with the flashing master-glance of his resistless
+eye.</p>
+<p>That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine
+years of age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero
+crowned with laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of
+victory. As commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of
+valor at the recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to
+the rank of general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the
+republic. Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the
+young general of five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the
+government, being still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished
+to remove him from Paris, and send him to La Vend&eacute;e as a
+brigadier-general. Buonaparte declined this mission, because he
+preferred remaining in the artillery service, and, for that reason,
+the government of the republic relieved him of his duties and put
+him on half-pay.</p>
+<p>So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the
+brilliant star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and
+shed the fulness of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the
+secret voices which whispered in his breast of a dazzling future,
+and a fabulous career of military glory, had already announced the
+rising of his star.</p>
+<p>So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed
+quiet, retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted
+friends only, who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted
+circumstances. For Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited
+means in the tempests of the revolution, and all that he possessed
+consisted of the laurels he had won on the battle-field, and his
+half pay as a brigadier-general. But, like the Viscountess de
+Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends who deemed it an honor
+to receive him as a guest at their table, and also, like Josephine,
+he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him to the dinners
+that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He often
+dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
+boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that
+time still his host, favored of the gods. The young general,
+instead of, like his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought
+only his ration, which was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned
+to his brother Louis, who was very fond of it, while Madame
+Bourrienne took care that he should invariably find his supply of
+white, bread at his plate. She had managed to get some flour
+smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had white-bread
+made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
+discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of
+them to the scaffold.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently
+wrote the name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of
+expectation, hoping that, should the existing government, so
+hostile to him, be suppressed by another, his wishes might be at
+last fulfilled. These wishes were, by the way, of a rather
+unpretending character. "If I could only live here quietly, at
+Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent that
+pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
+carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"</p>
+<p>He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the
+"pretty little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the
+cardinal, when the important events that soon shook Paris once more
+prevented him, and the famous 13th Vend&eacute;miaire, 1795, again
+summoned the famous general away from his meditations to stern
+practical activity. It was on that day, the 13th Vend&eacute;miaire
+(October 5th), that there came the outburst of the storm, the
+subterranean rumblings of which had been so long perceptible. The
+sections of Paris rose against the National Convention which had
+given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two thirds of
+the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
+legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
+accept the new constitution only when it provided that the
+legislative body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The
+Convention, thus assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was
+resolved to stand its ground, and called upon the representatives
+who commanded the armed forces, to defend the republic of their
+creation. Barras was appointed the first general commanding the
+Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the second. It was not long
+before a ferocious conflict broke out in the streets between the
+army and the insurgent sections. At that time the populace were not
+always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear up the
+pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
+terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the
+Church of St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but
+they were driven from them also; the struggle in the streets
+recommenced, and streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.</p>
+<p>After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras
+declared to the triumphant National Convention that the victory
+over the insurgents was chiefly due to the comprehensive and
+gallant conduct of General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon
+the latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of
+the Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on
+the day of peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from
+obscurity; his name had risen above the horizon!</p>
+<p>He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the
+whispering voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant
+song of his future career. He was now already conscious that he had
+a shining goal before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet
+assign a title, that flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale,
+and which he swore to make reality at last.</p>
+<p>One day, there came to the headquarters of the young
+general-in-chief a young man who very pressingly asked to see him.
+Bonaparte had him admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous,
+fiery glance, the noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at
+once prepossessed him in the young man's favor, and he forthwith
+questioned him in gentle, friendly tones, concerning the object of
+his visit.</p>
+<p>"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais,
+and I have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was
+denounced before the Committee of Public Safety as a
+<i>suspect</i>, and given over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, who
+had him murdered, three days before the fall of Robespierre."</p>
+<p>"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.</p>
+<p>"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I
+come now to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have
+the kindness to bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to
+induce them to give me back my father's sword. I will faithfully
+use it in fighting the enemies of my country and defending the
+cause of the republic."</p>
+<p>These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to
+the stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of
+his eyes grew softer.</p>
+<p>"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and
+this filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of
+General Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"</p>
+<p>"With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the
+necessary commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the
+adjutant returned, bringing with him the sword of General
+Beauharnais.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed
+with strong emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession
+of his father--to his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred
+emotion started into his eyes.</p>
+<p>Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white
+hand, which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as
+soft, as delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess,
+rested lightly on Eugene's shoulder.</p>
+<p>"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all
+hearts to him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you
+or your family."</p>
+<p>Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement.
+"Good general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will
+pray for you."</p>
+<p>This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly
+nod, he desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to
+call upon him soon again.</p>
+<p>This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the
+commencement of the acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and
+Josephine. The sword of the guillotined General Beauharnais placed
+an imperial crown upon the head of his widow, and adorned the brows
+of his son and his daughter with royal diadems.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.1"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>THE MARRIAGE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene,
+Josephine met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant
+<i>soir&eacute;es</i> given by Barras, the first general-in-chief.
+She asked Barras to introduce her to the young general, and then,
+in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of all prudery, yet
+none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand to
+Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
+the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.</p>
+<p>The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and
+beautiful woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to
+manhood. Her enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a
+sea of warmth and passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while
+the gentle, love-enticing smile that played around her mouth
+revealed the tender feminine gentleness and amiability of her
+disposition. Bonaparte had never mastered the art of flattering
+women in the light, frivolous style of the fashionable coxcomb; and
+when he attempted it his compliments were frequently of so unusual
+and startling a character that they might just as well contain an
+affront as a tribute of eulogy.</p>
+<p>"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was
+emperor, to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red
+hair you have!"</p>
+<p>"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time
+that a man ever told me so."</p>
+<p>And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a
+very handsome blond<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_3">[3]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to Tours,
+because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen of
+Spain.</blockquote>
+<p>To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once
+said: "Ah, good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to
+another: "What beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress
+that is! Who could have put it up for you in such ridiculous
+style?"</p>
+<p>Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women
+with words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language
+that his eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very
+hour, conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy
+at the thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young
+hero had awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to
+livelier palpitations.</p>
+<p>From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and,
+ere long, Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing
+confession of his love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her
+hand. In vain her powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored
+to dissuade her from marrying this young, penniless general; in
+vain did they remind her that he might be killed in the very next
+battle, and that she might thus again be left a reduced widow.
+Josephine shook her handsome curls with a peculiar smile. Perhaps
+she was thinking of the prophecy of the negress at Martinique;
+perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of Bonaparte's eye, and
+on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the very man to
+bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved him
+ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
+any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
+friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
+determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he
+was. Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous
+impatience to make their modest little preparations for their new
+housekeeping establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to
+complete his dream of happiness; he possessed neither house nor
+carriage, and Josephine, too, was without an equipage.</p>
+<p>Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on
+foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon
+period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as
+a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and
+confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle
+of the wheels, and they were not obliged to interrupt their sweet
+interchange of sentiment while getting into and out of a vehicle.
+Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the promenades, he smiling
+proudly when the passers-by broke out in spontaneous exclamations
+of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy and exultant as she
+overheard the whispered admiration and respect with which the
+multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with the
+general through the throng.</p>
+<p>One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to
+Ragideau, the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had
+been the business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long
+time, and Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her
+own disposal, a sum of money belonging to her that had been
+deposited with him. Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while
+Josephine went into the adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's
+office.</p>
+<p>"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
+Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.</p>
+<p>The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do
+well, and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I
+am satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."</p>
+<p>"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with
+the proud and happy look of a person really in love. "My future
+husband is General Bonaparte!"</p>
+<p>The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm.
+"How?" said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this
+little General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has
+already deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and
+throw him back into insignificance?"</p>
+<p>Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."</p>
+<p>"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you
+are wrong in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are
+committing a folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who
+has nothing but his hat and his sword."</p>
+<p>"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then,
+turning the conversation, she began to speak of the practical
+matters that had brought her thither.</p>
+<p>When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine
+returned to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He
+came, smiling, to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the
+notary, who was with her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the
+latter shrank back in consternation. Josephine also remarked that
+Bonaparte's countenance was paler that day than usual, and that he
+was less communicative and less disposed to chat with her; but she
+had already learned that it was not advisable to question him as to
+the cause of his different moods. So, she kept silent on that
+score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon drove away the
+clouds that had obscured the general's brow.</p>
+<p>The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of
+March, 1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense,
+Josephine's children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien,
+Calmelet, and Leclerq. The marriage-contract contained, along with
+the absolutely requisite facts of the case, a very pleasant piece
+of flattery for Josephine, since, in order to establish an equality
+of ages between the two parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a
+year older, and Josephine four years younger, than they really
+were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract states, born on the 5th of
+February, 1768 but on the 15th of August, 1769; and Josephine not,
+as the document represents, on the 23d of July, 1767, but on the
+23d of June, 1763<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_4">[4]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 350.</blockquote>
+<p>Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in
+queenly fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his
+appointment to the command of the Italian army, which Barras and
+Tallien had granted to her, at her own request.</p>
+<p>But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of
+activity, there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few
+happy weeks with his lovely wife and his new family, in the small
+residence in the Rue Chautereine, which he had purchased a short
+time before his marriage, and which Josephine had fitted up with
+that elevated and refined good taste that had always distinguished
+her.</p>
+<p>One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He
+had his house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There
+was now only a carriage to be procured in order to make the general
+the "happiest of men."</p>
+<p>But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the
+farther they advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the
+possession of a small house in Paris. He now wanted an
+establishment in the country also.</p>
+<p>"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the
+Yonne," he wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living
+on his property near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will
+buy it. Then I will retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not
+want any of the national domains<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5">[5]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 103.</blockquote>
+<p>As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the
+victorious General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses,
+which was a present to the general of the French Republic from the
+Emperor of Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years
+later, he would have him for a son-in-law.</p>
+<p>These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of
+Arcola, Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte
+brought back with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only
+gift which the general had not refused to accept.</p>
+<p>It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently
+hitched to a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look
+attached to the gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the
+first consul made his solemn entry into the Tuileries.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.1"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>BONAPARTE IN ITALY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few
+weeks in which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone
+in Paris, doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not
+only from her husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied
+his young step-father to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to
+Madame Campan's boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to
+Queen Marie Antoinette, had, at that time, opened an establishment
+for the education of young ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest
+and most eminent families of newly-republicanized France liked to
+send their daughters to it, so that they might learn from the
+former court-lady the refined style and manners of old royalist
+times.</p>
+<p>Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and
+there, in the society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of
+Bonaparte, and afterward Queen of Naples--and the young Countess
+Stephanie Beauharnais, her cousin, passed a few happy years of
+work, of varied study, and of youthful maiden-dreams.</p>
+<p>Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring
+enthusiasm, to her studies, which consisted, not only in the
+acquisition of languages, in music, and drawing, history and
+geography, but still more in the mastering the so-called <i>bon
+ton</i> and that aristocratic <i>savoir vivre</i> of which Madame
+Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus receiving
+instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in painting
+from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and was
+playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
+the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating
+in the balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show
+off the talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in
+a word, Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments
+of a distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful
+all these little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time,
+would one day be to her, and how good a thing it was that she had
+learned to play parts at Madame Campan's, and to appear in society
+as a great lady.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and
+exulting triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending,
+brighter and brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the
+name of Bonaparte was echoing in louder and louder volume through
+the world, and filling all Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear
+and trembling, as the sea becomes agitated when the sun begins to
+rise. Victory after victory came joyfully heralded from Italy, as
+ancient states fell beneath the iron tread of the victor, and new
+ones sprang into being. The splendid old Republic of Venice, once
+the terror of the whole world, the victorious Queen of the
+Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell in
+fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
+Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the
+slender monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained
+to the shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in
+Candia, Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the
+old commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state,
+the Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the
+French Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin,
+laid his peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted
+away, another Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given
+Venice the greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to
+the front at the head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom
+Bonaparte had said that he was "a man."</p>
+<p>"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how
+seldom one meets <i>men</i> in the world! In Italy there are
+eighteen millions of inhabitants, but I have found only two
+<i>men</i> among them all--Dandolo and Melzi<a name=
+"FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i, p. 139.</blockquote>
+<p>But, while Bonaparte was despairing of <i>men</i>, in the very
+midst of his victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned
+love for his wife, to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and
+most ardent letters, the answers to which he awaited with the most
+impatient longing.</p>
+<p>Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual
+and singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
+campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
+excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
+weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only
+on the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was
+more considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned
+<i>all</i> the communications he received to the flames,
+<i>unread</i>, and--while the fire on his hearth was consuming the
+paper on which, perchance, was written the despairing appeal of a
+mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a disconsolate wife,
+beseeching pity for her husband; or the application of an ambitious
+statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with a sardonic
+smile, and say, "There's <i>my</i> correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
+least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached
+him, indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary,
+Bourrienne, much time and labor, for, when they finally went to
+work on them, time and circumstances had already disposed of four
+fifths of them, and thus only one fifth required answers--a result
+that made Bonaparte laugh heartily, and filled him with justifiable
+pride in what he termed his "happy idea."</p>
+<p>Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to
+wait ere they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his
+heart bounding with delight, and invariably answered them, in such
+impassioned, glowing language as only his warm southern temperament
+could suggest, and contrasted with which even Josephine's missives
+seemed a little cool and passionless.</p>
+<p>Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting
+letters from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with
+him; and hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the
+general summoned his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his
+call with rapture, and hastened to Italy to join him. Now came
+proud days of triumph and gratified affection. All Italy hailed
+Bonaparte as the conquering hero; all Italy did homage to the woman
+who bore his name, and whose incomparable fascination and
+amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won all hearts. Her life now
+resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal pageant; a dazzling
+fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights" that had become
+reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine, sparkling with
+stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.1"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte
+made his proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the
+front courtyard of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the
+<i>Corps L&eacute;gislatif</i>, was erected a vast amphitheatre, in
+which sat all the high authorities of France; in the centre of the
+amphitheatre stood the altar of the country, surmounted by three
+gigantic statues, representing Freedom, Equality, and Peace. As
+Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the dense crowd that
+occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their feet with
+uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the windows of
+the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who waved
+welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
+this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An
+officer of the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity,
+had clambered up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the
+palace, then undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the
+ground almost at Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost
+simultaneously from a thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale
+and shrank back, shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a
+moment before had exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these
+living flowers, now stood there bare, with empty, gaping casements.
+A perceptible thrill ran through the ranks of the <i>Corps
+L&eacute;gislatif</i>, and here and there the whisper passed that
+this fall of an officer portended the early overthrow of the
+Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like the
+unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies
+at the feet of General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of
+Arcola new <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> every day; and when these
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i> were over, and Bonaparte, fatigued with the
+speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be on his way
+returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who beset his
+path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
+persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of
+the hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.</p>
+<p>A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
+individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on
+himself. Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation
+of his own inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him
+with a sort of reverential exultation.</p>
+<p>Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment
+of these glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely
+overwhelmed and disturbed, could have held aloof from these
+ovations of the people of Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the
+heart of his wife with pride and joy. While in the theatre, he
+shrank back, abashed, behind his wife's chair when the audience,
+learning his presence, filled their noisy plaudits and clamored to
+have a glimpse at him, Josephine would thank the crowd on his
+behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling with tears for
+this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a natural and
+appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero. But
+Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
+demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as
+though it would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their
+cries of "<i>Vive Bonaparte!</i>" while Josephine turned her face
+toward him, glowing with delight, and called out, exultingly--"See,
+how they love you, these good people of Paris!" he replied, with an
+almost melancholy expression "Bah! The crowd would be just as
+numerous and noisy if they were conducting me to the scaffold!"</p>
+<p>However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided,
+and his life resumed its more tranquil course.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest
+and calm enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated)
+dwelling in the Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city
+authorities had changed to <i>Rue de la Victoire</i>, in honor of
+the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo. He could, after so many
+battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while in the arms of love
+and happiness.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
+restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories.
+He felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of
+his conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the
+notes of the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and
+to other paths of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but
+could not completely satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning
+of death.</p>
+<p>"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he.
+"They retain the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one
+celebrity blots out another in this great Babylon; if I show myself
+much oftener to the public, they will cease to look at me, and if I
+do not soon undertake something new, they will forget me."</p>
+<p>And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented,
+that filled all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of
+France with an army to conquer, for the French Republic, that
+ancient land of Egypt, on whose pyramids the green moss of
+long-forgotten ages was flourishing.</p>
+<p>Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris;
+but she needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to
+sustain this separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to
+her might be just as likely to last six years as six months. And
+what could afford better consolation to a heart so tender as
+Josephine's than the presence of her beloved daughter? She had
+willingly given up her son to her husband, and he had accompanied
+the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and her she would
+not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school.</p>
+<p>Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who
+had come to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after
+two years' stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all
+the charms of innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.</p>
+<p>Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had
+retained the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a
+white sheet of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to
+write a mortal name. She loved nothing beyond her mother, her
+brother, the fine arts, and flowers. She entertained a profound but
+speechless veneration for her young step-father. His burning gaze
+made her uneasy and timorous; his commanding voice made her heart
+throb anxiously; in fine, she reverenced him with adoring but too
+agitated an impression of awe to find it possible to love him. He
+was for her at all times the hero, the lord and master, the father
+to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she dared not love him;
+she could only look up to and honor him from a distance.</p>
+<p>Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine
+arts, and flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of
+a child, upon the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to
+her, and from which she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling
+piece of good fortune without having any accurate idea in what it
+was to consist. She still loved all mankind, and believed in their
+truth and rectitude. No thorn had yet wounded her heart; no
+disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed to pieces, had yet left
+its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of transparent whiteness. The
+expression of her large blue eyes was still radiant and undimmed,
+and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it almost made her
+mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the last echo of
+some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too well knew
+that it would soon be hushed.</p>
+<p>But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling
+their melodies; the world still lay before her like an early
+morning dream, and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.</p>
+<p>Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
+boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of
+Plombi&egrave;res. But there it was that Hortense came near
+experiencing the greatest sorrow of her life, in nearly losing her
+mother.</p>
+<p>She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room
+of the house they occupied at Plombi&egrave;res. The doors facing
+the balcony were open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was
+sitting by the window painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she
+had gathered with her own hands on the hills of Plombi&egrave;res.
+Josephine found the atmosphere of the room too close, and invited
+some ladies to step out with her upon the balcony. A moment
+afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed by piercing
+shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate fright to
+the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her mother
+and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings had
+given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
+Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would
+have sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held
+back with the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared
+the young girl, and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded
+heaven of her youth. Her mother escaped with no other injury than
+the fright, and a slight wound on her arm, while one of the ladies
+had both legs broken.</p>
+<p>Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of
+the fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was,
+indeed, the wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet
+"something more than a queen."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.1"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had
+adorned his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the
+returning conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first
+time, Hortense was present at the festivities which the city of
+Paris dedicated to her step-father; for the first time she saw the
+homage that men and women, graybeards and children alike, paid to
+the hero of Italy and Egypt. These festivities and this homage
+filled her heart with a tremor of alarm, and yet, at the same time,
+with joyous exultation. In the midst of these triumphs and these
+ovations which were thus offered to her second father, the young
+girl recalled the prison in which her mother had once languished,
+the scaffold upon which the head of her own father had fallen; and
+frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered uniform of
+her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the time when
+Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice, through
+the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.</p>
+<p>These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
+Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune,
+preserved to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her
+from entertaining any overweening or domineering propensity in her
+day of prosperity, or from seeming cast down and hopeless when
+adversity came. She never lulled herself with the idea of good
+fortune that could not pass away, but her remembrances kept her
+eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune came, it did not take
+her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to confront it.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days
+in full draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom
+she was so fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified
+love; and in the name of her murdered father she thanked General
+Bonaparte with double fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for
+having been the means of procuring for her mother, who had suffered
+so deeply in her first wedded life, so magnificent a glow of
+splendor and happiness in her second marriage.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to
+dispel this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution
+convulsed all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two
+hostile camps, burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On
+one side stood the democratic republicans, who looked back with
+longing regret to the days of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving,
+as they did, that tranquillity and protracted peace must soon wrest
+the reins of power from their grasp, and therefore anxiously
+desiring to secure control through the element of intimidation.
+This party declared that liberty was in danger, and the
+Constitution threatened; they summoned the <i>sans-culottes</i> and
+the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of
+the imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at
+Bonaparte as the man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put
+France once more in the bonds of servitude.</p>
+<p>On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
+republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
+fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
+disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
+guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists
+and poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew
+that the days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic
+had brought not merely human beings, but also the arts and
+sciences, to the scaffold. With them, too, were arrayed the
+merchants and artisans, the bankers, the business-men, the
+property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the republic at least
+established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation, in order to
+have confidence in its durability and substantial character, and to
+commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success. And
+at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was
+a fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in
+which little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were
+slaughtered.</p>
+<p>The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the
+Directory, and the Constitution of the year III., fell together,
+and from the ruins of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic
+arose the moderate, rational republic of the year 1798. At its head
+were the three consuls, Bonaparte, Cambac&egrave;res, and
+Lebrun.</p>
+<p>On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls
+entered the Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept,
+as conquerors, in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.</p>
+<p>From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the
+forms of etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic
+republic, had slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of
+the Luxembourg and the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and
+circumspectly, 'tis true, in broad daylight. People were no longer
+required, in accordance with the spirit of equality, to ignore all
+distinctions of condition and culture, by the use of the words
+"citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the name of brotherhood, to
+endure the close familiarities of every brawling street ruffian;
+or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal liberty and
+inclination be trampled under foot.</p>
+<p>Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners
+again; and the three consuls, who had taken possession of the
+Luxembourg, whispered the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and
+greeted Josephine and her daughter, who were installed in the
+apartments prepared for them in the palace on the next day, with
+the title of "madame." Yet, only a year earlier, the two words
+"monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in Paris, and brought
+about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had promulged the
+stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever should use
+the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on pretext
+whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable of
+ever again serving in the army of the republic<a name=
+"FNanchor7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.</blockquote>
+<p>Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry,
+along with the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg,
+which had been delivered from its democratic tyrants.</p>
+<p>Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense
+was "Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now
+required a larger retinue of servants, and a more showy
+establishment. Indeed, temerity could not yet go so far as to speak
+of the <i>court</i> of Madame Bonaparte and the <i>court ladies</i>
+of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had still to be content with the
+limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg, but they were soon to
+be compensated for all this, and, if they still had to call each
+other <i>monsieur</i> and <i>madame</i>, they could, a few years
+later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in
+the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the
+joint residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the
+ambition of Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the
+other two men who shared the supreme control of France with him.
+Too it was also for the longings that now spoke with ever louder
+and stronger accents in his breast, and pushed him farther and
+farther onward in this path of splendor and renown which, at first,
+had seemed to him but as the magic mirage of his dreams, but which
+now appeared as the glittering truth and reality of his waking
+hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the three consuls, but
+they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to work to prepare
+the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It would not do to
+oust the representatives of the people, who held their sessions
+there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be made
+to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
+France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed
+monster of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was
+necessary, before entering the Tuileries, to give the French people
+proof that men might still be very good republicans, even although
+they might wish to be housed in the bedchamber of a king.</p>
+<p>Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to
+the Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a
+residence worthy of the representatives of the republic. So, the
+first move made was to set up a handsome bust of the elder
+Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's, which he had brought with him
+from Italy--in one of the galleries of the Tuileries; and then
+David had to carve out some other statues of the republican heroes
+of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A number of
+democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the 13th
+Vend&eacute;miaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of
+the death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans,
+arriving just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army
+should wear the badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were
+worn on the arm, and sable streamers waved from the standards, in
+honor of the deceased republican hero.</p>
+<p>However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army
+had sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered
+the Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which
+towered aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription
+of the republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend
+"August 10, 1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France
+is overthrown and will never rise again." It was between these two
+significant symbols that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries.
+It was a very long and imposing procession of carriages which moved
+that day toward the palace, through the streets of the capital.
+They only lacked the outward pomp and magnificence which rendered
+the latter <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> of the empire so remarkable. With the
+exception of the splendid vehicle in which the three consuls rode,
+and which was drawn by the six grays presented by the Emperor of
+Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen. France of
+the new day had not had the opportunity to build any state-coaches,
+and those of old France had been too shamefully misused to admit of
+their ever serving again; for it would be out of the question to
+employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
+state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the
+vehicles in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs
+to their place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September
+days of the year 1793.</p>
+<p>The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at
+that time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the
+streets and slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down
+from the guillotine and dyed the ground with the purple of the new
+system of popular liberty.</p>
+<p>The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which
+the guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their
+original savage propensities, and hence those who had been so
+fortunate as to escape the murderous axe of the
+<i>sans-culottes</i> had now to apprehend the danger of falling a
+victim to the sharp teeth of these wild blood-hounds; and as the
+ferocious brutes knew no difference between aristocrats and
+republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it became
+necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
+So, the Champs Elys&eacute;es were surrounded with troops, and the
+dogs were driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where
+they were mowed down by musketry. On that one day the dead
+carcasses of more than three thousand dogs lay about in the streets
+of Paris, and there they continued to fester for three days longer,
+because a dispute had arisen among the city officials as to whose
+duty it was to remove them. At length the Convention undertook that
+task, and intrusted the work to representative Gasparin, who was
+shrewd enough to convert the removal of the dead animals into a
+republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the <i>ci-devants</i>
+and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite proper,
+therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.</p>
+<p>Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the
+fugitive and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their
+stables, and the carcasses of the dogs were flung into these
+emblazoned and escutcheoned vehicles of old France. Six grand
+coaches that had belonged to the king opened the procession, and
+the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the luckless quadrupeds could
+be seen behind the glittering glass panels heaped together in wild
+disorder<a name="FNanchor8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor8">[8]</a>
+M&eacute;moires of the Marchioness de Cr&eacute;qui, vol. viii., p.
+10.</blockquote>
+<p>After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and
+indivisible republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be
+consistently used for any human and less mournful occasion, and
+hence it was that the consular procession to the Tuileries was so
+deficient in carriages, and that public hacks on which the numbers
+were defaced had to be employed.</p>
+<p>"With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution
+was at an end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory,
+yawning chasm which had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and
+democrats; and of that sword he made a bridge over which society
+might pass from one century to the other, and from the republic to
+the empire.</p>
+<a name="390.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/390.jpg"><img src="images/390.jpg"
+width="75%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>View of the Tuileries.</b></p>
+<p>As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the
+Diana Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries,
+and was with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed
+there, both of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused
+in front of the statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to
+the statue of Julius Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of
+the grave, solemn faces; but, suddenly, as though just awaking from
+a deep dream, he sharply raised his head, and, laying his hand with
+an abrupt movement upon Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at
+the statue of Brutus with blazing, almost menacing glances, said in
+a voice that made the hearts of both the ladies bound within their
+bosoms:</p>
+<p>"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there.
+And whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and
+conventionists have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how
+the savage Jacobins and cohorts of <i>sans-culottes</i> surrounded
+the palace and led away the good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah!
+never mind, Josephine; have no fear for the future! Let them but
+dare to come hither once more<a name="FNanchor9"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_9">[9]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor9">[9]</a>
+Bourrienne, vol. vi., p. 3.</blockquote>
+<p>And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the
+statues of Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry
+thunder through the long gallery, and made the figures of the
+heroes of the dead republic tremble on their pedestals.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus,
+as though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar,
+challenge all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one
+he aspired to be, to mortal combat.</p>
+<p>The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in
+the Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and
+daughter of General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered,
+had now found another father, who was destined to avenge that
+murder on the republic itself.</p>
+<p>The revolution was over!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II."></a>BOOK II.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND</i>.</h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.2"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>A FIRST LOVE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution
+closed, and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity
+followed. Josephine and Hortense were the cynosure of all these
+festivals, for they were, likewise, the animating centre whence the
+grace and beauty, the attractive charm, and the intellectual
+significance of them all, proceeded.</p>
+<p>Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the
+court of Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such
+enchanting delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people
+already began to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the
+powerful wife of the First Consul of France. Now, also,
+<i>audiences</i> were held, and Josephine and Hortense already had
+a court retinue who approached them with the same subserviency and
+humility as though they had been princesses of the blood.</p>
+<p>Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets
+of Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and
+wherever the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the
+wife and daughter of the first consul with applauding shouts.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made
+their appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons.
+There were chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid
+dinners and evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of
+foreign powers were received in solemn audience; for, now, all the
+European states had recognized the French Republic under the
+consulate, and, as Bonaparte had concluded peace with England and
+Austria, these two great powers also sent envoys to the court of
+the mighty consul.</p>
+<p>Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed
+contentions of the toilet, and <i>powder or no powder</i> was one
+of the great questions of etiquette in which Josephine gave the
+casting vote when she said that "every one should dress as seemed
+best and most becoming to each, but yet endeavor to let good taste
+pervade the selection."</p>
+<p>For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less
+zest than formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for
+some time she had seemed to prefer being alone more than in
+previous years, and held herself aloof in the quiet retirement of
+her own apartments, where the melancholy, tender, and touching
+melodies which she drew from her harp in those lonely hours seemed
+to hold her better converse than all the gay and flattering remarks
+that she was accustomed to hear in her mother's grand saloons.</p>
+<p>Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she
+confide what was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she
+venture to confess that she was in love, and with all the innocent
+energy, all the warmth and absolute devotion of a first attachment.
+How blissful were those hours of reverie, of expectant peering into
+the future, which seemed to promise the rising of another sun of
+happiness to her beaming gaze! For this young girl's passion had
+the secret approbation of her mother and her step-father, and both
+of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the least degree, aware
+of the tender understanding that subsisted between Hortense and
+General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
+Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young
+girl's heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more
+serious meaning to it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea
+of a union between Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above
+all other things, to give Duroc a more important and imposing
+status, and therefore sent him as ambassador to St. Petersburg, to
+convey to the Emperor Alexander, who had just ascended his father's
+throne, the congratulations and good wishes of the First Consul of
+France.</p>
+<p>The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
+constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
+becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to
+them of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand,
+one last tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of
+each other. But they hoped in the future, and looked forward to
+Duroc's return, and to the precious recompense that Bonaparte had
+significantly promised to his friend. That recompense was the hand
+of Hortense Until then, they had to content themselves with that
+sole and sweetest solace of all parted lovers, the letters that
+they interchanged, and which Bourrienne, Bonaparte's secretary,
+faithfully and discreetly transmitted.</p>
+<p>"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his
+M&eacute;moires, "I played a game of billiards with Mademoiselle
+Hortense, who was an adept at it. "When I said, in a low tone to
+her, 'I have a letter,' the game would cease at once, and she would
+hasten to her room, whither I followed her, and took the letter to
+her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of emotion and
+delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she would
+go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her<a name=
+"FNanchor10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor10">[10]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent
+dreams of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what
+was taking place around her, and did not perceive that others were
+ready to make her young heart the plaything of domestic and
+political intrigue.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the
+beautiful and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first
+consul, as in the first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by
+separating Hortense from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of
+the strongest supports of her influence, and thus, by isolating
+Josephine, bring themselves nearer to their brother. They well knew
+the affection which Bonaparte, who was particularly fond of
+children, entertained for those of his wife, and they also knew
+that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by their entreaties or
+their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented Josephine and
+Bonaparte from separating.</p>
+<p>This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of
+Junot had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from
+Egypt.</p>
+<p>At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman,
+against whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply
+because he was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne
+implored him, at least, to hear Josephine before condemning her,
+and to see whether she could not clear herself, or he could not
+forgive her, he had replied:</p>
+<p>"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I
+would tear my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as
+Bonaparte spoke, his voice trembling the while with rage, he
+clutched his breast with his hand as though he would indeed rend it
+to pieces. This scene occurred in the evening, but, when Bourrienne
+came into the office next morning, Bonaparte stepped forward to
+meet him with a smile on his face, and a little confused.</p>
+<p>"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here!
+Don't suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I
+reproached her vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you
+have?--when she left me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she
+descended the stairs with her head drooping, I saw Eugene and
+Hortense, who went with her, sobbing violently. I have not the
+heart to look unmoved on any one in tears. Eugene had accompanied
+me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to regard him as my
+adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young man. Hortense
+is just coming out into the world of society, and every one who
+knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the sight
+of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
+made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims
+of their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned
+round and, along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the
+movement, and said nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal
+man without having his hours of weakness!"</p>
+<p>"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted
+children will reward you for it!"</p>
+<p>"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
+sacrifice that I have made for them<a name=
+"FNanchor11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor11">[11]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.</blockquote>
+<p>This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for
+Josephine had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had
+joyfully become convinced that the accusations of his jealous
+brothers had been unjust.</p>
+<p>Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move
+Hortense, since they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that
+she, with her gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense,
+her penetrating and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young
+Mentor at the side of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive,
+somewhat vain, and very extravagant mother.</p>
+<p>It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first
+removed; and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because
+she interfered with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers.
+Since they could not become great and celebrated by their own
+merits, they desired to be so through their illustrious brother;
+and, in order that they might become kings, Bonaparte must, above
+all things, wear a crown. Josephine was opposed to this project;
+she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers that a usurpation of
+the crown must bring with it, and she had so little ambition as to
+prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the proud but
+perilous exaltation to a throne.</p>
+<p>For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and
+Bonaparte must choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there
+should course legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be
+content to see a crown upon the head of her consort.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.2"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above
+all things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of
+the burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they
+sent to each other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be
+transferred to the Italian army with a higher command, and that
+Hortense should then be given to him. They persuaded the
+unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was easy to deceive in these
+minor matters and thus easy because he was occupied with grand
+designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep the proposed
+union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early return to
+surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.</p>
+<p>But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her
+hostile brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her
+entire future, was imperilled, should she not succeed in making
+friends and allies in the family of Bonaparte itself. There was
+only one of Bonaparte's brothers who was not hostile to her, but
+loved her as the wife of his brother, to whom he was, at that time,
+still devoted with the most enthusiastic and submissive
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious
+and sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a
+man of science than fit for the council-chamber and the
+drawing-room. His was a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character,
+which, notwithstanding its apparent gentleness, developed an
+inflexible determination and energy at the right, decisive moment,
+and then could not be shaken by either threats or entreaties. His
+external appearance was little calculated to please, nay, was even
+somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of others only in
+moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his large blue
+eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.</p>
+<p>Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained,
+undemonstrative, and by no means showy natures which are too rarely
+understood, because, in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the
+time and do not take the pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a
+mother is in a position to comprehend and love men of this stamp,
+because the confidential home relations of long years have revealed
+to them the hidden bloom of these sensitive plants which shrink
+back and close their leaves at every rude contact of the world. But
+rarely, however, do they find a loving heart outside, for, since
+their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no one gives
+himself the trouble to discover them.</p>
+<p>The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was
+the one who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a
+point of support in the Bonaparte family.</p>
+<p>Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them,
+next to her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole
+family of brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither
+egotistical nor ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly
+allowed them to have their way, and only asked that they would also
+leave him undisturbed to follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive
+inclinations. He was the confidant of his young and beautiful
+sisters, who were always sure to find in him a discreet counsellor,
+and never a betrayer. Finally, he was the one of the whole circle
+of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the sincerest and warmest
+inclination, because he could not help esteeming him for his noble
+qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as he was by his
+other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of Jerome, Joseph,
+and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and chagrin to
+Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand
+fresh sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that
+I had consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said
+Bonaparte, one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between
+him and Jerome, which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting
+another draft on the private purse of the first consul.</p>
+<p>Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared
+thankfully content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him,
+unsolicited, and there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on
+his account, or any debts of his to pay.</p>
+<p>This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
+respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how
+to manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this
+was a quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she
+could never avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how
+much care and anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often
+Bonaparte had scolded her about them; how often she had promised to
+do differently, and make no more purchases until she should be in a
+condition to pay at once!</p>
+<p>But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
+impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing
+eyes and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she
+could not escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point
+precisely was it that the penitent sinner continually fell into
+fresh transgression--and again ran into debt!</p>
+<p>Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular
+as her own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two
+young, careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to
+each other, and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly
+as they did their purses.</p>
+<p>So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
+strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a
+premonitory distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have
+happened that she took the mighty eagle that fluttered above her
+head for a bird of evil omen whose warning cry she frequently
+fancied that she heard in the stillness of the night.</p>
+<p>The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more
+than a queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new
+fortune-teller, Madame Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to
+her, "You will wear a crown, but only for a short time."</p>
+<p>Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and
+too healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be
+something else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had
+no children, yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and
+his brothers repeated to him daily that this was for him a
+political necessity.</p>
+<p>Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her
+hands for help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her
+daughter to give up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure
+the real happiness of her mother.</p>
+<p>Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at
+the thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying
+an unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had
+scarcely noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked
+to sacrifice her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a
+cold-blooded calculation, an artificial family intrigue; and so,
+with all the enthusiasm of a first love, she swore rather to perish
+than to forego her lover.</p>
+<p>"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said
+Josephine. "What he is, he is only through the friendship of
+Bonaparte. He has no estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were
+Bonaparte to abandon him he would fall back into nothingness and
+obscurity again."</p>
+<p>Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and
+have no other ambition than to be his wife."</p>
+<p>"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to
+become your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own
+sake alone?"</p>
+<p>"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has
+told me that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal
+fidelity and love to me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to
+belong to each other."</p>
+<p>Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.</p>
+<p>"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is
+willing to marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that
+Bonaparte would then advance him the more rapidly?"</p>
+<p>"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing
+with honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far
+from all selfish calculation."</p>
+<p>"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine,
+irritated by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm
+for her own fortunes.</p>
+<p>Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated,
+so beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of
+death had passed over it.</p>
+<p>"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that
+Duroc loves me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give
+him up, and marry whom you will."</p>
+<p>Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey,"
+she replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that
+he does not love you, but the family alliance which you
+present."</p>
+<p>Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc
+returns to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see
+him again--she should read consolation and love's assurance in his
+handsome manly face; not that she needed this to confirm her
+confidence, for she believed in him, and not the shadow of a doubt
+obscured her blissful greeting.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes
+of this intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a
+supporting ally in the family, <i>against</i> the family itself;
+and for this reason Louis must become the husband of Hortense.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved
+to marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake
+his resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and
+little endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to
+show that Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but
+wanted to make an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte
+resolved, at least, to put his friend to the test, and, if
+Josephine turned out to be right, to marry Hortense to his own
+brother.</p>
+<p>After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back
+into his office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the
+writing-desk.</p>
+<p>"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.</p>
+<p>"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."</p>
+<p>"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him
+Hortense--that he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take
+place in two days, at the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred
+thousand francs, and I appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth
+military division. On the day after his wedding he shall start with
+his wife for Toulon, and we shall live apart. I will not have a
+son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to see these matters brought
+to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether Duroc accepts my
+propositions."</p>
+<p>"I don't think that he will, general."</p>
+<p>"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother
+Louis."</p>
+<p>"Will she consent?"</p>
+<p>"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."</p>
+<p>Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told
+him, word for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.</p>
+<p>Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on
+with his communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.</p>
+<p>"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had
+got through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
+son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful
+it may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can
+remain in Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his
+hat, without a trace of excitement or concern, and departed.</p>
+<p>That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full
+consent to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that
+Duroc had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished
+her, through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously
+feigned to love her.</p>
+<p>Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a
+word of complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely
+that a thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to
+atoms her love, her hopes, her future, and her happiness.</p>
+<p>But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the
+evil that had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to
+it. She had been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now
+for her future, her embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when
+<i>he</i> had deceived her --<i>he</i>, the only one whom she had
+loved?</p>
+<p>The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling,
+into Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready
+to fulfil her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight.
+She little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and
+of despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present
+smiling unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a
+worn-out heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in
+order that Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for
+him was dead, but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her
+tears, and conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too,
+enabled her to declare that she was ready to accept the husband
+whom her mother might present to her.</p>
+<p>Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one
+of Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question
+whether she should attain her other aim through that son, and
+whether she should find in him a support against the intrigues of
+the other brothers of the first consul.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.2"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>CONSUL AND KING.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the
+young couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802,
+Hortense was married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but
+one of the first consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the
+civil ceremony, and had never given his own union with Josephine
+the sanction of the Church, was less careless and unconcerned with
+regard to this youthful alliance, which had, indeed, great need of
+the blessing of Heaven, in order to prove a source of any good
+fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he reasoned that the
+consciousness of the indissoluble character of their union would
+lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
+inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render
+their separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the
+Tuileries, after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow
+the blessing of God and of the Church upon the bride and
+bridegroom.</p>
+<p>Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged
+by the young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the
+ceremonies were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new
+home, in the same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which
+her mother had occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful
+union with Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry
+into this dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and
+happiness did not shine in their faces, as had been the case with
+Bonaparte and Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with
+tears, and the countenance of her young husband was dark and
+gloomy. For, on his side, he, too, felt no love for this young
+woman; and, as she never forgave him for having accepted her hand,
+although he knew that she loved another, he, in like manner, could
+never forgive her having consented to be his wife, although he had
+not been the one to solicit it, and although he had never told her
+that he loved her. Both had bowed to the will of him who gave the
+law, not merely to all France, but also to his own family, and who
+had already become the lord and master of the republic. Both had
+married through obedience, not for love; and the consciousness of
+this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between these two
+otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the consciousness
+of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love one
+another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
+were forbidden to seek elsewhere.</p>
+<p>Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart,
+did Hortense make her appearance at the <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> which
+were given in honor of her marriage; and it was with a beclouded
+brow and averted face that Louis Bonaparte received the customary
+congratulations. While every one around them exhibited a cheerful
+and joyous bearing, while parties were given in their honor, and
+people danced and sang, the young couple only, of all present, were
+dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense, and she turned
+her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not read in it
+her deep and angry aversion.</p>
+<p>But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus
+indissolubly bound up with another, she had to try to live with
+that other. Hortense, externally so gentle and yielding, so full of
+maiden coyness and delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and
+resolute soul, and, in the noble pride of her wounded heart, was
+unwilling to give any one the right to pity her. Her soul wept, but
+she restrained her tears and still tried to smile, were it only
+that Duroc might not perceive the traces of her grief upon her
+sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her heart, and she
+rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim to
+happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted
+at the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth,
+and so she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a
+melancholy smile, "I must manage to be happy, without happiness.
+Let me try!"</p>
+<p>And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and
+again took part in the festivities which now were filling the halls
+of St. Cloud, Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were
+but the dying lay of the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the
+cradle-song of reviving monarchy.</p>
+<p>For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
+turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose
+between a seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already
+a republic but in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed,
+but a new-born, naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was
+wanting, that should possess the determined courage to clothe it
+with ermine and purple, in order to transform the helpless babe
+into a proud, triumphant man.</p>
+<p>That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher
+courage to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of
+monarchy, that lay there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver
+there a little longer; but, lest it should freeze altogether, he
+threw over it, for the time being, the mantle of his "consulship
+for life." Beneath it, the babe could slumber comfortably a few
+weeks longer, while waiting for its purple robes.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for
+life. He stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only
+upon himself whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like
+General Monk, he would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him
+the sceptre of his forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired
+the first; Josephine implored Heaven for the latter alternative.
+She was too completely a loving woman only, to long for the chilly
+joys of mere ambition; she was too entirely occupied with her
+personal happiness, not to fear every danger that menaced it.
+Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he would also have to
+think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in order to
+strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
+legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
+children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once,
+proposed to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it
+with the presence of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of
+royal dignity meant a separation from her; and Josephine still
+loved him too well, and too much with a young wife's love, to take
+so great a sacrifice upon her.</p>
+<p>Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the
+Count de Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had
+found an asylum at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of
+France.</p>
+<p>The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis
+XVIII.) had written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with
+emotion, and, with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had
+conjured her husband to, at least, give the brother of the beheaded
+king a mild and considerate answer. Yes, she had even ventured to
+beseech Bonaparte to comply with the request that Louis had made,
+and give him back the throne of his ancestors. But Bonaparte had
+laughed at this suggestion, as he would at some childish joke; for
+it had never entered into his head that any one could seriously ask
+him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot of a throne,
+which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom France had
+banished forever, should ascend.</p>
+<p>Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the
+victor at Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and
+Egypt--would not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity.
+Meanwhile, you are losing precious time. <i>We</i> can secure the
+glory of France; I say <i>we</i>, because I have need of Bonaparte
+in the work, and because he cannot complete it without me."</p>
+<p>But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but
+"I," and to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the
+Count de Lille: "You cannot desire your return to France, for you
+would have to enter it over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice
+your personal interests to the tranquillity and happiness of
+France. History will pay you a grateful acknowledgment."</p>
+<p>Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own
+position, and mark out what you want for your friends." And
+Bonaparte did choose his position; but unfortunately for the Count
+de Lille, it was the very one which the latter had wished to
+reserve for himself.</p>
+<p>Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for
+him, could she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had
+no longings for a diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did
+not require in order to command admiration.</p>
+<p>"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these
+days," said Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.</p>
+<p>Josephine replied, with tears: "<i>Mon Dieu</i>! I am far from
+cherishing any such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of
+Bonaparte--of the first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell
+him so; conjure him not to make himself king<a name=
+"FNanchor12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor12">[12]</a> Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.</blockquote>
+<p>But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne
+to tell her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him
+herself.</p>
+<p>One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at
+breakfast, and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered
+without having been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her
+husband, who sat with his back turned toward her, and had not yet
+noticed her. Lightly throwing her arm around his neck, and letting
+herself sink upon his breast, and then stroking his pale cheeks and
+glossy brown hair, with an expression of unutterable love and
+tenderness, she said:</p>
+<p>"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked
+brother Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."</p>
+<p>Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he
+said. "It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your
+La Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these
+wonderful stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now,
+don't bother me about them any more!"</p>
+<p>Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word,
+but he nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most
+intimate personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown.
+In the course of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to
+him:</p>
+<p>"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all
+Europe; whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be
+only the youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield
+precedence to them."</p>
+<p>Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that
+daring and imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and
+decisive moments, he responded:</p>
+<p>"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive <i>all</i>
+the kings from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they
+will have to recognize me as the oldest prince of all."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.2"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE CALUMNY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been
+followed by such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated.
+She had made a most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was,
+of all the first consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself
+the least about politics, and was the least likely to engage in any
+intrigue. Besides, this alliance had materially diminished the
+affection which Louis had always previously manifested for
+Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths of his noble and upright
+heart, for having been so egotistic as to sacrifice the happiness
+of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he blamed her, too,
+for having forced him into a marriage which love had not concluded,
+and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine had, at
+least, lost a friend in him.</p>
+<p>The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually
+strange. They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each
+other, and reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had
+been driven into this union against their own wishes. In this
+singular interchange of confidence, they went so far as to
+commiserate each other, and to condole with one another as friends,
+over the wretchedness they endured in their married bondage.</p>
+<p>They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that
+they detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual
+compassion, that out of that very compassion--that very hatred
+itself--love might possibly spring into being.</p>
+<p>Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife,
+busied with the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to
+drive away the clouds that obscured her brow; already, too,
+Hortense had come to regard it as her holiest and sweetest duty to
+endeavor to compensate her husband, by her kindly deportment toward
+him, and the delicate and attentive respect that distinguished her
+bearing, for the unhappiness he felt beside her; already had both,
+in fine, begun to console each other with the reflection that the
+child which Hortense now bore beneath her heart would, one day, be
+to them a compensation for their ill-starred marriage and their
+lost freedom.</p>
+<p>"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and
+when he calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive
+me for being his mother."</p>
+<p>"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that
+you love him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will
+pardon me for being your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at
+least, for I will be the father of your darling child."</p>
+<p>Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and
+innocent hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have
+overcome their unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last
+from hatred. But the world was pitiless to them; it had no
+compassion for their youth and their sufferings; with cruel hands
+it dashed away this tender blossoming of nascent affection, which
+was beginning to expand in their hearts. Josephine had wedded
+Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure in him an ally in
+the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and now that
+daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
+calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense
+from the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs
+by means of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the
+effect of calumny.</p>
+<p>They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had
+married his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was
+attached to her himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.</p>
+<p>These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child
+whose birth Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte
+than merely through the fact that his step-daughter was his
+brother's wife.</p>
+<p>This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those
+who devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest
+suspicion of such immorality, how strict he was in his own
+principles, and how repulsive it therefore would be to him to find
+himself made the object of such infamous slanders.</p>
+<p>The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these
+evil rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense
+away to a distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus
+isolated, could also be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte,
+being separated from his guardian angel, would no longer hear her
+whispering:</p>
+<p>"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory
+of the greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not
+make thyself a king!"</p>
+<p>In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very
+lightly whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard.
+Bonaparte's enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a
+weapon of it with which to assail him as a hero.</p>
+<p>One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had
+always been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the
+organ of Count d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued
+to read, a dark shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the
+paper in his clinched fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then
+as suddenly again his countenance cleared, and a proud smile
+flitted across it. He had his master of ceremonies summoned to his
+presence, and bade him issue the necessary invitations for a court
+ball to be given, on the evening of the next day, at St. Cloud. He
+then went to Josephine to inform her in person of the projected
+<i>f&ecirc;te</i>, and to say that he wished her to tell Hortense,
+who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly desired her
+to be present.</p>
+<p>Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
+requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch
+on which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining,
+busied with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women
+prepare her attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and
+seriously burdened by this festive attire, which harmonized so
+little with her feelings, and was so far from becoming to her
+figure, for she was only a few weeks from her confinement; but with
+her gentle and yielding disposition she did not venture, even in
+thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed upon her by her
+step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the appointed
+hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to meet
+her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
+at all, earnestly urged her to dance.</p>
+<p>Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto
+Bonaparte had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her
+condition; he had frequently said that he thought there was nothing
+more indecent than for a female to join in the dance under such
+circumstances, and now it was he who asked her to do that very
+thing.</p>
+<p>For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but
+Bonaparte grew only the more pressing and vehement in his
+request.</p>
+<p>"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with
+his irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take
+the floor only once, and that for but a single
+<i>contredance</i>."</p>
+<p>And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with
+shame at the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the
+gaze of all, obeyed and joined the dances.</p>
+<p>This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
+Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
+read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing
+flattery, and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her
+advanced state of pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure
+in the <i>contredance</i>, as a peculiar trait of amiability!</p>
+<p>Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very
+emphatic piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at
+once to the Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her
+how it was possible that, so early as the very next morning, there
+could be verses published in the newspapers concerning what had
+taken place at the ball on the preceding evening.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came
+in, and was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an
+evasive and jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her
+mother, who was leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with
+weeping and her heart oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had
+given no evasive answer, but had told the whole truth, and
+Josephine's heart was at that moment too full of wretchedness, too
+overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble, for her possibly to
+retain it within her own breast.</p>
+<p>Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it.
+She told her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the
+verses beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had
+urged her to dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other
+purpose than to have her dance, and have the poem that complimented
+her and referred to her pregnancy published in the next day's
+paper.</p>
+<p>Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the
+ground for all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage
+to tell her of the slanders that had been circulated in reference
+to herself and Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem,
+the ball, and her participation in the dance, because, on the
+preceding day, he had read in an English journal the calumnious
+statement that Madame Louis Bonaparte had safely given birth to a
+vigorous and healthy child some weeks previously, and he wished in
+this manner to refute the malicious statement.</p>
+<p>Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn.
+She had not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of
+injury, this shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained,
+but, as she rose to take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and
+it required hours of exertion to restore her to consciousness.</p>
+<p>A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant,
+and so passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was
+destroyed the hope of a better understanding between her and her
+husband.</p>
+<p>Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart.
+In those long, lonely days that she had passed during her
+confinement, she had the time and opportunity to meditate on many
+things, and keenly to estimate her whole present position and
+probable future. She had now become a mother, without having a
+child; yet the resolute energy of a mother remained to her. The
+youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl had now become
+transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman, that would
+no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would meet
+them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
+changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend
+to its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of
+resolution; and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious
+fireside at home was denied her, to at least make her house a
+pleasant gathering-point for her friends--for men of scientific and
+artistic attainments, for poets and singers, for painters and
+sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere long, all Paris was talking
+about Madame Louis Bonaparte's drawing-rooms, the agreeable and
+elegant entertainments that were given there, and the concerts
+there arranged, in which the first singers of the day executed
+pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited, with his
+wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written. Every
+one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which the
+participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
+themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or
+abuse, but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation;
+where, in fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists,
+and enjoy the newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.</p>
+<p>Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had
+resigned herself to accept the burden of existence, she would
+strive to render it as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of
+its hateful and repulsive features, but to turn away from them with
+a noble and disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the
+frightful calumnies which her mother had privately made known to
+her, nor had she deemed any defence or proof of her innocence at
+all necessary. She felt that there were certain accusations against
+which to even undertake defence is to admit their possibility, and
+which, therefore, could only be combated by silence. The slanders
+that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far beneath her, that
+they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell powerless at
+her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while to thrust
+them.</p>
+<p>But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this
+vile story, and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors
+were still spread abroad, and that his foes still bestirred
+themselves to keep him ever on the alert, and, if possible, to dim
+the lustre of his gloriously-won laurels by the shadow of an
+infamous crime.</p>
+<p>"There are still rumors abroad of a <i>liaison</i> between me
+and Hortense," said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even
+invented the most repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At
+the time, I thought that these calumnies were circulated among the
+public because the latter go earnestly desired that I might have a
+child to inherit my name. But it is still spoken of, is it
+not?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did
+not believe this calumny would be so long continued."</p>
+<p>"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes
+flashing with anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth
+there is in it. You have heard and seen all; not the smallest
+circumstance could escape you. You were her confidant in her
+love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to clear me of this infamous
+reproach if you should some day write my history. Posterity shall
+not associate my name with such infamy. I shall depend on you,
+Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have never
+believed in this abominable calumny?"</p>
+<p>"No, never, general."</p>
+<p>"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account,
+but for the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy
+enough, as is my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I
+love them both, and because this very circumstance gives color to
+the reports which idle chatterboxes have circulated regarding my
+relations to her. Therefore, bear this in mind when you write of me
+hereafter."</p>
+<p>"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but,
+unfortunately, I can not compel the world to believe the
+truth."</p>
+<p>Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the
+truth. With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it
+has been attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense,
+even down to our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the
+elegant and considerate language of the courteous diplomat, which
+is elsewhere always characteristic of his writings.</p>
+<p>"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that
+Bonaparte entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a
+step-father should entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense
+entertained for the first consul a feeling of reverential fear. She
+always spoke to him tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him
+with a petition. She was in the habit of coming to me, and I then
+submitted her wishes; and only when Bonaparte received them
+unfavorably did I mention the name of the petitioner. 'The silly
+thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not speak to me
+herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
+fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a
+father would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness
+of her actions in the most private relations of life, I declare
+that I have never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that
+would tend to convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider
+this calumny as belonging to the category of those which malice so
+willingly circulates about those persons whose career has been
+brilliant, and which credulity and envy so willingly believe. I
+declare candidly that, if I entertained the slightest doubt with
+regard to this horrible calumny, I would say so. But Bonaparte is
+no more! Impartial history must not and shall not give countenance
+to this reproach; she should not make of a father and friend a
+libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted, without,
+however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
+between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood!
+And this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
+throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
+exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession
+of a man, he can never be freed from it again?"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.2"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>KING OR EMPEROR.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at
+least, only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said:
+"I entreat you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not
+make himself king, he made himself emperor. He did not take up the
+crown that had fallen from the head of the Bourbons; he created a
+new one for himself--a crown which the French people and Senate
+had, however, offered him. The revolution still stood a threatening
+spectre behind the French people; its return was feared, and, since
+the discovery of the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru,
+the people anxiously asked themselves what was to become of France
+if the conspirators should succeed in murdering Bonaparte; and when
+the republic should again be sent adrift, without a pilot, on the
+wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that their institutions
+should be securely established and maintained, and believed that
+this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a monarchical form
+of government. The consulate for life must therefore be changed
+into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One can
+be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
+terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor,
+because they flattered themselves that in so doing they should
+still be able to preserve the republic.</p>
+<p>On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so
+long and carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th
+of May, the Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in
+the name of the people and army, to accept the imperial dignity,
+and exchange the Roman chair of a consul for the French throne of
+an emperor.</p>
+<p>Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, the late second consul of the
+republic, stood at the head of the Senate, and upon him devolved
+the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the wishes of the French people.
+Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s--who, as a member of the Convention, had
+voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that royalty
+should be forever banished from French soil--this same
+Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, was now the first to salute Bonaparte
+with "imperial majesty," and with the little word, so full of
+significance, "sire." He rewarded Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, for
+this by writing to him on the game day, and appointing him high
+constable of the empire, as the first act of his imperial rule. In
+this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte signed himself
+merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican style of
+writing. He addressed Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, as "citizen
+consul," and followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time,
+his letter being dated "the 20th Flor&eacute;al, of the year
+12."</p>
+<p>The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new
+dignity, was to invest the members of his family also with new
+dignities, and to confer upon them the rank of Princes of France,
+with the title "imperial highness." Moreover, he made his brother
+Joseph prince elector, and his brother Louis conn&eacute;table. On
+the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his new dignity, to present
+the generals and staff officers to the emperor, and then to conduct
+them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled.
+Josephine was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of
+the splendor of her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious
+heart, of the prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told
+her, "You will wear a crown, but only for a short time." She felt
+that this wondrous fortune could not last long--that the new
+emperor would have to do as the kings or old had done, and
+sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order to appease the
+hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would, therefore,
+sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his fortune and
+dynasty.</p>
+<p>It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and
+made her shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore,
+with a feeling of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new
+titles and honors that Fate had showered upon her, as from an
+inexhaustible horn of plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost
+with shame, she heard herself addressed with the titles with which
+she had addressed the Queen of France years before, in these same
+halls, when she came to the Tuileries as Marquise de Beauharnais,
+to do homage to the beautiful Marie Antoinette. She had died on the
+scaffold and now Josephine was the "majesty" that sat enthroned in
+the Tuileries, her brilliant court assembled around her, while in a
+retired nook of England the legitimate King of France was leading a
+lonely and gloomy life.</p>
+<p>Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as
+empress, she still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate
+Bourbons, and esteemed it her sacred duty to assist and advise
+those who, true to their principles and duties, had followed the
+royal family, or had emigrated, in order that they might, at least,
+not be compelled to do homage to the new system. Her purse was
+always at the service of the emigrants; and, if Josephine
+continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly allowance,
+her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her kindly,
+generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the half
+of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
+matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her
+creditors, she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of
+misfortune and the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other
+purpose<a name="FNanchor13"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_13">[13]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor13">[13]</a> M&eacute;moires sur la reine Hortense, par
+le Baron van Schelten, vol. i., p. 145.</blockquote>
+<p>Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the
+High Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant
+court of the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now
+a "Princess of France," an "imperial highness," who must be
+approached with reverence, who had her court and her maids of
+honor, and whose liberty and personal inclinations, as was also the
+case with her mother, were confined in the fetters of the strict
+etiquette which Napoleon required to be observed at the new
+imperial court.</p>
+<p>But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded
+by this new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no
+additional happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance
+Hortense's youth and beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She
+would have been contented to live in retirement, at the side of a
+beloved husband; her proud position could not indemnify her for her
+lost woman's happiness.</p>
+<p>But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to
+bear misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered
+her a recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a
+new hope--she promised to become a mother again.</p>
+<p>Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her
+daughter's hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give
+birth to a son, the gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be
+banished from the head of the empress. With this son, the dynasty
+of the new imperial family would be assured; this son could be the
+heir of the imperial crown, and Napoleon could well adopt as his
+own the child who was at the same time his nephew and his
+grandson.</p>
+<p>Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would
+rather content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of
+the emperor and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to
+separate himself from her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved
+his wife; he still compared with all he thought good and beautiful,
+the woman who shed around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and
+loveliness.</p>
+<p>When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy
+and thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
+exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These
+acclamations and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of
+Josephine! How proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a
+people<a name="FNanchor14"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_14">[14]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor14">[14]</a> Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.</blockquote>
+<p>But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said,
+upon entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to
+<i>be</i> in the Tuileries; one must also <i>remain</i> there"--he
+now said: "It is not enough to have been made emperor by the French
+people; one must also have received his consecration as emperor
+from the Pope of Rome."</p>
+<p>And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world;
+not only to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his
+will.</p>
+<p>Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the
+Pope left the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new
+emperor the blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.
+This was a new halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded
+triumph, which he celebrated over France, over the whole world and
+its prejudices, and over all the dynasties by the "grace of God."
+The Pope came to Paris to crown the emperor. The German emperors
+had been compelled to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the
+papal benediction, and now the Pope made a pilgrimage to Paris to
+crown the French emperor, and acknowledge the son of the Revolution
+as the consecrated son of the Church. All France was intoxicated
+with delight at this intelligence; all France adored the hero, who
+made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and converted even the
+holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his grandeur. Napoleon's
+journey with Josephine through France, undertaken while they
+awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single, continuous
+triumph. It was not only the people who received him with shouts of
+joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her <i>sanctus,
+sanctus</i>, and the priests received him at the doors of their
+churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of
+France. Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal
+exultation, with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and
+solemn addresses of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a
+transcendental nature.</p>
+<p>"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his
+enthusiastic address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and
+then He rested." And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet
+won over by the emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial
+court, whispered, quite audibly: "God would have done better had He
+rested a little sooner!"</p>
+<p>Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder,
+in which they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and
+that Pope Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was
+now approaching the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that
+had now arisen victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was
+everywhere received by the people and authorities with the greatest
+honor. The old royal palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the
+emperor, been refurnished with imperial magnificence, and, as a
+peculiarly delicate attention, the Pope's bedchamber had been
+arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber in the Quirinal at
+Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now repaired to
+Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony had,
+however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
+Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity
+with this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the
+approach of the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give
+himself the appearance of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way.
+The equipages and the imperial court had taken position in the
+forest of Nemours. Napoleon, however, attired in hunting-dress,
+rode, with his suite, to the summit of a little hill, which the
+Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope at once ordered a halt,
+and the emperor also brought his suite to a stand with a gesture of
+his hand. A brief interval of profound silence followed. All felt
+that a great historical event was taking place, and the eyes of all
+were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief figures of
+this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in his
+simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
+robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.</p>
+<p>As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his
+carriage, hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed
+his foot on the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already
+touched the earth. Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he
+must make up his mind to step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin
+slippers, on the wet soil, softened by a shower of rain, that had
+fallen on the previous day. The emperor's hunting-boots were
+certainly much better adapted to this meeting in the mud than the
+Pope's white satin slippers.</p>
+<p>Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly;
+then, through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the
+imperial equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance,
+interrupted this tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest
+accident that the emperor stood on the right, and the Pope on the
+left side of the equipage, that had now been brought to a stand
+again. The two doors of the carriage were simultaneously thrown
+open by the lackeys; at the same time, the Pope entered the
+carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right side, both
+seating themselves side by side at the same time. This settled the
+question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but the
+emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.</p>
+<p>The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of
+December, 1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris,
+but all France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of
+people surged to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the
+houses were filled with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the
+bells were ringing in all the churches, and joyous music,
+intermixed with the shouts of the people, was heard in every
+direction. For a moment, however, these shouts were changed into
+laughter, and that was when the papal procession approached, headed
+by an ass led by the halter, in accordance with an ancient custom
+of Rome. While the Pope, with the high dignitaries of the Church,
+repaired to the cathedral to await there the coming of the imperial
+couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial insignia in the
+Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet mantle, bordered
+with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and arraying
+himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new dignity.
+When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his wife,
+who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
+gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the
+palace, as he desired to see him at once.</p>
+<p>A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring
+him from his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little
+notary Ragideau entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the
+imperial pair were alone, awaiting him in their glittering
+attire.</p>
+<p>His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon
+stepped forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau,"
+said he, gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether
+General Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his
+sword, or whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for
+having married me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment,
+and Josephine asked the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte
+related how, while standing in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain
+occasion, he had heard the notary advising Josephine not to marry
+poor little Bonaparte; not to become the wife of the general, who
+possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.</p>
+<p>The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart
+like a dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no
+complaint, and made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his
+supreme triumph, to-day the emperor remembered that moment of
+humiliation, and, arrayed with the full insignia of the highest
+earthly dignity, he accorded himself the triumph of reminding the
+little notary that he had once advised Josephine not to marry him,
+because of his poverty.</p>
+<p>The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the
+mighty Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and
+his sword, but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of
+Notre-Dame, to place the golden imperial crown on his head.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.2"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S HEIR.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities
+of the coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her
+in the retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son;
+and in this child the happy mother found consolation and a new
+hope.</p>
+<p>Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
+foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
+grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had
+been gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
+unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured
+her mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus
+given a first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no
+longer a reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a
+separation, for there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath
+the imperial throne of France.</p>
+<p>The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's
+wishes, and to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not
+requested the Pope to delay his departure for a few days, in order
+to baptize the child? The Pope performed this sacred rite at St.
+Cloud, the emperor holding the child, and Madame Letitia standing
+at his side as second witness. Hortense now possessed an object
+upon which she could lavish the whole wealth of love that had until
+now lain concealed in her heart. The little Napoleon Charles was
+Hortense's first happy love; and she gave way to this intoxicating
+feeling with the most intense delight.</p>
+<p>Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the
+word; she no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now
+bestow her undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon,
+the Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of
+Piedmont by Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health,
+had not been compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to
+remain in her little house in Paris, which she could exchange when
+summer came for her husband's new estate, the castle of
+Saint-Leu.</p>
+<p>But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in
+this charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The
+brother and sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be
+permitted to lead a life of retirement. They were rays of the sun
+that now dazzled the whole world; they must fulfil their destiny,
+and contribute their light to the ruling sun.</p>
+<p>An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned
+from Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see
+his son, to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a
+brilliant destiny; the Constable of France was to become a king.
+Delegates of the Republic of Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived
+in Paris, and requested their mighty neighbor, the Emperor
+Napoleon, to give them a king, who should unite them with the
+glittering empire, through the ties of blood. Napoleon intended to
+fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king, in the person of
+his brother Louis.</p>
+<p>But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and
+refused to accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also
+in perfect harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to
+strengthen his resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was
+proposed to place on their heads would be nothing more than a
+golden chain of dependence; that the King of Holland could be
+nothing more than the vassal of France; and their personal
+relations to each other added another objection to this political
+consideration.</p>
+<p>In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound
+them together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and
+could avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served
+to separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
+themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary
+union. In Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in
+Holland they would live in entire dependence on each other, and
+hear continually the rattling of the chain with which each had
+bound the other to the galley of a union without love.</p>
+<p>Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor
+to ward off this new misfortune that was suspended over their
+heads, in the form of a kingly crown.</p>
+<p>But how could they resist successfully the iron will of
+Napoleon? Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon
+directly on the subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine
+already felt that her wishes no longer exercised the power of
+earlier days over the emperor. She therefore avoided interceding
+where she was not sure of being successful.</p>
+<p>At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother
+openly; but Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and
+his gentle, yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence
+of the deputation of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed
+for a sceptre and crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to
+accept the crown which had been freely tendered him, and to be to
+his country a king who would respect and protect its liberties, its
+laws, and its religion.</p>
+<p>With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept
+this crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.</p>
+<p>And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single
+and sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and
+energy. The people of Holland having chosen him to be their king,
+he was determined to do honor to their choice; having been
+compelled to give up his own country and nationality, he determined
+to belong to his new country with his whole heart and being--to
+become a thorough Hollander, as he could no longer remain a
+Frenchman.</p>
+<p>This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an
+entirely new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the
+emperor, was now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man
+of action, who had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to
+devote all the powers of his being to its attainment. As King of
+Holland, he desired, above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and
+to be able to contribute to their welfare and happiness. He studied
+their language with untiring diligence, and made himself acquainted
+with their manners and customs, for the purpose of making them his
+own. He investigated the sources of their wealth and of their
+wants, and sought to develop the former and relieve the latter. He
+was restless in his efforts to provide for his country, and to
+merit the love and confidence which his subjects bestowed on
+him.</p>
+<p>His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and
+glittering position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had
+so unwillingly accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together,
+at brilliant entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new
+nobility of Holland, and taught the stiff society of that country
+the fine, unconstrained tone, and the vivacious intellectual
+conversation of Parisian society. It was under Hortense's fostering
+hand that art and science first made their way into the
+aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social reunions a
+higher and nobler importance.</p>
+<p>And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science,
+but also the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the
+unhappy, whose tears she dried, and whose misery she
+alleviated--and this royal pair, though adored and blessed by their
+subjects, could not find within their palaces the least reflection
+of the happiness they so well knew how to confer upon others
+without its walls. Between these two beings, so gentle and yielding
+to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist, and not even the
+birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up the chasm that
+separated them.</p>
+<p>And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of
+destiny. Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the
+presumptive heir to his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so
+dearly that he often played with him for hours on the terraces of
+St. Cloud, the child Josephine worshipped, because its existence
+seemed to assure her own happiness, the child that had awakened the
+first feeling of motherly bliss in Hortense's bosom, the child that
+had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte for the unenjoyable present
+with bright hopes for the future--the little Napoleon Charles died
+in the year 1807, of the measles.</p>
+<p>This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the
+imperial pair of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled
+with tears when this intelligence was brought him, and a cry of
+horror escaped Josephine's lips.</p>
+<p>"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is
+decided. He will put me away."</p>
+<p>But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she
+hastened to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away
+from the place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense
+returned with the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had
+almost succumbed to his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health
+in the baths of the Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now
+stood desolate again; death had banished life and joy from its
+halls; and, though the royal pair were subsequently compelled to
+return to it, joy and happiness came back with them no more.</p>
+<p>King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
+ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
+irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his
+young wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices,
+and excuse his irritable disposition. They were totally different
+in their views, desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their
+children, instead of being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange
+them the more, for each insisted on considering them his or her
+exclusive property, and in having them educated according to his or
+her views and wishes.</p>
+<p>But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and
+cares, in the greater misery of her mother. A letter from
+Josephine, an agonized appeal to her daughter for consolation,
+recalled Hortense to her mother's side, and she left the Hague and
+hastened to Paris.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.2"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>PREMONITIONS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French
+clairvoyante, were now about to be fulfilled. The crown which
+Josephine had reluctantly and sorrowfully accepted, and which she
+had afterward worn with so much grace and amiability, with such
+natural majesty and dignity, was about to fall from her head.
+Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the dreamed-of future had
+been realized, to put away from him the woman who had loved him and
+chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his hopes for the
+future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave fidelity,
+had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation, was now
+to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
+widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should
+be done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
+pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to
+sacrifice to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good
+angel;" and he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the
+thought of her tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating
+gaze.</p>
+<p>But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
+threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
+countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from
+Vienna, had caused the door that connected his room with that of
+his wife to be locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers,
+who dared to address her with less reverence, but with a touch of
+compassionate sympathy; she heard it in the low whispering that
+ceased when she approached a group of persons in her parlors; it
+was betrayed to her in the covert, mysterious insinuations of the
+public press, which attached a deep and comprehensive significance
+to the emperor's journey to Vienna.</p>
+<p>She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she
+was too weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act
+her part as wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should
+not flow outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she
+suppressed her sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her
+cheeks with rouge. But she longed for a heart to whom she could
+confide her anguish, and show her tears, and therefore called her
+daughter to her side.</p>
+<p>How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many
+tears were shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine
+whispered in her daughter's ear!</p>
+<p>"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the
+last few weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although
+compelled to appear before the world as such! What glances,
+Hortense, what glances courtiers fasten upon a discarded woman! In
+what uncertainty, what expectancy more cruel than death, have I
+lived and am I still living, awaiting the lightning stroke that has
+long glowed in Napoleon's eyes<a name="FNanchor15"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_15">[15]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor15">[15]</a> Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol.
+viii., p. 243.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full
+of bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to
+sacrifice her own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had
+been condemned to a union without love, in order that the happiness
+of her mother's union might be established on a firm basis. And now
+all had been in vain; the sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the
+tide of misfortune now about to bear down her unhappy mother.
+Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She was a queen, and yet
+only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar on the street
+her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter stood on
+the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and this
+queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
+with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had
+led in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though
+struggling with want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in
+wishes, in illusions; now, they possessed all that could adorn
+life; now millions of men bowed down to them, and saluted them with
+the proud word "majesty," and yet empress and queen were now poor
+in hopes and wishes, poor in the illusions that lay shattered at
+their feet, and rejoicing only in the one happiness, that of being
+able to confide their misery to each other.</p>
+<p>A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be
+called to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but
+before the gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom
+the whole world now bowed, almost quailed.</p>
+<p>"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an
+important matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has
+done so much for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice
+which they demand of me. The tranquillity and welfare of France
+require that I shall choose a wife who can give the country an heir
+to the throne. Josephine has been living in suspense and anguish
+for six months, and this must end. You, Hortense, are her dearest
+friend and her confidante; she loves you more than all else in the
+world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother for this step? You
+would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."</p>
+<p>Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her
+eyes on the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His
+glance again quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of
+a pure, innocent woman. Hortense had the courage to positively
+refuse the emperors request.</p>
+<p>"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then
+refuse my request?"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears,
+"sire, I have not the strength to stab my mother to the
+heart<a name="FNanchor16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor16">[16]</a> Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.</blockquote>
+<p>And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the
+emperor's cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.2"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DIVORCE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through
+a third person, the distressing tidings of his determination with
+regard to herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come
+to Paris, and on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of
+his wish. Eugene, like his sister, received this intelligence in
+silent submissiveness, but like his sister, he refused to impart to
+his mother, tidings that must destroy her happiness forever.</p>
+<p>The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the
+distressing tidings in person.</p>
+<p>It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress
+dined, as usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering
+the room made Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance
+that the fatal hour had come. But she repressed the tears which
+were rushing to her eyes, and looked entreatingly at her daughter,
+who sat on the opposite side of the table, a deathly pallor on her
+countenance.</p>
+<p>Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The
+sighs and half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving
+breast were quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled
+dismally, and drove the rain violently against the window-panes;
+within, an ominous, oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of
+Nature contrasted, and yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely
+with this human silence. Napoleon broke this silence but once, and
+that was when, in a harsh voice, he asked the lackey, who stood
+behind him, what time it was. Then all was still as before.</p>
+<p>At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and
+coffee was then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then
+set the cup down with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it
+touched the table. With an angry gesture he dismissed the
+attendants.</p>
+<p>"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost
+inaudibly.</p>
+<p>"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a
+profound obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of
+tender compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.</p>
+<p>The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this
+being left alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in
+which they sat opposite each other! How strange the glance which
+the emperor fastened on his wife!</p>
+<p>She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that
+moved his soul, but she also read in them that her hour was
+come!</p>
+<p>As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and
+Josephine shudderingly recoiled.</p>
+<p>Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart,
+regarding her with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.</p>
+<p>"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
+Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you
+alone, do I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in
+this world. Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My
+dearest desires must yield to the interests of France<a name=
+"FNanchor17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor17">[17]</a> The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne,
+vol. iii., p. 344.</blockquote>
+<p>"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand
+angrily--"no, speak no further. I understand you, and I expected
+this, but the blow is not the less deadly."</p>
+<p>She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of
+despair came over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last
+broke forth. She wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her
+heaving breast, and a loud cry of anguish burst from her lips. She
+at last fainted away, and was thus relieved from a consciousness of
+her sufferings.</p>
+<p>When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and
+her physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her
+trembling arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her
+mother's heart, sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew,
+feeling that he could be of no further assistance. It had only been
+in his power to recall Josephine to a consciousness of her misery;
+but for her misery itself he had no medicine; he knew that her
+tears and her daughter's sympathy could alone give relief.</p>
+<p>Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came
+in to inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her
+bedside, she shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased
+to flow, and her usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances
+of anger and offended love at the emperor. But love soon conquered
+anger. She extended her tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet
+smile, peculiar to woman, trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle,
+touching voice, she said: "Was I not right, my friend, when I
+shrank back in terror from the thought of becoming an
+empress<a name="FNanchor18"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_18">[18]</a>?"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor18">[18]</a> Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne,
+vol. iii., p. 342, <i>et seq</i>.</blockquote>
+<p>Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these
+farewell tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the
+emperor had already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the
+hand of the Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in
+Vienna. Nothing now remained to be done but to remove Josephine
+from the throne, and elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the
+vacant place!</p>
+<p>The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He
+assembled about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and
+princes, created by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of
+the Tuileries, in the presence of his court and the Senate, the
+emperor appeared; at his side the empress, arrayed for the last
+time in all the insignia of the dignity she was about to lay aside
+forever.</p>
+<p>In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
+determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
+trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
+words. The arch-chancellor, Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, then caused
+the appropriate paragraph of the <i>Code Civile</i> to be read,
+applied it to the case under consideration, in a short, terse
+address, and pronounced the union of the emperor and empress
+dissolved.</p>
+<p>This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the
+law. Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the
+court, and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the
+graceful, sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few
+other women.</p>
+<p>As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by
+inward emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his
+iron countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then
+walked through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on
+either side, and greeted all with a last soft look, a last
+inclination of the head, nothing could be heard but weeping, and
+even those who rejoiced over her downfall, because they hoped much
+from the new empress and the new dynasty, were now moved to tears
+by this silent and yet so eloquent leave-taking.</p>
+<p>The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his
+dearest possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from
+Josephine.</p>
+<p>On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison,
+her future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and
+was now to be the widow's seat, of her love.</p>
+<p>Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who
+constituted this court did not leave her. During the next few weeks
+the crowds of the coming and going on the road from Paris to
+Malmaison presented the appearance of a procession; the equipages
+of all the kings and princes who were sojourning in Paris, and of
+all the nobles and dignitaries of the new France, were to be seen
+there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain, that still preserved its
+sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the empress at Malmaison.
+And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and humble, as well as by
+the rich and great. All wished to say to the empress that they
+still loved and honored her, and that she was still enthroned in
+their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at an end.</p>
+<p>The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
+whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that,
+with Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future
+would avenge her tears.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.2"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE KING OF HOLLAND.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison,
+Hortense was seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother
+lamented as a misfortune, because she still loved her husband,
+would have conferred happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved
+her husband. Once again in harmony with her husband, Hortense
+entreated the emperor to permit them to be divorced, and the king
+united his entreaties with those of the queen.</p>
+<p>But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear
+before the people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage
+bond. For state reasons he had separated from his wife, and for
+state reasons he could not give his consent to the dissolution of
+the union of his brother and step-daughter. They must, therefore,
+continue to drag the chain that united them; and they did, but with
+angry hearts.</p>
+<p>Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than
+ever; while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to
+Napoleon's express command, remained in Paris for some time. They
+were to attend the festivities that were soon to take place at the
+imperial court in honor of the marriage of the emperor with the
+Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. The daughter of the divorced
+empress, with the emperor's sisters, had been selected to carry the
+train of the new empress on the marriage-day. Napoleon wished to
+prove to France and to all Europe that there was no other law in
+his family than his will, and that the daughter of Josephine had
+never ceased to be his obedient daughter also. Napoleon wished,
+moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that she might
+have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
+inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
+womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court.
+Hortense mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April,
+1810, the day of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she,
+together with his sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She
+alone did this without making any resistance, while it was only
+after the most violent opposition to Napoleon's command that his
+sisters, Queen Caroline of Naples, the Duchess Pauline of
+Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of Tuscany, consented to
+undergo the humiliation of walking behind their new sovereign as
+humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not the only
+persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the day
+of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
+dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
+grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration
+in the chapel in the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
+opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and
+he did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had
+not appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red
+robes thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's
+dress.</p>
+<p>The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
+enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy
+forebodings; and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince
+Schwartzenberg in honor of the imperial marriage, a short time
+afterward, the fearful fire occurred that cost so many human lives
+and destroyed so much family happiness, the people remembered with
+terror that other misfortune that had occurred on the day of the
+entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and called this fire an
+earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian" would bring upon
+France and the emperor.</p>
+<p>While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in
+honor of the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering
+over her husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his
+crown.</p>
+<p>When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of
+Holland, he had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new
+people, and to devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too
+honest a man not to keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was
+to make such arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare
+and prosperity of Holland seemed to require, without in the least
+considering whether these laws were conducive to the interests of
+France or not. He would not regard Holland as a province dependent
+upon France, of which he was the governor, but as an independent
+land that had chosen him to be its free and independent king. But
+Napoleon did not view the matter in the same light; in his eyes it
+was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to refuse to conform
+itself in every respect to the interests of its powerful neighbor,
+France.</p>
+<p>When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he
+had charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same
+time to remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of
+France." Louis had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander;
+and when the interests of France and Holland came into conflict,
+the king took the side of his new country, and acted as a
+Hollander. He was of the opinion that the welfare of Holland
+depended on its commerce and industry only, and that it could only
+be great through its commercial importance; he therefore reduced
+the army and navy, making merchantmen of the men-of-war, and
+peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.</p>
+<p>Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and
+angrily reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole
+squadrons, discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until
+Holland was without power, both on land and water, as though
+warehouses and clerks were the material elements of power."
+Napoleon reproached the king still more bitterly, however, for
+having re-established commercial relations with England, for having
+raised the blockade for Holland which France had established
+against England, and for having permitted the American ships, that
+had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor quietly in
+those of Holland.</p>
+<p>The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should
+conform himself to his will and to the interests of France
+unconditionally; that he should immediately break off all
+commercial relations between Holland and England; that he should
+re-establish a fleet, of forty ships-of-the-line, seven frigates,
+and seven brigs, and an army of twenty-five thousand men, and that
+he should abolish all the privileges of the nobility that were
+contrary to the constitution.</p>
+<p>King Louis had the courage to resist these demands, in the name
+of Holland, and to refuse to obey instructions, the execution of
+which must necessarily have affected the material interests of
+Holland most injuriously.</p>
+<p>Napoleon responded to this refusal with a declaration of war.
+The ambassador of Holland received his passport, and a French army
+corps was sent to Holland, to punish the king's insolence.</p>
+<p>But the misfortune that threatened Holland had called the king's
+whole energy into activity, and Napoleon's anger and threats were
+powerless to break his resolution. As the commander of the French
+troops, the Duke of Reggio, approached Amsterdam, to lay siege to
+that city and thereby compel the king to yield, Louis determined
+rather to descend from his throne than to submit to the unjust
+demands of France. He, therefore, issued a proclamation to his
+people, in which he told them that he, convinced that he could do
+nothing more to promote their welfare, and, on the contrary,
+believing that he was an obstacle in the way of the restoration of
+friendly relations between his brother and Holland, had determined
+to abdicate in favor of his two sons, Napoleon Louis and Charles
+Louis Napoleon. Until they should attain their majority the queen,
+in conformity with the constitution, was to be regent. He then took
+leave of his subjects, in a short and touching address. He now
+repaired, in disguise, and under the name of Count de St. Leu,
+through the states of his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and
+through Saxony to T&ouml;plitz.</p>
+<p>Here he learned that Napoleon, far from respecting and
+fulfilling the conditions of his abdication, had united the kingdom
+of Holland with the empire. The king published a protest against
+this action of the emperor, in which, in the name of his son and
+heir, Napoleon Louis, he denounced this act of the emperor as a
+totally unjustifiable act of violence, and demanded that the
+kingdom of Holland should be re-established, in all its integrity,
+declaring the annexation of Holland to France to be null and void,
+in the name of himself and his sons.</p>
+<p>Napoleon responded to this protest by causing the king to be
+informed by the French ambassador in Vienna that unless he returned
+to France by the 1st of December, 1810, he should be regarded and
+treated as a rebel, who dared to resist the head of his family and
+violate the constitution of the empire.</p>
+<p>Louis neither answered nor conformed to this threat. He repaired
+to Gr&auml;tz, in Styria, and lived there as a private gentleman,
+beloved and admired, not only by those who came in contact with him
+there, but enjoying the esteem of all Europe, which he had won by
+the noble and truly magnanimous manner in which he had sacrificed
+his own grandeur to the welfare of his people. Even his and
+Napoleon's enemies could not withhold from the King of Holland the
+tribute of their respect, and even Louis XVIII. said of him: "By
+his abdication, Louis Bonaparte has become a true king; in
+renouncing his crown, he has shown himself worthy to wear it. He is
+the first monarch who has made so great a sacrifice but of pure
+love for his people; others have also relinquished their thrones,
+but they did it when weary of power. But in this action of the King
+of Holland there is something truly sublime--something that was not
+duly appreciated at first, but which will be admired by posterity,
+if I mistake not, greatly<a name="FNanchor19"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_19">[19]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor19">[19]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. v., p. 47.</blockquote>
+<p>In Gr&auml;tz, Louis Bonaparte, Count de St. Leu, lived a few
+peaceful, tranquil years, perhaps the first years of happiness he
+had enjoyed in his short and hitherto stormy life. Occupied with
+work and study, he easily forgot his former grandeur and
+importance. As it had once been his ambition to become a good king,
+it was now his ambition to become a good writer. He published his
+romance Marie, and, encouraged by the success which it met with in
+his circle of friends, he also gave his poems to the public--poems
+whose tender and passionate language proved that this so often
+misunderstood, so often repulsed, and, therefore, so timid and
+distrustful heart, could warm with a tenderness of love that Marie
+Pascal, the beautiful artist of the harp, could hardly have had the
+cruelty to withstand.</p>
+<p>But a day came when Louis Bonaparte closed his ear to all these
+sweet voices of happiness, of peace, and of love, to listen only to
+the voice of duty, that appealed to him to return to France, to his
+brother's side. While the sun of fortune shone over Napoleon, the
+king, who had voluntarily descended from a throne, remained in
+obscurity; but when the days of misfortune came upon the emperor,
+there could be but one place for his brave and faithful brother,
+and that was at Napoleon's side.</p>
+<p>Madame de St. Elme, who was at Gr&auml;tz at this time, and who
+witnessed the farewell scene between Louis Bonaparte and the
+inhabitants of Gr&auml;tz, says: "On the day when Austria so
+unexpectedly sundered its alliance with France, King Louis felt the
+necessity of abandoning an asylum, for which he would henceforth
+have been indebted to the enemies of France, and hastened to claim
+of the great unjust man who had repulsed him, the only place
+commensurate with the dignity of his character, the place at his
+side.</p>
+<p>"This was a subject of profound sorrow and regret for the
+inhabitants of Gr&auml;tz, and of all Styria, for there was not a
+pious or useful institution, or a poor family in Styria, that had
+not been the object of his beneficence, and yet it was well known
+that the king who had descended from his throne so hastily, and
+with so little preparation, had but small means, and denied himself
+many of the enjoyments of life, in order that he might lend a
+helping hand to others. He was entreated, conjured with tears, to
+remain, but he held firm to his resolution. And when the horses,
+that they had at first determined to withhold from him, were at
+last, at his earnest and repeated solicitation, provided, the
+people unharnessed these horses from his carriage, in order that
+they might take their places, and accompany him to the gates of the
+city with this demonstration of their love. This departure had the
+appearance of a triumphal procession; and this banished king,
+without a country, was greeted with as lively plaudits on leaving
+his place of exile as when he mounted his throne<a name=
+"FNanchor20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor20">[20]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une contemporaine, vol.
+iv., p. 377.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.2"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>JUNOT, THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render
+assistance to the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother
+Louis, forgetting the mortifications and injuries he had sustained
+at the emperor's hands, hastened to his side, there was one of the
+most devoted kept away from him by fate--one upon whom the emperor
+could otherwise have depended in life and death.</p>
+<p>This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who,
+descended from an humble family, had by his merit and heroism
+elevated himself to the rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed
+to respond when the ominous roll of the war-drum recalled all
+Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it was not his will, but fate,
+that kept him away.</p>
+<p>Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear
+and without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present
+governor of Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a
+visitation of the most fearful of all diseases--his brain was
+affected! The scars that covered his head and forehead, and
+testified so eloquently to his gallantry, announced at the same
+time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed by
+sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
+his brain.</p>
+<p>The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And
+yet, this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of
+Istria and Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these
+provinces, had invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the
+noble disposition, fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms,
+he had conferred upon him sovereign power to rule in his stead.
+There was, therefore, no one who could take the sceptre from his
+hand, and depose him from his high position. Napoleon had placed
+this sceptre in his hand, and he alone could demand it of him. Even
+the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers of Istria appealed for
+help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford them no relief. He
+could only say to them: "Send a courier to the emperor, and await
+his reply."</p>
+<p>But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a
+distance of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no
+telegraphs. The Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the
+emperor, with an entreaty for their relief, but the Russian
+proverb, "Heaven is high, and the emperor distant," applied to them
+also! Weeks must elapse before the courier could return with the
+emperor's reply; until then, there was no relief; and until then,
+there was no authority to obey but the Duke d'Abrantes, the poor
+madman!</p>
+<p>No other authority, no institution, had the right to place
+itself in his stead, or to assume his prerogatives for an instant
+even, without violating the seal of sovereignty that Napoleon had
+impressed on the brow of his governor!</p>
+<p>Napoleon, whose crown was already trembling on his head, who was
+already so near his own fall, still possessed such gigantic power
+that its reflection sufficed to protect, at a distance of a
+thousand miles from the boundaries of France, the inviolability of
+a man who had lost his reason, and no longer had the power of
+reflection and volition.</p>
+<p>How handsome, how amiable, how chivalrous, had Junot been in his
+earlier days! How well he had known how to charm beautiful women in
+the drawing-rooms, soldiers on the battle-field, and knights at the
+tourney! In all knightly accomplishments he was the master--always
+and everywhere the undisputed victor and hero. These
+accomplishments had won the heart of Mademoiselle de Premont. The
+daughter of the proud baroness of the Faubourg St. Germain had
+joyfully determined, in spite of her mother's dismay, to become the
+wife of the soldier of the republic, of Napoleon's comrade-in-arms.
+Although Junot had no possession but his pay, and no nobility but
+his sword and his renown, this nevertheless sufficed to win him the
+favor of the daughter of this aristocratic mother--of the daughter
+who was yet so proud of being the last descendant of the Comneni.
+Napoleon, who loved to see matrimonial alliances consummated
+between his generals and his nobility and the old legitimist
+nobility of France, rewarded the daughter of the Faubourg St.
+Germain richly for the sacrifice she had made for his
+comrade-in-arms, in giving up her illustrious name, and her
+coat-of-arms, to become the wife of a general without ancestors and
+without fortune. He made his friend a duke, and the Duchess
+d'Abrantes had no longer cause to be ashamed of her title; the
+descendant of the Comneni could content herself with the homage
+done her as the wife of the governor of Lisbon, contented with the
+laurels that adorned her husband's brow--laurels to which he added
+a new branch, but also new wounds, on every battle-field.</p>
+<p>The consequences of these wounds had veiled the hero's laurels
+with mourning-crape, and destroyed the domestic happiness of the
+poor duchess forever. She had first discovered her husband's sad
+condition, but she had known how to keep it a secret from the rest
+of the world. She had, however, refused to accompany the duke to
+Illyria, and had remained in Paris, still hoping that the change of
+climate and associations might restore him to health.</p>
+<p>But her hopes were not to be realized. The attacks of madness,
+that had hitherto occurred at long intervals only, now became more
+frequent, and were soon no longer a secret. All Illyria knew that
+its governor was a madman, and yet no one dared to oppose his will,
+or to refuse to obey his commands; all still bowed to his will, in
+humility and silent submissiveness, hopefully awaiting the return
+of the courier who had been dispatched to Napoleon at Paris.</p>
+<p>"But heaven is high, and the emperor distant!" And much evil
+could happen, and did happen, before the courier returned to
+Trieste, where Junot resided. The poor duke's condition grew worse
+daily; his attacks of madness became more frequent and more
+dangerous, and broke out on the slightest provocation.</p>
+<p>On one occasion a nightingale, singing in the bushes beneath his
+window, had disturbed his rest; on the following morning he caused
+the general alarm to be sounded, and two battalions of Croats to be
+drawn up in the park, to begin a campaign against the poor
+nightingale, who had dared to disturb his repose.</p>
+<p>On another occasion, Junot fancied he had discovered a grand
+conspiracy of all the sheep of Illyria; against this conspiracy he
+brought the vigilance of the police, all the means of the
+administration, and the whole severity of the law, into requisition
+for its suppression.</p>
+<p>At another time, he suddenly became desperately enamoured of a
+beautiful Greek girl, who belonged to his household. Upon her
+refusal to meet his advances favorably, a passionate desperation
+took possession of Junot, and he determined to set fire to his
+palace, and perish with his love in the flames. Fortunately, his
+purpose was discovered, and the fire he had kindled stifled at
+once.</p>
+<p>He would suddenly be overcome with a passionate distaste for the
+grandeur and splendor that surrounded him, and long to lay aside
+his brilliant position, and fly to the retirement of an humble and
+obscure life.</p>
+<p>It was his dearest wish to become a peasant, and be able to live
+in a hut; and, as there was no one who had the right to divest him
+of his high dignities and grant his desire, he formed the
+resolution to divest himself of this oppressive grandeur, by the
+exercise of his own fulness of power, and to withdraw himself from
+the annoyances imposed upon him by his high position.</p>
+<p>Under the pretence of visiting the provinces, he left Trieste,
+to lead for a few weeks an entirely new life--a life that seemed,
+for a brief period, to soothe his excited mind. He arrived, almost
+incognito, in the little city of Gorizia, and demanded to be
+conducted to the most unpretending establishment to which humble
+and honest laborers were in the habit of resorting for refreshment
+and relaxation. He was directed to an establishment called the
+Ice-house, a place to which poor daily laborers resorted, to repose
+after the labors of the day, and refresh themselves with a glass of
+beer or wine.</p>
+<p>In this Ice-house the governor of Illyria now took up his abode.
+He seldom quitted it, either by day or night; and here, like
+Haroun-al-Raschid, he took part in the harmless merriment of happy
+and contented poverty. And here this poor man was to find a last
+delight, a last consolation; here he was to find a last friend.</p>
+<p>This last friend of the Duke d'Abrantes--this Pylades of the
+poor Orestes--was--a madman!--a poor simpleton, of good family, who
+was so good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at
+large, and free scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however,
+possessed a kind of droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought
+to bear most effectively, sparing neither rank nor position. The
+half-biting, half-droll remarks of this Diogenes of Istria was all
+that now afforded enjoyment to the broken-down old hero. It was
+with intense delight that he heard the social grandeur and
+distinctions that had cost him so dear made ridiculous by this
+half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to jeer at the pomp
+that surrounded the governor, and imitate French elegance in a
+highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor princely
+friend's delight knew no bounds.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, after the poor fellow had been entertaining him
+in this manner, the Duke d'Abrantes threw himself, in his
+enthusiasm, in his friend's arms, and invested him with the
+insignia of the Legion of Honor, by hanging around his neck the
+grand-cross of this order hitherto worn by himself. The emperor had
+given Junot authority to distribute this order to the deserving
+throughout the provinces of Illyria and Istria, and the governor
+himself having invested this mad Diogenes with the decoration,
+there was no one who was competent to deprive him of it. For weeks
+this mad fool was to be seen in the streets of Gorizia, parading
+himself like a peacock, with the grand-cross of the honorable order
+of the Emperor Napoleon, and, at the same time, uttering the most
+pointed and biting <i>bon mots</i> at the expense of his own
+decoration. The duke often accompanied him in his wanderings
+through the town, sometimes laughing loudly at the fool's jests,
+sometimes listening with earnest attention, as though his
+utterances were oracles. Thus this strange couple passed the time,
+either lounging through the streets together, or seated side by
+side on a stone by the way, engaged in curious reflections on the
+passers-by, or philosophizing over the emptiness of all glory and
+grandeur, and over the littleness and malice of the world,
+realizing the heart-rending, impressive scenes between Lear and his
+fool, which Shakespeare's genius has depicted.</p>
+<p>After weeks of anxious suspense, the imperial message, relieving
+Junot of his authority, and placing the Duke of Otranto in his
+place, at last arrived. The poor Duke d'Abrantes left Illyria, and
+returned to France, where, in the little town of Maitbart, after
+long and painful struggles, he ended, in sadness and solitude, a
+life of renown, heroism, and irreproachable integrity.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.2"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A VENDER OF VIOLETS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Gradually, the brilliancy of the sun that had so long dazzled
+the eyes of all Europe began to wax pale, and the luminous star of
+Napoleon to grow dim among the dark clouds that were gathering
+around him. Fortune had accorded him all that it could bestow upon
+a mortal. It had laid all the crowns of Europe at his feet, and
+made him master of all the monarchies and peoples. Napoleon's
+antechamber in Erfurt and in Dresden had been the rendezvous of the
+emperors, kings, and princes of Europe, and England alone had never
+disguised its hostility beneath the mask of friendship, and bent
+the knee to a hated and feared neighbor. Napoleon, the master of
+Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother," could now
+proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no
+longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had
+now become a new triumph of his grandeur.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, during the congress at Erfurt, all the
+emperors, kings, and princes, were assembled around Napoleon's
+table. He occupied the seat between his enthusiastic friend the
+Emperor of Russia, and his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria.
+Opposite them sat the King of Prussia, his ally, although Napoleon
+had deprived him of the Rhine provinces; and the Kings of Bavaria
+and W&uuml;rtemberg, to whom Napoleon had given crowns, whose
+electorate and duchy he had converted into kingdoms, and of whom
+the first had given his daughter in marriage to Napoleon's adopted
+son, Eugene, and the second his daughter to Napoleon's brother
+Jerome. There were, further, at the table, the King of Saxony and
+the Grand-duke of Baden, to the latter of whom Napoleon had given
+the hand of Josephine's niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais. All these
+were princes, "by the grace of God," of brilliant and haughty
+dynasties; and in their midst sat the son of the advocate of
+Corsica--he, the Emperor of France--he, upon whom the gaze of all
+these emperors and kings was fastened in admiration and respect.
+Napoleon's extraordinary memory had just been the topic of
+conversation, and the emperor was about to explain how he had
+brought it to such a state of perfection.</p>
+<p>"While I was still a sub-lieutenant," began Napoleon, and
+instantly his hearers let fall their gaze, and looked down in shame
+at their plates, while a cloud of displeasure passed over the brow
+of the emperor of Austria at this mention of the low origin of his
+son-in-law. Napoleon observed this, and for an instant his eagle
+glance rested on the embarrassed countenances that surrounded him;
+he then paused for a moment. He began again, speaking with sharp
+emphasis: "When I still had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant,"
+said he, and the Emperor Alexander of Russia, the only one of the
+princes who had remained unembarrassed, laid his hand on the
+emperor's shoulder, smiled approvingly, and listened with interest
+and pleasure to the emperor's narrative of the time when he "still
+had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant<a name=
+"FNanchor21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor21">[21]</a> Bossuet, M&eacute;moires, vol.
+V.</blockquote>
+<p>Napoleon, as we have said, had already mounted so high that for
+him there was no longer a summit to be attained, and now his
+heart's last and dearest wish had been granted by destiny. His
+wife, Marie Louise, had given birth to a son on the 20th of May,
+1811, and the advent of the little King of Rome had fulfilled the
+warmest desires of Napoleon and of France. The emperor now had an
+heir; Napoleon's dynasty was assured.</p>
+<p>Festivities were therefore held in honor of this event, in the
+Tuileries, at the courts, of the Queen of Naples, of the
+Grand-duchess de Guastalla, of all the dukes of the empire, and of
+the Queen of Holland.</p>
+<a name="391.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/391.jpg"><img src="images/391.jpg"
+width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Portrait of Queen Hortense.</b></p>
+<p>Hortense was ill and in pain; a nervous headache, that she had
+been suffering from for some time, betrayed the secret of the pain
+and grief she had so long concealed from observation. Her cheeks
+had grown pale, and her eyes had lost their lustre. Her mother wept
+over her lost happiness in Malmaison, and, when Hortense had wept
+with and consoled her mother, she was compelled to dry her eyes and
+hasten to the Tuileries, and appear, with a smiling countenance,
+before her who was now her empress and her mother's happy
+rival.</p>
+<p>But Hortense had accepted her destiny, and was determined to
+demean herself as became her own and her mother's dignity. She
+endeavored to be a true and sincere friend to the young empress,
+and fulfil the emperor's wishes, and to give brilliant
+entertainments in honor of the King of Rome, in spite of the pain
+it must cost her. "The emperor wills it, the emperor requires it;"
+that was sufficient for all who were about him, and it was
+sufficient for her. Her mother had gone because it was his will,
+she had remained because it was his will, and she now gave these
+entertainments for the same reason. But there was an element of
+sadness and gloom even in these festivities of the carnival of
+1813; the presence of so many cripples and invalids recalled the
+memory of the reverses of the past year. At the balls there was a
+great scarcity of young men who could dance; incessant wars had
+made the youth of France old before their time, and had converted
+vigorous men into cripples.</p>
+<p>Her heart filled with dark forebodings, Hortense silently
+prepared herself against the days of misfortune which she knew must
+inevitably come. When these days should come, she wished to be
+ready to meet them with a brave heart and a resolute soul, and she
+also endeavored to impress on the minds of her two beloved sons the
+inconstancy of fortune, in order that they might look misfortune
+boldly in the face. She had no compassion with the tender youth of
+these boys, who were now eight and six years old; no compassion,
+because she loved them too well not to strive to prepare them for
+adversity.</p>
+<p>One day the Duchess of Bassano gave a ball in honor of the
+queen, and Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned
+her resolution to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion.
+Her blond hair, that reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed
+in the ancient Greek style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers,
+not natural flowers, however, but consisting of Hortensias in
+diamonds. Her dress was of pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias
+in silver. The hem of her dress and its train was encircled with a
+garland of flowers composed of roses and violets. A bouquet of
+Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom, and her necklace and
+bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias. In this rich and
+tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress Josephine the
+day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies and
+gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for the
+occasion.</p>
+<p>The parlor, filled with these ladies glittering with diamonds,
+and with these cavaliers in their rich, gold-embroidered uniforms,
+presented a brilliant spectacle. The queen's two sons, who came
+running into the room at this moment to bid their "bonne petite
+maman" adieu, stood still for an instant, dazzled by this
+magnificence, and then timidly approached the mother who seemed to
+them a queen from the fairy-realm floating in rosy clouds. The
+queen divined the thoughts of her boys, whose countenances were for
+her an open book in which she read every emotion.</p>
+<p>She extended a hand to each of her children, and led them to a
+sofa, on which she seated herself, taking the youngest, Louis
+Napoleon, who was scarcely six years old, in her lap, while his
+elder brother, Napoleon Louis, stood at her side, his curly head
+resting on Hortense's shoulder, gazing tenderly into the pale,
+expressive face of his beautiful mother.</p>
+<p>"I am very prettily dressed to-day, am I not, Napoleon?" said
+Hortense, laying her little hand, that sparkled with diamonds, on
+the head of her eldest son. "Would you like me less if I were poor,
+and wore no diamonds, but merely a plain black dress? Would you
+love me less then?"</p>
+<p>"No, <i>maman</i>!" exclaimed the boy, almost angrily, and
+little Louis Napoleon, who sat in his mother's lap, repeated in his
+shrill little voice: "No, <i>maman</i>!"</p>
+<p>The queen smiled. "Diamonds and dress do not constitute
+happiness, and we three would love each other just as much if we
+had no jewelry, and were poor. But tell me, Napoleon, if you had
+nothing, and were entirely alone in the world, what would you do
+for yourself?"</p>
+<p>"I would become a soldier," cried Napoleon, with sparkling eyes,
+"and I would fight so bravely that I should soon be made an
+officer."</p>
+<p>"And you, Louis, what would you do to earn your daily
+bread?"</p>
+<p>The little fellow had listened earnestly to his brother's words,
+and seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the
+knapsack and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and
+that he was, as yet, too weak to become a soldier.</p>
+<p>"I," said he, after a pause, "I would sell bouquets of violets,
+like the little boy who stands at the gates of the Tuileries, and
+from whom we buy our flowers every day."</p>
+<p>The ladies and cavaliers, who had listened to this curious
+conversation in silence, now laughed loudly at this naive reply of
+the little prince.</p>
+<p>"Do not laugh, ladies," said the queen, earnestly, as she now
+arose; "it was no jest, but a lesson that I gave my children, who
+were so dazzled by jewelry. It is the misfortune of princes that
+they believe that everything is subject to them, that they are made
+of another stuff than other men, and have no duties to perform.
+They know nothing of human suffering and want, and do not believe
+that they can ever be affected by anything of the kind. And this is
+why they are so astounded, and remain so helpless, when the hand of
+misfortune does strike them. I wish to preserve my sons from
+this<a name="FNanchor22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor22">[22]</a> The queen's own words.</blockquote>
+<p>She then stooped and kissed her boys, who, while she and her
+brilliant suite were driving to the Tuileries, busied their little
+heads, considering whether it was easier to earn one's bread as a
+soldier, or by selling violets at the gates of the Tuileries, like
+the little beggar-boy.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.2"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DAYS OF MISFORTUNE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The round of festivities with which the people of France
+endeavored to banish the shadow of impending misfortune, was soon
+to be abruptly terminated. The thunder of the cannon on the
+battle-fields of Hanau and Leipsic silenced the dancing-music in
+the Tuileries; and in the drawing-rooms of Queen Hortense, hitherto
+devoted to music and literature, the ladies were now busily engaged
+in picking lint for the wounded who were daily arriving at the
+hospitals of Paris from the army. The declaration of war of Austria
+and Russia had aroused France from its haughty sense of
+invincibility. All felt that a crisis was at hand. All were
+preparing for the ominous events that were gathering like
+storm-clouds over France. Each of the faithful hastened to assume
+the position to which honor and duty called him. And it was in
+response to such an appeal that Louis Bonaparte now returned from
+Gr&auml;tz to Paris; he had heard the ominous tones of the voice
+that threatened the emperor, and wished to be at his side in the
+hour of danger.</p>
+<p>It was not as the wife, but in the spirit of a Frenchwoman and a
+queen, that Hortense received the intelligence of her husband's
+return. "I am delighted to hear it," said she; "my husband is a
+good Frenchman, and he proves it by returning at the moment when
+all Europe has declared against France. He is a man of honor, and
+if our characters could not be made to harmonize, it was probably
+because we both had defects that were irreconcilable.</p>
+<p>"I," added she, with a gentle smile, "I was too proud, I had
+been spoiled, and was probably too deeply impressed with a sense of
+my own worth; and this defect is not conducive to pleasant
+relations with one who is distrustful and low-spirited. But our
+interests were always the same, and his hastening to France, to
+enroll himself with all his brother Frenchmen, for the defence of
+his country, is worthy of the king's character. It is only by doing
+thus that we can testify our gratitude for the benefits the people
+have conferred upon our family<a name="FNanchor23"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_23">[23]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor23">[23]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la reine
+Hortense, vol. i., p. 167.</blockquote>
+<p>In the first days of January, 1814, the news that the enemy had
+crossed the boundaries of France, and that the Austrians, Russians,
+and Prussians, were marching on Paris, created a panic throughout
+the entire city. For the first time, after so many years of
+triumph, France trembled for its proud army, and believed in the
+possibility of defeat.</p>
+<p>In the Tuileries, also, gloom and dejection ruled the hour for
+the first time; and while, when the army had heretofore gone forth,
+the question had been, "When shall we receive the first
+intelligence of victory?" there were now only mute, inquiring
+glances bent on the emperor's clouded countenance.</p>
+<p>On the 24th of January, Napoleon left Paris, in order to repair
+to the army. The empress, whom he had made regent, giving her a
+council, consisting of his brothers and the ministers, as a
+support--the empress had taken leave of him in a flood of tears,
+and Queen Hortense, who had alone been present on this occasion,
+had been compelled to remain for some time with the empress, in
+order to console and encourage her.</p>
+<p>But Hortense was far from feeling the confidence which she
+exhibited in the presence of the empress and of her own court. She
+had never believed in the duration of these triumphs and of this
+fortune; she had always awaited the coming evil in silent
+expectation, and she was therefore now ready to face it bravely,
+and to defend herself and her children against its attacks. She
+therefore was calm and self-possessed, while the entire imperial
+family was terror-stricken, while all Paris was in a panic, while
+the fearful intelligence, "The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks
+are marching on Paris!" was overrunning the city. "The Grand-duke
+Constantine has promised his troops that they shall warm themselves
+at the burning ruins of Paris, and the Emperor Alexander has sworn
+that he will sleep in the Tuileries."</p>
+<p>Nothing was now dreamed of but plundering, murder, and rapine;
+people trembled not only for their lives, but also for their
+property, and hastened to bury their treasures, their jewelry,
+their gold and silver, to secure it from the rapacious hands of the
+terrible Cossacks. Treasures were buried in cellars, or hid away in
+the walls of houses. The Duchess de Bassano caused all her valuable
+effects to be put in a hidden recess, and the entrance to the same
+to be walled up and covered with paper. There were among these
+valuable effects several large clocks, in golden cases, that were
+richly studded with precious stones, but it had unfortunately been
+forgotten to stop them, so that for the next week they continued to
+strike the hours regularly, and thereby betrayed to the neighbors
+the secret the duchess had so anxiously endeavored to conceal.</p>
+<p>But the cry, "The Cossacks are coming!" was not the only
+alarm-cry of the Parisians. Another, and a long-silent cry, was now
+heard in Paris--a strange cry, that had no music for the ear of the
+imperialist, but one that, to the royalist, had a sweet and
+familiar sound. This cry was, "The Count de Lille!" or, as the
+royalists said, "King Louis XVIII." The royalists no longer
+whispered this name, but proclaimed it loudly and with enthusiasm,
+and even those of them who had attached themselves to the imperial
+court, and played a part at the same, now dared to remove their
+masks a little, and show their true countenance.</p>
+<p>Madame Ducayla, one of the most zealous royalists, although
+attached to the court society of the Tuileries, had gone to
+Hartwell, to convey to him messages of love and respect in the name
+of all the royalists of Paris, and to tell him that they had now
+begun to smooth the way for his return to France and the throne of
+his ancestors. She had returned with authority to organize the
+conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them the king's sanction.
+Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the glittering weathercock in
+politics, had already experienced a change in disposition, in
+consequence of the shifting political wind, and when Countess
+Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from
+Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come
+from Hartwell, I have seen the king, and he has instructed me--" he
+interrupted her in loud and angry tones, exclaiming: "Are you mad,
+madame? You dare to confess such a crime to me?" He had, however,
+then added in a low voice: "You have seen him, then? Well, I am his
+most devoted servant<a name="FNanchor24"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_24">[24]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor24">[24]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une femme de
+qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 133.</blockquote>
+<p>The royalists held meetings and formed conspiracies with but
+little attempt at concealment, and the minister of police,
+Fouch&eacute;, whose eyes and ears were always on the alert, and
+who knew of everything that occurred in Paris, also knew of these
+conspiracies of the royalists; he did not prevent them, however,
+but advised caution, endeavoring to prove to them thereby the deep
+reverence which he himself experienced for the unfortunate royal
+family.</p>
+<p>In the midst of all this confusion and anxiety, Queen Hortense
+alone preserved her composure and courage, and far from
+endeavoring, like others, to conceal and secure her treasures,
+jewelry, and other valuables, she determined to make no change or
+reduction whatever in her manner of living; she wished to show the
+Parisians that the confidence of the imperial family in the emperor
+and his invincibility was not to be shaken. She therefore continued
+to conduct her household in truly royal style, although she had
+received from the exhausted state treasury no payment of the
+appanage set apart for herself and children for a period of three
+months. But she thought little of this; her generous heart was
+occupied with entirely different interests than those of her own
+pecuniary affairs.</p>
+<p>She wished to inspire Marie Louise, whom the emperor had
+constituted empress-regent on his departure for the army, with the
+courage which she herself possessed. She conjured her to show
+herself worthy of the confidence the emperor had reposed in her at
+this critical time, and to adopt firm and energetic measures. When,
+on the 28th of March, the terror-inspiring news was circulated that
+the hostile armies were only five leagues from Paris, and while the
+people were flying from the city in troops, Hortense hastened to
+the Tuileries to conjure the empress to be firm, and not to leave
+Paris. She entreated Marie Louise, in the name of the emperor, her
+husband, and the King of Rome, her son, not to heed the voice of
+the state council, who, after a long sitting, had unanimously
+declared that Paris could not be held, and that the empress, with
+her son and her council, should therefore leave the capital.</p>
+<p>But Marie Louise had remained deaf to all these pressing and
+energetic representations, and the queen had not been able to
+inspire her young and weak sister-in-law with her own
+resolution.</p>
+<p>"My sister," Hortense had said to her, "you will at least
+understand that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and
+thereby endanger your crown, but I see that you are resigned to
+this sacrifice."</p>
+<p>"It is true," Marie Louise had sadly replied. "I well know that
+I should act differently, but it is too late. The state council has
+decided, and I can do nothing!"</p>
+<p>In sadness and dejection Hortense had then returned to her
+dwelling, where Lavalette, Madame Ney, and the ladies of her court,
+awaited her.</p>
+<p>"All is lost," said she, sadly. "Yes, all is lost. The empress
+has determined to leave Paris. She lightly abandons France and the
+emperor. She is about to depart."</p>
+<p>"If she does that," exclaimed General Lavalette, in despair,
+"then all is really lost, and yet her firmness and courage might
+now save the emperor, who is advancing toward Paris by forced
+marches. After all this weighing and deliberating, they have
+elected to take the worst course they could choose! But, as this
+has finally been determined on, what course will your majesty now
+pursue?"</p>
+<p>"I remain in Paris," said the queen, resolutely; "as I am
+permitted to be mistress of my own actions, I am resolved to remain
+here and share the fortunes of the Parisians, be they good or evil!
+This is at least a better and worthier course than to incur the
+risk of being made a prisoner on the public highway."</p>
+<p>Now that she had come to a decision, the queen exhibited a
+joyous determination, and her mind recovered from its depression.
+She hastened to dispatch a courier to Malmaison to the Empress
+Josephine, now forgotten and neglected by all, to conjure her to
+leave for Novara at once. She then retired to her bedchamber to
+seek the rest she so much needed after so many hours of
+excitement.</p>
+<p>But at midnight she was aroused from her repose to a sad
+awakening. Her husband, with whom she had held no kind of
+intercourse since his return, had now, in the hour of danger,
+determined to assert his marital authority over his wife and
+children. He wrote the queen a letter, requiring her to leave Paris
+with her children, and follow the empress.</p>
+<p>Hortense replied with a decided refusal. A second categoric
+message from her husband was the response. He declared that if she
+should not at once conform to his will, and follow the empress with
+her children, he would immediately take his children into his own
+custody, by virtue of his authority as husband and father.</p>
+<p>At this threat, the queen sprang up like an enraged lioness from
+her lair. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes she commanded that
+her children should be at once brought to her, and then, pressing
+her two boys to her heart with passionate tenderness, she
+exclaimed: "Tell the king that I shall leave the city within the
+hour!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.2"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE ALLIES IN PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The anxiety of motherly love had effected what neither the
+departure of the empress nor the news of the approach of the
+Cossacks could do. Hortense had taken her departure. She had
+quitted Paris, with her children and suite, which had already begun
+to grow sensibly smaller, and arrived, after a hurried flight,
+endangered by bands of marauding Cossacks, in Novara, where the
+Empress Josephine, with tears of sorrow and of joy alike, pressed
+her daughter to her heart. Although her own happiness and grandeur
+were gone, and although the misfortunes of the Emperor
+Napoleon--whom she still dearly loved--oppressed her heart,
+Josephine now had her daughter and dearest friend at her side, and
+that was a sweet consolation in the midst of all these misfortunes
+and cares.</p>
+<p>At Novara, Hortense received the intelligence of the fall of the
+empire, of the capitulation of Paris, of the entrance of the
+allies, and of the abdication of Napoleon.</p>
+<p>When the courier sent by the Duke of Bassano with this
+intelligence further informed the Empress Josephine that the island
+of Elba had been assigned Napoleon as a domicile, and that he was
+on the point of leaving France to go into exile, Josephine fell,
+amid tears of anguish, into her daughter's arms, crying: "Hortense,
+he is unhappy, and I am not with him! He is banished to Elba! Alas!
+but for his wife, I would hasten to his side, to share his
+exile!"</p>
+<p>While the empress was weeping and lamenting, Hortense had
+silently withdrawn to her apartments. She saw and fully appreciated
+the consequences that must ensue to the emperor's entire family,
+from his fall; she already felt the mortifications and insults to
+which the Bonapartes would now be exposed from all quarters, and
+she wished to withdraw herself and children from their influence.
+She formed a quick resolve, and determined to carry it out at once.
+She caused Mademoiselle de Cochelet, one of the few ladies of her
+court who had remained faithful, to be called, in order that she
+might impart to her her resolution.</p>
+<p>"Louise," said she, "I intend to emigrate. I am alone and
+defenceless, and ever threatened by a misfortune that would be more
+cruel than the loss of crown and grandeur--the misfortune of seeing
+my children torn from me by my husband. My mother can remain in
+France--her divorce has made her free and independent; but I bear a
+name that will no longer be gladly heard in France, now that the
+Bourbons are returning. I have no other fortune than my diamonds.
+These I shall sell, and then go, with my children, to my mother's
+estate in Martinique. I lived there when a child, and have retained
+a pleasant remembrance of the place. It is undoubtedly hard to be
+compelled to give up country, mother, and friends; but one must
+face these great strokes of destiny courageously. I will give my
+children a good education, and that shall be my consolation."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle de Cochelet burst into tears, kissed the queen's
+extended hand, and begged so earnestly that she might be permitted
+to accompany her, that Hortense at last gave a reluctant consent.
+It was arranged between them that Louise should hasten to Paris, in
+order to make the necessary preparations for the queen's long
+journey; and she departed on this mission, under the protection of
+the courier, on the following morning.</p>
+<p>How changed and terrible was the aspect Paris presented on her
+arrival! At the gate through which they entered Cossacks stood on
+guard; the streets were filled with Russian, Austrian, and Prussian
+soldiery, at whose side the proud ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain were to be seen walking, in joyous triumph, bestowing upon
+the vanquishers of France as great a devotion as they could have
+lavished upon the beloved Bourbons themselves, whose return was
+expected in a few days.</p>
+<p>A Swedish regiment was quartered in the queen's dwelling; her
+servants had fled; her glittering drawing-rooms now sheltered the
+conquerors of France; and in the Tuileries preparations were
+already being made for the reception of the Bourbons.</p>
+<p>No one dared to pronounce the name of Napoleon. Those who were
+formerly his most zealous flatterers were now the most ready to
+condemn him. Those upon whom he had conferred the greatest benefits
+were now the first to deny him, hoping thereby to wipe out the
+remembrance of the benefits they had received. The most zealous
+Napoleonists now became the most ardent royalists, and placed the
+largest white cockades in their hats, in order that they might the
+sooner attract the attention of the new rulers.</p>
+<p>But there was still one man who pronounced the name of Napoleon
+loudly, and with affectionate admiration, and publicly accorded him
+the tribute of his respect.</p>
+<p>This one was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. He had loved
+Napoleon so dearly, that even the position of hostility which
+policy compelled him to assume could not banish from his heart
+friendship for the hero who had so long ruled Europe.</p>
+<p>Napoleon's fate was decided; and it was attributable to the
+zealous efforts of the czar that the allies had consented to the
+emperor's demands, and appointed him sovereign of the island of
+Elba. Now that Alexander could do nothing more for Napoleon, he
+desired to make himself useful to his family, at least, and thereby
+testify the admiration which he still felt for the fallen
+Titan.</p>
+<p>The Empress Marie Louise and the little King of Rome had no need
+of his assistance. The empress had not availed herself of the
+permission of the allies to accompany her husband to Elba, but had
+placed herself and son under the protection of her father, the
+Emperor of Austria.</p>
+<p>The Emperor Alexander therefore bestowed his whole sympathy upon
+Napoleon's divorced wife and her children, the Viceroy of Italy and
+the Queen of Holland. He took so great an interest in the queen,
+that he declared his intention, in case Hortense should not come to
+Paris, of going to Novara to see her, in order to learn from her
+own lips in what manner he could serve her, and how she desired
+that her future should be shaped.</p>
+<p>Count Nesselrode, the emperor's minister, was also zealous in
+his endeavors to serve the queen. The count had long been the
+intimate friend of Louise de Cochelet; and, desirous of giving her
+a further proof of his friendship, he knew of no better way of
+doing so than by rendering a service to Queen Hortense and her
+children. Louise informed the count of the queen's intended
+departure for Martinique. Count Nesselrode smiled sadly over this
+desperate resolve of a brave mother's heart, and instructed Louise
+to beg the queen to impart to him, through her confidante, all her
+wishes and demands, in order that he might lay them before the
+emperor.</p>
+<p>The queen's fate was the subject of great sympathy in all
+quarters. When, in one of the sessions of the ministers of the
+allies, in which the fate of France, of the Bourbons, and of the
+Bonapartes, was to be the subject of deliberation, the question of
+making some provision for the emperor's family came up for
+consideration, the prince of Benevento exclaimed: "I plead for
+Queen Hortense alone; for she is the only one for whom I have any
+esteem." Count Nesselrode added: "Who would not be proud to claim
+her as a countrywoman? She is the pearl of her France!" And
+Metternich united with the rest in her praise<a name=
+"FNanchor25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor25">[25]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p 279.</blockquote>
+<p>But it was in vain that Louise de Cochelet imparted this
+intelligence to the queen; the entreaties and representations of
+her friends were powerless to persuade Hortense to leave her
+retirement and come to Paris.</p>
+<p>The following letter of the queen, written to Louise, concerning
+her affairs, will testify to her beautiful and womanly sentiments.
+This letter is as follows:</p>
+<p>"My dear Louise,--You and all my friends write me the same
+questions: 'What do you want? What do you demand?' I reply to all
+of you: I want nothing whatever! What should I desire? Is not my
+fate already determined? When one has the strength to form a great
+resolution, and when one can firmly and calmly contemplate the idea
+of making a journey to India or America, it is unnecessary to
+demand any thing of any one. I entreat you to take no steps that I
+should be compelled to disavow; I know that you love me, and this
+might induce you to do so. I am really not to be pitied; it was in
+the midst of grandeur and splendor that I have suffered! I shall
+now, perhaps, learn the happiness of retirement, and prefer it to
+all the magnificence that once surrounded me. I do not believe I
+can remain in France; the lively interest now shown in my behalf
+might eventually occasion mistrust. This idea is annihilating; I
+feel it, but I shall not willingly occasion sorrow to any one. My
+brother will be happy; my mother can remain in her country, and
+retain her estates. I, with my children, shall go to a foreign
+land, and, as the happiness of those I love is assured, I shall be
+able to bear the misfortune that strikes only at my material
+interests, but not at my heart. I am still deeply moved and
+confounded by the fate that has overtaken the Emperor Napoleon and
+his family. Is it true? Has all been finally determined? Write me
+on this subject. I hope that my children will not be taken from me;
+in that case I should lose all courage. I will so educate them that
+they shall be happy in any station of life. I shall teach them to
+bear fortune and misfortune with equal dignity, and to seek true
+happiness in contentment with themselves. This is worth more than
+crowns. Fortunately, they are healthy. Thank Count Nesselrode for
+his sympathy. I assure you there are days that are properly called
+days of misfortune, and that are yet not without a charm; such are
+those that enable us to discern the true sentiments people hold
+toward us. I rejoice over the affection which you show me, and it
+will always afford me gratification to tell you that I return it.
+HORTENSE<a name="FNanchor26"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_26">[26]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor26">[26]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., pp. 275-277.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV.2"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+<h3>CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND LOUISE DE COCHELET.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In the meanwhile, Hortense was still living with her mother in
+Novara, firmly resolved to remain in her retirement, sorrowing over
+the fate of the imperial house, but quite indifferent as to her own
+fate.</p>
+<p>But her friends--and even in misfortune Hortense still had
+friends--and above all her truest friend, Louise de Cochelet,
+busied themselves all the more about her future, endeavoring to
+rescue out of the general wreck of the imperial house at least a
+few fragments for the queen.</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet was still sojourning in Paris, and the
+letters which she daily wrote to the queen at Novara, and in which
+she informed her of all that was taking place in the city, are so
+true a picture of that strange and confused era, that we cannot
+refrain from here inserting some of them.</p>
+<p>In one of her first letters Louise de Cochelet relates a
+conversation which she had had with Count Nesselrode, in relation
+to the queen's future.</p>
+<p>"The Bourbons," she writes, "have now been finally accepted. I
+asked Count Nesselrode, whom I have just left: 'Do you believe that
+the queen will be permitted to remain in France? Will the new
+rulers consider this proper?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'I am sure
+of it, for we will make it a condition with them, and without us
+they would never have come to the throne at all! It is not the
+Bourbons, but it is we, it is all Europe, that arranges and
+regulates these matters. I therefore trust that they will never
+violate the agreement. Rest assured that the Emperor Alexander will
+always support the right.'</p>
+<p>"All of these strangers here speak of you, madame, with great
+enthusiasm. Metternich, who doubtlessly recollects your great
+kindness to his wife and children, inquired after you with lively
+interest. Prince Leopold is devotedly attached to yourself and the
+Empress Josephine, and ardently desires to be able to serve you
+both. Count Nesselrode thinks it would be well for you to write to
+the Emperor Alexander, as he takes so warm an interest in your
+affairs.</p>
+<p>"The old nobility is already much discontented; it considers
+itself debased, because it sees itself mixed with so many new
+elements."</p>
+<p>"Come to Malmaison with the empress," she writes a few days
+later, "the Emperor Alexander will then go there at once to meet
+you; he is anxious to make your acquaintance, and you already owe
+him some thanks, as he devotes himself to your interests as though
+they were his own. The Duke of Vicenza, who demeans himself so
+worthily with regard to the Emperor Napoleon, requests me to inform
+you that the future of your children depends on your coming to
+Malmaison.</p>
+<p>"The Emperor Napoleon has signed an agreement, that secures the
+future of all the members of his family; you can remain in France,
+and retain your titles. You are to have for yourself and children
+an income of four hundred thousand francs.</p>
+<p>"It is said here that the Faubourg St. Germain is furious over
+the brilliant positions provided for the imperial family and the
+empress. This is their gratitude for all her goodness to them.</p>
+<p>"You wish to make Switzerland your home. Count Nesselrode thinks
+you may be right, that it is a good retreat; but you should not
+give up the one you have here, and should in any event retain the
+right to return to France.</p>
+<p>"Fancy, madame, Count Nesselrode insists on my seeing his
+emperor! I have not yet consented, because I do not like to do any
+thing without your assent; but I confess I long to make his
+acquaintance. I am made quite happy by hearing you so well spoken
+of here.</p>
+<p>"Count Nesselrode said to me yesterday: 'Tell the queen that I
+shall be happy to fulfil all her wishes, and that I can do so, that
+I have the power.' For great security he wishes to have a future
+assured you that shall be independent of the treaty. I do not know
+what to say to him. Write to me, and demand something, I conjure
+you!"</p>
+<p>The queen's only response to this appeal was a letter addressed
+to the Emperor Napoleon, and sent to Count Nesselrode, with the
+request that it should be forwarded to its destination.</p>
+<p>"It is strange," wrote Louise de Cochelet in relation to this
+matter--"strange that all my efforts to serve you here have had no
+other result than your sending a commission to Count Nesselrode to
+forward to Fontainebleau a letter addressed to the Emperor
+Napoleon. He at first thought I was bringing him the letter he had
+solicited for his emperor; but he well knows how to appreciate all
+that is noble and great, and as he possesses the most admirable
+tact, he thinks the letter cannot well reach the emperor through
+him, and will therefore send it to the Duke of Vicenza, at
+Fontainebleau, to be delivered by him to the Emperor Napoleon."</p>
+<p>Another letter of Louise de Cochelet is as follows: "I have just
+seen Count Nesselrode again; he makes many inquiries concerning
+you; the Emperor of Russia now resides on the Elys&eacute;e
+Bourbon. The count tells me a story that is in circulation here,
+and has reference to the Empress Marie Louise and the kings her
+brothers-in-law. They were about to force her to enter a carriage,
+in which they were to continue their journey with her; when she
+refused to enter, it is said the King of Westphalia became so
+violent that he gave her a little beating. She cried for help, and
+General Caffarelli<a name="FNanchor27"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_27">[27]</a>, who commanded the guards, came to her
+rescue. On the following day she and her son were made prisoners,
+and all the crown diamonds in her possession seized by the
+authorities; but it seems as though capture was precisely what she
+wished.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor27">[27]</a> According to Napoleon's instructions, his
+brothers were to prevent the empress and the King of Rome from
+falling into the hands of the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene
+in his memoirs, and it is self-evident that it was not so stormy as
+the gossip of Paris portrayed it.</blockquote>
+<p>"The Queen of Westphalia has just arrived in Paris; the Emperor
+Alexander, her cousin, called on her immediately. It is supposed
+that she will return to her father.</p>
+<p>"Your brothers future is not yet determined on, but it will
+certainly be a desirable and worthy one. There are many intrigues
+going on in connection with it, as Count Nesselrode informs me. As
+for the kingdom of Naples, it is no longer spoken of. By the
+details of the last war with us, narrated to me by the count, I see
+that he despises many of our ministers and marshals, and that these
+must be very culpable; and yet he tells me that they considered the
+result uncertain a week before our overthrow; as late as the 10th
+of March they believed that peace had been made with Prussia at
+least.</p>
+<p>"Do not grieve over the fate of the emperor on the island of
+Elba. The emperor selected it himself; the allies would have
+preferred any other place.</p>
+<p>"All the mails arriving at Paris have been seized by the allies.
+Among the letters there was one from the Empress Marie Louise to
+her husband. She writes that her son is well, but that on awakening
+from a good night's rest he had cried and told her he had dreamed
+of his father; notwithstanding all her coaxing and promises of
+playthings, he had, however, refused to tell what he had dreamed of
+his father, and that this circumstance had made her uneasy in spite
+of her will.</p>
+<p>"Prince Leopold resides in the same house with Countess Tascher;
+he is incessantly busied with yours and your mother's affairs; he
+at least is not oblivious of the kindness you have both shown him.
+I know that it is his intention to speak to the Emperor of Russia,
+and then write to you.</p>
+<p>"All your friends say that you must consider the interest of
+your children, and accept the future offered you. M. de Lavalette
+and the Duke of Vicenza are also of this opinion. You lose enough
+without this, and you may well permit the victors to return a small
+portion of that which they have taken from you, and which is
+rightfully yours.</p>
+<p>"In short, all your friends demand that you shall repair to
+Malmaison as soon as the Emperor Napoleon shall have departed from
+Fontainebleau. I am assured that the Emperor Alexander intends to
+hunt you up in Novara if you should not come to Malmaison. It will
+therefore be impossible to avoid him. Consider that the fate of
+your children lies in his hands! In the treaty of Fontainebleau you
+and your children were provided for together; this is a great point
+for you, and proves how highly you are thought of.</p>
+<p>"It is to the Emperor of Russia alone that you owe this; and
+when the Duke of Vicenza submitted this article of the treaty to
+the Emperor Napoleon for his signature, it met with his entire
+approval. Your sole and undivided authority over your children is
+thereby acknowledged. You should, therefore, not reject the good
+offered you for your children. I do not think it would require much
+persuasion to induce others to accept that which is tendered
+you.</p>
+<p>"Madame Tascher, who has proved herself to be your true friend
+and relative, has just had her first interview with the Duke of
+Dalberg, the member of the provisional government. She spoke of
+you, and I will here give you his response, word for word: 'She is
+considered as being altogether foreign to the Bonaparte family,
+because she has separated herself from her husband. She will be the
+refuge of her children, who are left to her. She is so dearly
+beloved and highly esteemed, that she can be very happy. She can
+remain in France, and do whatever she pleases; but she must now
+return to Paris.' Countess Tascher came to me immediately after
+leaving the duke, in order to acquaint me with what he had
+said.</p>
+<p>"Friends and foes alike say this about you: 'Those who are not
+delighted with what is being done for the queen are bad people! And
+as for her, what has she to regret in all this? Only the good she
+has done! Now, the world will dare to love her, and to express
+their love; she has so few wishes, she is so perfect!'</p>
+<p>"In short, it would seem almost that the people are pleased with
+the misfortune that places you in the right light, and they say,
+'She is far more worthy in herself than when surrounded by a
+glittering court!'</p>
+<p>"Yesterday I saw the new arrivals from Fontainebleau, M. de
+Lascour and M. de Lavoestine. They came to me to learn where you
+were to be found, and intend visiting you at once, either at Novara
+or at Malmaison, as the case may be. These two gentlemen are true
+knights. 'No matter what she is to become,' said they; 'we can now
+show our devotion, without incurring the risk of being considered
+flatterers.'</p>
+<p>"The last two weeks at Fontainebleau have been a period of the
+greatest interest. All these young men, together with M. de
+Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re and M. de Montesquieu, wished to accompany
+the emperor; but he forbade their doing so, and, in taking leave of
+them, appealed to them to remain, and to continue to serve their
+country zealously.</p>
+<p>"Lascour and Lavoestine, together with many other officers of
+the army, are much displeased with the generals who left
+Fontainebleau without taking leave of the emperor.</p>
+<p>"Upon taking leave of the Empress Josephine, the emperor is
+reported to have said: 'She was right; my separation from her has
+brought misfortune upon my head.'</p>
+<p>"It is said that the Duchess of Montebello will leave the
+Empress Marie Louise."</p>
+<p>But all these entreaties and flatteries, and these appeals to a
+mother's heart, were, as yet, powerless to break the queen's pride.
+She still considered it more worthy and becoming to remain away
+from the city in which the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
+celebrating the orgies of their victorious royalism with the
+soldiers of the allied armies. Instead of yielding to Louise de
+Cochelet's entreaties, the queen wrote her the following
+letter:</p>
+<p>"My dear Louise,--My resolution gives you pain! You all accuse
+me of childish waywardness. You are unjust! My mother can follow
+the Duke de Vicenza's counsel; she will go to Malmaison, but <i>I
+remain here,</i> and I have good reasons for doing so. I cannot
+separate my interests from those of my children. It is they, it is
+their nearest relatives, who are being sacrificed by all that is
+taking place, and I am, therefore, determined not to approach those
+who are working our ruin. I must be saddened by our great
+misfortune, and I will appear so, and abstain from approaching
+those who would still consider me a supplicant, even though I
+should demand nothing of them.</p>
+<p>"I can readily believe that the Emperor Alexander is kindly
+disposed toward me; I have heard much good of him, even from the
+Emperor Napoleon. Although I was once anxious to make his
+acquaintance, I at this moment have no desire to see him. Is he not
+our vanquisher? In their hearts, your friends must all approve of
+my determination, whatever they may say. I find retirement
+congenial. When you have seen enough of your friends, you will
+return to me. I am suffering in my breast, and shall perhaps go to
+some watering-place. I do not know whether it is due to the air of
+Novara, but since I have been here I cannot breathe. My friends
+maintain that it is due to the mental shocks resulting from the
+great events that have transpired; but they are in error; death has
+spared us all, and the loss of a glittering position is not the
+greatest loss one can sustain. What personal happiness do I lose?
+My brother will, I trust, be well and suitably provided for, and he
+will be no longer exposed to danger. He must be very uneasy on our
+account, and yet I dare not write to him, as my letters would
+probably never reach him; if an opportunity should present itself,
+please let him know that we are no longer surrounded by dangers.
+Adieu. I entreat you once more to undertake nothing in my behalf. I
+fear your impetuosity and friendship, and yet I love to be able to
+count on you. My children are well. My mother opposes all my plans;
+she asserts that she has need of me; but I shall, nevertheless, go
+to her who must now be more unhappy than all of us.</p>
+<p>HORTENSE."</p>
+<p>She of whom Hortense thought that she must be more unhappy than
+all of them, was the wife of Napoleon, Marie Louise, who had now
+left Blois, to which place she had gone as empress-regent, and
+repaired to Rambouillet, to await the decision of the allies with
+regard to the future of herself and son. It was certainly one of
+the most peculiar features of this period, so rich in extraordinary
+occurrences, to see the sovereigns of Europe, the overthrown rulers
+of France, and those who were about to grasp the sceptre once more,
+thrown confusedly together in Paris, and within a circuit of some
+fifty miles around that city: a Bourbon in the Tuileries, Bonaparte
+at Fontainebleau, his wife and his son at Rambouillet, the divorced
+empress at Novara, the Emperors of Russia and Austria, and the King
+of Prussia, at Paris; moreover, a whole train of little German
+potentates and princes, and the Napoleonic kings and princes, who
+were all sojourning in Paris or its vicinity.</p>
+<p>The Queen of Holland considered it her duty, in these days of
+misfortune and danger, to stand at the side of her whom Napoleon
+had commanded them to consider the head of the family, and to serve
+faithfully in life and death. Hortense therefore determined to go
+to the Empress Marie Louise at Rambouillet, in accordance with the
+emperor's commands.</p>
+<p>This determination filled the hearts of the queen's friends with
+sorrow; and Louise had no sooner received the letter in which the
+queen announced her impending departure, than she hastened to
+reply, imploring her to abandon this intention. M. de Marmold, the
+queen's equerry, departed with all speed to bring this letter to
+the queen at Louis, where she was to pass the night, and to add his
+entreaties to those of Louise.</p>
+<p>"M. de Marmold, the bearer of this letter, will deliver it to
+you at Louis, if he arrives there in good time," wrote Louise de
+Cochelet. "If you go to Rambouillet, you will destroy your own
+position, and also that of your children; this is the conviction of
+all your friends. I was so happy, for Prince Leopold had written
+you, in the name of the Emperor Alexander, and begged you to come
+to Malmaison. You could not have avoided seeing him, as he would
+even have gone to Novara. Instead, however, of returning with the
+Empress Josephine, you are on the point of uniting yourself with a
+family that has never loved you. With them you will experience
+nothing but distress, and they will not be thankful for the
+sacrifice you are about to make. You will regret this step when it
+is too late. I conjure you, do not go to Rambouillet!</p>
+<p>"Your course will touch those to whom you are going but little,
+and will displease the allies, who take so much interest in
+you.</p>
+<p>"The empress is a thorough Austrian at heart, and the visits of
+members of her husband's family are regarded with disfavor. I tell
+you this at the request of Prince Leopold and Madame de
+Caulaincourt. The latter, if you do not come here soon, will go to
+you, in spite of her great age. She conjures you not to go to
+Rambouillet, as your lady of honor, and the friend of your mother;
+she even forbids your doing so.</p>
+<p>"When I informed Prince Leopold of your intention to go to the
+Empress Marie Louise at Rambouillet, his eyes filled with tears.
+'It is beautiful to be proud,' said he, 'but she can no longer
+retreat; she is already under obligations to the Emperor of Russia,
+who effected the treaty of the 11th of April. I await her reply, to
+deliver it to the emperor: she owes him a reply.'</p>
+<p>"I passed an hour with our good friend Lavalette this morning.
+This excellent man knew nothing of the measures we have been taking
+to persuade you to return, and said to me: 'How fortunate it would
+be for her and her children, if the emperor should desire to see
+her!' Do come, do come; show your friends this favor; we shall all
+be in despair if you go to Rambouillet!</p>
+<p>"Prince Leopold will write you a few lines. He could not be more
+devoted to yourself and the Empress Josephine if you were his
+mother and his sister. Count Tschernitscheff has been to see me.
+The Emperor of Austria arrives here to-morrow, and the new French
+princes and the king will soon follow. What a change!</p>
+<p>"You must see the Emperor of Russia, because he so much desires
+it. I conjure you, on my knees, to do me this favor! The emperor
+conducts himself so handsomely that every one is constrained to
+respect him; one forgets that he is the conqueror, and can only
+remember him as the protector. He seems to be the refuge of all
+those who have lost all, and are in distress. His conduct is
+admirable; he receives none but business calls, and such others as
+are absolutely necessary. The fair ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain cannot boast of his attention to them, and this does him
+all the more credit, he being, as it is said, very susceptible to
+the fair sex. He told Prince Leopold that he intended going to
+Novara, adding: 'You know that I love and esteem this family;
+Prince Eugene is the prince of knights; I esteem the Empress
+Josephine, Queen Hortense, and Prince Eugene, all the more from the
+fact that her demeanor toward the Emperor Napoleon has been so much
+more noble than that of so many others, who should have shown him
+more devotion.' How could it be possible not to respect a man of
+such nobility of character? I trust you will soon have an
+opportunity of judging of this yourself. For God's sake,
+return!</p>
+<p>LOUISE."</p>
+<br>
+<p>But these entreaties were all in vain. M. de Marmold arrived at
+Louis in time to see the queen; he delivered the letters of her
+friends, and did all that lay in his power to persuade her not to
+go to Rambouillet.</p>
+<p>But Hortense held firmly to her intention. "You are right," said
+she. "All this is true; but I shall, nevertheless, go to the
+Empress Marie Louise, for it is my duty to do so. If unpleasant
+consequences should result from this step for me, I shall pay no
+attention to them, but merely continue to do my duty. Of all of us,
+the Empress Marie Louise must be the most unhappy, and must stand
+most in need of consolation; it is, therefore, at her side that I
+can be of most use, and nothing can alter my determination."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV.2"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+<h3>QUEEN HORTENSE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Queen Hortense had gone to Rambouillet, in spite of the
+entreaties and exhortations of her friends. The Empress Marie
+Louise had, however, received her with an air of embarrassment. She
+had told the queen that she was expecting her father, the Emperor
+of Austria, and that she feared the queen's presence might make him
+feel ill at ease. Moreover, the young empress, although dejected
+and grave, was by no means so sorrowful and miserable as Hortense
+expected. The fate of her husband had not wounded the heart of
+Marie Louise as deeply as that of the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>Hortense felt that she was not needed there; that the presence
+of the Emperor of Austria would suffice to console the Empress of
+France for her husband's overthrow. She thought of Josephine, who
+was so deeply saddened by Napoleon's fate; and finding that,
+instead of consoling, she only embarrassed the Empress Marie
+Louise, she hastened to relieve her of her presence.</p>
+<p>And now, at last, Hortense bowed her proud, pure heart beneath
+the yoke of necessity; now, at last, she listened to the prayers
+and representations of her mother, who had returned to Malmaison,
+and of her friends, and went to Paris. It had been too often urged
+upon her that she owed it to her sons to secure their fortune and
+future, not to overcome her personal repugnance, and conform
+herself to this new command of duty.</p>
+<p>She had, therefore, returned to Paris for a few days, and taken
+up her abode in her dwelling, whose present dreariness recalled,
+with sorrowful eloquence, the grandeur of the past.</p>
+<p>These drawing-rooms, once the rendezvous of so many kings and
+princes, were now desolate, and bore on their soiled floors the
+footprints of the hostile soldiers who had recently been quartered
+there. At the czar's solicitation, they had now been removed; but
+the queen's household servants had also left it. Faithless and
+ungrateful, they had turned their backs on the setting sun, and
+fled from the storm that had burst over the head of their
+mistress.</p>
+<p>The Emperor Alexander hastened to the queen's dwelling as soon
+as her arrival in Paris was announced, the queen advancing to meet
+him as far as the outermost antechamber.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, with a soft smile, "I have no means of
+receiving you with due ceremony; my antechambers are deserted."</p>
+<p>The appearance of this solitary woman, this queen without a
+crown, without fortune, and without protection and support, who
+nevertheless stood before him in all the charms of beauty and
+womanhood, a soft smile on her lips, made a deep impression on the
+emperor, and his eyes filled with tears.</p>
+<p>The queen observed this, and hastened to say, "But what of that?
+I do not think that antechambers filled with gold-embroidered
+liveries would make those who come to see me happier, and I esteem
+myself happy in being able to do you the honors of my house alone.
+I have, therefore, only won."</p>
+<p>The emperor took her hand, and, while conducting the queen to
+her room, conversed with her, with that soft, sad expression
+peculiar to him, lamenting with bitter self-reproaches almost that
+he was himself, in part, to blame for the misfortunes that had
+overtaken the emperor and his family. He then conjured her to
+abandon her intention of leaving France, and to preserve herself
+for her mother and friends. He told her that, in abandoning her
+country, her friends, and her rights, she would be guilty of a
+crime against her own children, against her two sons, who were
+entitled to demand a country and a fortune at her hands.</p>
+<p>The queen, overcome at last by these earnest and eloquent
+representations, declared her readiness to remain in France, if the
+welfare of her sons should require it.</p>
+<p>"Until now," said she, "I had formed all my resolutions with
+reference to misfortune. I was entirely resigned, and I never
+thought of the possibility of any thing fortunate happening for me;
+and even yet, I do not know what I can desire and demand. I am,
+however, determined to accept nothing for myself and children that
+would be unworthy of us, and I do not know what that could be."</p>
+<p>With an assuring smile, the emperor extended his hand to the
+queen. "Leave that to me," said he. "It is, then, understood, you
+are to remain in France?"</p>
+<p>"Sire, you have convinced me that the future of my sons requires
+it. I shall therefore remain."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI.2"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+<h3>THE NEW UNCLES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Malmaison, to which place Hortense had returned after a short
+stay in Paris, and where the Empress Josephine was also sojourning,
+was a kind of focus for social amusement and relaxation for the
+sovereigns assembled in Paris. Each of these kings and princes
+wished to pay his homage to the Empress Josephine and her daughter,
+and thereby, in a measure, show the last honors to the dethroned
+emperor.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, when the King of Prussia, with his two sons,
+Prince Frederick William (the late king) and William, had come to
+Malmaison, and announced their desire to call on the empress, she
+sent them an invitation to a family dinner, at which she also
+invited the Emperor of Russia and his two brothers to attend.</p>
+<p>The emperor accepted this invitation, and on entering, with the
+young archdukes, the parlor in which the Duchess de St. Leu was
+sitting, he took his two brothers by the hand and conducted them to
+Hortense.</p>
+<p>"Madame," said he, "I confide my brothers to your keeping. They
+are now making their <i>d&eacute;but</i> in society. My mother
+fears their heads may be turned by the beauties of France; and in
+bringing them to Malmaison, where so many charming persons are
+assembled, I am certainly fulfilling my promise to preserve them
+from such a fate but poorly."</p>
+<p>"Reassure yourself, sire," replied the queen, gravely; "I will
+be their mentor, and I promise you a motherly surveillance."</p>
+<p>The emperor laughed, and, pointing to Hortense's two sons, who
+had just been brought in, he said: "Ah, madame, it would be much
+less dangerous for my brothers if they were of the age of these
+boys."</p>
+<p>He approached the two boys with extended hands, and while
+conversing with them in a kindly and affectionate manner, addressed
+them with the titles "monseigneur" and "imperial highness."</p>
+<p>The children regarded him wonderingly, for the Russian emperor
+was the first to address the little Napoleon and his younger
+brother, Louis Napoleon, with these imposing titles. The queen had
+never allowed them to be called by any but their own names. She
+wished to preserve them from vain pride, and teach them to depend
+on their own intrinsic merit.</p>
+<p>Shortly afterward the King of Prussia and his sons were
+announced, and the emperor and his brothers left the young princes,
+and advanced to meet the king.</p>
+<p>While the emperor and the king were exchanging salutations,
+Hortense's two sons inquired of their governess the names of the
+gentlemen who had just entered.</p>
+<p>"It is the King of Prussia," whispered the governess; "and the
+gentleman who has just spoken with you is the Emperor of
+Russia."</p>
+<p>The little Louis Napoleon regarded the tall figures of those
+princes thoughtfully for a moment, by no means impressed by their
+imposing titles. He was so accustomed to see his mother surrounded
+by kings, and these kings had always been his uncles.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," said the little Louis Napoleon, after a short
+pause, "are these two new gentlemen, the emperor and the king, also
+our uncles, like all the others and must we call them so?"</p>
+<p>"No, Louis, you must simply call them 'sire.'"</p>
+<p>"But," said the boy, after a moment's reflection, "why is it
+that they are not our uncles?"</p>
+<p>The governess withdrew with the two children to the back of the
+parlor, and explained to them, in a low voice, that the emperors
+and kings then in Paris, far from being their uncles, were their
+vanquishers.</p>
+<p>"Then," exclaimed the elder boy, Napoleon Louis, his face
+flushing with anger, "then they are the enemies of my uncle, the
+emperor! Why did this Emperor of Russia embrace us?"</p>
+<p>"Because he is a noble and generous enemy, who is endeavoring to
+serve you and your mother in your present misfortune. Without him
+you would possess nothing more in the world, and the fate of your
+uncle, the emperor, would be much sadder than it already is."</p>
+<p>"Then we ought to love this emperor very dearly?" said the
+little Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Certainly; for you owe him many thanks."</p>
+<p>The young prince regarded the emperor, who was conversing with
+the empress Josephine, long and thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>When the emperor returned to Malmaison on the following day, and
+while he was sitting at his mother's side in the garden-house,
+little Louis Napoleon, walking on tiptoe, noiselessly approached
+the emperor from behind, laid a small glittering object in his
+hand, and ran away.</p>
+<p>The queen called him back, and demanded with earnest severity to
+know what he had done.</p>
+<p>The little prince returned reluctantly, hanging his head with
+embarrassment, and said, blushing deeply: "Ah, <i>maman,</i> it is
+the ring Uncle Eugene gave me. I wished to give it to the emperor,
+because he is so good to my <i>maman</i>!"</p>
+<p>Deeply touched, the emperor took the boy in his arms, seated him
+on his knees, and kissed him tenderly.</p>
+<p>Then, in order to give the little prince an immediate reward, he
+attached the ring to his watch-chain, and swore that he would wear
+the token as long as he lived<a name="FNanchor28"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_28">[28]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor28">[28]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII.2"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+<h3>DEATH OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Since Napoleon's star had grown pale, and himself compelled to
+leave France as an exile, life seemed to Josephine also to be
+enveloped in a gloomy mourning-veil; she felt that her sun had set,
+and night come upon her. But she kept this feeling a profound
+secret, and never allowed a complaint or sigh to betray her grief
+to her tenderly-beloved daughter. Her complaints were for the
+emperor, her sighs for the fate of her children and grandchildren.
+She seemed to have forgotten herself; her wishes were all for
+others. With the pleasing address and grace of which age could not
+deprive her, she did the honors of her house to the foreign
+sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a forced composure, in which
+her soul had no share. She would have preferred to withdraw with
+her grief to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought it her
+duty to make this sacrifice for the welfare of her daughter and
+grandchildren; and she, the loving mother, could do what Hortense's
+pride would not permit--she could entreat the Emperor Alexander to
+take pity on her daughter's fate.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in establishing
+her future, and had received the letters-patent which secured to
+the queen the duchy of St. Leu Alexander hastened to Malmaison, to
+communicate this good news to the Empress Josephine.</p>
+<p>She did not reward him with words, but with gushing tears, as
+she extended to the emperor both hands. She then begged him, with
+touching earnestness, to accept from her a remembrance of this
+hour.</p>
+<p>The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait of Josephine
+was painted, and begged her to give him that.</p>
+<p>"<i>No</i>, sire," said she; "such a cup can be bought anywhere.
+But I wish to give you something that cannot be had anywhere else
+in the world, and that will sometimes remind you of me. It is a
+present that I received from Pope Pius VII., on the day of my
+coronation. I present you with this token in commemoration of the
+day on which you bring my daughter the ducal crown, in order that
+it may remind you of mother and daughter alike--of the dethroned
+empress and of the dethroned queen."</p>
+<p>This present, which she now extended to the emperor with a
+charming smile, was an antique cameo, of immense size, and so
+wondrously-well executed that the empress could well say its equal
+was nowhere to be found in the world. On this cameo the heads of
+Alexander the Great and of his father, Philip of Macedonia, were
+portrayed, side by side; and the beauty of the workmanship, as well
+as the size of the stone, made this cameo a gem of inestimable
+value. And for this reason the emperor at first refused to accept
+this truly imperial present, and he yielded only when he perceived
+that his refusal would offend the empress, who seemed to be more
+pale and irritable than usual.</p>
+<p>Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for the royal
+family of the Bourbons had on this day caused her heart to bleed
+anew. Josephine had read an article in the journals, in which, in
+the most contemptuous and cruel terms, attention was called to the
+fact that the eldest son of the Queen of Holland had been interred
+in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and that the Minister Blacas had
+now issued an order to have the coffin removed from its
+resting-place, and buried in an ordinary grave-yard.</p>
+<p>Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in
+order that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of
+her beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the
+Church of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine's
+whole figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her
+countenance. Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her
+sufferings to-day, for the first time; Hortense was not present,
+and she might therefore, for once, allow herself the sad
+consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and its paint, the pale
+countenance, which death had already lightly touched.</p>
+<p>"Your majesty is ill!" exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.</p>
+<p>With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander's eyes, Josephine
+pointed to her breast, and whispered: "Sire, I have received the
+death-wound here!"</p>
+<p>Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her
+heart was bleeding to death.</p>
+<p>Terrified by Josephine's condition, the emperor hurried to
+Paris, and sent his own physician to inquire after her condition.
+When the latter returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine
+was dangerously ill, and that he did not believe her recovery
+possible.</p>
+<p>He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense
+and Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's
+bedside throughout the night. The best physicians were called in,
+but these only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the
+condition of the empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With
+strong hands, she had held it together as long as her children's
+welfare seemed to require. Now that Hortense's future was also
+assured--now that she knew that her grandchildren would, at least,
+not be compelled to wander about the world as exiled beggars--now
+Josephine withdrew her hands from her heart, and suffered it to
+bleed to death.</p>
+<p>On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an
+illness which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not
+heard her mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with
+Eugene, after her mother had received the sacrament from
+Abb&eacute; Bertrand--when she saw her mother, with outstretched
+arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to them--Hortense fainted away at
+her mother's bedside, and the empress breathed her last sigh in
+Eugene's arms.</p>
+<p>The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris
+profoundly. It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a
+day that Napoleon was no longer the ruler of France, and that the
+Bourbons had reascended the throne of their fathers. All Paris
+mourned; for the hearts of the French people had not forgotten this
+woman, who had so long been their benefactress, and of whom each
+could relate the most touching traits of goodness, of generosity,
+and of gentleness.</p>
+<p>Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as
+empress in the hearts of the French people and thousands poured
+into Malmaison, to pay their last homage to their deceased empress.
+Even the Faubourg St. Germain mourned with the Parisians; these
+haughty and insolent royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons,
+may, perhaps, for a moment, have recalled the benefits which the
+empress had shown them, when, as the mighty Empress of France, she
+employed the half of her allowance for the relief of the emigrants.
+They had returned without thinking of the thanks they owed their
+forgotten benefactress; now that she was dead, they no longer
+withheld the tribute of their admiration.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how
+interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness!
+How well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and
+good taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"</p>
+<p>Immediately after the death of the empress, Eugene had conducted
+the queen from the death-chamber, almost violently, and had taken
+her and her children to St. Leu. The body of the empress was
+interred in Malmaison, and followed to the grave by her two
+grandchildren only. Grief had made both of her children severely
+ill, and the little princes were followed, not by her relatives,
+but by the Russian General Von Sacken, who represented the emperor,
+and by the equipages of all those kings and princes who had helped
+to hurl the Bonapartes from their thrones and restore the
+Bourbons.</p>
+<p>The emperor passed his last night in France, before leaving for
+England, at St. Leu; and, on taking leave of Eugene and Hortense,
+who, at the earnest solicitation of her brother, had left her room
+for the first time since her mother's death, for the purpose of
+seeing the emperor, he assured them of his unchangeable friendship
+and attachment. As he knew that, among those whom he strongly
+suspected, Pozzo di Borgo<a name="FNanchor29"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_29">[29]</a>, the ambassador he left behind him in
+Paris, was an irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon and his family, he
+had assigned to duty at the embassy as <i>attach&eacute;</i>, a
+gentleman selected for this purpose by Louise de Cochelet--M. de
+Boutiakin--and it was through him that the emperor directed that
+the letters and wishes of the queen and of her faithful young lady
+friend should be received and answered.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor29">[29]</a> Upon receiving the intelligence of the death
+of the emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill
+him, but I threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order
+that he might never rise again."</blockquote>
+<p>A few days later Eugene also left St. Leu and his sister
+Hortense, to return, with the King of Bavaria, to his new home in
+Germany. It was not until his departure that Hortense felt to its
+full extent the gloomy loneliness and dreary solitude by which she
+was surrounded. She had not wept over the downfall of all the
+grandeur and magnificence by which she had formerly been
+surrounded; she had not complained when the whirlwind of fate
+hurled to the ground the crowns of all her relations, but had bowed
+her head to the storm with resignation, and smiled at the loss of
+her royal titles; but now, as she stood in her parlor at St. Leu
+and saw none about her but her two little boys and the few ladies
+who still remained faithful--now, Hortense wept.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" she cried, bursting into tears, as she extended her hand
+to Louise de Cochelet, "alas! my courage is at an end! My mother is
+dead, my brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon
+forget his promised protection, and I alone must contend, with my
+two children, against all the annoyances and enmities to which the
+name I bear will subject me! I fear I shall live to regret that I
+allowed myself to be persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will the
+love I bear my country recompense me for the torments which are in
+store for me?"</p>
+<p>The queen's dark forebodings were to be only too fully realized.
+In the great and solemn hour of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal
+vision the veil that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan
+prophetess, we see the impending evil, powerless to avert it.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_III."></a>BOOK III.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE RESTORATION.</i></h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.3"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the 12th of April, Count d'Artois, whom Louis XVIII. had sent
+in advance, and invested with the dignity of a lieutenant-general
+of France, made his triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the
+city, he was received by the newly-formed provisional government,
+Talleyrand at its head; and here it was that Count d'Artois replied
+to the address of that gentleman in the following words: "Nothing
+is changed in France, except that from to-day there will be one
+Frenchman more in the land." The people received him with cold
+curiosity, and the allied troops formed a double line for his
+passage to the Tuileries, at which the ladies of the Faubourg St.
+Germain, adorned with white lilies and white cockades, received him
+with glowing enthusiasm. Countess Ducayla, afterward the well-known
+friend of Louis XVIII., had been one of the most active instruments
+of the restoration, and she it was who had first unfolded again in
+France the banner of the Bourbons--the white flag. A few days
+before the entrance of the prince, she had gone, with a number of
+her royalist friends, into the streets, in order to excite the
+people to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty. But the
+people and the army had still preserved their old love for the
+emperor, and the proclamation of Prince Schwartzenberg, read by
+Bauvineux in the streets, was listened to in silence. True, the
+royalists cried, <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> at the end of this reading,
+but the people remained indifferent and mute.</p>
+<p>This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed to
+indicate a secret discontent with the new order of things. She felt
+that this sullen people must be inflamed, and made to speak with
+energy and distinctness. To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and
+proclamations had been attempted in vain; now the countess
+determined to attempt to arouse them by another means--to astonish
+them by the display of a striking symbol--to show them the white
+flag of the Bourbons!</p>
+<p>She gave her companion, Count de Montmorency, her handkerchief,
+that he might wave it aloft, fastening it to the end of his cane,
+in order that it should be more conspicuous. This handkerchief of
+Countess Ducayla, fastened to the cane of a Montmorency, was the
+first royalist banner that fluttered over Paris, after a banishment
+of twenty years. The Parisians looked at this banner with a kind of
+reverence and shuddering wonder; they did not greet it with
+applause; they still remained silent, but they nevertheless
+followed the procession of royalists, who marched to the
+boulevards, shouting, <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> They took no part in
+their joyful demonstration, but neither did they attempt to prevent
+it.</p>
+<p>This demonstration of the royalists, and particularly of the
+royalist ladies, transcended the bounds of propriety, and of their
+own dignity. In their fanaticism for the legitimate dynasty, they
+gave the allies a reception, which almost assumed the character of
+a declaration of love, on the part of the fair ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, for all the soldiers and officers of the
+allied army. In a strange confusion of ideas, these warriors, who
+had certainly entered France as enemies, seemed to these fair ones
+to be a part of the beloved Bourbons; and they loved them with
+almost the same love they lavished upon the royal family itself.
+During several days they were, in their hearts, the daughters of
+all countries except their own!</p>
+<p>Louis XVIII. was himself much displeased with this enthusiasm of
+the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and openly avowed to
+Countess Ducayla his dissatisfaction with the ridiculous and
+contemptible behavior of these ladies at that time. He was even of
+the opinion that it was calculated to injure his cause, as the
+nation had then not yet pronounced in his favor.</p>
+<p>"They should," said he, "have received the allies with a
+dignified reserve, without frivolous demonstrations, and without
+this inconsiderate devotion. Such a demeanor would have inspired
+them with respect for the nation, whereas they now leave Paris with
+the conviction that we are still--as we were fifty years ago--the
+most giddy and frivolous people of Europe. You particularly,
+ladies--you have compromised yourselves in an incomprehensible
+manner. The allies seemed to you so lovable <i>en masse,</i> that
+you gave yourselves the appearance of also loving them <i>en
+d&eacute;tail</i>; and this has occasioned reports concerning you
+which do little honor to French ladies!"</p>
+<p>"But, <i>mon Dieu!</i>" replied Countess Ducayla to her royal
+friend, "we wished to show them a well-earned gratitude for the
+benefit they conferred in restoring to us your majesty; we wished
+to offer them freely what we, tired of resistance, were at last
+compelled to accord to the tyrants of the republic and the
+sabre-heroes of the empire! None of us can regret what we have done
+for our good friends the allies!"</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, that which the ladies "had done for their good
+friends the allies" was the occasion of many annoying family
+scenes, and the husbands who did not fully participate in the
+enthusiasm of their wives were of the opinion that they had good
+cause to complain of their inordinate zeal.</p>
+<p>Count G----, among others, had married a young and beautiful
+lady a few days before the restoration. She, in her youthful
+innocence, was entirely indifferent to political matters; but her
+step-father, her step-mother, and her husband, Count G----, were
+royalists of the first water.</p>
+<p>On the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris,
+step-father, step-mother, and husband, in common with all good
+legitimists, hurried forward to welcome "their good friends," and
+each of them returned to their dwelling with a stranger--the
+husband with an Englishman, the step-mother with a Prussian, and
+the step-father with an Austrian. The three endeavored to outdo
+each other in the attentions which they showered upon the guests
+they had the good fortune to possess. The little countess alone
+remained indifferent, in the midst of the joy of her family. They
+reproached her with having too little attachment for the good
+cause, and exhorted her to do everything in her power to entertain
+the gallant men who had restored to France her king.</p>
+<p>The husband requested the Englishman to instruct the young
+countess in riding; the marquise begged the Prussian to escort her
+daughter to the ball, and teach her the German waltz; and, finally,
+the marquis, who had discovered a fine taste for paintings in the
+Austrian, appealed to this gentleman to conduct the young wife
+through the picture-galleries.</p>
+<p>In short, every opportunity was given the young countess to
+commit a folly, or rather three follies, for she did not like to
+give the preference to any one of the three strangers. She was
+young, and inexperienced in matters of this kind. Her triple
+intrigue was, therefore, soon discovered, and betrayed to her
+family; and now husband, step-father, and step-mother, were
+exasperated. This exceeded even the demands of their royalism; and
+they showered reproaches on the head of the young wife.</p>
+<p>"It is not my fault!" cried she, sobbing. "I only did what you
+commanded. You ordered me to do everything in my power to entertain
+these gentlemen, and I could therefore refuse them nothing."</p>
+<p>But there were also cases in which the advances of the
+enthusiastic ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were repelled. Even
+the high-born and haughty Marquise M---- was to experience this
+mortification. She stepped before the sullen, sombre veterans of
+the Old Guard of the empire, who had just allowed Count d'Artois to
+pass before their ranks in dead silence. She ardently appealed to
+their love for the dynasty of their fathers, and, in her enthusiasm
+for royalism, went so far as to offer herself as a reward to him
+who should first cry <i>"Vive le roi!"</i> But the faithful
+soldiers of the emperor stood unmoved by this generous offer, and
+the silence remained unbroken by the lowest cry!</p>
+<p>The princes who stood at the head of the allied armies were, of
+course, the objects of the most ardent enthusiasm of the royalist
+ladies; but it was, above all, with them that they found the least
+encouragement. The Emperor of Austria was too much occupied with
+the future of his daughter and grandson, and the King of Prussia
+was too grave and severe, to find any pleasure in the coquetries of
+women. The young Emperor Alexander of Russia, therefore, became the
+chief object of their enthusiasm and love. But their enthusiasm
+also met with a poor recompense in this quarter. Almost
+distrustfully, the czar held himself aloof from the ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain; and yet it was they who had decided the fate
+of France with him, and induced him to give his vote for the
+Bourbons; for until then it had remained undetermined whom the
+allies should call to the throne of France.</p>
+<p>In his inmost heart, the Emperor of Russia desired to see the
+universally-beloved Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, elevated
+to the vacant throne. The letter with which Eugene replied to the
+proposition of the allies, tendering him the ducal crown of Genoa,
+had won for Josephine's son the love and esteem of the czar for all
+time. Alexander had himself written to Eugene, and proffered him,
+in the name of the allies, a duchy of Genoa, if he would desert
+Napoleon, and take sides with the allies. Eugene Beauharnais had
+replied to him in the following letter:</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"SIRE,--I have received your majesty's propositions. They are
+undoubtedly very favorable, but they are powerless to change my
+resolution. I must have known how to express my thoughts but poorly
+when I had the honor of seeing you, if your majesty can believe
+that I could sully my honor for any, even the highest, reward.
+Neither the prospect of possessing the crown of the duchy of Genoa,
+nor that of the kingdom of Italy, can induce me to become a
+traitor. The example of the King of Naples cannot mislead me; I
+will rather be a plain soldier than a traitorous prince.</p>
+<p>"The emperor, you say, has done me injustice; I have forgotten
+it; I only remember his benefits. I owe all to him--my rank, my
+titles, and my fortune, and I owe to him that which I prefer to all
+else--that which your indulgence calls my renown. I shall,
+therefore, serve him as long as I live; my person is his, as is my
+heart. May my sword break in my hands, if it could ever turn
+against the emperor, or against France! I trust that my
+well-grounded refusal will at least secure to me the respect of
+your imperial majesty. I am, etc."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The Emperor of Austria, on the other hand, ardently desired to
+secure the throne of France to his grandson, the King of Rome,
+under the regency of the Empress Marie Louise; but he did not
+venture to make this demand openly and without reservation of his
+allies, whose action he had promised to approve and ratify. The
+appeals of the Duke of Cadore, who had been sent to her father by
+Marie Louise from Blois, urging the emperor to look after her
+interests, and to demand of the allies that they should assure the
+crown to herself and son, were, therefore, fruitless.</p>
+<p>The emperor assured his daughter's ambassador that he had reason
+to hope for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist
+on any action in her behalf.</p>
+<p>"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my
+son-in-law, and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."</p>
+<p>"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice
+is required at your hands."</p>
+<p>"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor,
+"to sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised
+the allies to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to
+consent to all they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count
+Metternich, is at this moment with them, and I shall ratify
+everything which he has signed<a name="FNanchor30"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_30">[30]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor30">[30]</a> Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.</blockquote>
+<p>But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should
+sign for him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome
+was to be the King of France.</p>
+<p>But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this
+hope.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in
+Talleyrand's house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd
+French diplomat, who well knew how much easier it would be to bend
+the will of the Agamemnon of the holy alliance<a name=
+"FNanchor31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a> to his wishes,
+when he should have him in hand, as it were, day and night. In
+offering the emperor his hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention
+to make him his prisoner, body and soul, and to use him to his own
+advantage.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor31">[31]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;.</blockquote>
+<p>It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to
+concert measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had
+transformed himself into the zealous legitimist of to-day.</p>
+<p>Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the
+Russian emperor, and he succeeded.</p>
+<p>While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet,
+Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de
+Lemall&eacute;--endeavor to make a great stroke. The emperor is
+gallant, and what he denies to diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to
+the ladies."</p>
+<p>He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's
+cabinet alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees,
+and stretched out her arms.</p>
+<p>With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened
+forward to assist her to rise.</p>
+<p>"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A noble lady
+never has occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."</p>
+<p>"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it
+is my purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you
+alone can restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess
+Louis XVIII. once more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to
+us!"</p>
+<p>"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the
+Bourbon family?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole
+love!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies
+filled with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"</p>
+<p>"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis
+XVIII., and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back.
+Let the legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be
+done<a name="FNanchor32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor32">[32]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 179.</blockquote>
+<p>And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the
+legislative bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to
+communicate the hopes with which the emperor had inspired her to
+all Paris; on the evening after her interview with the emperor, she
+gave a grand <i>soir&eacute;e</i>, to which she invited the most
+beautiful ladies of her party, and a number of senators.</p>
+<p>"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap
+the gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not
+know that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen
+vows?"</p>
+<p>On the following day the senate assembled, and elected a
+provisional government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of
+Dalberg, the Marquis of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the
+Abb&eacute; Montesquieu. The senate and the new provisional
+government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed from the throne, and
+recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus publicly and
+solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name of the
+French people, it at the same time testified to its own
+unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with
+its recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the
+salary which they had hitherto received, should be continued to
+them for life." While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took
+care to pay themselves for their trouble, and to secure their own
+future.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.3"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate
+and provisional government as the declaration of the people, and
+recalled to the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count
+de Lille, had so long languished in exile at Hartwell.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to
+the decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of
+Rome, to be robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to
+fall from his daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as
+much astonished at this result as Marie Louise, for, until their
+entrance into Paris, the allies had flattered the Austrian emperor
+with the hope that the crown of France would be secured to his
+daughter and grandson. The emperor's astonishment at this turn of
+affairs was made the subject of a caricature, which, on the day of
+the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was affixed to the same walls on which
+Chateaubriand's enthusiastic <i>brochure</i> concerning the
+Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of which thousands of
+copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the Emperor of Austria
+was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage; the Emperor
+Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England as
+postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up
+behind as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the
+carriage, holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of
+Austria, "Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And <i>taken me
+in</i>," was the reply of Francis I.</p>
+<p>The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was
+great, now that their king was at last restored to them, and they
+eagerly embraced every means of showing their gratitude to the
+Emperor of Russia. But Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to
+their homage; he even went so far as to avoid attending the
+entertainments given by the new king at the Tuileries, and society
+was shocked at seeing the emperor openly displaying his sympathy
+for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and repairing to Malmaison,
+instead of appearing at the Tuileries.</p>
+<p>Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet
+to inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the
+Faubourg St. Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's
+maid-of-honor, as he was in the habit of doing from time to time,
+for the purpose of discussing the queen's interests with her.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards
+your majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It
+has even caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said
+he to me, recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high
+circles of society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay
+about it; it is feared that he is there subjected to influences to
+which policy requires he should not be exposed.'"</p>
+<p>"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor,
+laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the
+Faubourg St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that
+they have not made a conquest of me! I prefer the noble qualities
+of the soul to all outward appearances; and I find united in the
+Empress Josephine, in the Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene,
+all that is admirable and lovable. I am better pleased to be here
+with you in quiet, confidential intercourse, than with those who
+really demean themselves as though they were crazed, and who,
+instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared for them, are only
+intent on destroying their enemies, and have commenced with those
+who formerly accorded them such generous protection; they really
+weary one with their extravagances.</p>
+<p>"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of
+the conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew
+how far their amiability could extend; but their heart is
+undoubtedly no longer their own. I am therefore on my guard against
+being deceived by it, and I fancy these ladies love to please so
+well, that they are even angry with those who respond to the
+attentions which are so lavishly showered on them, with
+conventional politeness only."</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against
+the emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by
+the manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it
+was but natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm
+for a young emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light,
+and that they must necessarily, even without being coquettish,
+ardently desire to be noticed by him.</p>
+<p>"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these
+ladies only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart
+palpitate? I seek mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those
+who display a desire to exercise a control over my heart; in this I
+see nothing but self-love, and I hold myself aloof from such
+contact."</p>
+<p>While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain
+were lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the
+returned king of the boundless delight of his people, this people
+was already beginning to grumble. The allies had now completed
+their task, they had restored to France its legitimate king, and
+they now put the finishing-touch to their work by providing in the
+treaty, that France should be narrowed down to the boundaries it
+had had before the revolution.</p>
+<p>France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers.
+From the weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which
+they had been compelled to accord to the strength of the
+empire.</p>
+<p>All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much
+French blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be
+given up, and the great, extended France was to shrink back into
+the France it had been thirty years before! It was this that made
+the people murmur. The Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they
+had grown weary of endless wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the
+conquests they had made under their emperor. The surrender of these
+conquests wounded the national pride, and they were angry with
+their king for being so ready to put this shame upon France--for
+holding the crown of France in higher estimation than the honor of
+France!</p>
+<p>It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most
+bitterly felt the disgrace that attached to him in this
+re-establishment of France within its ancient boundaries, and he
+had endeavored to protest in every way against this demand of the
+allies. But his representative had been made to understand that if
+Louis XVIII. could not content himself with the France the allies
+were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to relinquish it to
+Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to yield to
+necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while his
+courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
+he was heard to whisper, "<i>Nos chers amis les ennemis</i><a name=
+"FNanchor33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor33">[33]</a> "Our dear friends the enemies!"</blockquote>
+<p>Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great
+reluctance, and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII.
+consented to the demands made by the allies in behalf of the family
+of Napoleon. But the Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended
+the rights of the Queen of Holland and her children against the
+ill-will of the Bourbons, the dislike of the royalists, and the
+disinclination of the allies, alike. The family of the emperor owed
+it to him and to his firmness alone that the article of the treaty
+of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII. agreed "that the titles
+and dignities of all the members of the family of the Emperor
+Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not be deprived
+of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.</p>
+<p>It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last
+succeeded in obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate
+and a title, that secured her position. King Louis finally yielded
+to his urgent solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the title
+of Duchess of St. Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.</p>
+<p>But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under
+the pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given
+him his throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have
+forgotten as willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of
+the empire.</p>
+<p>For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep,
+and were not a little surprised to find that the world had
+progressed in the meanwhile.</p>
+<p>According to their ideas, every thing must have remained
+standing at the point where they had left it twenty years before;
+and they were at least determined to ignore all that had happened
+in the interval. King Louis therefore signed his first act as in
+"the nineteenth" year of his reign, and endeavored in all things to
+keep up a semblance of the continuation of his reign since the year
+1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which King Louis appointed
+Hortense Duchess of St. Leu were drawn up in a manner offensive to
+the queen, for they contained the following: "The king appoints
+Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais Duchess of St. Leu."</p>
+<p>The queen refused to accept this title, under the circumstances,
+and rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had
+angrily demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier,
+consented to draw up the letters-patent in a different style. They
+read: "The king appoints Hortense Eug&eacute;nie, included in the
+treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess of St. Leu." This was, to be
+sure, merely a negative and disguised recognition of the former
+rank of the queen; but it was, at least no longer a degradation to
+accept it.</p>
+<p>The Viceroy of Italy, the noble Eugene--who was universally
+beloved, and who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the
+czar, to secure his future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much
+annoyance and perplexity.</p>
+<p>The king could not refuse to recognize the brave hero of the
+empire and the son-in-law of the King of Bavaria, who was one of
+the allies; and, as Eugene desired an audience of the king, it was
+accorded him at once.</p>
+<p>But how was he to be received? With what title was Napoleon's
+step-son, the Viceroy of Italy, to be addressed? It would have been
+altogether too ridiculous to repeat the absurdity contained in
+Hortense's letters-patent, and call Eugene "Viscount de
+Beauharnais;" but to accord him the royal title would have
+compromised the dignity of the legitimate dynasty. A brilliant
+solution of this difficult question suggested itself to King Louis.
+When the Duke d'Aumont conducted Prince Eugene to the royal
+presence, the king advanced, with a cordial smile, and saluted him
+with the words, "M. Marshal of France, I am happy to see you."</p>
+<p>Eugene, who was on the point of making his salutation, remained
+silent, and looked over his shoulder to see whom the king was
+speaking with. Louis XVIII. smiled, and continued: "You, my dear
+sir, are a marshal of France. I appoint you to this dignity."</p>
+<p>"Sire," said Eugene, bowing profoundly, "I am much obliged to
+your majesty for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the
+rank to which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the
+high title with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I
+must decline it<a name="FNanchor34"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_34">[34]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor34">[34]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 267.</blockquote>
+<p>The king's stratagem had thus come to grief, and Eugene left the
+royal presence with flying colors. He was not under the necessity
+of accepting benefits from the King of France, for his step-father,
+the King of Bavaria, made Eugene a prince of the royal house of
+Bavaria, and created for him the duchy of Leuchtenberg. Hither
+Eugene retired, and lived there, surrounded by his wife and
+children, in peace and tranquillity, until death tore him from the
+arms of his sorrowing family, in the year 1824.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.3"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The restoration, that had overthrown so many of the great, and
+that was destined to restore to the light so many names that had
+lain buried in obscurity, now brought back to Paris a person who
+had been banished by Napoleon, and who had been adding new lustre
+and renown to her name in a foreign land. This personage was Madame
+de Sta&euml;l, the daughter of Necker, the renowned poetess of
+"Corinne" and "Delphine."</p>
+<p>It had been a long and bitter struggle between Madame de
+Sta&euml;l and the mighty Emperor of the French; and Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, with her genius and her impassioned eloquence, and
+adorned with the laurel-wreath of her exile, had perhaps done
+Napoleon more harm than a whole army of his enemies. Intense hatred
+existed on both sides, and yet it had depended on Napoleon alone to
+transform this hatred into love. For Madame de Sta&euml;l had been
+disposed to lavish the whole impassioned enthusiasm of her heart
+upon the young hero of Marengo and Arcola--quite disposed to become
+the Egeria of this Numa Pompilius. In the warm impulse of her
+stormy imagination, Madame de Sta&euml;l, in reference to
+Bonaparte, had even, in a slight measure, been regardless of her
+position as a lady, and had only remembered that she was a poetess,
+and that, as such, it became her well to celebrate the hero, and to
+bestow on the luminous constellation that was rising over France
+the glowing dithyrambic of her greetings.</p>
+<a name="392.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/392.jpg"><img src="images/392.jpg"
+width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Portrait of Madame de Sta&euml;l.</b></p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l had, therefore, not waited for Napoleon to
+seek her, but had made the first advances, and sought him.</p>
+<p>To the returning victor of Italy she wrote letters filled with
+impassioned enthusiasm; but these letters afforded the youthful
+general but little pleasure. In the midst of the din of battle and
+the grand schemes with which he was continually engaged, Bonaparte
+found but little time to occupy himself with the poetical works of
+Madame de Sta&euml;l. He knew of her nothing more than that she was
+the daughter of the minister Necker, and that was no recommendation
+in Napoleon's eyes, for he felt little respect for Necker's genius,
+and even went so far as to call him the instigator of the great
+revolution. It was, therefore, with astonishment that the young
+general received the enthusiastic letter of the poetess; and, while
+showing it to some of his intimate friends, he said, with a shrug
+of his shoulders, "Do you understand these extravagances? This
+woman is foolish!"</p>
+<p>But Madame de Sta&euml;l did not allow herself to be dismayed by
+Bonaparte's coldness and silence--she continued to write new and
+more glowing letters.</p>
+<p>In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate
+enthusiasm as to say, that it was a great error in human
+institutions that the gentle and quiet Josephine had united her
+faith with his; that she, Madame de Sta&euml;l, and Bonaparte, were
+born for each other, and that Nature seemed to have created a soul
+of fire like hers, in order that it might worship a hero such as he
+was.</p>
+<p>Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he
+threw it in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of
+sentiment, should dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not
+answer these letters!"</p>
+<p>He did not answer them, but Madame de Sta&euml;l did not, or
+rather would not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give
+up a resolution once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l was now also determined to have her way, and to
+approach Bonaparte despite his resistance.</p>
+<p>And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all
+obstacles, and the interview, so long wished for by her, and so
+long avoided by him, at last took place. Madame de Sta&euml;l was
+introduced at the Tuileries, and received by Bonaparte and his
+wife. The personal appearance of this intellectual woman was,
+however, but little calculated to overcome Bonaparte's prejudice.
+The costume of Madame de Sta&euml;l was on this occasion, as it
+always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and Napoleon
+loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired. In
+this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Sta&euml;l gave free scope
+to her wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do,
+she only succeeded in depressing him.</p>
+<p>It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, in her ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay
+her a compliment, that Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat
+indiscreet question: "Who is in your eyes the greatest woman?" with
+the sarcastic reply, "She who bears the most children to the
+state."</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l had come with a heart full of enthusiasm;
+in her address to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to
+earth;" she had come an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an
+offended woman. Her wounded vanity never forgave the answer which
+seemed to make her ridiculous. She avenged herself, in her
+drawing-room, by the biting <i>bon mots</i> which she hurled at
+Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully
+repeated to the first consul.</p>
+<p>But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded
+against the hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely
+than weapons of steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l was his superior, and the consciousness of this
+embittered Bonaparte all the more against the lady, who dared prick
+the heel of Achilles with the needle of her wit, and strike at the
+very point where he was most sensitive.</p>
+<p>A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest
+geniuses of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both
+with equal bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side,
+and could punish the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.</p>
+<p>He banished Madame de Sta&euml;l from Paris, and soon afterward
+even from France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the
+praises of her "god descended from heaven," now went into exile his
+enemy and a royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius,
+in making proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the
+minds of men an invisible but none the less formidable army against
+her enemy the great Napoleon.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l soon gave still greater weight to the
+flaming eruptions of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing
+renown and greatness; and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon
+became as redoubtable an opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia,
+or Austria, could be.</p>
+<p>But in the midst of the triumphs she was celebrating in her
+exile, Madame de Sta&euml;l soon began to long ardently to return
+to France, which she loved all the more for having been compelled
+to leave it. She therefore used all the influence she possessed in
+Paris, to obtain from Napoleon permission to return to her home,
+but the emperor remained inexorable, even after having read
+Delphine.</p>
+<p>"I love," said he, "women who make men of themselves just as
+little as I love effeminate men. There is an appropriate
+<i>r&ocirc;le</i> for every one in the world. Of what use is this
+vagabondizing of fantasy? What does it accomplish? Nothing! All
+this is nothing but do rangement of mind and feeling. I dislike
+women who throw themselves in my arms, and for this reason, if for
+no other, I dislike this woman, who is certainly one of that
+number."</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l's petitions to be permitted to return to
+Paris were therefore rejected, but she was as little disposed to
+abandon her purpose now as she was at the time she sought to gain
+Bonaparte's good-will. She continued to make attempts to achieve
+her aim, for it was not only her country that she wished to
+reconquer, but also a million francs which she wished to have paid
+to her out of the French treasury.</p>
+<p>Her father, Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a
+million francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy
+bread for the starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in
+writing, that this "national debt of France" should be
+returned.</p>
+<p>But the revolution that shattered the throne of the unfortunate
+king, also buried beneath the ruins of the olden time the promises
+and oaths that had been written on parchment and paper.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l now demanded that the emperor should fulfil
+the promises of the overthrown king, and that the heir of the
+throne of the Bourbons should assume the obligations into which a
+Bourbon had entered with her father.</p>
+<p>She had once called Napoleon a god descended from heaven; and
+she even now wished that he might still prove a god for her,
+namely, the god Pluto, who should pour out a million upon her from
+his horn of plenty.</p>
+<p>As she could not go to France herself, she sent her son to plead
+with the emperor, for herself and her children.</p>
+<p>Well knowing, however, how difficult it would be, even for her
+son to secure an audience of the emperor, she addressed herself to
+Queen Hortense in eloquent letters imploring her to exert her
+influence in her son's behalf.</p>
+<p>Hortense, ever full of pity for misfortune, felt the warmest
+sympathy and admiration for the genius of the great poetess, and
+interceded for Madame de Sta&euml;l with great courage and
+eloquence. She alone ventured, regardless of Napoleon's frowns and
+displeasure, to plead the cause of the poor exile again and again,
+and to solicit her recall to France, as a simple act of justice;
+she even went so far in her generosity as to extend the
+hospitalities of her drawing-rooms to the poetess's son, who was
+avoided and fled from by every one else.</p>
+<p>Hortense's soft entreaties and representations were at last
+successful in soothing the emperor's anger. He allowed Madame de
+Sta&euml;l to return to France, on the condition that she should
+never come to Paris or its vicinity; he then also accorded Madame
+de Sta&euml;l's son the long-sought favor of an audience.</p>
+<p>This interview of Napoleon with Madame de Sta&euml;l's son is as
+remarkable as it is original. On this occasion, Napoleon openly
+expressed his dislike and even his hatred as well of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l as of her father, although he listened with generous
+composure to the warm defence of the son and grandson.</p>
+<p>Young Sta&euml;l told the emperor of his mother's longing to
+return to her home, and touchingly portrayed the sadness and
+unhappiness of her exile.</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the emperor, "your mother is in a state of
+exaltation. I do not say that she is a bad woman. She has wit, and
+much intellect, perhaps too much, but hers is an inconsiderate, an
+insubordinate spirit. She has grown up in the chaos of a falling
+monarchy, and of a revolution, and she has amalgamized the two in
+her mind. This is all a source of danger; she would make
+proselytes, she must be watched; she does not love me. The
+interests of those whom she might compromise, require that I should
+not permit her to return to Paris. If I should allow her to do so,
+she would place me under the necessity of sending her to
+Bic&eacute;tre, or of imprisoning her in the Temple, before six
+months elapsed; that would be extremely disagreeable, for it would
+cause a sensation, and injure me in the public opinion. Inform your
+mother that my resolution is irrevocable. While I live, she shall
+not return to Paris."</p>
+<p>It was in vain that young Sta&euml;l assured him in his mother's
+name, that she would avoid giving him the least occasion for
+displeasure, and that she would live in complete retirement if
+permitted to return to Paris.</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes! I know the value of fine promises!" exclaimed the
+emperor. "I know what the result would be, and I repeat it, it
+cannot be! She would be the rallying-point of the whole Faubourg
+St. Germain. She live in retirement! Visits would be made her, and
+she would return them; she would commit a thousand indiscretions,
+and say a thousand humorous things, to which she attaches no
+importance, but which annoy me. My government is no jest, I take
+every thing seriously; I wish this to be understood, and you may
+proclaim it to the whole world!"</p>
+<p>Young Sta&euml;l had, however, the courage to continue his
+entreaties; he even went so far as to inquire in all humility for
+the grounds of the emperor's ill-will against his mother. He said
+he had been assured that Necker's last work was more particularly
+the cause of the emperor's displeasure, and that he believed Madame
+de Sta&euml;l had assisted in writing it. This was, however, not
+so, and he could solemnly assure the emperor that his mother had
+taken no part in it whatever. Besides, Necker had also done full
+justice to the emperor in this work.</p>
+<p>"Justice, indeed! He calls me the 'necessary man.' The necessary
+man! and yet, according to his book, the first step necessary to be
+taken, was to take off this necessary man's head! Yes, I was
+necessary to repair all that your grandfather had destroyed! It is
+he who overthrew the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the
+scaffold!"</p>
+<p>"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then
+not aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he
+defended the king!"</p>
+<p>"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when
+he lies in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then
+maintain that I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that
+M. Necker defended Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak
+prove nothing. Robespierre's property was also confiscated. Not
+even Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, have brought such misery upon
+France as Necker; he it is who made the revolution. You did not see
+it, but I was present in those days of horror and public distress;
+but I give you my word that they shall return no more while I live!
+Your schemers write out their utopias, the simple-minded read these
+dreams, they are printed and believed in; the common welfare is in
+everybody's mouth, and soon there is no more bread for the people;
+it revolts, and that is the usual result of all these fine
+theories! Your grandfather is to blame for the orgies that brought
+France to desperation."</p>
+<p>Then lowering his voice, from the excited, almost angry tone in
+which he had been speaking, to a milder one, the emperor approached
+the young man, who stood before him, pale, and visibly agitated.
+With that charming air of friendly intimacy that no one knew so
+well how to assume as Napoleon, he gently pinched the tip of the
+young man's ear, the emperor's usual way of making peace with any
+one to whom he wished well, after a little difficulty.</p>
+<p>"You are still young," said he; "if you possessed my age and
+experience, you would judge of these matters differently. Your
+candor has not offended, but pleased me; I like to see a son defend
+his mother's cause! Your mother has entrusted you with a very
+difficult commission, and you have executed it with much spirit. It
+gives me pleasure to have conversed with you, for I love the young
+when they are straightforward and not too 'argumentative.' But I
+can nevertheless give you no false hopes! You will accomplish
+nothing! If your mother were in prison, I should not hesitate to
+grant you her release. But she is in exile, and nothing can induce
+me to recall her."</p>
+<p>"But, sire, is one not quite as unhappy far from home and
+friends, as in prison?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah! those are romantic notions! You have heard that said
+about your mother. She is truly greatly to be pitied. With the
+exception of Paris, she has the whole of Europe for her
+prison!"</p>
+<p>"But, sire, all her friends are in Paris!"</p>
+<p>"With her intellect, she will be able to acquire new ones
+everywhere. Moreover, I cannot understand why she should desire to
+be in Paris. Why does she so long to place herself in the immediate
+reach of tyranny? You see I pronounce the decisive word! I am
+really unable to comprehend it. Can she not go to Rome, Berlin,
+Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London would be the right place!
+There she can perpetrate libels whenever she pleases. At all of
+these places I will leave her undisturbed with the greatest
+pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate
+those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what
+would happen, if I should permit your mother to return to Paris.
+She would commit new follies; she would corrupt those who surround
+me; she would corrupt Garat, as she once corrupted the tribunal; of
+course, she would promise all things, but she would, nevertheless,
+not avoid engaging in politics."</p>
+<p>"Sire," I can assure you that my mother does not occupy herself
+with politics at all; she devotes herself exclusively to the
+society of her friends, and to literature."</p>
+<p>"That is the right word, and I fully understand it. One talks
+politics while talking of literature, of morals, of the fine arts,
+and of every conceivable thing! If your mother were in Paris, her
+latest <i>bon mots</i> and phrases would be recited to me daily;
+perhaps they would be only invented; but I tell you I will have
+nothing of the kind in the city in which I reside! It would be best
+for her to go to London; advise her to do so. As far as your
+grandfather is concerned, I have certainly not said too much; M.
+Necker had no administrative ability. Once more, inform your mother
+that I shall never permit her to return to Paris."</p>
+<p>"But if sacred interests should require her presence here for a
+few days, your majesty would at least--"</p>
+<p>"What? Sacred interests? What does that mean?"</p>
+<p>"Sire," the presence of my mother will be necessary, in order to
+procure from your majesty's government the return of a sacred
+debt."</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah! sacred! Are not all the debts of the state
+sacred?"</p>
+<p>"Without doubt, sire; but ours is accompanied by peculiar
+circumstances."</p>
+<p>"Peculiar circumstances!" exclaimed the emperor, rising to
+terminate the long interview, that began to weary him. "What
+creditor of the state does not say the same of his debt? Moreover,
+I know too little of your relations toward my government. This
+matter does not concern me, and I will not be mixed up in it. If
+the laws are for you, all will go well without my interference; but
+if it requires influence, I shall have nothing to do with it, for I
+should be rather against than for you!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said young Sta&euml;l, venturing to speak once more, as
+the emperor was on the point of leaving, "sire, my brother and I
+were anxious to settle in France; but how could we live in a land
+in which our mother would not be allowed to live with us
+everywhere?"</p>
+<p>Already standing on the threshold of the door, the emperor
+turned to him hastily. "I have no desire whatever to have you
+settle here," said he; "on the contrary. I advise you not to do so.
+Go to England. There they have a <i>penchant</i> for Genevese,
+parlor-politicians, etc.; therefore, go to England; for I must say,
+I should be rather ill than well disposed toward you<a name=
+"FNanchor35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor35">[35]</a> Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.3"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L'S RETURN TO PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l returned to her cherished France with the
+restoration. She came back thirsting for new honor and renown, and
+determined, above all, to have her work republished in Germany, its
+publication having been once suppressed by the imperial police. She
+entertained the pleasing hope that the new court would forget that
+she was Necker's daughter, receive her with open arms, and accord
+her the influence to which her active mind and genius entitled
+her.</p>
+<p>But she was laboring under an error, by which she was not
+destined to be long deceived. She was received at court with the
+cold politeness which is more terrible than insult. The king, while
+speaking of her with his friends, called Madame de Sta&euml;l "a
+Chateaubriand in petticoats." The Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me seemed
+never to see the celebrated poetess, and never addressed a word to
+her; the rest of the court met Madame de Sta&euml;l armed to the
+teeth with all the hatred and prejudices of the olden time.</p>
+<p>It was also in vain that Madame de Sta&euml;l endeavored to act
+an important part at the new court; they refused to regard her as
+an authority or power, but treated her as a mere authoress; her
+counsel was ridiculed, and they dared even to question the renown
+of M. Necker.</p>
+<p>"I am unfortunate," said Madame de Sta&euml;l to Countess
+Ducayla; "Napoleon hated me because he believed me to possess
+intellect; these people repel me because I at least possess
+ordinary human understanding! I can certainly get on very well
+without them; but, as my presence displeases them, I shall, at
+least, endeavor to get my money from them."</p>
+<p>The "sacred debt" had not been paid under the empire, and it was
+now Madame de Sta&euml;l's intention to obtain from the king what
+the emperor had refused.</p>
+<p>She was well aware of the influence which Countess Ducayla
+exercised over Louis XVIII., and she now hastened to call on the
+beautiful countess--whose acquaintance she had made under peculiar
+circumstances, in a romantic love intrigue--in order to renew the
+friendship they had then vowed to each other.</p>
+<p>The countess had not forgotten this friendship, and she was now
+grateful for the service Madame de Sta&euml;l had then shown her.
+She helped to secure the liquidation of the sacred debt, and, upon
+the order of King Louis, the million was paid over to Madame de
+Sta&euml;l. "But," says the countess, in her memoirs, "I believe
+the recovery of this million cost Madame de Sta&euml;l four hundred
+thousand francs, besides a set of jewelry that was worth at least
+one hundred thousand."</p>
+<p>The countess's purse and the jewelry case, however, doubtlessly
+bore evidence that she might as well have said "I know" as "I
+believe."</p>
+<p>Besides the four hundred thousand francs and the jewelry, Madame
+de Sta&euml;l also gave the countess a piece of advice. "Make the
+most of the favor you now enjoy," said she to her; "but do so
+quickly, for, as matters are now conducted, I fear that the
+restoration will soon have to be restored."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" asked the countess, smiling.</p>
+<p>"I mean that, with the exception of the king, who perhaps does
+not say all he thinks, the others are still doing precisely as they
+always have done, and Heaven knows to what extremities their folly
+is destined to bring them! They mock at the old soldiers and assist
+the young priests, and this is the best means of ruining
+France."</p>
+<p>Countess Ducayla considered this prediction of her intellectual
+friend as a mere cloud with which discontent and disappointed
+ambition had obscured the otherwise clear vision of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, and ridiculed the idea, little dreaming how soon her
+words were to be fulfilled.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l consoled herself for her cold reception at
+court, by receiving the best society of Paris in her parlors, and
+entertaining them with biting <i>bon mots</i> and witty
+<i>persiflage</i>, at the expense of the grand notabilities, who
+had suddenly arisen with their imposing genealogical trees out of
+the ruins and oblivion of the past.</p>
+<p>Madame de Sta&euml;l now also remembered the kindness Queen
+Hortense had shown her during her exile; and not to her only, but
+also to her friend, Madame R&eacute;camier, who had also been
+exiled by Napoleon, not, however, as his enemies said, "because she
+was Madame de Sta&euml;l's friend," but simply because she
+patronized and belonged to the so-called "little church." The
+"little church" was an organization born of the spirit of
+opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a portion of the
+Catholic clergy, and was one of those things appertaining to the
+internal relations of France that were most annoying and
+disagreeable to the emperor.</p>
+<p>Queen Hortense had espoused the cause of Madame de Sta&euml;l
+and of Madame R&eacute;camier with generous warmth. She had
+eloquently interceded for the recall of both from their exile; and,
+now that the course of events had restored them to their home, both
+ladies came to the queen to thank her for her kindness and
+generosity.</p>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet has described this visit of Madame de
+Sta&euml;l so wittily, with so much <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>, and
+with such peculiar local coloring, that we cannot refrain from
+laying a literal translation of the same before the reader.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.3"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L'S VISIT TO QUEEN HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Louise de Cochelet relates as follows: "Madame de Sta&euml;l and
+Madame R&eacute;camier had begged permission of the queen to visit
+her, for the purpose of tendering their thanks. The queen invited
+them to visit her at St. Leu, on the following day.</p>
+<p>"She asked my advice as to which of the members of her social
+circle were best qualified to cope with Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p>
+<p>"'I, for my part,' said the queen, 'have not the courage to take
+the lead in the conversation; one cannot be very intellectual when
+sad at heart, and I fear my dullness will infect the others.'</p>
+<p>"We let quite a number of amiable persons pass before us in
+review, and I amused myself at the mention of each new name, by
+saying, 'He is too dull for Madame de Sta&euml;l.'</p>
+<p>"The queen laughed, and the list of those who were to be invited
+was at last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two
+ladies in great suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the
+queen, of being intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of
+conjuring up a somewhat embarrassed and stupid expression to our
+faces. We presented the appearance of actors on the stage looking
+at each other, while awaiting the rise of the curtain. Jests and
+<i>bon mots</i> followed each other in rapid succession until the
+arrival of the carriage recalled to our faces an expression of
+official earnestness.</p>
+<p>"Madame R&eacute;camier, still young, and very handsome, and
+with an expression of <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> in her charming
+countenance, made the impression on me of being a young lady in
+love, carefully watched over by too severe a <i>duenna,</i> her
+timid, gentle manner contrasted so strongly with the somewhat too
+masculine self-consciousness of her companion. Madame de Sta&euml;l
+is, however, generally admitted to have been good and kind,
+particularly to this friend, and I only speak of the impression she
+made on one to whom she was a stranger, at first sight.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l's extremely dark complexion, her original
+toilet, her perfectly bare shoulders, of which either might have
+been very beautiful, but which harmonized very poorly with each
+other; her whole <i>ensemble</i> was far from approximating to the
+standard of the ideal I had formed of the authoress of Delphine and
+Corinne. I had almost hoped to find in her one of the heroines she
+had so beautifully portrayed, and I was therefore struck dumb with
+astonishment. But, after the first shock, I was at least compelled
+to acknowledge that she possessed very beautiful and expressive
+eyes; and yet it seemed impossible for me to find anything in her
+countenance on which love could fasten, although I have been told
+that she has often inspired that sentiment.</p>
+<p>"When I afterward expressed my astonishment to the queen, she
+replied: 'It is, perhaps, because she is capable of such great love
+herself, that she succeeds in inspiring others with love; moreover,
+it flatters a man's self-love to be noticed by such a woman, and,
+in the end, one can dispense with beauty, when one has Madame de
+Sta&euml;l's intellect.'</p>
+<p>"The queen inquired after Madame de Sta&euml;l's daughter, who
+had not come with her, and who was said to be truly charming. I
+believe the young gentlemen of our party could have confronted the
+beautiful eyes of the daughter with still greater amiability than
+those of the mother, but an attack of toothache had prevented her
+coming.</p>
+<p>"After the first compliments and salutations, the queen proposed
+to the ladies to take a look at her park. They seated themselves on
+the cushions of the queen's large <i>char &agrave; banc</i>, which
+has become historic on account of the many high and celebrated
+personages who have been driven in it at different times. The
+Emperor Napoleon was, however, not one of this number, as he never
+visited St. Leu; but, with this exception, there are few of the
+great and celebrated who have not been seated in it at one time or
+another.</p>
+<p>"As they drove through the park and the forest of Montmorency,
+in a walk only, the conversation was kept up as in the parlor, and
+the consumption of intellectuality was continued. The beautiful
+neighborhood, that reminded one of Switzerland, as it was remarked,
+was duly admired. Then Italy was spoken of. The queen, who had been
+somewhat <i>distraite</i>, and had good cause to be somewhat sad,
+and disposed to commune with herself, addressed Madame de
+Sta&euml;l with the question, 'You have been in Italy, then?'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l was, as it were, transfixed with dismay,
+and the gentlemen exclaimed with one accord: 'And Corinne? and
+Corinne?'</p>
+<p>"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarrassment,
+awakening, as it were, from her dreams.</p>
+<p>"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not
+read Corinne?'</p>
+<p>"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it
+again,' and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could
+understand, she abruptly changed the topic of conversation.</p>
+<p>"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that
+the book had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in
+Holland. The king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up
+to her grief, believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that
+it was necessary to arouse her from this state of mental dejection
+at all hazards. It was determined that I should read 'Corinne' to
+her. She was not in a condition to pay much attention to it, but
+she had involuntarily retained some remembrance of this romance.
+Since then, I had several times asked permission of the queen to
+read Corinne to her, but she had always refused. 'No, no,' said
+she, 'not yet; this romance has identified itself with my sorrow.
+Its name alone recalls the most fearful period of my whole life. I
+have not yet the courage to renew these painful impressions.'</p>
+<p>"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had
+embarrassed and moved the queen so much when she replied to the
+question addressed to her concerning Corinne. But the authoress
+could, of course, only interpret it as indicating indifference for
+her master-work, and I told the queen on the following day that it
+would have been better to have confessed the cause of her confusion
+to Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p>
+<p>"'Madame de Sta&euml;l would not have understood me,' said she;
+'now, I am lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a
+simpleton, but it was not the time to speak of myself, and of my
+painful reminiscences.'</p>
+<p>"The large <i>char &agrave; banc</i> was always preferred to the
+handsomest carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of
+two wooden benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each
+other), because it was more favorable for conversation. But it
+afforded no security against inclement weather, and this we were
+soon to experience. The rain poured in streams, and we all returned
+to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was there prepared and offered
+the ladies, in which they might repair the disarrangement of their
+toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them long, kept there
+by the questions of Madame de Sta&euml;l concerning the queen and
+her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There was
+now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing,
+hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the
+display of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to
+admire but a moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face
+to face, like the rest of the world, with material life, these two
+celebrated women, who are everywhere sought after, and received
+with such marked consideration. There they are, as wet as myself,
+and as little poetic.' We were really behind the curtain, but it
+was shortly to rise again.</p>
+<p>"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a
+German accent was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed:
+'Ah, that is Prince Augustus of Prussia!'</p>
+<p>"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two
+ladies had therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had
+come merely to pay the queen a visit, and it was so near
+dinner-time, that politeness required that he should be invited to
+remain. And this was doubtless what he wished.</p>
+<p>"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Sta&euml;l
+on his left. The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig
+on her napkin, which she twisted between her fingers while
+speaking, as was her habit. The conversation was animated, and it
+was amusing to observe Madame de Sta&euml;l gesticulating with the
+little twig in her fingers. One might have supposed that some fairy
+had given her this talisman, and that her genius was dependent upon
+this little twig.</p>
+<p>"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were
+well acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de
+Sta&euml;l thought it would be a delightful task for an
+intellectual woman, to turn the sultan's head, and then to compel
+him to give his Turks a constitution. After dinner, freedom of the
+press was also a topic of conversation.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l astonished me, not only by the brilliancy
+of her genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she
+treated questions of that kind, for until then custom had not
+allowed women to discuss such matters. At entertainments,
+philosophy, morals, sentiment, heroism, and the like, had been the
+subjects of conversation, but the emperor monopolized politics. His
+era was that of actions, and, we may say it with pride, of great
+actions, while the era that followed was essentially that of great
+words, and of political and literary controversies.</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that
+which is right, happen what may.'</p>
+<p>"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,'
+said she, 'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while
+doing so.'</p>
+<p>"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the
+reflection of inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no
+longer the woman of mind only, but also the woman of heart and
+feeling, and I comprehended at this moment how charming she could
+be.</p>
+<p>"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching
+the emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could
+not have known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go
+to Elba! Do you think he would receive me well? I was born to
+worship this man, and he has repelled me.'</p>
+<p>'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor
+say that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could
+compare his labors with the exertions of a man who, having the
+summit of a steep mountain ever before his eyes, strains every
+nerve to attain it, ever toiling painfully upward, and allowing his
+progress to be arrested by no obstacle whatever. "All the worse for
+those," said he, "who meet me on my course--I can show them no
+consideration."'</p>
+<p>"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have
+extended you a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his
+mountain.'</p>
+<p>"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Sta&euml;l; 'I have
+been injured in his opinion.'</p>
+<p>"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him
+ill, if you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed
+you to be his enemy, and he feared you, which was something very
+unusual for him,' added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is
+unfortunate, you will show yourself his friend, and prove yourself
+to be such, and I am satisfied that he will receive you well.'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Sta&euml;l also occupied herself a great deal with
+the young princes, but she met with worse success with them than
+with us. It was perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity,
+that she showered unsuitable questions upon them.</p>
+<p>"'Do you love your uncle?'</p>
+<p>"'Very much, madame!'</p>
+<p>"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'</p>
+<p>"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'</p>
+<p>'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing
+with the words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'</p>
+<p>"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not
+oftener than any other.'</p>
+<p>"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and
+precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest
+composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me
+and said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is
+that what you call being intellectual?'</p>
+<p>"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all
+indulged in an expression of opinion concerning them, and young
+Prince Napoleon was the one upon whom the ladies had made the least
+flattering impression, but he only ventured to intimate as much in
+a low voice.</p>
+<p>"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this
+visit. One could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its
+inconsiderateness, and its wanderings, but there was nothing
+pleasing, nothing graceful and womanly, in Madame de Sta&euml;l's
+manner<a name="FNanchor36"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_36">[36]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_36"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor36">[36]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reine
+Hortense, vol. i., pp. 429-440.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.3"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last
+withdrawn from the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the
+independent ruler of France. In him, in the returned members of his
+family, and in the emigrants who were pouring into the country from
+all quarters, was represented the old era of France, the era of
+despotic royal power, of brilliant manners, of intrigues, of
+aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury. Opposed to them stood the
+France of the new era, the generation formed by Napoleon and the
+revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no other ancestors
+than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had nothing to
+relate of the <i>oeil de boeuf</i> and the <i>petites maisons</i>,
+but an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the
+hospitals in which their wounds had been healed.</p>
+<p>These two parties stood opposed to each other.</p>
+<p>Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous
+warfare at the court of Louis XVIII., with this difference,
+however, that young France, hitherto ever victorious, now
+experienced a continuous series of reverses and humiliations. Old
+France was now victorious. Not victorious through its gallantry and
+merit, but through its past, which it endeavored to connect with
+the present, without considering the chasm which lay between.</p>
+<p>True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April,
+that none of his subjects should be deprived of their titles and
+dignities; and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and
+barons, could therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad
+and humiliating <i>r&ocirc;le</i>, and they were made to feel that
+they were only tolerated, and not welcome.</p>
+<p>The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been entitled to
+seats in the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but
+the doors of these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of
+the new Napoleonic nobility. "The ladies of the old era still
+retained their <i>tabouret,</i> as well as their grand and little
+<i>entr&eacute;e</i> to the Tuileries and the Louvre, and it would
+have been considered very arrogant if the duchesses of the new era
+had made claim to similar honors."</p>
+<p>It was the Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me who took the lead and set
+the Faubourg St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant
+pretensions in ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting
+enemy of the new era, born of the revolution, and of its
+representatives; it is true, however, that she, who was the
+daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had herself so long
+languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the horrors of the
+revolution in their saddest and most painful features. She now
+determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget this
+era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.</p>
+<p>At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the
+Duchess d'Angoul&ecirc;me, who sat next to the King of Bavaria,
+pointed to the Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the
+prince who married a princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness
+to ally one's self in such a manner with that general!"</p>
+<p>The duchess did not or would not remember that the King of
+Bavaria, as well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other
+side, and could well hear her words, had also allied themselves
+with General Bonaparte.</p>
+<p>After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had
+formerly occupied in the Tuileries, the duchess asked old Dubois,
+who had formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office
+under the empire, and who now showed her the new and elegant
+instruments provided by Josephine--she asked him: "What has become
+of my piano?"</p>
+<p>This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the
+duchess was surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty
+years had not passed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th
+of August, 1792, the day on which the populace demolished the
+Tuileries, had never been!</p>
+<p>But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and
+the Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than
+one night lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the
+levee of to-day of King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that
+persons they had known as children had grown up since they last saw
+them, and insisted on treating every one as they had done in
+1789.</p>
+<p>After the Empress Josephine's death, Count d'Artois paid a visit
+to Malmaison, a place that had hardly existed before the
+revolution, and which owed its creation to Josephine's love and
+taste for art.</p>
+<p>The empress, who had a great fondness for botany, had caused
+magnificent greenhouses to be erected at Malmaison; in these all
+the plants and flowers of the world had been collected. Knowing her
+taste, all the princes of Europe had sent her, in the days of her
+grandeur, in order to afford her a moment's gratification, the
+rarest exotics. The Prince Regent of England had even found means,
+during the war with France, to send her a number of rare
+West-Indian plants. In this manner her collection had become the
+richest and most complete in all Europe.</p>
+<p>Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view
+this celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being
+conducted through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he
+recognized his old flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of
+Trianon!"</p>
+<p>And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also
+returned to France with the same ideas with which they had fled the
+country. They endeavored, in all their manners, habits, and
+pretensions, to begin again precisely where they had left off in
+1789. They had so lively an appreciation of their own merit, that
+they took no notice whatever of other people's, and yet their
+greatest merit consisted in having emigrated.</p>
+<p>For this merit they now demanded a reward.</p>
+<p>All of these returned emigrants demanded rewards, positions, and
+pensions, and considered it incomprehensible that those who were
+already in possession were not at once deprived of them. Intrigues
+were the order of the day, and in general the representatives of
+the old era succeeded in supplanting those of the new era in
+offices and pensions as well as in court honors. All the high
+positions in the army were filled by the marquises, dukes, and
+counts, of the old era, who had sewed tapestry and picked silk in
+Coblentz, while the France of the new era was fighting on the
+battle-field, and they now began to teach the soldiers of the
+empire the old drill of 1780.</p>
+<p>The etiquette of the olden time was restored, and the same
+luxurious and lascivious disposition prevailed among these
+cavaliers of the former century which had been approved in the
+<i>oeil de boeuf</i> and in the <i>petites maisons</i> of the old
+era.</p>
+<p>These old cavaliers felt contempt for the young Frenchmen of the
+new era on account of their pedantic morality; they scornfully
+regarded men who perhaps had not more than one mistress, and to
+whom the wife of a friend was so sacred, that they never dared to
+approach her with a disrespectful thought even.</p>
+<p>These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
+reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of
+the many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which
+they unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their
+sweetest relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the
+remembrance of the old <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, and when they spoke of
+this era, they forgot their age and debility, and were once more
+the young <i>rou&eacute;s</i> of the <i>oeil de boeuf</i>.</p>
+<p>Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis
+de Chim&egrave;ne and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the
+frivolous era, in which the boudoir and the <i>petites maisons</i>
+were the battle-field, and the myrtle instead of the laurel the
+reward of victory, while these gentlemen were conversing of some
+occurrence under the old government, the Duke de Lauraguais, in
+order to more nearly fix the date of the occurrence of which they
+were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was in the year in
+which I had my <i>liaison</i> with your wife."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes," replied the marquis, with perfect composure, "that
+was in the year 1776."</p>
+<p>Neither of the gentlemen found anything strange in this allusion
+to the past. The <i>liaison</i> in question had been a perfectly
+commonplace matter, and it would have been as ridiculous in the
+duke to deny it as for the marquis to have shown any
+indignation.</p>
+<p>The wisest and most enlightened of all these gentlemen was their
+head, King Louis XVIII. himself.</p>
+<p>He was well aware of the errors of those who surrounded him, and
+placed but little confidence in the representatives of the old
+court. But he was nevertheless powerless to withdraw himself from
+their influence, and after he had accorded the people the charter,
+in opposition to the will and opinion of the whole royal family, of
+his whole court and of his ministers, and had sworn to support it
+in spite of the opposition of "Monsieur" and the Prince de
+Cond&eacute;, who was in the habit of calling the charter
+"<i>Mademoiselle la Constitution de 1791,</i>" Louis withdrew to
+the retirement of his apartments in the Tuileries, and left his
+minister Blacas to attend to the little details of government, the
+king deeming the great ones only worthy of his attention.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.3"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>KING LOUIS XVIII.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>King Louis XVIII. was, however, in the retirement of his palace,
+still the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the representatives
+of the old era; he clearly saw many things to which his advisers
+purposely closed their eyes. To his astonishment, he observed that
+the men who had risen to greatness under Bonaparte, and who had
+fallen to the king along with the rest of his inheritance, were not
+so ridiculous, awkward, and foolish, as they had been represented
+to be.</p>
+<p>"I had been made to suppose," said Louis XVIII., "that these
+generals of Bonaparte were peasants and ruffians, but such is not
+the case. He schooled these men well. They are polite, and quite as
+shrewd as the representatives of the old court. We must conduct
+ourselves very cautiously toward them."</p>
+<p>This kind of recognition of the past which sometimes escaped
+Louis XVIII., was a subject of bitter displeasure to the gentlemen
+of the old era, and they let the king perceive it.</p>
+<p>King Louis felt this, and, in order to conciliate his court, he
+often saw himself compelled to humiliate "the <i>parvenus</i>" who
+had forced themselves among the former.</p>
+<p>Incessant quarrelling and intriguing within the Tuileries was
+the consequence, and Louis was often dejected, uneasy, and angry,
+in the midst of the splendor that surrounded him.</p>
+<p>"I am angry with myself and the others," said he on one occasion
+to an intimate friend. "An invisible and secret power is ever
+working in opposition to my will, frustrating my plans, and
+paralyzing my authority."</p>
+<p>"And yet you are king!"</p>
+<p>"Undoubtedly I am king!" exclaimed Louis, angrily; "but am I
+also master? The king is he who all his life long receives
+ambassadors, gives tiresome audiences, listens to annihilating
+discourses, goes in state to Notre-Dame, dines in public once a
+year, and is pompously buried in St. Denis when he dies. The master
+is he who commands and can enforce obedience, who puts an end to
+intriguing, and can silence old women as well as priests. Bonaparte
+was king and master at the same time! His ministers were his
+clerks, the kings his brothers merely his agents, and his courtiers
+nothing more than his servants. His ministers vied with his senate
+in servility, and his <i>Corps L&eacute;gislatif</i> sought to
+outdo his senate and the church in subserviency. He was an
+extraordinary and an enviable man, for he had not only devoted
+servants and faithful friends, but also an accommodating
+church<a name="FNanchor37"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_37">[37]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_37"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor37">[37]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. v., p. 35.</blockquote>
+<p>King Louis XVIII., weary of the incessant intrigues with which
+his courtiers occupied themselves, withdrew himself more and more
+into the retirement of his palace, and left the affairs of state to
+the care of M. de Blacas, who, with all his arrogance and egotism,
+knew very little about governing.</p>
+<p>The king preferred to entertain himself with his friends, to
+read them portions of his memoirs, to afford them an opportunity of
+admiring his verses, and to regale them with his witty and not
+always chaste anecdotes; he preferred all these things to tedious
+and useless disputes with his ministers. He had given his people
+the charter, and his ministers might now govern in accordance with
+this instrument.</p>
+<p>"The people demand liberty," said the king. "I give them enough
+of it to protect them against despotism, without according them
+unbridled license. Formerly, the taxes appointed by my mere will
+would have made me odious; now the people tax themselves.
+Hereafter, I have nothing to do but to confer benefits and show
+mercy, for the responsibility for all the evil that is done will
+rest entirely with my ministers<a name="FNanchor38"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_38">[38]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_38"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor38">[38]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 410.</blockquote>
+<p>While his ministers were thus governing according to the
+charter, and "doing evil," the king, who now had nothing but "good"
+to do, was busying himself in settling the weighty questions of the
+old etiquette.</p>
+<p>One of the most important features of this etiquette was the
+question of the fashions that should now be introduced at court;
+for it was, of course, absurd to think of adopting the fashions of
+the empire, and thereby recognize at court that there had really
+been a change since 1789.</p>
+<p>They desired to effect a counter-revolution, not only in
+politics, but also in fashions; and this important matter occupied
+the attention of the grand dignitaries of the court for weeks
+before the first grand levee that the king was to hold in the
+Tuilerics. But, as nothing was accomplished by their united wisdom,
+the king finally held a private consultation with his most intimate
+gentleman and lady friends on this important matter, that had,
+unfortunately, not been determined by the charter.</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies, M. de Breg&eacute;, declared to
+the king that it was altogether improper to continue the fashions
+of the empire at the court of the legitimate King of France.</p>
+<p>"We are, therefore, to have powder, coats-of-mail, etc.,"
+observed the king.</p>
+<p>M. de Breg&eacute; replied, with all gravity, that he had given
+this subject his earnest consideration day and night, but that he
+had not yet arrived at a conclusion worthy of the grand-master of
+ceremonies of the legitimate king.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said the Duke de Chartres, smiling, "I, for my part,
+demand knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and the cue."</p>
+<p>"But I," exclaimed the Prince de Poir, who had remained in
+France during the empire, "I demand damages, if we are to be
+compelled to return to the old fashions and clothing before the new
+ones are worn out!"</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies replied to this jest at his
+expense with a profound sigh only; and the king at last put an end
+to this great question, by deciding that every one should be
+permitted to follow the old or new fashions, according to his
+individual taste and inclination.</p>
+<p>The grand-master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this
+royal decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness:
+"Your majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man;
+uniformity of attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads
+directly to an agrarian law."</p>
+<p>"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as
+Figaro. Many a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles
+before a procurator in a long gown<a name="FNanchor39"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_39">[39]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_39"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor39">[39]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 384.</blockquote>
+<p>But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in
+fashions, he allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce
+the entire etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this
+etiquette, the king could not rise from his couch in the morning
+until the doors had been opened to all those who had the <i>grande
+entr&eacute;e</i>--that is to say, to the officers of his
+household, the marshals of France, several favored ladies; further,
+to his <i>cafetier</i>, his tailor, the bearer of his slippers, his
+barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
+apothecaries.</p>
+<p>The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored
+individuals, etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie
+himself, but requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their
+contents of the previous day.</p>
+<p>The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal
+family," was also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies
+not only found it necessary to make preparations for this dinner
+weeks beforehand, but the king was also compelled to occupy himself
+with this matter, and to appoint for this great ceremony the
+necessary "officers of provisions"--that is to say, the
+wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand doorkeepers, and the
+cook-in-chief.</p>
+<p>At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and
+indispensable "ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in
+front of the king's seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an
+antique work of art which the city of Paris had once presented to a
+King of France, had also been lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792,
+and the grand-master of ceremonies had been compelled to have a new
+one made by the court jeweller for the occasion. This "ship" was a
+work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel deprived of its masts
+and rigging; and in the same, between two golden plates, were
+contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance with the
+old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and princesses, could
+pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
+were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.</p>
+<p>The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the
+fashion of the "royal lady-friends."</p>
+<p>Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
+lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess
+Ducayla occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the
+king, and dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be
+seen on the brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by
+ill-health, weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him
+the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i> of the imperial court; she
+reminded him of the old affairs of his youth, which the king knew
+how to relate with so much wit and humor, and which he so loved to
+relate; it devolved upon her to examine the letters of the "black
+cabinet," and to read the more interesting ones to the king.</p>
+<p>King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he
+rewarded her in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing
+<i>ennui</i> from his apartments. Finding that the countess had no
+intimate acquaintance with the contents of the Bible, he gave her
+the splendid Bible of Royaumont, ornamented with one hundred and
+fifty magnificent engravings, after paintings of Raphael. Instead
+of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note covered each of these
+engravings<a name="FNanchor40"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_40">[40]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_40"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor40">[40]</a> Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France,
+par St. Edme, vol. ii., p. 383. M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 409.</blockquote>
+<p>On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;"
+and in this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note,
+as in the Bible.</p>
+<p>For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful
+countess, perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal
+snuff-box," which appellation had its origin in the habit which the
+king fondly indulged in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely
+shoulder, and then snuffing it up with his nose.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.3"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being
+introduced anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was
+governing in complacent recklessness, time was progressing,
+notwithstanding his endeavors to turn it backward in his
+flight.</p>
+<p>While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new
+France, a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor
+of Elba, was forming great plans of conquest, and preparing in
+secret understanding with the faithful, to leave his place of exile
+and return to France.</p>
+<p>He well knew that he could rely on his old army--on the army who
+loudly cried, "<i>Vive le roi!</i>" and then added, <i>sotto
+voce</i>, "<i>de Rome, et son petit papa</i><a name=
+"FNanchor41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41">[41]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_41"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor41">[41]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reine
+Hortense, vol. iii, p. 121.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense, the new Duchess of St. Leu, took but little part in
+all these things. She had, notwithstanding her youth and beauty, in
+a measure taken leave of the world. She felt herself to be no
+longer the woman, but only the mother; her sons were the objects of
+all her tenderness and love, and she lived for them only. In her
+retirement at St. Leu, her time was devoted to the arts, to
+reading, and to study; and, after having been thus occupied
+throughout the day, she passed the evening in her drawing-room, in
+unrestrained intellectual conversation with her friends.</p>
+<p>For she had friends who had remained true, notwithstanding the
+obscurity into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although
+they filled important positions at the new court, had retained
+their friendship for the solitary dethroned queen.</p>
+<p>With these friends the Duchess of St. Leu conversed, in the
+evening, in her parlor, of the grand and beautiful past, giving
+themselves up entirely to these recollections, little dreaming that
+this harmless relaxation could awaken suspicion.</p>
+<p>For the Duke of Otranto, who had succeeded in his shrewdness in
+retaining his position of minister of police, as well under Louis
+XVIII. as under Napoleon, had his spies everywhere; he knew of all
+that was said in every parlor of Paris; he knew also that it was
+the custom, in the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu, to look from
+the dark present back at the brilliant past, and to console one's
+self for the littleness of the present, with the recollection of
+the grandeur of departed days! And Fouch&eacute;, or rather the
+Duke of Otranto, knew how to utilize everything.</p>
+<p>In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of
+security, to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking
+place, Fouch&eacute; told him that a conspiracy against the
+government was being formed in the parlors of the Duchess of St.
+Leu; that all those who were secret adherents of Bonaparte were in
+the habit of assembling there, and planning the deliverance of the
+emperor from Elba. In order, however, on the other hand, to provide
+against the possibility of Napoleon's return, the Duke of Otranto
+hastened to the Duchess of St. Leu, to warn her and conjure her to
+be on her guard against the spies by whom she was surrounded, as
+suspicion might be easily excited against her at court.</p>
+<p>Hortense paid no attention to this warning; she considered
+precaution unnecessary, and was not willing to deprive herself of
+her one happiness--that of seeing her friends, and of conversing
+with them in a free and unconstrained manner.</p>
+<p>The parlors of the duchess, therefore, continued to be thrown
+open to her faithful friends, who had also been the faithful
+servants of the emperor; and the Dukes of Bassano, of Friaul, of
+Ragusa, of the Moskwa, and their wives, as well as the gallant
+Charles de Labedoy&egrave;re, and the acute Count Renault de
+Saint-Jean d'Angely, still continued to meet in the parlors of the
+Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>The voice of hostility was raised against them with
+ever-increasing hostility; the reunions that took place at St. Leu
+were day by day portrayed at the Tuileries in more hateful colors;
+and the poor duchess, who lived in sorrow and retirement in her
+apartments, became an object of hatred and envy to these proud
+ladies of the old aristocracy, who were unable to comprehend how
+this woman could be thought of while they were near, although she
+had been the ornament of the imperial court, and who was considered
+amiable, intellectual, and beautiful, even under the legitimate
+dynasty.</p>
+<p>Hortense heard of the ridiculous and malicious reports which had
+been circulated concerning her, and, for the sake of her friends
+and sons, she resolved to put an end to them.</p>
+<p>"I must leave my dear St. Leu and go to Paris," said she. "There
+they can better observe all my actions. Reason demands that I
+should conform myself to circumstances."</p>
+<p>She therefore abandoned her quiet home at St. Leu, and repaired
+with her children and her court to Paris, to again take up her
+abode in her dwelling in the Rue de la Victoire.</p>
+<p>But this step gave fresh fuel to the calumnies of her enemies,
+who saw in her the embodied remembrance of the empire which they
+hated and at the same time feared.</p>
+<p>The Bonapartists still continued their visits to her parlors, as
+before; and no appeals, no representations could induce Hortense to
+close her doors against her faithful friends, for fear that their
+fidelity might excite suspicion against herself.</p>
+<p>In order, however, to contradict the report that adherents of
+Napoleon only were in the habit of frequenting her parlors, the
+duchess also extended the hospitalities of her parlors to the
+strangers who brought letters of recommendation, and who desired to
+be introduced to her. Great numbers hastened to avail themselves of
+this permission.</p>
+<p>The most brilliant and select circle was soon assembled around
+the duchess. There, were to be found the great men of the empire,
+who came out of attachment; distinguished strangers, who came out
+of admiration; and, finally, the aristocrats of the old era, who
+came out of curiosity, who came to see if the Duchess of St. Leu
+was really so intelligent, amiable, and graceful, as she was said
+to be.</p>
+<p>The parlors of the duchess were therefore more talked of in
+Paris than they had been at St. Leu. The old duchesses and
+princesses of the Faubourg St. Germain, with all their ancestors,
+prejudices, and pretensions, were enraged at hearing this
+everlasting praise of the charming queen, and endeavored to appease
+their wrath by renewed hostilities against its object.</p>
+<p>It was not enough that she was calumniated, at court and in
+society, as a dangerous person; the arm of the press was also
+wielded against her.</p>
+<p>As we have said, Hortense was the embodied remembrance of the
+empire, and it was therefore determined that she should be
+destroyed. <i>Brochures</i> and pamphlets were published, in which
+the king was appealed to, to banish from Paris, and even from
+France, the dangerous woman who was conspiring publicly, and even
+under the very eyes of the government, for Napoleon, and to banish
+with her the two children also, the two Napoleons; "for," said
+these odious accusers, "to leave these two princes here, means to
+raise in France wolves that would one day ravage their
+country<a name="FNanchor42"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_42">[42]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_42"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor42">[42]</a> Cochelet, M&eacute;moires sur la Reins
+Hortense, vol. ii., p. 330.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense paid but little attention to these reports and
+calumnies. She was too much accustomed to being misunderstood and
+wrongly judged, to allow herself to be disquieted thereby. She knew
+that calumnies were never refuted by contradiction, and that it was
+therefore better to meet them with proud silence, and to conquer
+them by contempt, instead of giving them new life by combating and
+contradicting them.</p>
+<p>She herself entertained such contempt for calumny that she never
+allowed anything abusive to be said in her presence that would
+injure any one in her estimation. When, on one occasion, while she
+was still Queen of Holland, a lady of Holland took occasion to
+speak ill of another lady, on account of her political opinions,
+the queen interrupted her, and said: "Madame, here I am a stranger
+to all parties, and receive all persons with the same
+consideration, for I love to hear every one well spoken of; and I
+generally receive an unfavorable impression of those only who speak
+ill of others<a name="FNanchor43"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_43">[43]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_43"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor43">[43]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.</blockquote>
+<p>And, strange to say, she herself was ever the object of calumny
+and accusation.</p>
+<p>"During twenty-five years, I have never been separated from
+Princess Hortense," says Louise de Cochelet, "and I have never
+observed in her the slightest feeling of bitterness against any
+one; ever good and gentle, she never failed to take an interest in
+those who were unhappy; and she endeavored to help them whenever
+and wherever they presented themselves. And this noble and gentle
+woman was always the object of hatred and absurd calumnies, and
+against all this she was armed with the integrity and purity of her
+actions and intentions only<a name="FNanchor44"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_44">[44]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_44"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor44">[44]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.</blockquote>
+<p>Nor did Hortense now think of contradicting the calumnies that
+had been circulated concerning her. Her mind was occupied with
+other and far more important matters.</p>
+<p>An ambassador of her husband, who resided in Florence, had come
+to Paris in order to demand of Hortense, in the name of Louis
+Bonaparte, his two sons.</p>
+<p>After much discussion, he had finally declared that he would be
+satisfied, if his wife would send him his eldest son, Napoleon
+Louis, only.</p>
+<p>But the loving mother could not and would not consent to a
+separation from either of her children; and as, in spite of her
+entreaties, her husband persisted in refusing to allow her to
+retain both of them, she resolved, in the anguish of maternal love,
+to resort to the most extreme means to retain the possession of her
+sons.</p>
+<p>She informed her husband's ambassador that it was her fixed
+purpose to retain possession of her children, and appealed to the
+law to recognize and protect them, and not allow her sons to be
+deprived of their rights as Frenchmen, by going into a compulsory
+exile.</p>
+<p>While the Duchess of St. Leu was being accused of conspiring in
+favor of Napoleon, her whole soul was occupied with the one
+question, which was to decide whether one of her sons could be torn
+from her side or not; and, if she conspired at all, it was only
+with her lawyer in order to frustrate her husband's plans.</p>
+<p>But the calumnies and accusations of the press were nevertheless
+continued; and at last her friends thought it necessary to lay
+before the queen a journal that contained a violent and abusive
+article against her, and to request that they might be permitted to
+reply to it.</p>
+<p>"With a sad smile, Hortense read the article and returned the
+newspaper.</p>
+<p>"It is extremely mortifying to be scorned by one's countrymen,"
+said she, "but it would be useless to make any reply. I can afford
+to disregard such attacks--they are powerless to harm me."</p>
+<p>But when on the following morning the same journal contained a
+venomous and odious article levelled at her husband, Louis
+Bonaparte, her generous indignation was aroused, and, oblivious of
+all their disagreements, and even of the process now pending
+between them, she remembered only that it was the father of her
+children whom they had dared to attack, and that he was not present
+to defend himself. It therefore devolved upon her to defend
+him.</p>
+<p>"I am enraged, and I desire that M. Despr&eacute;s shall reply
+to this article at once," said Hortense. "Although paternal love on
+the one side, and maternal love on the other, has involved us in a
+painful process, it nevertheless concerns no one else, and it
+disgraces neither of us. I should be in despair, if this sad
+controversy were made the pretext for insulting the father of my
+children and the honored name he bears. For the very reason that I
+stand alone, am I called on to defend the absent to the best of my
+ability. Therefore let M. Despr&eacute;s come to me; I will
+instruct him how to answer this disgraceful article!"</p>
+<p>On the following day, an able and eloquent article in defence of
+Louis Bonaparte appeared in the journal--an article that shamed and
+silenced his accusers--an article which the prince, whose cause it
+so warmly espoused, probably never thought of attributing to the
+wife to whose maternal heart be had caused such anguish<a name=
+"FNanchor45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45">[45]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_45"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor45">[45]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 303.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.3"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE BURIAL OF LOUIS XVI. AND HIS WIFE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The earnest endeavors of the Bourbon court to find the
+resting-place of the remains of the royal couple who had died on
+the scaffold, and who had expiated the crimes of their predecessors
+rather than their own, were at last successful. The remains of the
+illustrious martyrs had been sought for in accordance with the
+directions of persons who had witnessed their sorrowful and
+contemptuous burial, and the body of Louis XVI. was found in a
+desolate corner of the grave-yard of St. Roch, and in another place
+also that of Queen Marie Antoinette.</p>
+<p>It was the king's wish, and a perfectly natural and just one, to
+inter these bodies in the royal vault at St. Denis, but he wished
+to do it quietly and without pomp; his acute political tact taught
+him that these sad remains should not be made the occasion of a
+political demonstration, and that it was unwise to permit the bones
+of Louis XVI. to become a new apple of discord.</p>
+<p>But the king's court, even his nearest relatives, his ministers,
+and the whole troop of arrogant courtiers, who desired, by means of
+an ostentatious interment, not only to show a proper respect for
+the beheaded royal pair, but also to punish those whom they
+covertly called "regicides," and whom they were nevertheless now
+compelled to tolerate--the king's entire court demanded a solemn
+and ceremonious interment; and Louis, who, as he himself had said,
+"was king, but not master," was compelled to yield to this
+demand.</p>
+<p>Preparations were therefore made for an ostentatious interment
+of the royal remains, and it was determined that the melancholy
+rites should take place on the 21st of January, 1815, the
+anniversary of painful memories and unending regret for the royal
+family.</p>
+<p>M. de Chateaubriand, the noble and intelligent eulogist and
+friend of the Bourbons, caused an article to be inserted in the
+<i>Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, in which he announced the
+impending ceremony. This article was then republished in pamphlet
+form; and so great was the sympathy of the Parisians in the
+approaching event, that thirty thousand copies were disposed of, in
+Paris alone, in one day.</p>
+<p>On the 20th of January the graves of the martyrs were opened,
+and all the princes of the royal house who were present, knelt down
+at the edge of the grave to mingle their prayers with those of the
+thousands who had accompanied them to the church-yard.</p>
+<p>But the king was right. This act, that appeared to some to be a
+mere act of justice, seemed an insult to others, and reminded them
+of the dark days of error and fanaticism, in which they had allowed
+themselves to be drawn into the vortex of the general delirium.
+Many of those who in the Assembly had voted for the death of the
+king, were now residing at Paris, and even at court, as for
+instance Fouch&eacute;, and to them the approaching ceremony seemed
+an insult.</p>
+<p>"Are you aware," exclaimed Descourtis, as he rushed into the
+apartment of Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, who was at that moment
+conversing with the Count de Pere, "have you already been informed
+that this ceremony is really to take place to-morrow?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, to-morrow is the fated day. To-morrow we are to be
+delivered over to the daggers of fanatics."</p>
+<p>"Is this the pardon that was promised us?"</p>
+<p>"As for that," exclaimed the Count de Pere (a good royalist), "I
+was not aware that there was an article in the constitution
+forbidding the reinterment of the mortal remains of the royal pair.
+The proceeding will be perfectly lawful."</p>
+<p>"It is their purpose to infuriate the populace," exclaimed
+Descourtis, pale with inward agitation. "Old recollections are to
+be recalled and a mute accusation hurled at us. But we shall some
+day be restored to power again, and then we will remember
+also!"</p>
+<p>Cambac&eacute;r&egrave;s, who had listened to this conversation
+in silence, now stepped forward, and, taking Descourtis's hand in
+his own, pressed it tenderly.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my friend," said he, in sad and solemn tones, "I would we
+were permitted to march behind the funeral-car in mourning-robes
+to-morrow! We owe this proof of repentance to France and to
+ourselves!"</p>
+<p>The solemn funeral celebration took place on the following day.
+All Paris took part in it. Every one, even the old republicans, the
+Bonapartists as well as the royalists, joined the funeral
+procession, in order to testify that they had abandoned the past
+and were repentant.</p>
+<p>Slowly and solemnly, amid the ringing of all the bells, the roll
+of the drum, the thunders of artillery, and the chants of the
+clergy, the procession moved onward.</p>
+<p>The golden crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car,
+shone lustrously in the sunlight. It had fallen from the heads of
+the royal pair while they still lived; it now adorned them in
+death.</p>
+<p>Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived
+at the Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre.
+Suddenly a terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the
+air.</p>
+<p>The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen
+down, touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into
+fragments on the glittering snow of the street.</p>
+<p>This occurred on the 21st of January; two months later, at the
+same hour, and on the same day, the crown of Louis XVIII. fell from
+his head, and Napoleon placed it on his own!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.3"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>A cry of tremendous import reverberated through Paris, all
+France, and all Europe, in the first days of March, 1815. Napoleon,
+it was said, had quitted Elba, and would soon arrive in France!</p>
+<p>The royalists heard it with dismay, the Bonapartists with a
+delight that they hardly took the pains to conceal.</p>
+<p>Hortense alone took no part in the universal delight of the
+imperialists. Her soul was filled with profound sadness and dark
+forebodings. "I lament this step," said she; "I would have
+sacrificed every thing to prevent his return to France, because I
+am of the belief that no good can come of it. Many will declare
+for, and many against him, and we shall have a civil war, of which
+the emperor himself may be the victim<a name=
+"FNanchor46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46">[46]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_46"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor46">[46]</a> Cochelet, vol. ii., p. 348.</blockquote>
+<p>In the meanwhile the general excitement was continually
+increasing; it took possession of every one, and at this time none
+would have been capable of giving cool and sensible advice.</p>
+<p>Great numbers of the emperor's friends came to the Duchess of
+St. Leu, and demanded of her counsel, assistance, and
+encouragement, accusing her of indifference and want of sympathy,
+because she did not share their hopes, and was sad instead of
+rejoicing with them.</p>
+<p>But the spies of the still ruling government, who lay in wait
+around the queen's dwelling, did not hear her words; they only saw
+that the emperor's former generals and advisers were in the habit
+of repairing to her parlors, and that was sufficient to stamp
+Hortense as the head of the conspiracy which had for its object the
+return of Napoleon to France.</p>
+<p>The queen perceived the danger of her situation, but she bowed
+her head to receive the blows of Fate in silent resignation. "I am
+environed by torments and perplexities," said she, "but I see no
+means of avoiding them. There is no resource for me but to arm
+myself with courage, and that I will do."</p>
+<p>The royal government, however, still hoped to be able to stem
+the advancing tide, and compel the waves of insurrection to surge
+backward and destroy those who had set them in motion.</p>
+<p>They proposed to treat the great event which made France glow
+with new pulsations, as a mere insurrection, that had been
+discovered in good time, and could therefore be easily repressed.
+They therefore determined, above all, to seize and render harmless
+the "conspirators," that is to say, all those of whom it was known
+that they had remained faithful to the emperor in their hearts.</p>
+<p>Spies surrounded the houses of all the generals, dukes, and
+princes of the empire, and it was only in disguise and by the
+greatest dexterity that they could evade the vigilance of the
+police.</p>
+<p>The Duchess of St. Leu was at last also compelled to yield to
+the urgent entreaties of her friends, and seek an asylum during
+these days of uncertainty and danger. She quitted her dwelling in
+disguise, and, penetrating through the army of spies who lay in
+wait around the house and in the street in which she resided, she
+happily succeeded in reaching the hiding-place prepared for her by
+a faithful servant of her mother. She had already confided her
+children to another servant who had remained true to her in her
+time of trouble.</p>
+<p>The Duke of Otranto, now once more the faithful Fouch&eacute; of
+the empire, was also to have been arrested, but he managed to
+effect his escape. General Lavalette--who was aware that the
+dwelling of the Duchess of St. Leu was no longer watched by the
+police, who had discovered that the duchess was no longer
+there--Lavalette took advantage of this circumstance, and concealed
+himself in her dwelling, and M. de Dandr&eacute;, the chief of
+police, who had vainly endeavored to catch the so-called
+conspirators, exclaimed in anguish: "It is impossible to find any
+one; it has been so much noised about that these Bonapartists were
+to be arrested, that they are now all hidden away."</p>
+<p>Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and
+doubting capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in
+Grenoble with exultation, and the troops that were to have been led
+against him have, together with their chieftain, Charles de
+Labedoy&egrave;re, gone over to the emperor. The gates of the city
+were thrown open, and the people advanced to meet him with shouts
+of welcome and applause; and now Napoleon stood no longer at the
+head of a little body of troops, but at the head of a small army
+that was increasing with every hour."</p>
+<p>The government still endeavored, through its officials and
+through the public press, to make the Parisians disbelieve this
+intelligence.</p>
+<p>But the government had lost faith in itself. It heard the old,
+the hated cry, "Vive l'empereur!" resounding through the air; it
+heard the fluttering of the victorious battle-flags of Marengo,
+Arcola, Jena, and Austerlitz! The Emperor Napoleon was still the
+conquering hero, who swayed destiny and compelled it to declare for
+him.</p>
+<p>A perfect frenzy of dismay took possession of the royalists; and
+when they learned that Napoleon had already arrived in Lyons, that
+its inhabitants had received him with enthusiasm, and that its
+garrison had also declared for him, their panic knew no bounds.</p>
+<p>The royalist leaders assembled at the house of Count de la Pere,
+for the purpose of holding a last great discussion and
+consultation. The most eminent persons, men and women, differing
+widely on other subjects, but a unit on this point, assembled here
+with the same feelings of patriotic horror, and with the same
+desire to promote the general welfare. There were Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, Benjamin Constant, Count Lain&eacute;, and
+Chateaubriand; there were the Duke de N&eacute;mours, and Count de
+la Pere, and around them gathered the whole troop of anxious
+royalists, expecting and hoping that the eloquent lips of these
+celebrated personages who stood in their midst would give them
+consolation and new life.</p>
+<p>Benjamin Constant spoke first. He said that, to Napoleon, that
+is, to force, force must be opposed. Bonaparte was armed with the
+love of the soldiers, they must arm themselves with the love of the
+citizens. His appearance was imposing, like the visage of Caesar;
+it would be necessary to oppose to him an equally sublime
+countenance. Lafayette should, therefore, be made
+commander-in-chief of the French army.</p>
+<p>M. de Chateaubriand exclaimed, with noble indignation, that the
+first step to be taken by the government was to punish severely a
+ministry that was so short-sighted, and had committed so many
+faults. Lain&eacute; declared, with a voice tremulous with emotion,
+that all was lost, and that but one means of confounding tyranny
+remained; a scene, portraying the whole terror, dismay and grief of
+the capital at the approach of the hated enemy, should be arranged.
+In accordance with this plan, the whole population of Paris--the
+entire National Guard, the mothers, the young girls, the children,
+the old and the young--were to pass out of the city, and await the
+tyrant; and this aspect of a million of men fleeing from the face
+of a single human being was to move or terrify him who came to rob
+them of their peace!</p>
+<p>In her enthusiastic and energetic manner, Madame de Sta&euml;l
+pronounced an anathema against the usurper who was about to kindle
+anew, in weeping, shivering France, the flames of war.</p>
+<p>All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do
+nothing but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent
+lips of these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were,
+nothing more than a bulletin concerning the condition of the
+patient, and concerning the mortal wounds which he had received.
+This patient was France; and the royalists, who were assembled in
+the house of Count de la Pere, now felt that the patient's case was
+hopeless, and that nothing remained to them but to go into exile,
+and bemoan his sad fate<a name="FNanchor47"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_47">[47]</a>!</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_47"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor47">[47]</a> M&eacute;moires d'une Femme de
+Qualit&eacute;, vol. i., p. 99.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.3"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and
+despairing, King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and
+sense of security. That is to say, they had taken care not to
+inform him of the real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had
+been informed that Bonaparte had been everywhere received with
+coldness and silence, and that the army would not respond to his
+appeal, but would remain true to the king. The exultation with
+which the people everywhere received the advancing emperor found,
+therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the crowd who pressed
+around the king when he repaired to the hall of the <i>Corps
+L&eacute;gislatif</i> to hold an encouraging address, was not the
+people, but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and
+gentlemen of the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the
+first entrance, acted the part to which the people were not
+disposed to adapt themselves, and transformed themselves for a
+moment into the people, in order to show to the king the
+demonstrations of his people's love.</p>
+<p>The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
+continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance
+was in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this
+deception so far that they had informed the king that Lyons had
+closed its gates to Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet
+him, vowing that he would bring the emperor back to Paris in an
+iron cage.</p>
+<p>The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute,
+when suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of
+Orleans, who, according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a
+victor, arrived in Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their
+soldiers and servants, and informed Louis that Lyons had received
+the emperor with open arms, and that no resource had been left them
+but to betake themselves to flight.</p>
+<p>And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence
+followed the first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his
+tottering throne, Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile
+position toward his old companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the
+emperor, and his army had followed him with exultation.</p>
+<p>The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and
+learned how greatly he had been deceived.</p>
+<p>"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not
+listen to the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell
+me the truth!"</p>
+<p>At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to
+his brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who
+surrounded him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and
+the Minister Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of
+victory, now stepped in pale and trembling.</p>
+<p>The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now
+plainly impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had
+desired to hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling
+minister.</p>
+<p>A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all
+were fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general
+silence, he was heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion:
+"Sire, all is lost; the army, as well as the people, betray your
+majesty. It will be necessary for your majesty to leave Paris."</p>
+<p>The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an
+inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared
+to return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down
+sorrowfully.</p>
+<p>The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his
+breast.</p>
+<p>"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile;
+"heretofore it has been your purpose to make me govern for you,
+hereafter I shall govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to
+the throne of my fathers once more, you will be made to understand
+that I will profit by the experience you have given me<a name=
+"FNanchor48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48">[48]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_48"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor48">[48]</a> The king's own words. M&eacute;moires d'une
+Femme de Qualit&eacute;, vol. i. p. 156.</blockquote>
+<p>A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count
+Blacas, without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing
+a torch, the king left the once more desolate and solitary
+Tuileries, and fled to Holland.</p>
+<p>Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March,
+Napoleon entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts
+of the people, and the thundering "<i>Vive l'empereur</i>" of the
+troops. On the same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had
+but yesterday fluttered, the <i>tricolore</i> of the empire now
+flung out its folds to the breeze.</p>
+<p>In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his
+generals, and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing
+and greeting him. An immense concourse of people surged around the
+entrance on the stair-ways and in the halls.</p>
+<p>Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor
+was carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while
+shouts of joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined
+the more fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his
+apartments, and rent the air with exulting cries of "<i>Vive
+l'empereur</i>!"</p>
+<p>In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was
+received by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen
+Hortense, who had abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried
+to the Tuileries to salute the emperor.</p>
+<p>Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the
+health of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have
+placed my nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain
+in the midst of my enemies."</p>
+<p>Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The
+emperor seemed not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship
+of my enemies," said he, "and have placed yourself under
+obligations to the Bourbons. I depend on Eugene; I hope he will
+soon be here. I wrote to him from Lyons."</p>
+<p>This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He
+was angry with her for having remained in France, and at the same
+time the flying Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of
+her: "The Duchess of St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues
+alone have brought Napoleon back to Paris."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.3"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE HUNDRED DAYS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a
+myth of the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes
+destroy worlds with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the
+ground with a stamp of the foot; in which nations perish, and new
+ones are born within the space of a minute.</p>
+<p>These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these
+hundred days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth
+can offer of fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as
+well as of all that the earth contains that is disgraceful,
+miserable, traitorous, and perfidious.</p>
+<p>Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed
+to hail the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to
+assure him of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that
+they had only obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.</p>
+<p>The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the
+Tuileries, where the emperor now held his glittering court again.
+There was, however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the
+honors of the court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who
+had not returned with her husband; and the emperor could not now
+show the people his own son, but could only point to his two
+nephews, the sons of Hortense.</p>
+<p>The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had
+been compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations;
+he had comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her
+children, in continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her
+reluctance. After this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon
+extended his hand to Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and
+begged her to name a wish, in order that he might fulfil it.</p>
+<p>Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned
+by the royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing
+Bourbons to be the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now
+entreated the emperor to permit the Duchess d'Orleans, who had not
+been able to leave Paris on account of a broken limb, to remain,
+and to accord her a pension besides. She told the emperor that she
+had received a letter from the duchess, in which she begged for her
+intercession in obtaining some assistance from the emperor,
+assuring her that it was urgently Deeded, in her depressed
+circumstances.</p>
+<p>The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter
+Hortense; and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon
+accorded a pension of four hundred thousand francs to the Duchess
+d'Orleans, the mother of King Louis Philippe<a name=
+"FNanchor49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49">[49]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_49"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor49">[49]</a> La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et
+en Angleterre. Ecrit par elle-m&ecirc;me, p. 185.</blockquote>
+<p>A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two
+hundred thousand francs was also accorded to the Duchess of
+Bourbon, who had also besought the queen to exert her influence in
+her behalf; and both ladies now hastened to assure Hortense of
+their everlasting gratitude. The fulfilment of her wish filled
+Hortense with delight; she was as proud of it as of a victory
+achieved.</p>
+<p>"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for
+these ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a
+few clays before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a
+state!"</p>
+<p>But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was
+now no longer the Duchess of St. Leu, but the queen and the
+ornament of the court once more; all heads now bowed before her
+again, and the high-born ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her
+existence during the past year, now hastened to do homage to the
+queen.</p>
+<p>"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen,
+"unfortunately, you were always absent in the country when I called
+to pay my respects during the past winter."</p>
+<p>The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which
+she accompanied with a smile.</p>
+<p>Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point
+of attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public
+officials now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in
+order to pay their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each
+day beheld new <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> and ceremonies.</p>
+<p>The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of
+the <i>Champ de Mai</i>, that took place on the first of June, and
+at which the emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace,
+presented to his army the new eagles and flags, which they were
+henceforth to carry into battle instead of the lilies of the
+Bourbons.</p>
+<p>It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of
+human beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made
+the welkin ring with their "<i>Vive l'empereur</i>!"--to behold the
+proud, triumphant soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles
+consecrated by the priests at the altar that stood before the
+emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle to behold the hundreds of
+richly-attired ladies glittering with diamonds, who occupied the
+tiers of seats that stood immediately behind the emperor's chair,
+and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the first
+seats.</p>
+<p>The air was so balmy, the sun shone so lustriously over all this
+splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and
+the strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while
+all were applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the
+emperor's chair covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay
+before her, the grand ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her,
+"might perhaps be the last of the empire<a name=
+"FNanchor50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50">[50]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_50"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor50">[50]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this
+universal delight and contentment.</p>
+<p>The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she
+already perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the
+mutterings of the storm that was soon, and this time forever, to
+hurl the emperor's throne to the ground. She knew that a day would
+suddenly come when all this brightness would grow dim, and when all
+those who now bowed so humbly before him, would turn from him
+again--a day when they would deny and desert the emperor as they
+had already done once before, and that, from that day on, the
+present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as a debt. But
+this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarrassment.</p>
+<p>The emperor was once more there; he was the lord and father left
+her by her mother Josephine, and it was her duty and desire to be
+true and obedient to him as long as she lived.</p>
+<p>The sun still shone lustrously over the restored empire, and in
+the parlors of Queen Hortense, where the diplomats, statesmen,
+artists, and all the notables of the empire were in the habit of
+assembling, gayety reigned supreme. There music and literature were
+discussed, and homage done to all the fine arts.</p>
+<p>Benjamin Constant, who had with great rapidity transformed
+himself from an enthusiastic royalist into an imperial
+state-councillor, came to the queen's parlors and regaled her
+guests by reading to them his romance Adolphe; and Metternich, the
+Austrian ambassador seemed to have no other destiny than to amuse
+the queen and the circle of ladies assembled around them, and to
+invent new social games for their entertainment.</p>
+<p>Metternich knew how to bring thousands of charming little
+frivolities into fashion; he taught the ladies the charming and
+poetic language of flowers, and made it a symbolic means of
+conversation and correspondence in the queen's circle. He also, to
+the great delight of the court, invented the alphabet of gems; in
+this alphabet each gem represented its initial letter, and, by
+combinations, names and devices were formed, which were worn in
+necklaces, bracelets, and rings.</p>
+<p>The little games with which the diplomatic Metternich occupied
+himself during the hundred days at the imperial court at Paris,
+were, it appears, of the most innocent and harmless nature.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.3"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S LAST ADIEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The storm, of the approach of which Queen Hortense had so long
+had a foreboding, was preparing to burst over France. All the
+princes of Europe who had once been Napoleon's allies had now
+declared against him. They all refused to acknowledge Napoleon as
+emperor, or to treat with him as one having any authority.</p>
+<p>"No peace, no reconciliation with this man," wrote the Emperor
+Alexander to Pozzo di Borgo; "all Europe is of the same opinion
+concerning him. With the exception of this man, any thing they may
+demand; no preference for any one; no war after this man shall have
+been set aside<a name="FNanchor51"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_51">[51]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_51"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor51">[51]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 90.</blockquote>
+<p>But, in order to "set this man aside," war was necessary. The
+allied armies therefore advanced toward the boundaries of France;
+the great powers declared war against France, or rather against the
+Emperor Napoleon; and France, which had so long desired peace, and
+had only accepted the Bourbons because it hoped to obtain it of
+them, France was now compelled to take up the gauntlet.</p>
+<p>On the 12th of June the emperor left Paris with his army, in
+order to meet the advancing enemy. Napoleon himself, who had
+hitherto gone into battle, his countenance beaming with an
+assurance of victory, now looked gloomy and dejected, for he well
+knew that on the fate of his army now depended his own, and the
+fate of France.</p>
+<p>This time it was not a question of making conquests, but of
+saving the national independence, and it was the mother-earth, red
+with the blood of her children, that was now to be defended.</p>
+<p>Paris, that for eighty days had been the scene of splendor and
+festivity, now put on its mourning attire. All rejoicings were at
+an end, and every one listened hopefully to catch the first tones
+of the thunder of a victorious battle.</p>
+<p>But the days of victory were over; the cannon thundered, the
+battle was fought, but instead of a triumph it was an
+overthrow.</p>
+<p>At Waterloo, the eagles that had been consecrated on the first
+of June, on the <i>Champ de Mai</i>, sank in the dust; the emperor
+returned to Paris, a fugitive, and broken down in spirit, while the
+victorious allies were approaching the capital.</p>
+<p>At the first intelligence of his return, Hortense hastened to
+the Elys&eacute;e, where he had taken up his residence, to greet
+him. During the last few days she had been a prey to gloomy
+thoughts; now that the danger had come, now when all were
+despairing, she was composed, resolute, and ready to stand at the
+emperor's side to the last.</p>
+<p>Napoleon was lost, and Hortense knew it; but he now had most
+need of friends, and she remained true, while so many of his
+nearest friends and relatives were deserting him.</p>
+<p>On the twenty-second day of June the emperor sent in his
+abdication in favor of his son, the King of Rome, to the chambers;
+and a week later the chambers proclaimed Napoleon's son Emperor of
+France, under the name of Napoleon II.</p>
+<p>But this emperor was a child of four years, and was, moreover,
+not in France, but in the custody of the Emperor of Austria, whose
+army was now marching on Paris with hostile intent!</p>
+<p>Napoleon, now no longer Emperor of France, had been compelled to
+take the crown from his head a second time; and for the second time
+he quitted Paris to await the destiny to be appointed him by the
+allies.</p>
+<p>This time he did not repair to Fontainebleau, but to
+Malmaison--to Malmaison, that had once been Josephine's paradise,
+and where her heart had at last bled to death. This charming resort
+had passed into the possession of Queen Hortense; and Napoleon, who
+but yesterday had ruled over a whole empire, and to-day could call
+nothing, not even the space of ground on which he stood, his own,
+Napoleon asked Hortense to receive him at Malmaison.</p>
+<p>Hortense accorded his request joyfully, and, when her friends
+learned this, and in their dismay and anxiety conjured her not to
+identify in this manner herself and children with the fate of the
+emperor, but to consider well the danger that would result from
+such a course, the queen replied resolutely: "That is an additional
+reason for holding firm to my determination. I consider it my
+sacred duty to remain true to the emperor to the last, and the
+greater the danger that threatens the emperor, the happier I shall
+be in having it in my power to show him my entire devotion and
+gratitude."</p>
+<p>And when, in this decision, when her whole future hung in the
+balance, one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind
+the queen of the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once
+been put in circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon,
+and suggested that she would give new strength to them by now
+receiving the emperor at Malmaison, Hortense replied with dignity:
+"What do I care for these calumnies? I fulfil the duty imposed on
+me by feeling and principle. The emperor has always treated me as
+his child; I shall therefore ever remain his devoted and grateful
+daughter; it is my first and greatest necessity to be at peace with
+myself<a name="FNanchor52"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_52">[52]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_52"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor52">[52]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 149.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense therefore repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and
+the faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune,
+gathered around him, watched over his life, and gave to his
+residence a fleeting reflection of the old grandeur and
+magnificence. For they who now stood around Napoleon, guarding his
+person from any immediate danger that threatened him at the hands
+of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were marshals, generals,
+dukes, and princes.</p>
+<p>But Napoleon's fate was already decided--it was an inevitable
+one, and when the intelligence reached Malmaison that the enemy was
+approaching nearer and nearer, and that resistance was no longer
+made anywhere, and when Napoleon saw that all was lost, his throne,
+his crown, and even the love which he imagined he had for ever
+built up for himself in the hearts of the French people by his
+great deeds and victories--when he saw this he determined to fly,
+no matter whither, but away from the France that would no longer
+rally to his call, the France that had abandoned him.</p>
+<p>The emperor resolved to fly to Rochefort, and to embark there in
+order to return to Elba. The provisional government that had
+established itself in Paris, and had sent an ambassador to Napoleon
+at Malmaison with the demand that he should depart at once, now
+instructed this ambassador to accompany the emperor on his journey,
+and not to leave him until he should have embarked.</p>
+<p>Napoleon was ready to comply with this demand. He determined to
+depart on the afternoon of the 30th of June. He had nothing more to
+do but to take leave of his friends and family. He did this with
+cold, tearless composure, with an immovable, iron countenance; no
+muscle of his face quivered, and his glance was severe and
+imperious.</p>
+<p>But, when Hortense brought in her two sons, when he had clasped
+them in his arms for the last time, then a shadow passed over his
+countenance; then his pale compressed lips quivered, and he turned
+away to conceal the tears that stood in his eyes.</p>
+<p>But Hortense had seen them, and in her heart she preserved the
+remembrance of these tears as the most precious gem of her departed
+fortune. As the emperor then turned to her to bid her adieu in his
+former cold and immovable manner, Hortense, who well knew that a
+volcano of torments must be glowing under this cold lava, entreated
+him to grant her a last favor.</p>
+<p>A painful smile illumined the emperor's countenance for a
+moment. There was, it seemed, still something that he could grant;
+he was not altogether powerless! With a mute inclination of the
+head he signified his assent. Hortense handed him a broad black
+belt.</p>
+<p>"Sire," said she, "wear this belt around your body and beneath
+your clothing. Conceal it carefully, but in the time of necessity
+remember it and open it."</p>
+<p>The emperor took the belt in his hand, and its weight startled
+him.</p>
+<p>"What does it contain?" asked he: "I must know what it
+contains!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," said Hortense, blushing and hesitating: "Sire, it is my
+large diamond necklace that I have taken apart and sewed in this
+belt. Your majesty may need money in a critical moment, and you
+will not deny me this last happiness, your acceptance of this
+token."</p>
+<p>The emperor refused, but Hortense entreated him so earnestly
+that he was at last compelled to yield, and accept this
+love-offering.</p>
+<p>They then took a hasty and mute leave of each other, and
+Hortense, in order to hide her tears, hastened with her children
+from the room.</p>
+<p>The emperor summoned a servant, and ordered that no one else
+should be admitted; but at this moment the door was hastily thrown
+open, and a national guard entered the room.</p>
+<p>"Talma!" exclaimed the emperor, almost gayly, as he extended his
+hand.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Talma, sire," said he, pressing the emperor's hand to his
+lips. "I disguised myself in this dress, in order that I might get
+here to take leave of your majesty."</p>
+<p>"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor,
+sadly. "I shall never be able to admire you in your great
+<i>r&ocirc;les</i> again, Talma. I am about to depart, never to
+return again. You will play the emperor on many an evening, but not
+I, Talma! My part is at an end!"</p>
+<p>"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma,
+with generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown
+and the purple robe."</p>
+<p>"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a
+throne that is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected
+for yourself on the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the
+books of history. And every one, no matter to what nation he may
+belong, who reads of your great deeds, will be inspired by them,
+and will acknowledge himself to be one of your people, and bow down
+before the emperor in reverence."</p>
+<p>"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
+deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"</p>
+<p>"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will
+also one day regret, having deserted the great man he once called
+brother!" And, in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind
+Napoleon of one of his moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your
+majesty perhaps remembers that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor
+of Russia made you so tender a declaration of his love, publicly
+and before the whole world? But no, you cannot remember it; for you
+it was a matter of no moment; but I--I shall never forget it! It
+was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.' I looked up at the
+box in which your majesty sat, between the King of Prussia and the
+Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second Alexander of
+Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft and saw
+you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship of a
+great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
+Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears
+choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this
+applause was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor
+Alexander<a name="FNanchor53"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_53">[53]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_53"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor53">[53]</a> This scene is entirely historical. See
+Bossuet, M&eacute;moires; Bourrienne, M&eacute;moires; Cochelet and
+Une Femme de Qualit&eacute;.</blockquote>
+<p>While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes
+flashing, a rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for
+an instant, he smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised
+up the humiliated emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.</p>
+<p>Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand
+to bid him adieu.</p>
+<p>As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up
+in front of the house. It was Letitia, the emperor's mother, who
+had come to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless
+suspense; in his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to
+witness this leave-taking.</p>
+<p>"Madame m&egrave;re" walked past Talma in silence, and without
+observing him. She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the
+room, his sombre and flashing glance fastened on her with an
+unutterable expression. Now they stood face to face, mother and
+son. The emperor's countenance remained immovable as though hewn
+out of marble.</p>
+<p>They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly
+trickled down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background,
+weeping bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Letitia now raised
+both hands and extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said
+she, in full and sonorous tones.</p>
+<p>Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and
+fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother,
+adieu!"</p>
+<p>Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her
+hand fall. Letitia turned to go, and at this moment General
+Bertrand appeared at the door to announce that all was prepared for
+the journey<a name="FNanchor54"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_54">[54]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_54"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor54">[54]</a> This leave-taking was exactly as above
+described, and Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See
+her M&eacute;moires, vol. iii, P. 173.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IV."></a>BOOK IV.</h2>
+<h3><i>THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU</i>.</h3>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I.4"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE BANISHMENT OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the
+protection of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of
+France. But this time he did not return with his former mild and
+conciliatory disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came
+unaccompanied by mercy. The old generals and marshals of the
+empire, who had not been able to resist their chieftain's call,
+were now banished, degraded, or executed. Ney and
+Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re paid for their fidelity to the emperor
+with their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the
+Bonapartes were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been
+circulated in 1814 against the Duchess of St. Leu were now to bear
+bitter fruit. These were the dragon's teeth from which the armed
+warriors had sprung, who now levelled their swords at the breast of
+a defenceless woman.</p>
+<p>King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had
+not forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The Duchess of
+St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon
+back!" Now that he was again king, he thought of it, and determined
+to punish her. He requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he
+should this time not call on the Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation
+concerning Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering
+web with which Madame de Kr&uuml;dener had enveloped him, and
+separated from the reality of the world, acceded to the wishes of
+the Bourbons, and abandoned the queen. This was the signal that let
+loose the general wrath of the royalists; they could now freely
+utter their scorn and malice. By low calumnies they could now
+compensate themselves for their humiliation of the past, for having
+been compelled to approach the daughter of Viscountess de
+Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.</p>
+<p>They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with
+boundless fury, for this very fury proved their royalism, and to
+hate and calumniate Bonaparte and his family was to love and
+flatter the Bourbons.</p>
+<p>Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the
+duchess, whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of
+the empire, and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as
+well as the column on the <i>Place Vend&ocirc;me</i>.</p>
+<p>While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her
+apartments, in sadness and desolation, the report was circulated
+that she was again conspiring, and that she was in the habit of
+leaving her house every evening at twilight, in order to incite the
+populace to rise and demand the emperor's return, or at least the
+instalment of the little King of Rome on the throne instead of
+Louis de Bourbon.</p>
+<p>When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet,
+informed her of these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and
+indifferent.</p>
+<p>"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure
+as if I were reciting a story of the last century!"</p>
+<p>"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we
+have lost all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us,
+with the composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it
+natural that they should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear
+a name that has made the whole world tremble, and that will still
+be great, though we all be trodden in the dust. But I will shield
+myself and children from this hatred. We will leave France and go
+to Switzerland, where I possess a little estate on the Lake of
+Geneva."</p>
+<p>But time was not allowed the duchess to prepare for her
+departure. The dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her
+to drive her from the city. A defenceless woman with two young
+children seemed to be an object of anxiety and terror to the
+government, and it made haste to get rid of her.</p>
+<p>On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian
+General de M&uuml;ffling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to
+the dwelling of the Duchess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant,
+M. Deveaux, that the duchess must leave Paris within two hours, and
+it was only at the urgent solicitation of the intendant, that a
+further sojourn of four hours was allowed her.</p>
+<p>Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and
+depart without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for
+her journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she
+of course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a
+troop of enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching
+departure, had quitted Paris to lie in wait for her on her road,
+"in order to rob her of the millions in her custody."</p>
+<p>The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with
+her, but only that which was absolutely necessary.</p>
+<p>General de M&uuml;ffling offered her an escort of his soldiers;
+Hortense declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian
+officer might be allowed to accompany her for the protection of
+herself and children on the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of
+Prince Schwartzenberg, was selected for this purpose.</p>
+<p>On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the Duchess of St. Leu
+took her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet
+in Paris to arrange her affairs, and assure the safe-keeping of her
+jewelry. Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count
+Boyna, her children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been
+a queen left Paris to go into exile.</p>
+<p>It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her
+beloved France, that she could no longer call her country, and that
+now seemed as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it
+had once passionately loved them.</p>
+<p>In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had
+everywhere hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their
+real disposition beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom
+Hortense met on her journey were therefore all royalists, who
+thought they could give no better testimony to their patriotism
+than by persecuting with cries of scorn, with gestures of hatred,
+and with loud curses, the woman whose only crime was that she bore
+the name of him whom France had once adored, and whom the royalists
+hated.</p>
+<p>Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and
+her children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger
+against her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it
+necessary to call on the Austrian military stationed there for
+assistance in protecting the duchess and her children from the
+attacks of an infuriated crowd, led by royal guards and beautiful
+ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned with the lilies of the
+Bourbons<a name="FNanchor55"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_55">[55]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_55"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor55">[55]</a> Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.</blockquote>
+<p>Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced,
+Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being
+able to retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the
+storms of life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The
+French ambassador in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed
+the authorities of that city that his government would not tolerate
+the queen's sojourn so near the French boundary, and demanded that
+she should depart. The authorities of Geneva complied with this
+demand, and ordered the Duchess of St. Leu to leave the city
+immediately.</p>
+<p>When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the duchess, and
+asked her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed
+despair found utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into
+the lake, then we shall all be at rest!"</p>
+<p>But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly
+submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last
+possession, the charming little Pregny, from her "<i>r&ecirc;ve de
+chalet</i>."</p>
+<p>In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in
+Aix, where she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen,
+and where she was at least permitted to live in retirement with her
+children and a few faithful adherents.</p>
+<p>But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her
+fell upon her!</p>
+<p>Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814,
+shortly before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that
+she should deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody
+of his father. Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him,
+Louis demanded that this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron
+von Zuyten to Aix to bring back the prince to his father then
+residing in Florence.</p>
+<p>The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard
+command; she was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms
+to a father who was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore
+could not love.</p>
+<p>It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his
+mother, and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before
+been separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his
+neck, tearfully entreating him to stay with him.</p>
+<p>But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two
+weeping children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while
+Napoleon Louis followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as
+though his heart would break. When Hortense heard the carriage
+driving off, she uttered a cry of anguish and fell to the ground in
+a swoon, and a long and painful attack of illness was the
+consequence of this sorrowful separation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II.4"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The Duchess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose
+in Aix; the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still
+fearing the name whose first and greatest representative was now
+languishing on a solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons
+considered it dangerous that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter,
+and her son, whose name of Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living
+monument of the past, should be permitted to sojourn so near the
+French boundary. They therefore instructed their ambassador to the
+government of Savoy to protest against the further sojourn of the
+queen in Aix, and Hortense was compelled to undertake a new
+pilgrimage, and to start out into the world again in search of a
+home.</p>
+<p>She first turned to Baden, whose duchess, Stephanie, was so
+nearly related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore
+well expect a kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify
+his cousin's hopes; he had not the courage to defy the jealous
+fears of France, and it was only at the earnest solicitation of his
+wife that he at last consented that Hortense should take up her
+residence at the extreme end of the grand-duchy, at Constance, on
+the Lake of Constance; and this permission was only accorded her on
+the express condition that neither the duchess nor her son should
+ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife, Stephanie, should never
+visit her cousin at Constance.</p>
+<p>Hortense accepted this offer with its conditions, contented to
+find a place where she could rest after her long wanderings, and
+let the bleeding wounds of her heart heal in the stillness and
+peace of beautiful natural scenery. She passed a few quiet, happy
+years in Constance desiring and demanding nothing but a little rest
+and peace, aspiring to but one thing--to make of the son whom
+Providence had given her as a compensation for all her sufferings,
+a strong, a resolute, and an intelligent man.</p>
+<p>Her most tender care and closest attention were devoted to the
+education of this son. An excellent teacher, Prof. Lebas, of Paris,
+officiated as instructor to the young prince. She herself gave him
+instruction in drawing, in music, and in dancing; she read with
+him, sang with him, and made herself a child, in order to replace
+to her lonely boy the playmate Fate had torn from his side.</p>
+<p>While reposing on her <i>chaise-longue</i> on the long quiet
+evenings, her boy seated on a cushion at her feet, she would speak
+to him of his great uncle, and of his heroic deeds, and of his
+country, of France that had discarded them, to be able to return to
+which was, however, her most ardent wish, and would continue to be
+while life lasted. She would then inspire the boy's soul with the
+description of the great battles which his uncle had won in Italy,
+on the Nile, on the Rhine, and on the Danube; and the quiet, pale
+boy, with the dark, thoughtful eyes, would listen in breathless
+suspense, his weak, slender body quivering with emotion when his
+mother told him how dearly his uncle had loved France, and that all
+his great and glorious deeds had been done for the honor and renown
+of France alone.</p>
+<p>One day, while he was sitting before her, pale and trembling
+with agitation, his mother pointed to David's splendid painting,
+representing Napoleon on the heights of the Alps, the genial
+conception of which painting is due to Napoleon's own
+suggestions.</p>
+<p>"Paint me tranquilly seated on a wild horse," Napoleon had said
+to David, and David had so painted him--on a rearing steed, on the
+summit of a rock which bears the inscription "Hannibal" and
+"Caesar." The emperor's countenance is calm, his large eyes full of
+a mysterious brilliancy, his hair fluttering in the wind, the whole
+expression thoughtful and earnest; the rider heedless of the
+rearing steed, which he holds firmly in check with the reins.</p>
+<p>A beautiful copy of this great painting hung in the parlor of
+the duchess; and to this she now pointed while narrating the
+history of the emperor's passage over the Great St. Bernard with an
+army, a feat never before performed except by Hannibal and Caesar,
+and perhaps never to be performed again.</p>
+<p>As she concluded her narrative, an almost angry expression
+flitted across the young prince's countenance. Rising from his
+seat, and holding himself perfectly erect, he exclaimed: "Oh,
+mamma, I shall also cross the Alps some day, as the emperor
+did!"</p>
+<p>And while thus speaking, a glowing color suffused his face; his
+lips trembled, and the feverish beating of his heart was quite
+audible.</p>
+<p>Hortense turned in some anxiety to her friend Louise de
+Cochelet, and begged her in a low voice to soothe the child with
+the recital of some merry narrative. As Louise looked around the
+room thoughtfully and searchingly, a cup that stood on the
+mantel-piece arrested her gaze. She hastened to the mantel, took
+the cup, and returned with it to little Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>"Mamma has been explaining a very grave picture to you, Louis,"
+said she; "I will now show you a merry one. Look at it--isn't it
+charming?"</p>
+<p>The prince cast a hasty, absent-minded look at the cup, and
+nodded gravely. Louise laughed gayly.</p>
+<p>"You see, Louis," said she, "that this is the exact counterpart
+of the picture of the Emperor Napoleon, who, while riding over the
+Alps, encounters on their summit the great spirits of Hannibal and
+Caesar. Here is a little Napoleon, who is not climbing up the Alps,
+but climbing down from his bed, and who, on this occasion, meets a
+black spirit, in the person of a chimney-sweep. This is the history
+of the great and of the little Napoleon; the great meets Hannibal,
+the little the chimney-sweep."</p>
+<p>"Am I the little Napoleon?" asked the boy, gravely.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Louis, you are, and I will now tell you the story of this
+cup. One day, when we were all still in Paris, and while your great
+uncle was still Emperor of France--one day, you met in your room a
+little Savoyard who had just crept out of the chimney in his black
+dress, his black broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and
+were about to run away, but I held you back and told you that these
+chimney-sweeps were poor boys, and that their parents were so poor
+that they could not support their children, but were compelled to
+send them to Paris to earn their bread by creeping into and
+cleaning our hot and dirty chimneys, with great trouble, and at the
+risk of their lives. My story touched you, and you promised me
+never to be afraid of the little chimney-sweeps again. A short time
+afterward, you were awakened early in the morning by a strange
+noise, your brother still lay asleep at your side, and your nurse
+was absent from the room. This noise was made by a chimney-sweep
+who had just come down the chimney and now stood in your room. As
+soon as you saw him, you remembered his poverty, jumped out of bed
+in your night-clothes, and ran to the chair on which your clothes
+lay. You took out of your pocket the purse you were compelled to
+carry with you on your walks to give money to the poor, and you
+emptied its entire contents into the black, sooty hand of the young
+Savoyard. You then tried to get back to bed, but it was too high
+for you; you could not climb over the railing. Seeing this, the
+chimney-sweep came to your assistance, and took the little prince
+in his arms to help him into bed. At this moment, your nurse
+entered the room, and your brother who had just awakened, cried
+loudly when he saw Louis in the arms of a chimney-sweep.</p>
+<p>"This is the story of little Napoleon and the chimney-sweep!
+Your grandmother, the Empress Josephine was so much pleased with
+this story, that your mother had the scene painted on a cup, and
+presented it to the empress, in order to afford her a
+gratification. And what do you think, Louis--this cup was also the
+cause of a punishment being remitted your cousin, the King of Rome,
+who now lives in Vienna!"</p>
+<p>"Tell me all about it, Louise," said the prince, smiling.</p>
+<p>"You shall hear it! Your mother had instructed me to take the
+cup to Malmaison to the empress. But before going, I endeavored to
+obtain some news about the little King of Rome for the empress.
+Your good grandmother loved him as though he had been her own
+child, although she had never seen him. I therefore went to the
+Tuileries to see the little King of Rome, with whose governess,
+Madame de Montesquieu, I was intimately acquainted. On entering the
+apartment, I saw the king cowering behind a chair in a corner of
+the room; Madame de Montesquieu intimated by a look that he was
+undergoing a punishment; I understood it, and first conversed with
+his governess for a short time. When I then turned and approached
+him, he concealed the tearful, flushed face, that his long blond
+curls covered as with a golden veil, whenever he moved behind the
+chair.</p>
+<p>"'Sire,' said Madame de Montesquieu to him, 'sire, do you not
+intend to bid Mademoiselle de Cochelet good-morning? She came here
+expressly to see you.'</p>
+<p>"'Your majesty does not recognize me,' said I, attempting to
+take his small hand in mine. He tore it from me, and cried in a
+voice almost choked with sobbing: 'She will not let me look at the
+soldiers of my papa!'</p>
+<p>"Madame de Montesquieu told me that it was the little prince's
+greatest pleasure to see the Guards exercising on the <i>Place de
+Carrousel</i>, but that she had deprived Mm of this pleasure
+to-day, because he had been naughty and disobedient; that, when he
+heard the music and drums, his despair and anger had become so
+great that she had been forced to resort to severe means, and make
+him stand in the corner behind a chair. I begged for the young
+king's pardon; I showed him the cup, and explained the scene that
+was painted on it. The king laughed, and Madame de Montesquieu
+pardoned him for the sake of his little cousin, Louis Napoleon, who
+was so well behaved, and who was always held up to him as a
+model<a name="FNanchor56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56">[56]</a>. Now
+you have heard the whole story, are you pleased with it,
+Louis?"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_56"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor56">[56]</a> Cochelet, vol. i., p. 212.</blockquote>
+<p>"I like it very much," said the grave boy, "but I do not like my
+cousin's governess, for having intended to prevent him from looking
+at his father's soldiers. Oh, how handsome they must have been, the
+soldiers of the emperor! Mamma, I wish I were also an emperor, and
+had ever so many handsome soldiers."</p>
+<p>Hortense smiled sadly, and laid her hand on the boy's head as if
+to bless him. "Oh, my son," said she, "it is no enviable fortune to
+wear a crown. It is almost always fastened on our head with
+thorns!"</p>
+<p>From this day on, Prince Louis Napoleon would stand before his
+uncle's portrait, lost in thought, and after looking at it to his
+satisfaction, he would run out and call the boys of the
+neighborhood together, in order to play soldier and emperor with
+them in the large garden that surrounded his mother's house, and
+teach the boys the first exercise.</p>
+<p>One day, in the zeal of play, he had entirely forgotten his
+mother's command, not to go out of the garden, and had inarched
+into the open field with his soldiers. When his absence from the
+garden was noticed, all the servants were sent out to look for him,
+and the anxious duchess, together with her ladies, assisted in this
+search, walking about in every direction through the cold and the
+slush of the thawing snow. Suddenly they came upon the boy
+barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves, wading toward them through the
+mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused at this unexpected
+meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he had been
+playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor and
+ragged that it was painful to look at them. As he had no money to
+give them, he had put his shoes on one child, and his coat on
+another<a name="FNanchor57"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_57">[57]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_57"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor57">[57]</a> Cochelet, vol. iv., p. 303.</blockquote>
+<p>The duchess did not have the courage to scold him; she stooped
+down and kissed her son; but when her ladies commenced to praise
+him, she motioned to them to be silent, and said in a loud voice
+that what her son had done was quite a matter of course, and
+therefore deserved no praise.</p>
+<p>An ardent desire to gladden others and make them presents was
+characteristic of little Louis Napoleon. One day, Hortense had
+given him three beautiful studs for his shirt, and on the same day
+the prince transferred them to one of his friends who admired
+them.</p>
+<p>When Hortense reproached her son for doing so, and threatened to
+make him no more presents, as he always gave them away again
+directly, Louis Napoleon replied, "Ah, mamma, this is why your
+presents give me double pleasure--once when you give them to me,
+and the second time when I make others happy with them<a name=
+"FNanchor58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58">[58]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_58"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor58">[58]</a> Cochelet, vol. i, p. 355.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III.4"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Fate seemed at last weary of persecuting the poor Duchess of St.
+Leu. It at least accorded her a few peaceful years of repose and
+comfort; it at least permitted her to rest from the weariness of
+the past on the bosom of Nature, and to forget her disappointments
+and sorrows. The Canton of Thurgau had had the courage to extend
+permission to the duchess to take up her residence within its
+borders, at the very moment when the Grand-duke of Baden, who had
+been urged to the step by Germany and France, had peremptorily
+ordered Hortense to leave Constance and his grand-duchy without
+delay.</p>
+<p>Hortense had thankfully accepted the offer of the Swiss canton,
+and had purchased, on the Swiss side of the Lake of Constance, an
+estate, whose beautiful situation on the summit of a mountain,
+immediately on the banks of the lake, with its magnificent view of
+the surrounding country, and its glittering glaciers on the distant
+horizon, made it a most delightful place of sojourn. Hortense now
+caused the furniture of her dwelling in Paris, that had been sold,
+to be sent to her. The sight of these evidences of her former
+grandeur awakened sweet and bitter emotions in her heart, as they
+were one after another taken out of the cases in which they had
+been packed--these sofas, chairs, divans, carpets, chandeliers,
+mirrors, and all the other ornaments of the parlors in which
+Hortense had been accustomed to receive kings and emperors, and
+which were now to adorn the Swiss villa that was outwardly so
+beautiful because of the vicinity, and inwardly so plain and
+simple.</p>
+<p>But Hortense knew how to make an elegant and tasteful
+disposition of all these articles; she herself arranged every thing
+in her house, and took true feminine delight in her task. And when
+all was at last arranged--when she walked, with her son at her
+side, through the suite of rooms, in which every ornament and piece
+of furniture reminded her of the past--when these things recalled
+the proud days of state when so many friends, relatives, and
+servants, had surrounded her--a feeling of unutterable loneliness,
+of painful desolation, came over her, and she sank down on a sofa
+and wept bitterly. But there was nevertheless a consolation in
+having these familiar articles in her possession once more; these
+mute friends often awakened in the solitary queen's heart memories
+that served to entertain and console her. Arenenberg was a perfect
+temple of memory; every chair, every table, every article of
+furniture, had its history, and this history spoke of Napoleon, of
+Josephine, and the great days of the empire.</p>
+<p>In Arenenberg Hortense had at last found a permanent home, and
+there she passed the greater part of the year; and it was only when
+the autumnal storms began to howl through her open and
+lightly-constructed villa, that Hortense repaired to Rome, to pass
+the winter months in a more genial climate, while her son Louis
+Napoleon was pursuing his studies at the artillery school at
+Thun.</p>
+<p>And thus the years passed on, quiet and peaceful, though
+sometimes interrupted by new losses and sorrows. In the year 1821
+the hero, the emperor, to whose laurel-crown the halo of a martyr
+had now also been added, died on the island-rock, St. Helena.</p>
+<p>In the year 1824 Hortense lost her only brother, Eugene, the
+Duke of Leuchtenberg.</p>
+<p>The only objects of Hortense's love were now her two sons, who
+were prospering in mind and body, and were the pride and joy of
+their mother, and an object of annoyance and suspicion to all the
+princes of Europe. For these children bore in their countenance, in
+their name, and in their disposition, too plain an impress of the
+great past, which they could never entirely ignore while Bonaparte
+still lived to testify to it.</p>
+<p>And they lived and prospered in spite of the Bourbons; they
+lived and prospered, although banished from their country, and
+compelled to lead an inactive life.</p>
+<p>But at last it seemed as though the hour of fortune and freedom
+had come for these Bonapartes--as though they, too, were to be
+permitted to have a country to which they might give their devotion
+and services.</p>
+<p>The thundering voice of the revolution of 1830 resounded
+throughout trembling Europe. France, on whom the allies had imposed
+the Bourbons, arose and shook its mane; with its lion's paw it
+overthrew the Bourbon throne, drove out the Jesuits who had stood
+behind it, and whom Charles X. had advised to tear the charter to
+pieces, to destroy the freedom of the press, and to reintroduce the
+<i>autos da f&eacute;</i> of the olden time.</p>
+<p>France had been treated as a child in 1815, and was now
+determined to assert its manhood; it resolved to break entirely
+with the past, and with its own strength to build up a future for
+itself.</p>
+<p>The lilies of the Bourbons were to bloom no more; these last
+years of fanatical Jesuit tyranny had deprived them of life, and
+France tore the faded lily from her bosom in order to replace it
+with a young and vigorous plant. The throne of the Bourbons was
+overthrown, but the people, shuddering at the recollection of the
+sanguinary republic, selected a king in preference. It stretched
+out its hand after him it held dearest; after him who in the past
+few years had succeeded in winning the sympathy of France. It
+selected the Duke of Orleans, the son of Philippe
+&Eacute;galit&eacute;, for its king.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe, the enthusiastic republican of 1790, who at that
+time had caused the three words "<i>Libert&eacute;,
+&Eacute;galit&eacute;, Fraternit&eacute;</i>" and the inscription
+"<i>Vive la R&eacute;publique,"</i> to be burnt on his arm, in
+order to prove his republicanism; the proscribed Louis Philippe,
+who had wandered through Europe a fugitive, earning his bread by
+teaching writing and languages--the same Louis Philippe now became
+King of France.</p>
+<p>The people called him to the throne; they tore the white flag
+from the roof of the Tuileries, but they knew no other or better
+one with which to replace it than the <i>tricolore</i> of the
+empire.</p>
+<p>Under the shadow of this <i>tricolore</i> Louis Philippe mounted
+the throne, and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the
+glorious era of the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in
+order to indulge their sympathies they demanded for France--not the
+son of Napoleon, not Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and
+the emperor's statue on the Palace Vend&ocirc;me. Louis Philippe
+accorded them both, but with these concessions he thought he had
+done enough. He had accepted the <i>tricolore</i> of the empire; he
+had promised that the emperor should watch over Paris from the
+summit of the Vend&ocirc;me monument, and to cause his ashes to be
+brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.</p>
+<p>They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it
+would be worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course
+might easily shake the new throne, and recall the allies to
+Paris.</p>
+<p>The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still
+continued against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich
+said, "a principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the
+throne."</p>
+<p>The European powers had signified to the King of France, through
+their diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but
+they exacted one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe
+should confirm or renew the decree of exile fulminated by the
+Bourbons against the Bonapartes.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes,
+whose only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of
+the deceased emperor, before whom not only France, but all the
+princes of Europe, had once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once
+more declared strangers to their country, and condemned to
+exile!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV.4"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of
+banishment! Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts,
+annihilating their holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their
+joy over the glorious and heroic revolution of July gave place to a
+bitter sense of disappointment.</p>
+<p>Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life
+to which they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console
+themselves, for their new disappointment, with the arts and
+sciences.</p>
+<p>At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to
+leave Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the
+habit of doing every year.</p>
+<p>But this time she first went to Florence, where her elder son,
+Napoleon Louis, recently married to his cousin, the second daughter
+of King Joseph, was now living with his young wife. The heart of
+the tender mother was filled with anxiety and care; she felt and
+saw that this new French Revolution was likely to infect all
+Europe, and that Italy, above all, would be unable to avoid this
+infection. Italy was diseased to the core, and it was to be feared
+that it would grasp at desperate means in its agony, and proceed to
+the blood-letting of a revolution, in order to restore itself to
+health. Hortense felt this, and feared for her sons.</p>
+<p>She feared that the exiled, the homeless ones who had been
+driven from their country, and were not permitted to serve it,
+would devote their services to those who were unhappy and who
+suffered like themselves. She feared the enthusiasm, the generous
+courage, the energy of her sons, and she knew that, if a revolution
+should break out in Italy, it would gladly adorn itself with the
+name of Napoleon.</p>
+<p>Hortense, therefore, conjured her sons to hold themselves aloof
+from all dangerous undertakings, and not to follow those who might
+appeal to them with the old word of magic power, "liberty;" that,
+in spite of the tears and blood it has already caused mankind, can
+never lose its wondrous power.</p>
+<p>Her two sons promised compliance; and, much relieved, Hortense
+left Florence, and went, with her younger son, Louis Napoleon, to
+Rome.</p>
+<p>But Rome, otherwise so aristocratic and solemn, assumed an
+unusual, an entirely new, physiognomy this winter. In society the
+topics of conversation were no longer art and poetry, the Pantheon
+and St. Peter, or what the newest amusement should be; but politics
+and the French Revolution were the all-engrossing topics, and the
+populace listened anxiously for the signal that should announce
+that the revolution in Italy had at last begun.</p>
+<p>Even the populace of Rome, usually addicted to lying so
+harmlessly in the sunshine, now assembled in dense groups on the
+streets, and strange words were heard when the police cautiously
+approached these groups for the purpose of listening. But they now
+lacked the courage to arrest those who uttered those words; they
+felt that such a provocation might suffice to tear away the veil
+behind which the revolution still concealed itself.</p>
+<p>The whole energy and watchfulness of the Roman government was
+therefore employed in endeavoring to avert the revolution, if
+possible; not, however, by removing the cause and occasion, but by
+depriving the people of the means. The son of Hortense, Louis
+Napoleon, seemed to the government a means which the revolution
+might use for its purposes, and it was therefore determined that he
+should be removed.</p>
+<p>His name, and even the three-colored saddle-blanket of his
+horse, with which he rode through the streets of Rome, were
+exciting to the populace, in whose veins the fever of revolution
+was already throbbing. Louis Napoleon must therefore be
+removed.</p>
+<p>The Governor of Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle,
+Cardinal Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to
+remove the young prince from Rome for a few weeks.</p>
+<p>But the cardinal indignantly declared that his nephew, who had
+done nothing, should not be compelled to leave Rome merely on
+account of his name and his saddle-blanket, and that he would never
+advise the Duchess of St. Leu to do anything of the kind.</p>
+<p>The Roman government therefore determined to adopt energetic
+means. It caused the dwelling of the duchess to be surrounded by
+soldiers, while a papal office presented himself before Hortense,
+and announced that he had received orders to remove Prince Louis
+from the city at once, and to conduct him without the papal
+territory.</p>
+<p>The fear of approaching evil caused the government to forget the
+respect due to nobility in misfortune and the emperor's nephew was
+turned out of the city like a criminal!</p>
+<p>Hortense received this intelligence almost with joy. Far from
+Rome, it seemed to her that he would be safer from the revolution,
+whose approach she so much dreaded; and it therefore afforded her
+great satisfaction to send the prince to Florence, to his father,
+believing that he would there be shielded from the dangerous
+political calumnies that threatened him in Rome. She therefore
+permitted him to depart; and how could she have prevented his
+departure--she, the lone, powerless woman, to whom not even the
+French ambassador would have accorded protection! No one interceded
+for her--no one protested against the violent and brutal course
+pursued toward Louis Napoleon--no one, except the Russian
+ambassador.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia was the only one of all the sovereigns of
+Europe who felt himself strong enough not to ignore the name of
+Napoleon, and the consideration due to the family of a hero and of
+an emperor.</p>
+<p>The Emperor of Russia had, therefore, never refused his
+protection and assistance to the Bonapartes, and his ambassador was
+now the only one who protested against the violent course taken by
+the Roman government.</p>
+<p>The revolution at last broke forth. Italy arose as France had
+done, resolved to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, and
+be free! The storm first broke out in Modena. The duke saw himself
+compelled to fly, and a provisional government under General
+Menotti placed itself in his stead. But, while this was taking
+place in Modena, the populace of Rome was holding high festival in
+honor of the newly-chosen Pope Gregory XVI., who had just taken his
+seat in the chair of the deceased Pope Pius VIII., and these
+festivities, and the Carnival, seemed to occupy the undivided
+attention of the Romans; under the laughing mask of these
+rejoicings the revolution hid its grave and threatening visage, and
+it was not until <i>mardi-gras</i> that it laid this mask aside and
+showed its true countenance.</p>
+<p>The people had been accustomed to throw confectionery and
+flowers on this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable
+by a shower of stones and bullets; this time they were not to
+appear in the harlequin jacket, but in their true form, earnest,
+grand, commanding, self-conscious, and self-asserting.</p>
+<p>But the government had been informed of the intention of the
+conspirators to avail themselves of the drive to the Corso, to
+begin the revolution, and this procession was prohibited an hour
+before the time appointed for its commencement.</p>
+<p>The people arose against this prohibition, and the revolution
+they had endeavored to repress by this means now broke out.</p>
+<p>The thunder of cannon and the rattling of musketry now resounded
+through the streets of Rome, and the people everywhere resisted the
+papal soldiery with energy and determination.</p>
+<p>The new pope trembled in the Quirinal, the old cardinals lost
+courage, and in dismay recoiled a step at every advancing stride of
+the insurgents. Gregory felt that the papal crown he had just
+achieved was already on the point of falling from his head, to be
+trodden in the dust by the victorious populace; he turned to
+Austria, and solicited help and assistance.</p>
+<p>But young Italy, the Italy of enthusiasm, of liberty, and of
+hope, looked to France for support. Old Italy had turned to Austria
+for help; young Italy looked for assistance to the free,
+newly-arisen France, in which the revolution had just celebrated a
+glorious victory. But France denied its Italian brother, and denied
+its own origin; scarcely had the revolution seated itself on the
+newly-erected kingly throne and invested itself with the crown and
+purple robe, when, for its own safety, it became reactionary, and
+denied itself.</p>
+<p>With all Italy, Rome was resolved to shake off the yoke of
+oppression; the whole people espoused this cause with enthusiasm;
+and in the streets of Rome--at other times filled with priests and
+monks and holy processions--in these streets, now alive with the
+triumphant youth of Rome, resounded exultant songs of freedom.</p>
+<p>The strangers, terrified by this change, now quitted the holy
+city in crowds, and hastened to their homes. Hortense desired to
+remain; she knew that she had nothing to fear from the people, for
+all the evil that had hitherto overtaken her, had come, not from
+the people, but always from the princes only<a name=
+"FNanchor59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59">[59]</a>. However, letters
+suddenly arrived from her sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and
+announcing that they would leave Florence within the hour, in order
+to hasten forward to meet their mother.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_59"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor59">[59]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 63.</blockquote>
+<p>Upon reading this, Hortense cried aloud with terror--she, who
+knew and desired no other happiness on earth than the happiness of
+her children, she whose only prayer to God had ever been, that her
+children might prosper and that she might die before them, now felt
+that a fearful danger threatened her sons, and that they were now
+about to be swept into the vortex of the revolution.</p>
+<p>They had left Florence, and their father, and were now on the
+way to Rome, that is, on the way to the revolution that would
+welcome them with joy, and inscribe the name Napoleon on its
+standards!</p>
+<p>But it was perhaps still time to save them; with her prayers and
+entreaties she might still succeed in arresting them on the verge
+of the abyss into which they were hastening in the intoxication of
+their enthusiasm. As this thought occurred to her, Hortense felt
+herself strong, determined, and courageous; and, on the same day on
+which she had received the letters, she left Rome, and hurried
+forward to meet her sons. She still hoped to be in time to save
+them; she fancied she saw her sons in every approaching
+carriage--but in vain!</p>
+<p>They had written that they would meet her on the road, but they
+were not there!</p>
+<p>Perhaps they had listened to the representations of their
+father; perhaps they had remained in Florence and were awaiting
+their mother's arrival there.</p>
+<p>Tormented by fear and hope, Hortense arrived in Florence and
+drove to the dwelling in which her son Louis Napoleon had resided.
+Her feet could scarcely bear her up; she hardly found strength to
+inquire after her son--he was not there!</p>
+<p>But he might be with his father, and Hortense now sent there for
+intelligence of her sons. The messenger returned, alone and
+dejected: her sons had left the city!</p>
+<p>The exultant hymn of liberty had struck on their delighted ear,
+and they had responded to the call of the revolution.</p>
+<p>General Menotti had appealed to them, in the name of Italy, to
+assist the cause of freedom with their name and with their swords,
+and they had neither the will nor the courage to disregard this
+appeal.</p>
+<p>A servant, left behind by her younger son, delivered to the
+duchess a letter from her son Louis Napoleon, a last word of adieu
+to his beloved mother.</p>
+<p>"Your love will understand us," wrote Louis Napoleon. "We cannot
+withdraw ourselves from duties that devolve upon us; the name we
+bear obliges us to listen to the appeal of unhappy nations. I beg
+you to represent this matter to my sister-in-law as though I had
+persuaded my brother to accompany me; it grieves him to have
+concealed from her one action of his life<a name=
+"FNanchor60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60">[60]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_60"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor60">[60]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 78.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V.4"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>THE DEATH OF PRINCE NAPOLEON.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>That which Hortense most dreaded had taken place: the voice of
+enthusiasm had silenced every other consideration; and the two sons
+of the Duchess of St. Leu, the nephews of the Emperor Napoleon, now
+stood at the head of the revolution. From Foligno to Civita
+Castellano, they organized the defence, and from the cities and
+villages the young people joyously hurried forth to enroll
+themselves under their banners, and to obey the Princes Napoleon as
+their leaders; the crowds which the young princes now led were
+scarcely armed, but they nevertheless advanced courageously, and
+were resolved to attempt the capture of Civita Castellano, in order
+to liberate the state prisoners who had been languishing in its
+dungeons for eight years.</p>
+<p>This was the intelligence brought back by the couriers whom
+Hortense had dispatched to her sons with letters entreating them to
+return.</p>
+<p>It was too late--they neither would nor could return.</p>
+<p>Their father wrung his hands in despair, and conjured his wife,
+he being confined to his arm-chair by illness and the gout, to do
+all in her power to tear their sons from the fearful danger that
+menaced them. For the revolution was lost; all who were cool and
+collected felt and saw this. But the youth refused to see it; they
+still continued to flock to the revolutionary banners; they still
+sang exultant hymns of freedom, and, when their parents endeavored
+to hold them back, they fled from the parental house secretly, in
+order to answer the call that resounded on their ear in such divine
+notes.</p>
+<p>One of the sons of the Princess of Canino, the wife of Lucien
+Bonaparte, had fled from his father's castle in order to join the
+insurgents. They succeeded in finding, and forcing him to return,
+and as the family were under obligations to the pope for having
+created the principalities of Canino and Musignano, for Lucien
+Bonaparte and his eldest son, the most extreme measures were
+adopted to prevent the young prince from fighting against the
+troops of the pope;</p>
+<p>The Princess of Canino, as a favor, requested the Grand-duke of
+Tuscany to confine her son in one of the state prisons of Tuscany;
+her request was granted, and her son taken to a prison, where he
+was kept during the entire revolution. It was proposed to the
+Duchess of St. Leu to adopt this same means of prevention, but, in
+spite of her anxiety and care, and although, in her restlessness
+and feverish disquiet, she wandered through her rooms day and
+night, she declined to take such a course. She was not willing to
+subject her sons to the humiliation of such compulsion; if their
+own reason, if the prayers and entreaties of their mother, did not
+suffice, force should not be resorted to, to bring them back. The
+whole family was, however, still employing every means to induce
+the two Princes Napoleon to withdraw from the revolution, which
+must inevitably again draw down upon the name Napoleon the
+suspicion of the angry and distrustful princes of Europe.</p>
+<p>Cardinal Fesch and King Jerome conjured their nephews, first in
+entreating, and then in commanding letters, to leave the insurgent
+army.</p>
+<p>With the consent of their father, Louis Bonaparte, they wrote to
+the provisional government at Bologna that the name of the two
+princes was injuring the cause of the revolution, and to General
+Armandi, the minister of war of the insurgent government,
+entreating him to recall the princes from the army. Every one,
+friend and foe, combined to neutralize the zeal and efforts of the
+two princes, and to prove to them that they could only injure the
+cause to which they gave their names; that foreign powers,
+considering the revolution a matter to be decided by Italy alone,
+would perhaps refrain from intervening; but that they would become
+relentless should a Bonaparte place himself at the head of the
+revolution, in order perhaps to shake the thrones of Europe
+anew.</p>
+<p>The two princes at last yielded to these entreaties and
+representations; they gave up their commands, and resigned the rank
+that had been accorded them in the insurgent army; but, as it was
+no longer in their power to serve the revolution with their name
+and with their brains, they were at least desirous of serving it
+with their arms: they resigned their commands, but with the
+intention of remaining in the army as simple soldiers and
+volunteers without any rank.</p>
+<p>And when their father and their uncles, not yet satisfied with
+what they had done, urged them still further the two princes
+declared that, if these cruel annoyances were continued, they would
+go to Poland, and serve the revolution there<a name=
+"FNanchor61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61">[61]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_61"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor61">[61]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 93.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense had taken no part in these attempts and efforts of her
+family; she knew that it was all in vain; she understood her sons
+better than they, and she knew that nothing in the world could
+alter a resolution they had once formed. But she also knew that
+they were lost, that the revolution must be suppressed, that they
+would soon be proscribed fugitives, and she quietly prepared to
+assist them when the evil days should come. She armed herself with
+courage and determination, and made her soul strong, in order that
+she might not be overwhelmed by the misfortune that was so near at
+hand.</p>
+<p>While all about her were weeping and lamenting, while her
+husband was wringing his hands in despair, and complaining of the
+present, Hortense quietly and resolutely confronted the future, and
+prepared to defy it.</p>
+<p>That which she dreaded soon took place. An Austrian fleet sailed
+into the Adriatic; an Austrian army was marching on the
+insurrectionary Italian provinces. Modena had already been
+reconquered; the insurgents were already flying in crowds before
+the Austrian cannon, whose thundering salvos were destined to
+destroy once more the hopes of the youth of Italy.</p>
+<p>Like an enraged lioness glowing with enthusiasm and courage,
+Hortense now sprang up. The danger was there, and she must save her
+sons! She had long considered how it was to be done, and whither
+she was to go with them. She had first resolved to go with them to
+Turkey, and to take up her residence in Smyrna, but the presence of
+the Austrian fleet which ruled the Adriatic made this plan
+impracticable. At this moment of extreme danger, a volume of light
+suddenly beamed in upon her soul, and pointed out the way to
+safety. "I will take them by a road," said she to herself, "on
+which they will be least expected. I will conduct them through
+France, through Paris. The death-penalty will there hang suspended
+over them, but what care I for that? Liberty, justice, and
+humanity, still exercise too much control over France to make me
+apprehend such severe measures. I must save my sons; the way
+through France is the way of safety, and I shall therefore follow
+it!"</p>
+<p>And Hortense immediately began to carry her plan into execution.
+She requested an Englishman residing in Florence, to whose family
+she had once rendered important services in France, to call on her,
+and begged him to procure her a passport for an English lady and
+her two sons through France to England.</p>
+<p>The lord understood her, and gladly consented to assist her and
+her two sons.</p>
+<p>On the following day he brought her the required passport, and
+Hortense, who well knew that the best way to keep a secret was to
+have no confidants, now declared to her husband, as well as to her
+family and her friends that she was resolved to find her sons, and
+to embark with them from Ancona for Corfu!</p>
+<p>For this purpose she demanded a passport of the government of
+Tuscany, and it was accorded her.</p>
+<p>Her sons were still in Bologna, but it was known that this city
+must fall into the hands of the Austrians in a few days, and all
+was lost unless Hortense arrived there before them. She sent a
+trusty servant to her sons to announce her coming. Then, at
+nightfall, she herself departed, accompanied by one of her ladies
+only. She was courageous and resolute, for she knew that the safety
+of her sons, her only happiness, was at stake.</p>
+<p>Her rapidly-driven carriage had soon passed without the city,
+and she now found herself in a part of the country still occupied
+by the insurgents. Here all still breathed courage, joyousness, and
+confidence. The entire population, adorned with cockades and
+three-colored ribbons, seemed happy and contented, and refused to
+believe in the danger that threatened.</p>
+<p>Festivals were everywhere being held in honor of the revolution
+and of liberty, and those who spoke of the advancing Austrians and
+of dangers were ridiculed. Instead of making preparations for their
+defence, the insurgents folded their hands in contentment,
+rejoicing over that which they had already attained, and blind to
+the tide that was rolling down upon them.</p>
+<p>In the mean while, the insurgent army was in position near
+Bologna, and also still occupied the two cities of Terni and
+Soleta, which they had courageously defended against the papal
+troops. Every one expected that a decisive battle would soon take
+place, and every one looked forward to it with a joyous assurance
+of victory.</p>
+<p>Hortense was far from participating in this general confidence.
+In Foligno, where she had remained to await her sons, she passed
+several sorrowful days of expectancy and suspense, alarmed by every
+noise, and ever looking forward with an anxiously-throbbing heart
+to the moment when her sons should come to her as fugitives,
+perhaps covered with wounds, perhaps dying, to tell her that all
+was lost! Her anxiety at last became so great, that she could no
+longer remain in Foligno; she must be nearer her sons, she must
+view the dangers that encompassed them, and, if need be, share
+them. Hortense, therefore, left Foligno, and started for
+Ancona.</p>
+<p>On her arrival at the first station, she saw a man descend from
+a carriage and approach her. He was unknown to her, and yet she
+felt a dark foreboding at his approach. The mother's heart already
+felt the blow that awaited her.</p>
+<p>This man was a messenger from her sons. "Prince Napoleon is
+ill," said he.</p>
+<p>Hortense remembered that she had heard that a contagious disease
+was ravaging the vicinity. "Is he indeed ill?" cried she, in
+dismay.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and he earnestly desires to see you, madame!"</p>
+<p>"Oh," exclaimed Hortense, in terror, "if he calls for me, he
+must be very ill indeed!--Forward, forward, with all possible
+speed; I must see my son!"</p>
+<p>And onward they went with the speed of the wind from station to
+station, approaching nearer and nearer to their destination; but as
+they neared their destination, the faces they met grew sadder and
+sadder. At every station groups of people assembled about her
+carriage and gazed at her sorrowfully; everywhere she heard them
+murmur: "Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon is dead!" Hortense
+heard, but did not believe it! These words had not been spoken by
+men, but were the utterances of her anxious heart! Her son was not
+dead, he could not be dead. Napoleon lived, yes, he still lived!
+And again the people around her carriage murmured, "Napoleon is
+dead!"</p>
+<p>Hortense reclined in her carriage, pale and motionless. Her
+thoughts were confused, her heart scarcely beat.</p>
+<p>At last she reached her destination; her carriage drove up to
+the house in Pesaro, where her sons were awaiting her.</p>
+<p>At this moment a young man, his countenance of a deathly pallor,
+and flooded with tears, rushed out of the door and to her carriage.
+Hortense recognized him, and stretched out her arms to him. It was
+her son Louis Napoleon, and on beholding his pale, sorrowful
+countenance, and his tear-stained eyes, the unhappy mother learned
+the truth. Yes, it was not her heart, it was the people who had
+uttered the fearful words: "Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon
+is dead!"</p>
+<p>With a heart-rending cry, Hortense sank to the ground in a
+swoon.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI.4"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>THE FLIGHT FROM ITALY.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>But Hortense now had no leisure to weep over the son she had so
+dearly loved; the safety of the son who remained to her, whom she
+loved no less, and on whom her whole love must now be concentrated,
+was at stake.</p>
+<p>She still had a son to save, and she must now think of him--of
+Louis Napoleon, who stood in sorrow at her side, lamenting that
+Fate had not allowed him to die with his brother.</p>
+<p>Her son must be saved. This thought restored Hortense to health
+and strength. She is informed that the authorities of Bologna have
+already tendered submission to the Austrians; that the insurgent
+army is already scattering in every direction; that the Austrian
+fleet is already to be seen in the distance, approaching, perhaps
+with the intention of landing at Sinigaglia, in order to surround
+the insurgents and render flight impossible.</p>
+<p>This intelligence aroused Hortense from her grief and restored
+her energy. She ordered her carriage and drove with her son to
+Ancona, in full view of the people, in order that every one should
+know that it was her purpose to embark with her son for Corfu at
+that seaport. At Ancona, immediately fronting the sea, stood her
+nephew's palace, and there Hortense descended from her
+carriage.</p>
+<p>The waves of the storm-tossed sea sometimes rushed up to the
+windows of the room occupied by the duchess; from there she could
+see the port, and the crowds of fugitives who were pressing forward
+to save themselves on the miserable little vessels that there lay
+at anchor.</p>
+<p>And these poor people had but little time left them in which to
+seek safety. The Austrians were rapidly advancing; on entering the
+papal territory, they had proclaimed an amnesty, from the benefits
+of which Prince Louis Napoleon, General Zucchi, and the inhabitants
+of Modena, were, however, excepted. The strangers who had taken
+part in the insurrection were to be arrested and treated with all
+the severity of the law.</p>
+<p>The young people who had flocked from Modena, Milan, and from
+all Italy, to enroll themselves under the banner of the Roman
+revolution, now found it necessary to seek safety from the pursuing
+Austrians in flight.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon also had no time to lose; each moment lost might
+render flight impossible! Hortense was weary and ill, but she now
+had no time to think of herself; she must first save her son, then
+she could die, but not sooner.</p>
+<p>With perfect composure she prepared for her double (her feigned
+and her real) departure.</p>
+<p>Outwardly, she purposed embarking with her son at Corfu;
+secretly, it was her intention to fly to England through France!
+But the English passport that she had received for this purpose
+mentioned two sons, and Hortense now possessed but one; and it was
+necessary for her to provide a substitute for the one she had
+lost.</p>
+<p>She found one in the person of the young Marquis Zappi, who,
+compromised more than all the rest, joyfully accepted the
+proposition of the Duchess of St. Leu, promising to conform himself
+wholly to her arrangements, without knowing her plans and without
+being initiated in her secrets.</p>
+<p>Hortense then procured all that was necessary to the disguise of
+the young men as liveried servants, and ordered her carriage to be
+held in readiness for her departure.</p>
+<p>While this was being done in secret, she publicly caused all
+preparations to be made for her journey to Corfu. She sent her
+passport to the authorities for the purpose of obtaining the
+official <i>visa</i> for herself and sons, and had her trunks
+packed. Louis Napoleon had looked on, with cold and mute
+indifference, while these preparations were being made. He stood
+by, pale and dejected, without complaining or giving utterance to
+his grief.</p>
+<p>Becoming at last convinced that he was ill, Hortense sent for a
+physician.</p>
+<p>The latter declared that the prince was suffering from a severe
+attack of fever, which might become dangerous unless he sought
+repose at once. It was therefore necessary to postpone their
+departure for a day, and Hortense passed an anxious night at the
+bedside of her fever-shaken, delirious son.</p>
+<p>The morning at last dawned, the morning of the day on which they
+hoped to fly; but when the rising sun shed its light into the
+chamber in which Hortense stood at her son's bedside, who can
+describe the unhappy mother's horror when she saw her son's face
+swollen, disfigured, and covered with red spots!</p>
+<p>Like his brother, Louis Napoleon had also taken the same
+disease.</p>
+<p>For a moment Hortense was completely overwhelmed, and then, by
+the greatest effort of her life, she summoned her fortitude to her
+aid. She immediately sent for the physician again, and, trusting to
+a sympathetic human heart, she confided all to him, and he did not
+disappoint her. What is to be done must be done quickly,
+immediately, or it will be in vain!</p>
+<p>Hortense thinks of all, and provides for all. Especially, she
+causes her son's passport to Corfu to be signed by the authorities,
+and a passage to be taken for him on the only ship destined for
+Corfu now lying in the harbor. She instructs the servants, who are
+conveying trunks and packages to the vessel, to inform the curious
+spectators of her son's intended departure on this vessel. She at
+the same time causes the report to be circulated that she has
+suddenly been taken ill, and can therefore not accompany her
+son.</p>
+<p>The physician confirms this statement, and informs all Ancona of
+the dangerous illness of the Duchess of St. Leu.</p>
+<p>And after all this had been done, Hortense causes her son's bed
+to be carried into the little cabinet adjoining her room, and
+falling on her knees at his bedside, and covering her face with her
+hands, she prays to God to preserve the life of her child!</p>
+<p>On the evening of this day the vessel destined for Corfu hoisted
+its anchor. No one doubted that Louis Napoleon had embarked on it,
+and every one pitied the poor duchess, who, made ill by grief and
+anxiety, had not been able to accompany her son.</p>
+<p>In the mean while Hortense was sitting at the bedside of her
+delirious son. But she no longer felt weak or disquieted; nervous
+excitement sustained her, and gave her strength and presence of
+mind. Her son was at the same time threatened by two dangers--by
+the disease, which the slightest mistake might render mortal; and
+by the arrival of the Austrians, who had expressly excepted her son
+Louis Napoleon from the benefits of the amnesty. She must save her
+son from both these dangers--this thought gave her strength.</p>
+<p>Two days had now passed; the last two vessels had left the
+harbor, crowded with fugitives; and now the advance-guard of the
+Austrians was marching into Ancona.</p>
+<p>The commandant of the advance-guard, upon whom the duty of
+designating quarters for the following army devolved, selected the
+palace of Princess Canino, where the Duchess of St. Leu resided, as
+headquarters for the commanding general and his staff. Hortense had
+expected this, and had withdrawn to a few small rooms in advance,
+holding all the parlors and large rooms in readiness for the
+general. When they, however, demanded that the entire palace should
+be vacated, the wife of the janitor, the only person whom Hortense
+had taken into her confidence, informed them that Queen Hortense,
+who was ill and unhappy, was the sole occupant of these reserved
+rooms.</p>
+<p>Strange to relate, the Austrian captain who came to the palace
+to make the necessary preparations for his general's reception was
+one of those who, in the year 1815, had protected the queen and her
+children from the fury of the royalists. For the second time he now
+interested himself zealously in behalf of the duchess, and hastened
+forward to meet the general-in-chief, Baron Geppert, who was just
+entering the city, in order to acquaint him with the state of
+affairs. He, in common with all the world, convinced that her son,
+Louis Napoleon, had fled to Corfu, declared his readiness to permit
+the duchess to retain the rooms she was occupying, and begged
+permission to call on her. But the duchess was still ill, and
+confined to her bed, and could receive no one.</p>
+<p>The Austrians took up their quarters in the palace; and in the
+midst of them, separated from the general's room by a locked door
+only, were Hortense and her sick son. The least noise might betray
+him. When he coughed it was necessary to cover his head with the
+bedclothes, in order to deaden the sound; when he desired to speak
+he could only do so in a whisper, for his Austrian neighbors would
+have been astonished to hear a male voice in the room of the sick
+duchess, and their suspicions might have been thereby aroused.</p>
+<p>At last, after eight days of torment and anxiety, the physician
+declared that Louis Napoleon could now undertake the journey
+without danger, and consequently the duchess suddenly recovered!
+She requested the Austrian general, Baron Geppert, to honor her
+with a call, in order that she might thank him for his protection
+and sympathy; she told him that she was now ready to depart, and
+proposed embarking at Livorno, in order to join her son at Malta,
+and go with him to England. As she would be compelled to pass
+through the whole Austrian army-corps on her way, she begged the
+general to furnish her with a passport through his lines over his
+own signature; requesting in addition that, in order to avoid all
+sensation, the instrument should not contain her name.</p>
+<p>The general, deeply sympathizing with the unhappy woman who was
+about to follow her proscribed son, readily accorded her
+request.</p>
+<p>Hortense purposed beginning her journey on the following day,
+the first day of the Easter festival; and, on sending her farewell
+greeting to the Austrian general, she informed him that she would
+start at a very early hour, in order to hear mass at Loretto.</p>
+<p>During the night all necessary preparations for the journey were
+made, and Louis Napoleon was compelled to disguise himself in the
+dress of a liveried servant; a similar attire was also sent to
+Marquis Zappi, who had hitherto been concealed in the house of a
+friend, and in this attire he was to await the duchess below at the
+carriage.</p>
+<p>At last, day broke and the hour of departure came. The horn of
+the postilion resounded through the street. Through the midst of
+the sleeping Austrian soldiers who occupied the antechamber through
+which they were compelled to pass, Hortense walked, followed by her
+son loaded with packages, in his livery. Their departure was
+witnessed by no one except the sentinel on duty.</p>
+<p>Day had hardly dawned. In the first carriage sat the duchess,
+with a lady companion, and in front, on the box, her son, as a
+servant, at the side of the postilion; in the second carriage her
+maid, behind her the young Marquis Zappi.</p>
+<p>As the sun arose and shone down upon the beautiful Easter day,
+Ancona was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side
+of Louis Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her
+to succeed so far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be
+merciful in the future. But there were still many dangers to be
+overcome; the slightest accident might still betray them. The
+danger consisted not only in having to pass through all the places
+where the Austrian troops were stationed; General Geppert's pass
+was a sufficient protection against any thing that might threaten
+them from this quarter.</p>
+<p>The greatest danger was to be apprehended from their
+friends--from some one who might accidentally recognize her son,
+and unintentionally betray them.</p>
+<p>They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
+greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one,
+and every one might betray them. This part of the journey must
+therefore be made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom
+they had dispatched in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary
+relays of horses; their dismay was, therefore, great when they
+found no horses at the station Camoscia, on the boundary of
+Tuscany, and were informed that several hours must elapse before
+they could obtain any!</p>
+<p>These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense
+passed them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the
+slightest noise that broke upon the air.</p>
+<p>Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated
+himself on a stone bench that stood in front of the miserable
+little station-house. Worn out by grief and still weak from
+disease, indifferent to the dangers that menaced from all sides,
+heedless of the night wind that swept, with its icy breath, over
+his face, the prince sank down upon this stone bench, and went to
+sleep.</p>
+<p>Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a
+half-open carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France,
+on a stone bench, that served him as a couch!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII.4"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>THE PILGRIMAGE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu.
+It heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted
+mother and son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every
+step in Italy.</p>
+<p>At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary
+without being recognized. They were now in their own country--in
+<i>la belle France</i>, which they still loved and proudly called
+their mother, although it had forsaken and discarded them. The
+death-penalty threatened the Bonapartes who should dare to set foot
+on French soil. But what cared they for that? Neither Hortense nor
+her son thought of it. They only knew that they were in their own
+country. They inhaled with delight the air that seemed to them
+better and purer than any other; with hearts throbbing with joy,
+they listened to the music of this beautiful language that greeted
+them with the sweet native melodies.</p>
+<p>At Cannes they passed the first night. What recollections did
+this place recall to Hortense! Here it was that Napoleon had landed
+on his return from Elba to France; from Cannes he had commenced his
+march to Paris with a handful of soldiers, and had arrived there
+with an army. For the people had everywhere received him with
+exultation; the regiments that had been sent out against the
+advancing general had everywhere joyously gone over to his
+standard. Charles de Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re, this enthusiastic
+adherent of the emperor, had been the first to do this. He was to
+have advanced against the emperor from Grenoble; but, with the
+exulting cry, "<i>Vive l'empereur!</i>" the entire regiment had
+gone over to its adored chieftain. Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re had
+paid dearly for the enthusiasm of those moments; for, the
+for-the-second-time restored Bourbons punished his fidelity with
+death. Like Marshal Ney, Charles de Lab&eacute;doy&egrave;re was
+also shot; like the emperor himself, he paid for the triumph of the
+hundred days with his liberty and with his life!</p>
+<p>Of all these names and events of the past, Hortense thought,
+while enjoying the first hours of repose in their room at an hotel
+in Cannes. Leaning back in her chair, her large eyes gazing
+dreamily at the ceiling above her, she told the attentive prince of
+the days that had been, and spoke to him of the days in which they
+were now living--of these days of humiliation and obscurity--of
+those days in which the French nation had risen, and, shaking its
+lion's mane, hurled the Bourbons from their ancestral throne, and
+out of the land they had hitherto proudly called their own. On
+driving out the Bourbons, the people had freely chosen another
+king--not the King of Rome, who, in Vienna, as Duke of Reichstadt,
+had been made to forget the brilliant days of his childhood--not
+the son of the Emperor Napoleon. The people of France had chosen
+the Duke of Orleans as their king, and Louis Philippe's first act
+had been to renew the decree of banishment which the Bourbons had
+fulminated against the Bonapartes, and which declared it to be a
+capital crime if they should ever dare to set foot on the soil of
+France.</p>
+<p>"The people acted freely and according to their own will," said
+Hortense, with a sad smile, as she saw her son turn pale, and
+wrinkles gather on his brow. "Honor the will of the people, my son!
+In order to reward the emperor for his great services to the
+country, the people of France had unanimously chosen him their
+emperor. The people who give have also the right to take back
+again. The Bourbons, who consider themselves the owners of France,
+may reclaim it as an estate of which they have been robbed by the
+house of Orleans. But the Bonapartes must remember that they
+derived all their power from the will of the people. They must be
+content to await the future expression of its will, and then
+submit, and conform themselves to it<a name=
+"FNanchor62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62">[62]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_62"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor62">[62]</a> The duchess's own words. See La Reine
+Hortense en Italie, Suisse, France, etc., p. 79.</blockquote>
+<p>Louis Napoleon bowed his head and sighed. He must conform to the
+will of the people; cautiously, under a borrowed name, he must
+steal into the land of his longing and of his dreams; he must deny
+his nationality, and be indebted, for his name and passport, to the
+country that had bound his uncle, like a second Prometheus, to the
+rock, and left him there to die! But he did it with a sorrowful,
+with a bleeding heart; he wandered with his mother, who walked
+heavily veiled at his side, from place to place, listening to her
+reminiscences of the great past. At her relation of these
+reminiscences, his love and enthusiasm for the fatherland, from
+which he had so long been banished, burned brighter and brighter.
+The sight, the air of this fatherland, had electrified him; he
+entertained but one wish: to remain in France, and to serve France,
+although in the humble capacity of a private soldier.</p>
+<p>One day Louis Napoleon entered his mother's room with a letter
+in his hand, and begged her to read it. It was a letter addressed
+to Louis Philippe, in which Louis Napoleon begged the French king
+to annul his exile, and to permit him to enter the French army as a
+private soldier.</p>
+<p>Hortense read the letter, and shook her head sadly. It wounded
+her just pride that her son, the nephew of the great emperor,
+should ask a favor of him who had not hesitated to make the most of
+the revolution for himself, but had nevertheless lacked the courage
+to help the banished Bonapartes to recover their rights, and enable
+them to return to their country. In his ardent desire to serve
+France, Louis Napoleon had forgotten this insult of the King of
+France.</p>
+<p>"My children," says Hortense, in her memoirs, "my children, who
+had been cruelly persecuted by all the courts, even by those who
+owed every thing to the emperor, their uncle, loved their country
+with whole-souled devotion. Their eyes ever turned toward France,
+busied with the consideration of institutions that might make
+France happy; they knew that the people alone were their friends;
+the hatred of the great had taught them this. To conform to the
+will of the people with resignation was to them a duty, but to
+devote themselves to the service of France was their hearts'
+dearest wish. It was for this reason that my son had written to
+Louis Philippe hoping to be permitted to make himself useful to his
+country in some way."</p>
+<p>Hortense advised against this venturous step; and when she saw
+how much this grieved her son, and observed his eyes filling with
+tears, she begged that he would at least wait and reflect, and
+postpone his decision until their arrival in Paris.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon yielded to his mother's entreaties, and in
+silence and sadness these two pilgrims continued their wandering
+through the country and cities, that to Hortense seemed transformed
+into luminous monuments of departed glory.</p>
+<p>In Fontainebleau Hortense showed her son the palace that had
+been the witness of the greatest triumphs and also of the most
+bitter grief of his great uncle. Leaning on his arm, her
+countenance concealed by a heavy black veil, to prevent any one
+from recognizing her, Hortense walked through the chambers, in
+which she had once been installed as a mighty and honored queen,
+and in which she was now covertly an exile menaced with death. The
+servants who conducted her were the same who had been there during
+the days of the emperor! Hortense recognized them at once; she did
+not dare to make herself known, but she nevertheless felt that she,
+too, was remembered there. She saw this in the expression with
+which the servants opened the rooms she had once occupied; she
+heard it in the tone in which they mentioned her name! Every thing
+in this palace had remained as it then was! There was the same
+furniture in the rooms which the imperial family had occupied after
+the peace of Tilsit, and in which they had given such brilliant
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, and received the homage of so many of the kings
+and princes of Europe, all of whom had come to implore the
+assistance and favor of their vanquisher! There were also the
+apartments which the pope had occupied, once voluntarily;
+subsequently, under compulsion. Alas! and there was also the little
+cabinet, in which the emperor, the once so mighty and illustrious
+ruler of Europe, had abdicated the crown which his victories, his
+good deeds, and the love of the French people, had placed on his
+head! And, finally, there were also the chapel and the altar before
+which the Emperor Napoleon had stood god-father to his nephew Louis
+Napoleon! All was still as it had been, except that the garden,
+that Hortense and her mother had laid out and planted, had grown
+more luxuriant, and now sang to the poor banished pilgrim with its
+rustling tree-tops a melancholy song of her long separation from
+her home!</p>
+<p>The sorrowing couple wandered on, and at last arrived before the
+gates of Paris. At this moment, Hortense was a Frenchwoman, a
+Parisian only, and, forgetting every thing else, all her grief and
+sufferings, she sought only to do the honors of Paris for her son.
+She ordered the coachman to drive them through the boulevards to
+the Rue de la Paix, and then to stop at the first good hotel. This
+was the same way over which she had passed sixteen years before,
+escorted by an Austrian officer. Then she had quitted Paris by
+night, driven out in a measure by the allies, who so much feared
+her, the poor, weak woman with her little boys, that troops had
+been placed under arms at regular intervals on her way, in order,
+as it was given out, to secure her safe passage. Now, after sixteen
+years, Hortense returned to Paris by the same route, still exiled
+and homeless, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
+French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
+proscription.</p>
+<p>But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she
+wept with joy at beholding once more the streets and places about
+which the memories of her youth clustered.</p>
+<p>By a strange chance, it was at the "<i>H&ocirc;tel de
+Hollande</i>" that the former Queen of Holland descended from her
+carriage, and took up her residence, holding thus, in a measure,
+her entrance into Paris, under the fluttering banner of the past.
+In the little <i>H&ocirc;tel de Hollande</i>, the Queen of Holland
+took possession of the apartments of the first floor, which
+commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me.</i> "Say to the column on the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me</i> that I am dying, because I cannot embrace it,"
+the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the album of a French
+nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful spies, who
+surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his father and
+of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the emperor's
+son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.</p>
+<p>Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was
+entirely unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He
+could go down into the square and hasten to the foot of the
+<i>Vend&ocirc;me</i> column, and in thought at least kneel down
+before the monument that immortalized the renown and grandeur of
+the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order to perform a sacred
+duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own honor and
+dignity.</p>
+<p>She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive
+criminal, in the city that in the exercise of its free will had
+chosen itself a king, but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to
+partake of French hospitality and enjoy French protection by
+stealth; she was not willing to go about in disguise, deceiving the
+government with a false pass and a borrowed name. She had the
+courage of truth and sincerity, and she resolved to say to the King
+of France that she had come, not to defy his decree of banishment
+by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing against his new
+crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
+forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no
+other means of saving her son; because she must pass through France
+with him in order to reach England.</p>
+<p>Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of
+men, had surrounded the new king almost entirely with the friends
+and servants of the emperor and of the Duchess of St. Leu. But, in
+order not to excite suspicion against these, Hortense now addressed
+herself to him with whom she had the slightest acquaintance and
+whose devotion to the Orleans family was too well known to be
+called in doubt by her undertaking. Hortense therefore addressed
+herself to M. de Houdetot, the adjutant of the king, or rather, she
+caused her friend Mlle. de Massuyer to write to him. She was
+instructed to inform the count that she had come to Paris with an
+English family, and was the bearer of a commission from the Duchess
+of St. Leu to M. de Houdetot.</p>
+<p>M. de Houdetot responded to her request, and came to the
+<i>H&ocirc;tel de Hollande</i> to see Mlle. Massuyer. With surprise
+and emotion, he recognized in the supposititious English lady the
+Duchess of St. Leu, who was believed by all the world to be on the
+way to Malta, and for whom her friends (who feared the fatigue of
+so long a journey would be too much for Hortense in her weak state
+of health) had already taken steps to obtain for her permission to
+pass through France on her way to England.</p>
+<p>Hortense informed Count Houdetot of the last strokes of destiny
+that had fallen upon her, and expressed her desire to see the king,
+in order to speak with him in person about the future of her
+son.</p>
+<p>M. de Houdetot undertook to acquaint the king with her desire,
+and came on the following day to inform the duchess of the result
+of his mission. He told the duchess that the king had loudly
+lamented her boldness in coming to France, and the impossibility of
+his seeing her. He told her, moreover, that, as the king had a
+responsible ministry at his side, he had been compelled to inform
+the premier of her arrival, and that Minister Casimir Perrier would
+call on her during the day.</p>
+<p>A few hours later, Louis Philippe's celebrated minister arrived.
+He came with an air of earnest severity, as it were to sit in
+judgment upon the accused duchess, but her artless sincerity and
+her gentle dignity disarmed him, and soon caused him to assume a
+more delicate and polite bearing.</p>
+<p>"I well know," said Hortense in the course of the conversation,
+"I well know that I have broken a law, by coming hither; I fully
+appreciate the gravity of this offence; you have the right to cause
+me to be arrested, and it would be perfectly just in you to do
+so!"--Casimir Perrier shook his head slowly, and replied: "Just,
+no! Lawful, yes<a name="FNanchor63"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_63">[63]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_63"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor63">[63]</a> La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc.,
+p. 110.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII.4"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>LOUIS PHILIIPE AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The visit which Casimir Perrier had paid the duchess seemed to
+have convinced him that the fears which the king and his ministry
+had entertained had really been groundless, that the step-daughter
+of Napoleon had not come to Paris to conspire and to claim the
+still somewhat unstable throne of France for the Duke de Reichstadt
+or for Louis Napoleon, but that she had only chosen the way through
+France, in the anxiety of maternal love in order to rescue her
+son.</p>
+<p>In accordance with this conviction, Louis Philippe no longer
+considered it impossible to see the Duchess of St. Leu, but now
+requested her to call. Perhaps the king, who had so fine a memory
+for figures and money-matters, remembered that it had been Hortense
+(then still Queen of Holland) who, during the hundred days of the
+empire in 1815, had procured for the Duchess
+Orleans-Penthi&egrave;vre, from the emperor, permission to remain
+in Paris and a pension of two hundred thousand francs per annum;
+that it had been Hortense who had done the same for the aunt of the
+present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in their joy
+over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written the
+duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
+assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable
+gratitude<a name="FNanchor64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64">[64]</a>.
+Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of
+rewarding Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_64"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor64">[64]</a> La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc.,
+p. 185.</blockquote>
+<p>He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of
+her sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St.
+Leu to the Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl,
+as the step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as
+the wife of the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once
+more, a poor, nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded
+countenance, imploring a little toleration and protection of those
+to whom she had once accorded toleration and protection.</p>
+<p>Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the
+elegance and graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how
+to assume, and that had always been an inheritance of his house,
+with all the amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which
+he so well knew how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the
+point at once, he spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the
+duchess most, of the decree of banishment.</p>
+<p>"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile,
+and it is not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He
+assured her that this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte
+family was a heavy burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse
+himself for it by saying that the exile pronounced against the
+imperial family was only an article of the same law which the
+conventionists had abolished, and the renewal of which had been so
+vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it had seemed as though he
+had uttered a new decree of banishment, while in point of fact he
+had only renewed a law that had already existed under the consulate
+of Napoleon. "But," continued the king with exultation, "the time
+is no longer distant when there will be no more exiles; I will have
+none under my government!"</p>
+<p>Then, as if to remind the duchess that there had been exiles and
+decrees of banishment at all times, also under the republic, the
+consulate, and the kingdom, he spoke of his own exile, of the needy
+and humiliating situation in which he had found himself, and which
+had compelled him to hire himself out as a teacher and give
+instruction for a paltry consideration.</p>
+<p>The duchess had listened to the king with a gentle smile, and
+replied that she knew the story of his exile, and that it did him
+honor.</p>
+<p>Then the duchess informed the king that her son had accompanied
+her on her journey, and was now with her in Paris; she also told
+him that her son, in his glowing enthusiasm for his country, had
+written to the king, begging that he might be permitted to enter
+the army.</p>
+<p>"Lend me the letter," replied Louis Philippe; "Perrier shall
+bring it to me, and, if circumstances permit, I shall be perfectly
+willing to grant your son's request; and it will also give me great
+pleasure to serve you at all times. I know that you have legitimate
+claims on the government, and that you have appealed to the justice
+of all former ministries in vain. Write out a statement of all that
+France owes you, and send it <i>to me alone</i>. I understand
+business matters, and constitute myself from this time on your
+<i>charg&eacute; d'affaires</i><a name="FNanchor65"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_65">[65]</a>. The Duke of Rovigo," he continued, "has
+informed me that the other members of the imperial family have
+similar claims. It will afford me great pleasure to be of
+assistance to all of you, and I shall interest myself particularly
+for the Princess de Montfort<a name="FNanchor66"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_66">[66]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_65"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor65">[65]</a> The king's own words. See Voyage en Italie,
+etc., p. 201.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_66"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor66">[66]</a> The Princess de Montfort was the wife of
+Jerome, the sister of the King of W&uuml;rtemberg, and a cousin of
+the Emperor of Russia.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense had listened to the king, her whole face radiant with
+delight. The king's beneficent countenance, his friendly smile, his
+hearty and cordial manner, dispelled all doubt of his sincerity in
+Hortense's mind. She believed in his goodness and in his kindly
+disposition toward herself; and, in her joyous emotion, she thanked
+him with words of enthusiasm for his promised benefits, never
+doubting that it was his intention to keep his word.</p>
+<p>"Ah, sire!" she exclaimed, "the entire imperial family is in
+misfortune, and you will have many wrongs to redress. France owes
+us all a great deal, and it will be worthy of you to liquidate
+these debts."</p>
+<p>The king declared his readiness to do every thing. He who was so
+fond of taking in millions and of speculating, smilingly promised,
+in the name of France, to disburse millions, and to pay off the old
+state debt!</p>
+<p>The duchess believed him. She believed in his protestations of
+friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct
+her to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame
+Adelaide with the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in
+the course of the conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her
+cordial disposition. She asked the duchess how long she expected to
+remain in Paris, and when the latter replied that she intended
+remaining three days longer, Madame exclaimed, in a tone of anxious
+dismay: "So long! Three days still! And there are so many
+Englishmen here who have seen your son in Italy, and might
+recognize you here!"</p>
+<p>But Fate itself seemed to delay the departure of the duchess and
+her son. On returning home from her visit to the Tuileries, she
+found her son on his bed in a violent fever, and the physician who
+had been called in declared that he was suffering from inflammation
+of the throat.</p>
+<p>Hortense was to tremble once more for the life of a son, and
+this son was the last treasure Fate had left her.</p>
+<p>Once more the mother sat at the bedside of her son, watching
+over him, lovingly, day and night. That her son's life might be
+preserved was now her only wish, her only prayer; all else became
+void of interest, and was lost sight of. She only left her son's
+side when Casimir Perrier came, as he was in the habit of doing
+daily, to inquire after her son's condition in the name of the
+king, and to request the duchess to name the amount of her claims
+against France, and to impart to him all her wishes with regard to
+her future. Hortense now had but one ardent wish--the recovery of
+her son; and her only request was, that she might be permitted to
+visit the French baths of the Pyrenees during the summer, in order
+to restore her failing health.</p>
+<p>The minister promised to procure this permission of the king,
+and of the Chambers, that were soon to be convened. "In this way we
+shall gradually become accustomed to your presence," observed
+Casimir Perrier. "As far as you are personally concerned, we shall
+be inclined to throw open the gates of the country to you. But with
+your son it is different, his name will be a perpetual obstacle in
+his way. If he should really desire at any time to take service in
+the army, it would be, above all, necessary that he should lay
+aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the wishes of
+foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties, that a
+war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change his
+name, if--"</p>
+<p>But now the duchess, her cheeks glowing, blushing with
+displeasure and anger, interrupted him. "What!" exclaimed she, "lay
+aside the noble name with which France may well adorn itself,
+conceal it as though we had cause to be ashamed of it?"</p>
+<p>Beside herself with anger, regardless, in her agitation, even of
+the suffering condition of her son, she hastened to his bedside, to
+inform him of the proposition made to her by Louis Philippe's
+minister.</p>
+<p>The prince arose in his couch, his eyes flaming, and his cheeks
+burning at the same time with the fever-heat of disease and of
+anger.</p>
+<p>"Lay aside my name!" he exclaimed. "Who dares to make such a
+proposition to me? Let us think of all these things no more,
+mother. Let us go back to our retirement. Ah, you were right,
+mother: our time is passed, or it has not yet come!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX.4"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS FROM PARIS.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Excitement had made the patient worse, and caused his fever to
+return with renewed violence. Hortense was now inseparable from his
+bedside; she herself applied ice to his burning throat, and
+assisted in applying the leeches ordered by the physician. But this
+continuous anxiety and excitement, all these troubles of the
+present, and sad remembrances of the past, had at last exhausted
+the strength of the delicate woman; the flush of fever now began to
+show itself on her cheeks also, and the physician urged her to take
+daily exercise in the open air if she desired to avoid falling
+ill.</p>
+<p>Hortense followed his advice. In the evening twilight, in plain
+attire, her face concealed by a heavy black veil, she now daily
+quitted her son's bedside, and went out into the street for a walk,
+accompanied by the young Marquis Zappi. No one recognized her, no
+one greeted her, no one dreamed that the veiled figure that walked
+so quietly and shyly was she who, as Queen of Holland, had formerly
+driven through these same streets in gilded coaches, hailed by the
+joyous shouts of the people.</p>
+<p>But, in these wanderings through Paris, Hortense also lived in
+her memories only. She showed the marquis the dwelling she had once
+occupied, and which had for her a single happy association: her
+sons had been born there. With a soft smile she looked up at the
+proud <i>fa&ccedil;ade</i> of this building, the windows of which
+were brilliantly illumined, and in whose parlors some banker or
+ennobled provision-dealer was now perhaps giving a ball; pointing
+to these windows with her slender white hand, she said: "I wished
+to see this house, in order to reproach myself for having been
+unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the midst of
+so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of the
+misfortune that was one day to come upon me<a name=
+"FNanchor67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67">[67]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_67"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor67">[67]</a> The duchess's own words: see Voyage, etc.,
+p. 225.</blockquote>
+<p>She looked down again and passed on, to seek the houses of
+several friends, of whom she knew that they had remained faithful;
+heavily veiled and enveloped in her dark cloak she stood in front
+of these houses, not daring to acquaint her friends with her
+presence, contented with the sweet sense of being near them!</p>
+<p>When, after having strengthened her heart with the consciousness
+of being near friends, she passed on through the streets, in which
+she, the daughter of France, was now unknown, homeless, and
+forgotten!--no, not forgotten!--as she chanced to glance in at a
+store she was just passing, she saw in the lighted window her own
+portrait at the side of that of the emperor.</p>
+<p>Overcome by a sweet emotion, Hortense stood still and gazed at
+these pictures. The laughing, noisy crowd on the sidewalk passed
+on, heedless of the shrouded woman who stood there before the
+shop-window, gazing with tearful eyes at her own portrait. "It
+seems we are still remembered," whispered she, in a low voice.
+"Those who wear crowns are not to be envied, and should not lament
+their loss; but is it possible that the love of the people, to
+receive which is so sweet, has not yet been wholly withdrawn from
+us?"</p>
+<p>The profound indifference with which France had accepted the
+exile of the Bonapartes had grieved her deeply. She had only longed
+for some token of love and fidelity in order that she might go back
+into exile consoled and strengthened. And now she found it. France
+proved to her through these portraits that she was not
+forgotten.</p>
+<p>Hortense stepped with her companion into the store to purchase
+the portraits of herself and of the emperor; and when she was told
+that these portraits were in great demand, and that many of them
+were sold to the people, she hardly found strength to repress the
+tears of blissful emotion that rose from her heart to her eyes. She
+took the portraits and hastened home, to show them to her son and
+to bring to him with them the love-greetings of France. While the
+duchess, her thoughts divided between the remembrances of the past
+and the cares and troubles of the present, had been sojourning in
+Paris for twelve days, all the papers were extolling the heroism of
+the duchess in having saved her son, and of her having embarked at
+Malta in order to take him to England.</p>
+<p>Even the king's ministerial council occupied itself with this
+matter, and thought it proper to make representations to his
+majesty on the subject. Marshal Sebastiani informed the king that
+the Duchess of St. Leu, to his certain knowledge, had landed at
+Corfu. With lively interest he spoke of the fatiguing journey at
+sea that the duchess would be compelled to make, and asked almost
+timidly if she might not be permitted to travel through France.</p>
+<p>The king's countenance assumed an almost sombre look, and he
+replied, dryly: "Let her continue her journey." Casimir Perrier
+bowed his head over the paper that lay before him, in order to
+conceal his mirth, and minister Barthe availed himself of the
+opportunity to give a proof of his eloquence and of his severity,
+by observing that a law existed against the duchess, and that a law
+was a sacred thing that no one should be permitted to evade.</p>
+<p>But the presence of the duchess, although kept a secret, began
+to cause the king and his premier Casimir Perrier more and more
+uneasiness. The latter had already once informed her through M. de
+Houdetot that her departure was absolutely necessary and must take
+place at once, and he had only been moved to consent to her further
+sojourn by the condition of the prince, whose inflammation of the
+throat had rendered a second application of leeches necessary.</p>
+<p>They were now, however, on the eve of a great and dangerous day,
+of the 5th of May<a name="FNanchor68"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_68">[68]</a>. The people of Paris were strangely moved,
+and the new government saw with much apprehension the dawn of this
+day of such great memories for France. There seemed to be some
+justification for this apprehension. Since the break of day,
+thousands of people had flocked to the column on the <i>Place
+Vend&ocirc;me</i>. Silently and gravely they approached the
+monument, in order to adorn with wreaths of flowers the eagles, or
+to lay them at the foot of the column, and then to retire
+mournfully.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_68"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor68">[68]</a> The anniversary of Napoleon's
+death.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense stood at the window of her apartment, looking on with
+folded hands and tears of bliss at the impressive and solemn scene
+that was taking place on the <i>Place Vend&ocirc;me</i> beneath,
+when suddenly a violent knocking was heard at her door, and M. de
+Houdetot rushed in, a pale and sorrowful expression on his
+countenance.</p>
+<p>"Duchess," said he breathlessly, "you must depart immediately,
+without an hour's delay! I am ordered to inform you of this. Unless
+the life of your son is to be seriously endangered, you must leave
+at once!"</p>
+<p>Hortense listened to him tranquilly. She almost pitied the
+king--the government--to whom a weak woman and an invalid youth
+could cause such fear. How great must this fear be, when it caused
+them to disregard all the laws of hospitality and of decency! What
+had she done to justify this fear? She had not addressed herself to
+the people of France, in order to obtain help and protection for
+her son--for the nephew of the emperor; cautiously and timidly she
+had concealed herself from the people, and, far from being disposed
+to arouse or agitate her country, she had only made herself known
+to the King of France in order to solicit protection and toleration
+at his hands.</p>
+<p>She was distrusted, in spite of this candor; and her presence,
+although known to no one, awakened apprehensions in those in
+authority. Hortense pitied them; not a word of complaint or regret
+escaped her lips. She sent for her physician at once; and, after
+informing him that she must necessarily depart for London, she
+asked him if such a journey would endanger her son's life. The
+physician declared that, while he could have desired a few days
+more of repose, the prince would nevertheless, with proper care and
+attention, be able to leave on the following day.</p>
+<p>"Inform the king that I shall depart to-morrow," said Hortense;
+and, while M. de Houdetot was hastening to the king with this
+welcome intelligence, the duchess was making preparations for the
+journey, which she began with her son early on the following
+morning.</p>
+<p>In four days they reached Calais, where they found the ship that
+was to convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to
+leave her country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once
+more driven out, and condemned to live in a foreign country!
+Because the French people still refused to forget their emperor,
+the French kings hated and feared the imperial family. Under the
+old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis Philippe, who had attained
+his crown through the people, felt that it was necessary to flatter
+the people, and show some consideration for their sympathies. He
+declared to the people that he entertained the most profound
+admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree of
+banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the
+<i>Vend&ocirc;me</i> column, with its bronze statue of the emperor,
+should be adorned, and at the same time his decree banished the
+daughter and the nephew of the emperor from France, and drove them
+back into a foreign country.</p>
+<p>Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she
+was leaving her country--the country in which she had friends whom
+she had not seen again; the country in which lay her mother's
+grave, which she had not dared to visit; and, finally, the grave of
+her son! She once more left behind her all the remembrances of her
+youth--all the places she had loved; and her regret and her tears
+made known how dear these things still were to her; that the
+banished and homeless one was still powerless to banish the love of
+country from her heart, and that France was still her home!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X.4"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>PILGRIMAGE THROUGH FRANCE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The sojourn of the Duchess of St. Leu in England where she
+arrived with her son after a stormy passage, was for both a
+succession of triumphs and ovations. The high aristocracy of London
+heaped upon her proofs of esteem, of reverence, and of love; every
+one seemed anxious to atone for the severity and cruelty with which
+England had treated the emperor, by giving proofs of their
+admiration and respect for his step-daughter. All these proud
+English aristocrats seemed desirous of proving to the duchess and
+her son that they were not of the same disposition as Hudson Lowe,
+who had slowly tormented the chained lion to death with petty
+annoyances.</p>
+<p>The Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Holland, and Lady Grey, in
+particular, were untiring in their efforts to do the honors of
+their country to Hortense, and to show her every possible
+attention. But Hortense declined their proffered invitations. She
+avoided all publicity; she feared, on her own and her son's
+account, that the tattle of the world and the newspapers might once
+more draw down upon her the distrust and ill-will of the French
+government. She feared that this might prevent her returning with
+her son, through France, to her quiet retreat on the Lake of
+Constance, in Switzerland, to her charming Arenenberg, where she
+had passed so many delightful and peaceful years of repose and
+remembrance.</p>
+<p>Hortense was right. Her sojourn in England excited, as soon as
+it became known, in every quarter, care, curiosity, and disquiet.
+All parties were seeking to divine the duchess's intention in
+residing in London. All parties were convinced that she entertained
+plans that might endanger and frustrate their own. The Duchess de
+Berri, who resided in Bath, had come to London as soon as she heard
+of the arrival of the Duchess of St. Leu, in order to inquire into
+Hortense's real intention. The bold and enterprising Duchess de
+Berri was preparing to go to France, in order to call the people to
+arms for herself and son, to hurl Louis Philippe from his usurped
+throne, and to restore to her son his rightful inheritance. They,
+therefore, thought it perfectly natural that Hortense should
+entertain similar plans for her son; that she, too, should purpose
+the overthrow of the French king in order to place her own son, or
+the son of the emperor, the Duke de Reichstadt, on the throne.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, it had been endeavored to persuade Prince
+Leopold, of Coburg, to whom the powers of Europe had just offered
+the crown of Belgium, that the Duchess of St. Leu had come to
+England in order to possess herself of Belgium by a <i>coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i>, and to proclaim Louis Napoleon its king. But
+this wise and magnanimous prince laughed at these intimations. He
+had known the duchess in her days of magnificence, and he now
+hastened to lay the same homage at the foot of the homeless woman
+that he had once devoted to the adored and powerful Queen of
+Holland. He called on the duchess, conversed with her of her
+beautiful and brilliant past, and told her of the hopes which he
+himself entertained for the future. Deeply bowed down by the death
+of his beloved wife, Princess Charlotte of England, it was his
+purpose to seek consolation in his misfortune by striving to make
+his people happy. He had therefore accepted the crown tendered him
+by the people, and was on the point of departing for Belgium.</p>
+<p>While taking leave of the duchess, after a long and cordial
+conversation, he remarked, with a gentle smile: "I trust you will
+not take my kingdom away from me on your journey through
+Belgium?"</p>
+<p>While the new government of France, as well as the exiled
+Bourbons, suspected the Duchess of St. Leu and her son of
+entertaining plans for the subversion of the French throne, the
+imperialists and republicans were hoping that Hortense's influence
+might be exerted upon the destinies of France. Everywhere in France
+as well as in England, the people were of the opinion that the new
+throne of Louis Philippe had no vitality, because it had no support
+in the heart of the people. The partisans of the Bourbons believed
+that France longed for the grandson of St. Louis, for its
+hereditary king, Henry V.; the imperialists were convinced that the
+new government was about to be overthrown, and that France was more
+anxious than ever to see the emperors son, Napoleon II., restored.
+The republicans, however, distrusted the people and the army, and
+began to perceive that they could only attain the longed-for
+republican institutions under a Bonaparte. They therefore sent
+their secret emissaries as well to the Duke de Reichstadt as to
+Louis Napoleon.</p>
+<p>The Duke de Reichstadt, to whom these emissaries proposed that
+he should come to France and present himself to the people,
+replied: "I cannot go to France as an adventurer; let the nation
+call me, and I shall find means to get there."</p>
+<p>To the propositions made to him, Louis Napoleon replied that he
+belonged to France under all circumstances; that he had proved this
+by asking permission to serve France, but he had been rejected. It
+would not become him to force to a decision by a <i>coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i> the nation whose decrees he would ever hold
+sacred.</p>
+<p>Hortense regarded these efforts of the imperialists and of the
+republicans to win her son to their purposes with a sorrowful and
+anxious heart. She hoped and longed for nothing more than the
+privilege of living in retirement with her memories; she felt
+exhausted and sobered by the few steps she had already taken into
+the great world; she, who had ever felt the most tender sympathy
+for the misfortunes of others, and the most ardent desire to
+alleviate them--she had nowhere found in her misfortune any thing
+but injustice, indifference, and calumny.</p>
+<p>Hortense longed to be back at Arenenberg, in her Swiss
+mountains. Thither she desired to return with her son, in order
+that she might there dream with him of the brilliant days that had
+been, and sing with him the exalted song of her remembrances! If
+the French government should permit her to journey with her son
+through France, she could easily and securely reach the Swiss
+Canton of Thurgau, where her little estate, Arenenberg, lay under
+the protection of the republic; the daughter of the emperor would
+there be certain to find peace and repose!</p>
+<p>The duchess there wrote to M. de Houdetot, begging him to
+procure for her from the French government a passport, permitting
+her to travel through France under some assumed name. It was
+promised her after long hesitation, but under the condition that
+she should not commence her journey until after July, until after
+the first anniversary of the coronation of Louis Philippe.</p>
+<p>Hortense agreed to this, and received on the first of August a
+passport, which permitted her, as Madame Arenenberg, to pass
+through France with her son in order to return to her estate in
+Switzerland.</p>
+<p>It was at first the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the
+unquiet movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey
+through Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and
+uninterested demeanor, that she had no share whatever in these
+movements and riots.</p>
+<p>But, on informing Louis Napoleon of her intention, he exclaimed,
+with sparkling eyes: "If we go to Paris, and if I should see the
+people sabred before my eyes, I shall not be able to resist the
+inclination to place myself on its side<a name=
+"FNanchor69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69">[69]</a>!"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_69"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor69">[69]</a> La Reine Hortense, p. 276.</blockquote>
+<p>Hortense clasped her son anxiously in her arms, as if to protect
+him from all danger, on her maternal heart. "We shall not go to
+Paris," said she, "we will wander through France, and pray before
+the monuments of our happiness!"</p>
+<p>On the 7th of August the Duchess of St. Leu left England with
+her son, Louis Napoleon, and landed after a pleasant passage at
+Boulogne.</p>
+<p>Boulogne was for Hortense the first monument of her happiness,
+at the foot of which she wished to pray! There, during the most
+brilliant period of the empire, she had attended the military
+<i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, in the midst of which the emperor was preparing
+to go forth to encounter new dangers, and to reap, perhaps, new
+renown. A high column designated the place where these
+camp-festivals had once taken place. It had been erected under the
+empire, but under the restoration the name of Louis XVIII. had been
+inscribed on it.</p>
+<p>Accompanied by the prince, the Duchess of St. Leu ascended this
+column, in order to show him from its summit the beautiful and
+flourishing France, that had once been her own and through which
+they must now pass with veiled countenances and borrowed names.
+From there she pointed out to him the situation of the different
+camps, the location of the imperial tent, then the place where the
+emperor's throne had stood, and where he had first distributed
+crosses of the legion of honor among the soldiers.</p>
+<p>With a glowing countenance and in breathless attention, Louis
+Napoleon listened to his mother's narrative. Hortense, lost in her
+recollections, had not noticed that two other visitors, a lady and
+a gentleman, were now also on the platform and had listened to a
+part of her narrative. As the duchess ceased speaking, they
+approached to tell her with what deep interest they had listened to
+her narrative of the most glorious period of French history. They
+were a young married couple from Paris, and had much to relate
+concerning the parties who were now arrayed against each other in
+France, and who made the future of the country so uncertain.</p>
+<p>In return for Hortense's so eloquent description of the past,
+they now told her of a <i>bon mot</i> of the present that was going
+the rounds of Parisian society. It was there said that the best
+means of satisfying everybody and all parties would be, to convert
+France into a republic and to give it three consuls, the Duke of
+Reichstadt, the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Bordeaux. "But,"
+added they, "it might easily end in the first consul's driving out
+the other two, and making himself emperor."</p>
+<p>Hortense found the courage to answer this jest with a smile, but
+she hastened to leave the place and to get away from the couple,
+who had perhaps recognized her, and told them of the <i>bon mot</i>
+with a purpose.</p>
+<p>Sadly and silently, mother and son returned to their hotel,
+which was situated on the sea-side, and commanded a fine view of
+the surging, foaming waters of the channel and of the lofty column
+of the empire.</p>
+<p>They both stepped out on the balcony. It was a beautiful
+evening; the setting sun shed its purple rays over the surface of
+the sea. Murmuring and in melodious <i>tace</i> the foaming waves
+rolled in upon the beach; on another side, the lofty column,
+glowing in the light of the setting sun, towered aloft like a
+pillar of fire, a memorial monument of fire!</p>
+<p>Hortense, who for some time had been silently gazing, first at
+the column, then at the sea, now turned with a sad smile to her
+son.</p>
+<p>"Let us spend an hour with recollections of the past," said she.
+"In the presence of this foaming sea and of this proud column, I
+will show you a picture of the past. Do you wish to see it?"</p>
+<p>His gaze fastened on the imperial column, Louis Napoleon
+silently nodded assent.</p>
+<p>Hortense went to her room, and soon returned to the balcony with
+a book, bound in red velvet. Often, during the quiet days of
+Arenenberg, the prince had seen her writing in this book, but never
+had Hortense yielded to his entreaties and permitted him to read
+any part of her memoirs. Unsolicited it was her intention to unfold
+before him to-day a brilliant picture; in view of the sad and
+desolate present, she wished to portray to him the bright and
+glittering past, perhaps only for the purpose of entertaining him,
+perhaps in order to console him with the hope that all that is
+passes away, and that the present would therefore also come to an
+end, and that which once was, again become reality for him, the
+heir of the emperor.</p>
+<p>She seated herself at her son's side, on a little sofa that
+stood on the balcony, and, opening her book, began to read.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI.4"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>FRAGMENT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"The emperor had returned from Italy. The beautiful ceremony of
+the distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honor had taken
+place before his departure, and I had been present on the occasion;
+the emperor now repaired to Boulogne, in order to make a second
+distribution of the order in the army on his birthday. He had made
+my husband general of the army of the reserve, and sent him a
+courier, with the request that he should come with me and our son
+to the camp at Boulogne. My husband did not wish to interrupt the
+baths he was taking at St. Amand, but he requested me to go to
+Boulogne, to spend a week with the emperor.</p>
+<p>"The emperor resided at Boulogne in a little villa called
+<i>Pont de Brigue</i>. His sister, Caroline, and Murat, lived in
+another little villa near by. I lived with them, and every day we
+went to dine with the emperor. During two years, our troops had
+been concentrating in full view of England, and every one expected
+an attack. The camp at Boulogne was erected on the sea-side, and
+resembled a long and regularly-built city. Each hut had a little
+garden, flowers, and birds. In the middle of the camp, on an
+elevation, stood the emperor's tent; near by, that of Marshal
+Berthier. All the men-of-war on the water were drawn up in a line,
+only waiting the signal of departure. In the distance we could see
+England, and its beautiful ships that were cruising along the coast
+seemed to form an impenetrable barrier. This grand spectacle gave
+us for the first time an illustration of an unknown, hitherto
+not-dreamed-of power that stood opposed to us. Here every thing was
+calculated to excite the imagination. This boundless sea might soon
+transform itself into a battle-field, and swallow up the
+<i>&eacute;lite</i> of the two greatest nations. Our troops, proud
+in the feeling that there were no obstacles for them, made
+impatient by two years' repose, glowing with energy and bravery,
+already imagined themselves to have attained the opposite coast.
+When one considered their bravery and confidence, success seemed
+certain; but when the eye turned to the impenetrable forest of
+masts on the hostile ships, a feeling of anxiety and fear suddenly
+took possession of the heart. And yet nothing seemed to be wanting
+to the expedition but a favorable wind.</p>
+<p>"Of all the homage that a woman can receive, military homage has
+in the highest degree the chivalrous character, and it is
+impossible not to feel flattered by it.</p>
+<p>"There could not be any thing more delightful or imposing than
+the homage of which I was here the object, and it was only here
+that it made any impression on me.</p>
+<p>"The emperor gave me as an escort his equerry, General Defrance.
+Whenever I approached a camp division, the guard was called out and
+presented arms.</p>
+<p>"I had interceded for several soldiers who were undergoing
+punishment for breaches of discipline, and was on this account
+received everywhere with the liveliest enthusiasm. The entire
+mounted general staff escorted my carriage, and my approach was
+everywhere hailed by brilliant music. It was on such an occasion
+that I saw for the first time the urn which a grenadier wore
+attached to his belt; I was told that the emperor, in order to do
+honor to the memory of the gallant Latour d'Auvergne<a name=
+"FNanchor70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70">[70]</a>, had caused his
+heart to be enclosed in a leaden casket, which he had intrusted to
+the oldest soldier of the regiment, commanding that his name should
+always be called at the roll-call, as though he were present. He
+who bore the heart replied: 'Dead on the field of honor.'</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_70"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor70">[70]</a> Latour d'Auvergne, a descendant of the
+celebrated Turenne, was known and honored throughout the whole army
+on account of the lion-hearted courage which he had exhibited on so
+many occasions. As he invariably declined the many advancements and
+honors that were tendered him, Napoleon appointed him first
+grenadier of the army. He fell in the action at Neuburg, and the
+Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, afterward caused a monument
+to be erected there in his memory.</blockquote>
+<p>"One day, a breakfast was given me at the camp of Ambleteuse. I
+desired to go by water, and, notwithstanding a contrary wind, the
+admiral took me. I saw the English ships, and we passed so near
+them, that they might easily have captured our yacht. I also
+visited the Dutch fleet commanded by Admiral Versuelt, where I was
+received with great applause, the sailors little dreaming that I
+would be their queen within the space of a year<a name=
+"FNanchor71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71">[71]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_71"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor71">[71]</a> In order to reach the harbor of Ambleteuse
+to which they had been assigned, the Dutch had first been compelled
+to do battle with the English fleet, and in this combat they had
+acquitted themselves with the greatest honor.</blockquote>
+<p>"On another occasion, the emperor ordered a review. The English,
+who felt disquieted, by the appearance of so many troops drawn up
+before them, approached nearer and nearer to our coasts, and even
+fired a few cannon-shots at us; the emperor was at the head of his
+French columns when they replied to these shots, and was thus
+placed between two fires. As we had followed him, we were now
+compelled to remain at his side. To his uncle's great joy, my son
+exhibited no symptom of fear whatever. But the generals trembled at
+seeing the emperor exposed to such danger. The ramrod of some
+awkward soldier might prove as dangerous as a ball. In the midst of
+this imposing spectacle, I was struck with astonishment at the
+contrast presented by the troops under different circumstances.
+When drawn up in line of battle, they glowed with gallantry and
+determination, but, in the days of repose, they resembled
+well-behaved children, who could amuse themselves with a flower or
+a bird. The most daring warrior was then often converted into the
+most diligent and submissive scholar.</p>
+<p>"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent,
+the grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several
+songs, and came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young
+girls. In the most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song
+full of the fiercest and most daring threats against England.</p>
+<p>"From the emperor's parlor we often saw the soldiers of his
+guard assemble on the grass-plot before the castle; one of them
+would play the violin and instruct his comrades in dancing. The
+beginners would study the '<i>j&eacute;t&eacute;s</i>' and
+'<i>assembl&eacute;s</i>' with the closest attention; the more
+advanced ones would execute a whole contredance. From behind the
+window-blinds we watched them with the greatest pleasure. The
+emperor, who often surprised us at this occupation, would laugh
+with us and rejoice at the innocent amusements of his soldiers.</p>
+<p>"Was this project of a landing in England really intended? Or
+was it the emperor's purpose by these enormous preparations to
+divert attention from other points, and fix it on this one only?
+Even to-day this is a question which I cannot venture to decide;
+here, as elsewhere, I only report what I have seen.</p>
+<p>"Madame Ney also gave me a brilliant festival at Montreuil,
+where her husband the marshal was in command. During the forenoon
+the troops were manoeuvred before me, in the evening a ball took
+place. But this was suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that
+the emperor had just embarked.</p>
+<p>"A number of young officers, who had been present at the ball,
+rushed out on the road to Boulogne; I followed them with the
+rapidity of lightning, escorted as usual by General Defrance, who
+burned with impatience to be again at the emperor's side. I myself
+felt unutterable emotion at the prospect of witnessing so great an
+occurrence. I imagined myself observing the battle from the summit
+of the tower that stood near the emperor's tent; beholding our
+fleet advance and sink down into the waves, I shuddered in
+anticipation.</p>
+<p>"At last I arrived. I inquired after the emperor, and learned
+that he had actually attended the embarkation of all his troops
+during the night, but that he had just returned to his villa.</p>
+<p>"I did not see him until dinner, at which he asked Prince
+Joseph, who was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed
+in this pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the
+soldiers. Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed
+that a departure was really intended, and that the soldiers had
+doubted it so little that they had sold their watches. The emperor
+also often asked if the telegraph had not yet announced the
+approach of the French squadron; his adjutant, Lauriston, was with
+the squadron, and the emperor seemed only to be awaiting
+Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to set sail.</p>
+<p>"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired,
+and I took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and
+Dunkirk. I saw troops defiling before me everywhere; and with
+regret and fear I left this magnificent army, thinking that they
+might perhaps in a few days be exposed to the greatest dangers.</p>
+<p>"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage
+of our fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving
+in our neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the
+Rhine. Austria had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris,
+to see the emperor once more before his departure for
+Germany<a name="FNanchor72"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_72">[72]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_72"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor72">[72]</a> La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc.,
+p. 278.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII.4"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>THE PILGRIM.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son,
+in order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
+her memories.</p>
+<p>It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although
+banished and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she
+still stood on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living
+in a foreign land, in a land whose language was unknown to her, and
+whose people she could therefore not understand. Now, on this
+journey through France, she rejoiced once more in being able to
+understand the conversation of the people in the streets, and of
+the peasants in the fields. It was a sensation of mingled
+bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a stranger among
+this people, and it therefore now afforded her the greatest delight
+to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
+<i>na&iuml;ve</i> and artless words.</p>
+<p>As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in
+which she purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out
+into the streets on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into
+a booth, seated herself, and conversed with the people who came to
+the store to purchase their daily necessaries; on another occasion,
+she accosted a child on the street, kissed it, and inquired after
+its parents; then, again, she would converse with the peasants in
+the villages about their farms, and the prospects of a plentiful
+harvest. The <i>na&iuml;ve</i>, strong, and healthy disposition of
+the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of a happy
+mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
+French people, to which they, though banished and cast off, still
+belonged.</p>
+<p>In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince
+Cond&eacute;. The forests that stood in the neighborhood had once
+belonged to the queen, or rather they had been a portion of the
+appendage which the emperor, since the union of Holland and France,
+had set apart for her second son, Louis Napoleon. Hortense had
+never been in the vicinity, and could therefore visit the castle
+without fear of being recognized.</p>
+<p>They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the
+garden, who had been the former possessor of the great forests of
+Chantilly.</p>
+<p>"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense,"
+replied the man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued
+to speak of her here for a long time; it was said that she was
+wandering about in the country in disguise, but for the last few
+years nothing has been heard of her, and I do not know what has
+become of her."</p>
+<p>"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad
+a smile that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with
+tears.</p>
+<p>From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine,
+for Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once
+seen in the days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These
+places now seemed as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How
+great the splendor that had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the
+emperor had visited the owner of the place in order to enjoy with
+him the delights of the chase! In the walks of the park, in which
+thousands of lamps had then shone, the grass now grew rankly; a
+miserable, leaky boat was now the only conveyance to the Poplar
+Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques, on whose monument
+Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names. Morfontaine
+appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in 1815, and
+it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense had
+attended a magnificent festival given by Joseph Bonaparte, then its
+owner, to his imperial brother.</p>
+<p>In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful
+remembrances for Hortense, for here was situated the great college
+for the daughters of high military officers, of which Hortense had
+been the protectress. She dared not show herself, for she well knew
+that she was not forgotten here; here there were many who still
+knew and loved her, and she could only show herself to strangers.
+But she nevertheless visited the church, and descended with Louis
+Napoleon into the vaults. Louis XVIII. alone reposed in the halls
+which the empire had restored for the reception of the new family
+of rulers, adopted by France. Alas! he who built these halls, the
+Emperor Napoleon, now reposed under a weeping-willow on a desolate
+island in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him now
+occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus of the emperor.</p>
+<p>While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls, Hortense
+thought of the day on which she had come hither with the emperor to
+inspect the building of the church. And that time she had been ill
+and suffering, and with the fullest conviction she had said to her
+mother that she, Queen Hortense, would be the first that would be
+laid to rest in the vault of St. Denis. Now, after so many years,
+she descended into it living and had hardly a right to visit
+it.</p>
+<p>But there was another grave, another monument to her memories,
+beside which Hortense desired to pray. This was the grave of the
+Empress Josephine, in the church at Ruelle.</p>
+<p>With what emotions did she approach this place and kneel down
+beside the grave-mound! Of all that Josephine had loved, there
+remained only Hortense and her son, a solitary couple, who were now
+secretly visiting the place where Hortense's mother reposed. The
+number of flowers that adorned the monument proved that Josephine
+was at least resting in the midst of friends, who still held her
+memory sacred, and this was a consolation for her daughter.</p>
+<p>From Ruelle and its consecrated grave they wandered on to
+Malmaison. Above all, Hortense wished to show this palace to her
+son! It was from this place that Napoleon had departed to leave
+France forever! Here Hortense had had the pleasure of sweetening
+for him, by her tender sympathy, the moment when all the world had
+abandoned him--the moment when he fell from the heights of renown
+into the abyss of misfortune. But, alas! the poor queen was not
+even to have the satisfaction of showing to her son the palace,
+sacred to so many memories that had once been her own! The present
+owner had given strict orders to give admission to the palace only
+upon presentation of permits that must be obtained of him
+beforehand, and, as Hortense had none, her entreaties were all in
+vain.</p>
+<p>She was cruelly repelled from the threshold of the palace in
+which in former days she had been so joyfully received by her
+devoted friends and servants!</p>
+<p>Sorrowfully, her eyes clouded with tears, she turned away and
+returned to her hotel, leaning on her son's arm.</p>
+<p>In silence she seated herself at his side on the stone bench
+that stood before the house, and gazed at the palace in which she
+had spent such happy and momentous days, lost in the recollections
+of the past!</p>
+<p>"It is, perhaps, natural," she murmured in a low voice, "that
+absence should cause those, who have the happiness to remain in
+their homes, to forget us. But, for those who are driven out into
+foreign lands, the life of the heart stands still, and the past is
+all to them; to the exiled the present and the future are
+unimportant. In France every thing has progressed, every thing is
+changed, I alone am left behind, with my sentiments of unchangeable
+love and fidelity! Alas! how sorrowful and painful it is to be
+forgotten<a name="FNanchor73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73">[73]</a>!
+How--"</p>
+<p>Suddenly she was interrupted by the tones of a piano, that
+resounded in her immediate vicinity. Behind the bench on which they
+were sitting, were the windows of the parlor of the hotel. These
+windows were open, and each tone of the music within could be heard
+with the greatest distinctness.</p>
+<p>The playing was now interrupted by a female voice, which said:
+"Sing us a song, my daughter."</p>
+<p>"What shall I sing?" asked another and more youthful voice.</p>
+<p>"Sing the beautiful, touching song your brother brought you from
+Paris yesterday. The song of Delphine Gay, set to music by M. de
+Beauplan."</p>
+<p>"Ah, you mean the song about Queen Hortense, who comes to Paris
+as a pilgrim? You are right, mamma, it is a beautiful and touching
+song, and I will sing it!"</p>
+<p>And the young lady struck the keys more forcibly, and began to
+play the prelude.</p>
+<p>Outside on the stone bench sat she who was once Queen Hortense,
+but was now the poor, solitary pilgrim. Nothing remained to her of
+the glorious past, but her son, who sat at her side! Hand in hand,
+both breathless with emotion, both pale and tearful, they listened
+until the young girl concluded her touching song.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_73"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor73">[73]</a> The duchess's own words. See Voyage en
+Italie, etc., p. 305.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII.4"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>CONCLUSION.</h3>
+<br>
+<p>This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was
+once more in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking
+the Lake of Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic
+lake, with its island and its surrounding cities and villages.</p>
+<br>
+<p>Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned
+its back on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny
+alike frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and
+the Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her
+residence in their territory--still had the courage to offer the
+Duchess of St. Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil
+of the little republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and
+distrust of the mighty could not drive her!</p>
+<p>In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a
+bleeding breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful
+blow, the loss of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and
+bowed down by the coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the
+cowardly fear of its egoism, had become faithless, even to the
+holiest and most imperishable of all religions, the religion of
+memory!</p>
+<p>How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned
+her! how many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour
+of peril!</p>
+<p>In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them
+all; and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied
+them! She had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her
+world--Arenenberg, in which her last and only happiness, her son,
+the heir of the imperial name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which
+was as a temple of memory, in which Hortense was the pious and
+believing priestess.</p>
+<p>At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her
+journey through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in
+the heroism of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The
+noblest womanhood, the most cultivated mind, the proudest and
+purest soul, speaks from out this book, with which Hortense has
+erected a monument to herself that is more imperishable than all
+the monuments of stone and bronze, for this monument speaks to the
+heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote this book with her
+heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her eyes; she
+concludes it with a touching appeal to the French people, which it
+may well be permitted us to repeat here; it is as follows:</p>
+<p>"The renewal of the law of exile, and the assimilation made
+between us and the Bourbons, testify to the sentiments and fears
+that are entertained respecting us. No friendly voice has been
+raised in our behalf; this indifference has doubled the bitterness
+of our banishment! May they, however, still be happy--those who
+forget! May they, above all, make France happy! This is my
+prayer!</p>
+<p>"As for the people, it will, if it remembers its glory, its
+grandeur, and the incessant care of which it was the object, ever
+hold our memory dear. This is my firm conviction, and this thought
+is the sweetest consolation of an exile, the sweetest consolation
+he can take with him to the grave<a name="FNanchor74"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_74">[74]</a>!"</p>
+<p>Hortense still lived a few years of peaceful tranquillity; far
+from all she loved--far also from the son who was her last hope,
+never dreaming that destiny had so brilliant a future in store for
+him, and that Louis Napoleon, whom the Bourbons had banished from
+France as a child, and the Orleans as a youth--that Louis Napoleon
+would one day be enthroned in Paris as emperor, while the Bourbons
+and Orleans languish in foreign lands as exiles!</p>
+<p>In the year 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Bonapartes,
+died!</p>
+<p>Weary, at last, of misfortune, and of the exile in which she
+languished, she bowed her head, and went home to her great
+dead--home to Napoleon and Josephine!</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_74"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor74">[74]</a> Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 324.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Mühlbach
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Muehlbach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Queen Hortense
+       A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+Author: L. Muehlbach
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2004 [EBook #12019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN HORTENSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE
+
+A Life picture of the Napoleonic Era
+
+BY
+
+L. MUeHLBACH
+
+AUTHOR OF PRINCE EUGENE AND HIS TIMES, JOSEPH II, AND HIS COURT,
+MERCHANT OF BERLIN, ETC.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
+
+CHAPMAN COLEMAN
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--Days of Childhood.
+  II.--The Prophecy.
+ III.--Consequences of the Revolution.
+  IV.--General Bonaparte.
+   V.--The Marriage.
+  VI.--Bonaparte in Italy.
+ VII.--Vicissitudes of Destiny.
+VIII.--Bonaparte's Return from Egypt.
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--A First Love.
+  II.--Louis Bonaparte and Duroc.
+ III--Consul and King.
+  IV.--The Calumny.
+   V.--King or Emperor.
+  VI.--Napoleon's Heir.
+ VII.--Premonitions.
+VIII.--The Divorce.
+  IX.--The King of Holland.
+   X.--Junot, the Duke d'Abrantes.
+  XI.--Louis Napoleon as a Vender of Violets.
+ XII.--The Days of Misfortune.
+XIII.--The Allies in Paris.
+ XIV.--Correspondence between the Queen and Louise de Cochelet.
+  XV.--Queen Hortense and the Emperor Alexander.
+ XVI.--The New Uncles.
+XVII.--Death of the Empress Josephine.
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Return of the Bourbons.
+  II.--The Bourbons and the Bonapartes.
+ III.--Madame de Stael.
+  IV.--Madame de Stael's Return to Paris.
+   V.--Madame de Stael's Visit to Queen Hortense.
+  VI.--The Old and New Era.
+ VII.--King Louis XVIII.
+VIII.--The Drawing-room of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Burial of Louis XVI. and his Wife.
+   X.--Napoleon's Return from Elba.
+  XI.--Louis XVIII.'s Departure and Napoleon's Arrival.
+ XII.--The Hundred Days.
+XIII.--Napoleon's Last Adieu.
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU._
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I.--The Banishment of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.
+ III.--The Revolution of 1830.
+  IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense.
+   V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.
+  VI.--The Flight from Italy.
+ VII.--The Pilgrimage.
+VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu.
+  IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from Paris.
+   X.--Pilgrimage through France.
+  XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
+ XII.--The Pilgrim.
+XIII.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the Sections, _Frontispiece_.
+
+View of the Tuileries.
+
+Portrait of Queen Hortense.
+
+Portrait of Madame de Stael.
+
+
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+BOOK I.
+
+_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.
+
+"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says our
+great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss purchased
+with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.
+
+And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
+Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy? Now,
+let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have tasted
+felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable
+and eternal!"
+
+Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an
+emperor to endure.
+
+In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and
+with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was
+not spared.
+
+A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was
+this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended
+from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of
+life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us
+as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen
+of Flowers.
+
+The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's beautiful
+daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she
+was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the
+daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued
+to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared
+to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his
+"_Fleurs Animees_." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of the
+Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a
+half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris. Farther in
+the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of
+the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot,
+but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial
+mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the
+train of a comet; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the
+golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a
+full-blooming branch of the crown imperial.
+
+It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming picture of
+Gavarni's conjures up before us--an historical pageant that sweeps by
+us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the
+life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her
+destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had
+seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems
+remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.
+
+When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none
+the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her poems are
+sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of
+impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds
+of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally
+melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, "_Va
+t'en, Guerrier_," which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at
+Napoleon's request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of
+France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this
+march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same warlike
+harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant
+destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time
+everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had
+returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the _Invalides_ hummed it
+under their breath, while they whispered secretly to each other of the
+glory of _La Belle France_, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now
+gone forever.
+
+To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and mounts
+in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vendome. The bronze
+visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous
+billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the
+queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews
+of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems,
+and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for
+France has won so holy a significance--holy because it is the
+master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should
+revere--the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "_Va t'en,
+Guerrier_," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the
+queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some
+brave soldier.
+
+She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable queen--but she
+ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to
+woman--the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on
+the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken
+heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged
+lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned
+kings and queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs,
+banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of
+those to whom _they_ had been clement, a little spot of earth, where,
+far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in
+quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty
+sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy tale,
+which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to men and
+nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were
+eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.
+
+Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the
+mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the contrary, to
+teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the
+dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these
+wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the
+broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her
+bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but,
+even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to
+relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a
+constant charity; and when she died she could, like the Empress
+Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept much, but never have I made
+others weep."
+
+Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who, against
+the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de
+la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love
+alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy
+issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and
+jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the
+wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil
+bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not
+merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and
+cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine
+was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all
+those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her
+husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered
+in the viscount's ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived,
+then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter
+grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention
+and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet _blasee_ and
+hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and
+the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part
+to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she
+required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should
+not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose
+the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his
+suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity; and both
+became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love
+they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their
+children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a
+son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy.
+Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness; and often
+when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the
+presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress
+from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and
+mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive
+attachment.
+
+But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment
+arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in
+her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had
+sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and
+little Hortense, quite disheartened by the absence of her brother, had
+no longer the means or the courage to allay the quarrels that raged
+between her parents, but would escape in terror and dismay, when they
+broke out, to some lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a
+misfortune, the extent of which her poor little childish heart could not
+yet estimate.
+
+In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young viscountess
+received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame
+Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors
+of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was
+no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and
+insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her
+with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her
+daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the
+last few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her
+dazzling youth.
+
+Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a hint from
+destiny; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and resolved to end them
+forever, she took her little daughter, Hortense, then scarcely four
+years old, and with her sailed away from France, to seek beyond the
+ocean and in her mother's arms the new happiness of undisturbed
+tranquillity.
+
+But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The mutterings
+and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A
+subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands; a dull
+thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change
+into one vast volcano--one measureless crater--that would dash to atoms,
+and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams and fiery cinder-showers, the
+happiness and peace of all humanity. And, finally, this terrific crater
+did, indeed, open and hurl destruction and death on all sides, over the
+whole world, uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations,
+and silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering
+echoes of its awful voice!
+
+This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most fearful
+explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole world shook
+and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious masses from beneath
+overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse the order of things and
+place the lowest where the highest had been. Even away in Martinique
+this social earthquake was felt, which had already, in France, flung out
+the bloody guillotine from its relentless crater. This guillotine had
+become the altar of the so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon
+this altar the intoxicated, unthinking masses offered up to their new
+idol those who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by
+whose death they now believed that they could purchase freedom
+for evermore.
+
+"_Egalite! fraternite! liberte!_" Such was the battle-cry of this
+howling, murdering populace. Such were the three words which burned in
+blood-red letters of fire above the guillotine, and their mocking emblem
+was the glittering axe, that flashed down, to sever from their bodies
+the heads of the aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion
+represented in those three words, they would not recognize as brethren
+and equals, or admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this
+battle-cry of the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as
+Martinique, where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience
+to the point of demanding by force that participation in freedom,
+equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They, at
+last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their masters, and
+the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of the whites served
+as the bridal torches to their espousal of liberty.
+
+The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes in which
+these firebrands fell.
+
+One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames,
+which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror,
+she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the
+couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped her in the
+bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst,
+with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting
+crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of
+mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready
+to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the
+small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young
+woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with
+one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the
+deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and
+child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put
+out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.
+
+The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her
+child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed
+up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this moment all her
+thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it was only when she
+had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free
+from all danger--only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a
+mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and
+frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering
+night-clothes, without any other covering to her beautiful neck and
+bosom than her superb, luxuriant hair, which fell around her and partly
+hid them, like a thick black veil, stood the young Viscountess
+Josephine de Beauharnais, in the midst of a group of gazing men!
+
+However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so soon as
+her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine eagerly requested
+to be taken back to land, in order that she might fly to her mother's
+assistance.
+
+But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to give the
+young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins who were
+burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells could be
+distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast, so far as the
+eye could reach, looked like another sea--a sea, though, of flame and
+smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in long tongues of fire far
+against the sky. It was a terrible, an appalling spectacle; and
+Josephine fled from it to the bedside of her little sleeping daughter.
+Then, kneeling there by the couch of her child, she uplifted to heaven
+her face, down which the tears were streaming, and implored God to spare
+her mother.
+
+But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and farther
+away from this blazing coast.
+
+Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother's burning home,
+which gradually grew less to her sight, then glimmered only like a tiny
+star on the distant horizon, and finally vanished altogether. With that
+last ray her childhood and past life had sunk forever in the sea, and a
+new world and a new life opened for both mother and child. The past was,
+like the ships of Cortez, burned behind her; yet it threw a magic light
+far away over into her future, and as Josephine stood there with her
+little Hortense in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island
+where her early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old
+mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day:
+
+"You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all France will
+be at your feet. You will be greater there than a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PROPHECY.
+
+It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with her little
+daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her residence in a
+small dwelling. There she soon received the intelligence of the rescue
+of her mother, and of the re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In
+France, however, the revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the
+banner of the Reign of Terror--the red flag--still cast its bloody
+shadow over Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken; no one knew in
+the evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or
+that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at every
+door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in every family.
+In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all her earlier griefs,
+all the insults and humiliations to which she had been subjected by her
+husband; the old love revived in her breast, and, as it might well be
+that on the morrow death would come knocking at her own door, she wished
+to devote the present moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a
+reunion with her son.
+
+But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The viscount had
+felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an injury, too great an
+insult, to be now willing to consent to a reconciliation with his wife.
+Sympathizing friends arranged a meeting between them, without, however,
+previously informing the viscount of their design. His anger was
+therefore great when, on entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in
+response to that gentleman's invitation, he found there the wife he had
+so obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily,
+when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in silvery
+tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was now powerless
+to fly; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his heart, and when the
+child, with a winning smile, entreated him to kiss her mamma as he had
+kissed her; when he saw the beautiful countenance of Josephine wet with
+tears; when he heard his father's voice saying, "My son, reconcile
+yourself with my daughter! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not
+call her so if she were unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son,
+Eugene, gazing at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother's
+shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he
+stepped forward to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful
+greeting of love, Josephine sank on his bosom.
+
+Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united in a
+closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to have spent
+their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear and cloudless.
+But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the black shadow of the
+revolution.
+
+Viscount Beauharnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the new
+legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position, in order
+to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue. With the rank
+of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the North, accompanied
+by Josephine's blessings and tears. A dread premonition told her that
+she would never see the general again, and this premonition did not
+deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and insurrection not only raged among
+the people of Paris, but also in the army. The aristocrats, who were
+given over to the guillotine in Paris, were also regarded with distrust
+and hatred in the army, and Viscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry
+on the battle-field of Soissons, had been promoted to the position of
+commanding general, was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of
+France and of the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to
+Paris, and thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other
+victims of the revolution lay in confinement.
+
+The sad intelligence of her husband's misfortune soon reached Josephine,
+and aroused her love to energetic action in his behalf. She mentally
+vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her children, or to die
+with him. She courageously confronted all dangers, all suspicions, and
+was happy when she found him in his prison, where she visited him,
+whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.
+
+But at that time love and fidelity were also capital crimes, and
+Josephine's guilt was twofold: first, because she was an aristocrat
+herself, and secondly, because she loved and wept for the fate of an
+aristocrat, and an alleged traitor to his country. Josephine was
+arrested and thrown into the prison of St. Pelagie.
+
+Eugene and Hortense were now little better than orphans, for the
+prisoners of the Luxembourg and St. Pelagie, at that time, only left
+their prisons to mount the scaffold. Alone, deprived of all help,
+avoided by all whom they had once known and loved, the two children were
+threatened with misery, want, and even with hunger, for the estate of
+their parents had been confiscated, and, in the same hour in which
+Josephine was conducted to prison, the entrances and doors of their
+dwelling were sealed, and the poor children left to find a sheltering
+roof for themselves. But yet they were not entirely helpless, not quite
+friendless, for a friend of Josephine, a Madame Ho1stein, had the
+courage to come to the rescue, and take the children into her
+own family.
+
+But it was necessary to go to work cautiously and wisely, in order to
+avoid exciting the hatred and vengeance of those who, coming from the
+scum of the people, were now the rulers of France. An imprudent word, a
+look, might suffice to cast suspicion upon, and render up to the
+guillotine, this good Madame Ho1stein, this courageous friend of the two
+children. It was in itself a capital crime that she had taken the
+children of the accused into her house, and it was therefore necessary
+to adopt every means of conciliating the authorities. It was thought
+necessary that Hortense should, in company with her protectress, attend
+the festivals and patriotic processions, that were renewed at every
+decade in honor of the one and indivisible republic, but she was never
+required to take an active part in these celebrations. She was not
+considered worthy to figure among the daughters of the people; she had
+not yet been forgiven for being the daughter of a viscount, of an
+imprisoned _ci-devant._ Eugene had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and
+the son of the viscount was now often seen walking through the streets
+in a blouse, carrying a board on his shoulder or a saw under his arm.
+
+While the children of the accused were thus enjoying temporary security,
+the future of their parents was growing darker and darker, and not only
+the life of the general, but also that of his wife, was now seriously
+endangered. Josephine had been removed from the prison of St. Pelagie to
+that of the Carmelites, and this brought her a step nearer the scaffold.
+But she did not tremble for herself, she thought only of her children
+and her husband; she wrote affectionate letters to the former, which she
+bribed her jailer to forward to their destination, but all her efforts
+to place herself in communication with her husband were abortive. One
+day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just been
+conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited for
+further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
+acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he already
+free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he were free, he
+would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead,
+his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the
+condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.
+Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
+misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
+face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.
+
+The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
+were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose
+seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the
+Marquise de Crequi, the intellectual lady who has often been called the
+last marquise of the _ancien regime_, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
+the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
+aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbe Texier, who, when the
+revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
+to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will
+you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was
+yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his
+master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter
+full of water and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than
+seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.
+
+To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this
+day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of
+her husband.
+
+In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison
+now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an assignat of
+fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that
+his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as
+"dove," and had made all other preparations. A table stood in the middle
+of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water,
+around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as
+near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to
+see the better. The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought
+from her bed in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and
+behind her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta. Around
+the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these
+ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their aristocratic
+manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly observant of
+etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the honor of the
+_tabouret_ in the Tuileries, were here accorded the same precedence, and
+all possible consideration shown them.
+
+On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her large, dark
+eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression, stood the unhappy
+Josephine, and, at some distance behind the ladies, the jailer with
+his wife.
+
+Now the Grand Cophta laid both hands on the child's head and cried in a
+loud voice, "Open your eyes and look!"
+
+The child turned pale and shuddered as it fixed its gaze on the
+decanter.
+
+"What do you see?" asked the Grand Cophta, "I want you to look into the
+prison of General Beauharnais. What do you see?"
+
+"I see a little room," said the child with vivacity. "On a cot lies a
+young man who sleeps; at his side stands another man, writing on a sheet
+of paper that lies on a large book."
+
+"Can you read?"
+
+"No, citizen. Now the man cuts off his hair, and folds it in the paper."
+
+"The one who sleeps?"
+
+"No, the one who was just now writing. He is now writing something on
+the back of the paper in which he wrapped the hair; now he opens a
+little red pocket-book, and takes papers out of it; they are assignats,
+he counts them and then puts them back in the pocket-book. Now he rises
+and walks softly, softly."
+
+"What do you mean by softly? You have not heard the slightest noise as
+yet, have you?"
+
+"No, but he walks through the room on tiptoe."
+
+"What do you see now?"
+
+"He now covers his face with his hands and seems to be weeping."
+
+"But what did he do with his pocket-book?"
+
+"Ah, he has put the pocket book and the package with the hair in the
+pocket of the coat that lies on the sleeping man's bed."
+
+"Of what color is this coat?"
+
+"I cannot see, exactly; it is red or brown, lined with blue silk and
+covered with shining buttons."
+
+"That will do," said the Grand Cophta; "you can go to bed, child."
+
+He stooped down over the child and breathed on her forehead. The little
+girl seemed to awaken as from a trance, and hurried to her parents, who
+led her from the hall.
+
+"General Beauharnais still lives!" said the Grand Cophta, addressing
+Josephine.
+
+"Yes, he still lives," cried she, sadly, "but he is preparing for
+death[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: This scene is exactly as represented by the Marquise de
+Crequi, who was present and relates it in her memoirs, vol. vi.,
+p. 238.]
+
+Josephine was right. A few days later Duchess d'Anville received a
+package and a letter. It was sent to her by a prisoner in La Force,
+named De Legrois. He had occupied the same cell with General Beauharnais
+and had found the package and the letter, addressed to the duchess, in
+his pocket on the morning of the execution of the general.
+
+In this letter the general conjured Duchess D'Anville to deliver to
+Josephine the package which contained his hair and his last adieus to
+wife and children.
+
+This was the only inheritance which General Beauharnais could bequeath
+to his Josephine and her unhappy children!
+
+Josephine was so agitated by the sight of her husband's hair and his
+last fond words of adieu, that she fainted away, a stream of blood
+gushing from her mouth.
+
+Her companions in misfortune vied with each other in giving her the most
+tender attention, and demanded of the jailer that a physician should
+be called.
+
+"Why a physician!" said the man, indifferently. "Death is the best
+physician. He called the general to-day; in a few days he will restore
+to him his wife."
+
+This prophecy was almost verified. Josephine, scarcely recovered from
+her illness, received her citation from the Tribunal of Terror. This was
+the herald of certain death, and she courageously prepared for the
+grave, troubled only by thoughts of the children she must leave behind.
+
+A fortunate and unforeseen occurrence saved her. The men of the
+revolution had now attained the summit of their power, and, as there was
+no standing still for them, they sank into the abyss which themselves
+had digged.
+
+The fall of Robespierre opened the prisons and set at liberty thousands
+of the already condemned victims of the revolution.
+
+Viscountess Josephine left her prison; she was restored to liberty, and
+could now hasten to her children, but she came back to them as a poor
+widow, for the seals of the "one and indivisible republic" were on hers
+and her children's property as well as on that of all other aristocrats.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION.
+
+France drew a breath of relief; the Reign of Terror was at an end, and a
+milder and more moderate government wielded the sceptre over the poor
+land that had so lately lain in the agonies of death. It was no longer a
+capital offence to bear an aristocratic name, to be better dressed than
+the _sans-culottes_, to wear no Jacobin-cap, and to be related to the
+emigrants. The guillotine, which had ruled over Paris during two years
+of blood and tears, now rested from its horrid work, and allowed the
+Parisians to think of something else besides making their wills and
+preparing for death.
+
+Mindful of the uncertainty of the times, the people were disposed to
+make the most of this release from the fear of immediate death, and to
+enjoy themselves to the utmost while they could.
+
+They had so long wept, that they eagerly desired to laugh once more; so
+long lived in sorrow and fear, that they now ardently longed for
+amusement and relaxation. The beautiful women of Paris, who had been
+dethroned by the guillotine, and from whose hands the reins had been
+torn, now found the courage to grasp these reins again, and reconquer
+the position from which the storm-wind of the revolution had
+hurled them.
+
+Madame Tallien, the all-powerful wife of one of the five directors who
+now swayed the destinies of France; Madame Recamier, the friend of all
+the eminent and distinguished men of that period; and Madame de Stael,
+the daughter of Necker, and the wife of the ambassador of Sweden, whose
+government had recognized the republic--these three ladies gave to Paris
+its drawing-rooms, its reunions, its _fetes_, its fashions, and its
+luxury. All Paris had assumed a new form, and, although the Church had
+not yet again obtained official recognition, the belief in a Supreme
+Being was already re-established. Robespierre had already been bold
+enough to cause the inscription, "There is a Supreme Being," to be
+placed over the altars of the churches that had been converted into
+"Temples of Reason." Yes, there is a Supreme Being; and Robespierre, who
+had first acknowledged its existence, was soon to experience in himself
+that such was the case. Betrayed by his own associates, and charged by
+them with desiring to make himself dictator, and place himself at the
+head of the new Roman-French Republic as a new Caesar, Robespierre fell
+a prey to the Tribunal of Terror which he himself had called into
+existence. While engaged in the Hotel de Ville in signing
+death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the guillotine,
+he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards, who had stormed
+the gates and penetrated into the building, and the attempt to blow out
+his brains with his pistol miscarried. Bleeding, his jaw shattered by
+the bullet, he was dragged before Fouquier-Tainville to receive his
+sentence, and to be conducted thence to the scaffold. In order that the
+proceeding should be attended with all formalities, he was, however,
+first conducted to the Tuileries, where the Committee of Public Safety
+was then sitting in the chamber of Queen Marie Antoinette. Into the
+bedchamber of the queen whom Robespierre had brought to the scaffold,
+the bleeding, half-lifeless dictator was now dragged. Like a bundle of
+rags he was contemptuously thrown on the large table that stood in the
+middle of the room. But yesterday Robespierre had been enthroned at this
+table as almighty ruler over the lives and possessions of all Frenchmen;
+but yesterday he had here issued his decrees and signed the
+death-sentences, that lay on the table, unexecuted. These papers were
+now the only salve the ghastly, groaning man could apply to the wound in
+his face, from which blood poured in streams. The death-sentences signed
+by himself now drank his own blood, and he had nothing but a rag of a
+tricolor, thrown him by a compassionate _sans-culotte_, with which to
+bind up the great, gaping wound on his head. As he sat there in the
+midst of the blood-saturated papers, bleeding, groaning, and
+complaining, an old National Guard, with outstretched arms, pointing to
+this ghastly object, cried: "Yes, Robespierre was right. There is a
+Supreme Being!"
+
+This period of blood and terror was now over; Robespierre was dead;
+Theroigne de Mericourt was no longer the Goddess of Reason, and
+Mademoiselle Maillard no longer Goddess of Liberty and Virtue. Women had
+given up representing divinities, and desired to be themselves again,
+and to rebuild in the drawing-rooms of the capital, by means of their
+intellect and grace, the throne which had gone down in the revolution.
+
+Madame Tallien, Madame Recamier, and Madame de Stael, reorganized
+society, and all were anxious to obtain admission to their parlors. To
+be sure, these entertainments and reunions still wore a sufficiently
+strange and fantastic appearance. Fashion, which had so long been
+compelled to give way to the _carmagnole_ and red cap, endeavored to
+avenge its long banishment by all manner of caprices and humors, and in
+doing so assumed a political, reactionary aspect. _Coiffures a la
+Jacobine_ were now supplanted by _coiffures a la victime_ and _au
+repentir_. In order to exhibit one's taste for the fine arts, the
+draperies of the statues of Greece and ancient Rome were now worn.
+Grecian _fetes_ were given, at which the black soup of Lycurgus was duly
+honored, and Roman feasts which, in splendor and extravagance, rivalled
+those of Lucullus. These Roman feasts were particularly in vogue at the
+palace of Luxembourg, where the directors of the republic had now taken
+up their residence, and where Madame Tallien exhibited to the new French
+society the new wonders of luxury and fashion. Too proud to wear the
+generally-adopted costume of the Grecian republic, Madame Tallien chose
+the attire of the Roman patrician lady; and the gold-embroidered purple
+robes, and the golden tiara in her black, shining hair, gave to the
+charming and beautiful daughter of the republic the magnificence of an
+empress. She had also drawn around her a splendid court. All eagerly
+pressed forward to pay their respects to and obtain the good will of the
+mighty wife of the mighty Tallien. Her house was the great point of
+attraction to all those who occupied prominent positions in Paris, or
+aspired to such. While in the parlors of Madame Recamier, who, despite
+the revolution, had remained a zealous royalist, the past and the good
+time of the Bourbons were whispered of, and witty and often sanguinary
+_bon mots_ at the expense of the republic uttered--while in Madame de
+Stael's parlors art and science had found an asylum--Madame Tallien and
+court lived for the present, and basked in the splendor with which she
+knew how to invest the palace of the dictators of France.
+
+In the mean while, Viscountess Josephine Beauharnais had been living,
+with her children, in quiet retirement, a prey to sad memories. A day
+came, however, when she was compelled to tear herself from this last
+consolation of the unhappy, the brooding over the sorrows and losses of
+the past, or see her children become the victims of misery and want. The
+time had come when she must leave her retirement, and step, as a
+petitioner, before those who had the power to grant, as a favor, that
+which was hers by right, and restore to her, at least in part, her
+sequestered estate. Josephine had known Madame Tallien when she was
+still Madame de Fontenay, and it now occurred to her that she might
+assist her in her attempt to recover the inheritance of her father.
+Madame Tallien, the "Merveilleuse de Luxembourg," also called by her
+admirers, "Notre-dame de Thermidor," felt much nattered at being called
+on by a real viscountess, who had filled a distinguished position at the
+court of King Louis. She therefore received her with great amiability,
+and endeavored to make the charming and beautiful viscountess her
+friend. But Josephine found that estates were more easily lost than
+recovered. The republic, one and indivisible, was always ready to take,
+but not to give; and, even with the kindly offices of Madame Tallien
+freely exerted in her behalf, it was some time before Josephine
+succeeded in recovering her estate. In the mean time, she really
+suffered want, and she and her children were compelled to bear the
+hardships and mortifications which poverty brings in its train. But true
+friends still remained to her in her misery; friends who, with true
+delicacy, furnished her with the prime necessities of life--with food
+and clothing for herself and children. In general, it was characteristic
+of this period that no one felt humiliated by accepting benefits of this
+kind from his friends. Those who had lost all had not done so through
+their own fault; and those who had saved their property out of the
+general wreck could not attribute their fortune to their own merit or
+wisdom, but merely to chance. They therefore considered it a sacred
+duty to divide with those who had been less fortunate; and the latter
+would point with pride to the poverty which proved that they had been
+true to themselves and principle, and accept what friendship offered.
+This was the result of a kind of community of property, to which the
+revolution had given birth. Those who had possessions considered it
+their duty to divide with those who had not, and the latter regarded
+this division rather as a right than as a benefit conferred.
+
+Josephine could, therefore, accept the assistance of her friends without
+blushing; she could, with propriety, allow Madame de Montmorin to
+provide for the wardrobe of herself and daughter; and she and Hortense
+could accept the invitation of Madame Dumoulin to dine with her twice a
+week. There, at Madame Dumoulin's, were assembled, on certain days, a
+number of friends, who had been robbed of their fortunes by the storms
+of the revolution. Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a rich army-contractor,
+gave these dinners to her friends, but each guest was expected to bring
+with him his own white-bread. White-bread was, at that time, considered
+one of the greatest dainties; for, there being a scarcity of grain, a
+law had been proclaimed allotting to each section of Paris a certain
+amount of bread, and providing that no individual should be entitled to
+purchase more than two ounces daily. It had, therefore, become the
+general custom to add the following to all invitations: "You are
+requested to bring your white bread with you," for the reason that no
+more than the allotted two ounces could be had for money, and that
+amount cost the purchaser dearly[2]. Josephine, however, had not even
+the money to buy the portion allowed her by law. An exception to this
+rule was, however, made in favor of Josephine and Hortense; and at
+Madame Dumoulin's dinners the hostess always provided white bread for
+them, and for them alone of all her guests. Viscountess Beauharnais was
+soon, however, to be freed from this want. One day when she had been
+invited by Madame Tallien to dinner, and had walked to the palace with
+Hortense, Tallien informed her that the government had favorably
+considered her petition, and was willing to make some concessions to the
+widow of a true patriot who had sealed his devotion to principle with
+his blood; that he had procured an ordinance from the administration of
+domains, pursuant to which the seals were at once to be removed from her
+furniture and other personal property, and that the republic had
+remitted to her, through him, an order on the treasury for her relief,
+until the sequestration of her landed estates should be annulled, which
+he expected would soon take place.
+
+[Footnote 2: Memoires de Monsieur de Bourrienne sur Napoleon, etc., Vol.
+i., p. 80.]
+
+Josephine found no words in which to express her thanks. She pressed her
+daughter to her heart and cried out, her face bathed in tears: "We shall
+at last be happy! My children shall no longer suffer want!" This time
+the tears Josephine shed were tears of joy, the first in long years.
+
+Care and want were now over. Josephine could now give her children an
+education suitable to their rank; she could now once more assume the
+position in society to which her beauty, youth, amiability, and name
+entitled her. She no longer came to Madame Tallien's parlor as a
+suppliant, she was now its ornament, and all were eager to do homage to
+the adored friend of Madame Tallien, to the beautiful and charming
+viscountess. But Josephine preferred the quiet bliss of home-life in the
+circle of her children to the brilliant life of society; she gradually
+withdrew from the noisy circles of the outer world, in order that she
+might, in peaceful retirement, devote herself to the cultivation of the
+hearts and minds of her promising children.
+
+Eugene was now a youth of sixteen years, and, as his personal security
+no longer required him to deny his name and rank, he had left his
+master's carpenter-shop, and laid aside his blouse. He was preparing
+himself for military service under the instruction of excellent
+teachers, whom he astonished by his zeal and rare powers of
+comprehension. The military renown and heroic deeds of France filled him
+with enthusiasm; and one day, while speaking with his teacher of the
+deeds of Turenne, Eugene exclaimed with sparkling eyes and glowing
+countenance: "I too will become a gallant general, some day!"
+
+Hortense, now a girl of twelve years, lived with her mother, who was
+scarcely thirty years old, in the sweet companionship of an elder and
+younger sister. They were inseparable companions; Nature had given
+Hortense beauty with a lavish hand; her mother gave to this beauty
+grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's
+intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to
+care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition
+usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an
+insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence,
+not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls
+usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with
+the adornment of her person, and she did not bend her young head beneath
+the yoke of capricious fashion: for her, there were higher and nobler
+enjoyments, and Hortense was never happier than when her mother
+dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of
+Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to
+amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if
+not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the
+brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the
+school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a
+womanly earnestness and resolution, and yet her noble and chaste
+features still wore the impress of childhood, and in her large blue eyes
+reposed a whole heaven of innocence and peace. When she sat with her
+harp at the window in the evening twilight, the last rays of the setting
+sun gilding her sweet countenance, and surrounding as with a halo her
+beautiful blond hair, Josephine imagined she saw before her one of those
+angel-forms of innocence and love which the poet and painter portray.
+In a kind of trance she listened to the sweet sounds and melodies which
+Hortense lured from her harp, and accompanied with the silvery tones of
+her voice, in words composed by herself, half-childish prayer, half
+rhapsody of love, and revealing the most secret thoughts of the fair
+young being who stood on the threshold of womanhood, bidding adieu to
+childhood with a blissful smile, and dreaming of the future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GENERAL BUONAPARTE.
+
+While Josephine de Beauharnais, after the trials of these long and
+stormy years, was enjoying blissful days of quiet happiness and repose,
+the gusts of revolution kept bursting forth from time to time in fits of
+fury, and tranquillity continued far from being permanently restored.
+The clubs, those hot-beds of the revolution, still exercised their
+pestilential influence over the populace of Paris, and stirred the rude
+masses incessantly to fresh paroxysms of discontent and disorder.
+
+But already the man had been found who was to crush those wild masses in
+his iron grasp, and dash the speakers of the clubs down into the dust
+with the flashing master-glance of his resistless eye.
+
+That man was Napoleon Buonaparte. He was hardly twenty-nine years of
+age, yet already all France was talking him as a hero crowned with
+laurels, already had he trodden a brilliant career of victory. As
+commander of a battalion he had performed prodigies of valor at the
+recapture of Toulon; and then, after being promoted to the rank of
+general, had gone to the army in Italy on behalf of the republic.
+Bedecked with the laurels of his Italian campaign, the young general of
+five-and-twenty had returned to France. There, the government, being
+still hostile and ill-disposed toward him, wished to remove him from
+Paris, and send him to La Vendee as a brigadier-general. Buonaparte
+declined this mission, because he preferred remaining in the artillery
+service, and, for that reason, the government of the republic relieved
+him of his duties and put him on half-pay.
+
+So, Buonaparte remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the brilliant
+star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and shed the fulness
+of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which
+whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of
+military glory, had already announced the rising of his star.
+
+So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed quiet,
+retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted friends only,
+who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted circumstances. For
+Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited means in the tempests of
+the revolution, and all that he possessed consisted of the laurels he
+had won on the battle-field, and his half pay as a brigadier-general.
+But, like the Viscountess de Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends
+who deemed it an honor to receive him as a guest at their table, and
+also, like Josephine, he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him
+to the dinners that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He
+often dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
+boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that time
+still his host, favored of the gods. The young general, instead of, like
+his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought only his ration, which
+was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned to his brother Louis, who
+was very fond of it, while Madame Bourrienne took care that he should
+invariably find his supply of white, bread at his plate. She had managed
+to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
+white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
+discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
+the scaffold.
+
+Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
+name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
+that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
+by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
+the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
+quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
+that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
+carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"
+
+He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
+little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
+when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
+and the famous 13th Vendemiaire, 1795, again summoned the famous general
+away from his meditations to stern practical activity. It was on that
+day, the 13th Vendemiaire (October 5th), that there came the outburst of
+the storm, the subterranean rumblings of which had been so long
+perceptible. The sections of Paris rose against the National Convention
+which had given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two
+thirds of the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
+legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
+accept the new constitution only when it provided that the legislative
+body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The Convention, thus
+assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was resolved to stand its
+ground, and called upon the representatives who commanded the armed
+forces, to defend the republic of their creation. Barras was appointed
+the first general commanding the Army of the Interior, and Bonaparte the
+second. It was not long before a ferocious conflict broke out in the
+streets between the army and the insurgent sections. At that time the
+populace were not always so ready, as they have been since then, to tear
+up the pavements for barricades, and the revolters, put to flight by the
+terrible fire and the fierce onset of the artillery, made the Church of
+St. Roch and the Palais Royal their defensive points; but they were
+driven from them also; the struggle in the streets recommenced, and
+streams of blood had to flow ere it was over.
+
+After the lapse of two days order was restored, and Barras declared to
+the triumphant National Convention that the victory over the insurgents
+was chiefly due to the comprehensive and gallant conduct of General
+Bonaparte.
+
+The National Convention, as a token of gratitude, conferred upon the
+latter the permanent position of second general of the Army of the
+Interior, which had been allotted to him temporarily, only on the day of
+peril. From that moment, Bonaparte emerged from obscurity; his name had
+risen above the horizon!
+
+He now had a position, and he could better comprehend the whispering
+voices that sang within his bosom the proud, triumphant song of his
+future career. He was now already conscious that he had a shining goal
+before his gaze--a goal to which he dared not yet assign a title, that
+flitted about him like a dazzling fairy tale, and which he swore to make
+reality at last.
+
+One day, there came to the headquarters of the young general-in-chief a
+young man who very pressingly asked to see him. Bonaparte had him
+admitted, and the dignified form, the courageous, fiery glance, the
+noble, handsome countenance of the stranger, at once prepossessed him in
+the young man's favor, and he forthwith questioned him in gentle,
+friendly tones, concerning the object of his visit.
+
+"General," said the young man, "my name is Eugene Beauharnais, and I
+have served the republic on the Rhine. My father was denounced before
+the Committee of Public Safety as a _suspect_, and given over to the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, who had him murdered, three days before the fall
+of Robespierre."
+
+"Murdered!" exclaimed Bonaparte, in threatening tones.
+
+"Yes, general, murdered!" repeated Eugene, with resolution. "I come now
+to request, in the name of my mother, that you will have the kindness to
+bring your influence to bear upon the committee, to induce them to give
+me back my father's sword. I will faithfully use it in fighting the
+enemies of my country and defending the cause of the republic."
+
+These proud and noble words called up a gentle, kindly smile to the
+stern, pale face of the young general, and the fiery flash of his eyes
+grew softer.
+
+"Good! young man, very good!" he said. "I like this spirit, and this
+filial tenderness. The sword of your father--the sword of General
+Beauharnais--shall be restored to you. Wait!"
+
+With this, he called one of his adjutants, and gave him the necessary
+commands. A short time only had elapsed, when the adjutant returned,
+bringing with him the sword of General Beauharnais.
+
+Bonaparte himself handed it to Eugene. The young overwhelmed with strong
+emotion, pressed the weapon--the sole, dear possession of his father--to
+his lips and to his heart, and tears of sacred emotion started into
+his eyes.
+
+Instantly the general stepped to his side, and his slender white hand,
+which knew so well how to wield the sword, and yet was as soft, as
+delicate, and as transparent as the hand of a duchess, rested lightly on
+Eugene's shoulder.
+
+"My young friend," said he, in that gentle tone which won all hearts to
+him, "I should be very happy could I do anything for you or
+your family."
+
+Eugene gazed at him with an expression of childish amazement. "Good
+general!" he managed to say; "then mamma and my sister will pray
+for you."
+
+This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly nod, he
+desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to call upon him
+soon again.
+
+This meeting of Eugene and General Bonaparte was the commencement of the
+acquaintanceship between Bonaparte and Josephine. The sword of the
+guillotined General Beauharnais placed an imperial crown upon the head
+of his widow, and adorned the brows of his son and his daughter with
+royal diadems.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MARRIAGE.
+
+A few days after this interview between Bonaparte and Eugene, Josephine
+met Bonaparte at one of the brilliant _soirees_ given by Barras, the
+first general-in-chief. She asked Barras to introduce her to the young
+general, and then, in her usual frank manner, utterly the opposite of
+all prudery, yet none the less delicate and decorous, extending her hand
+to Bonaparte, she thanked him, with the tender warmth of a mother, for
+the friendliness and kindness he had manifested to her son.
+
+The general looked with wondering admiration at this young and beautiful
+woman, who claimed to be the mother of a lad grown up to manhood. Her
+enchanting face beamed with youth and beauty, and a sea of warmth and
+passion streamed from her large, dark eyes, while the gentle,
+love-enticing smile that played around her mouth revealed the tender
+feminine gentleness and amiability of her disposition. Bonaparte had
+never mastered the art of flattering women in the light, frivolous style
+of the fashionable coxcomb; and when he attempted it his compliments
+were frequently of so unusual and startling a character that they might
+just as well contain an affront as a tribute of eulogy.
+
+"Ah! ah! How striking that looks!" he once said, while he was emperor,
+to the charming Duchess de Chevreuse. "What remarkable red hair
+you have!"
+
+"Possibly so, sire," she replied, "but this is the first time that a
+man ever told me so."
+
+And the duchess was right; for her hair was not red, but of a very
+handsome blond[3].
+
+[Footnote 3: The Duchess de Chevreuse was shortly afterward banished to
+Tours, because she refused to serve us a lady of honor to the Queen
+of Spain.]
+
+To another lady, whose round, white arms pleased him, he once said: "Ah,
+good Heavens, what red arms you have!" Then, again, to another: "What
+beautiful hair you have; but what an ugly head-dress that is! Who could
+have put it up for you in such ridiculous style?"
+
+Bonaparte, as I have said, did not know how to compliment women with
+words; but Josephine well understood the flattering language that his
+eyes addressed to her. She knew that she had, in that very hour,
+conquered the bold young lion, and she felt proud and happy at the
+thought; for the unusually imposing appearance of the young hero had
+awakened her own heart, which she had thought was dead, to livelier
+palpitations.
+
+From that time forth they saw each other more frequently, and, ere long,
+Josephine heard from Bonaparte's own lips the glowing confession of his
+love. She reciprocated it, and promised him her hand. In vain her
+powerful friends, Tallien and Barras, endeavored to dissuade her from
+marrying this young, penniless general; in vain did they remind her that
+he might be killed in the very next battle, and that she might thus
+again be left a reduced widow. Josephine shook her handsome curls with
+a peculiar smile. Perhaps she was thinking of the prophecy of the
+negress at Martinique; perhaps she had read in the fiery glances of
+Bonaparte's eye, and on his broad, thoughtful brow, that he might be the
+very man to bring that prophecy to its consummation; perhaps she loved
+him ardently enough to prefer an humble lot, when shared with him, to
+any richer or more brilliant alliance. The representations of her
+friends did not frighten her away, and she remained firm in her
+determination to become the wife of the young general, poor as he was.
+Their wedding-day was fixed, and both hastened with joyous impatience to
+make their modest little preparations for their new housekeeping
+establishment. Yet Bonaparte had not been able to complete his dream of
+happiness; he possessed neither house nor carriage, and Josephine, too,
+was without an equipage.
+
+Thus both of them often had to content themselves with going on foot
+through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their
+felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a
+scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications
+were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not
+obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting
+into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the
+promenades, he smiling proudly when the passers-by broke out in
+spontaneous exclamations of delight at Josephine's beauty, and she happy
+and exultant as she overheard the whispered admiration and respect with
+which the multitude everywhere greeted Bonaparte, as she pressed with
+the general through the throng.
+
+One day, Bonaparte accompanied the viscountess on a visit to Ragideau,
+the smallest man but the greatest lawyer in Paris. He had been the
+business attorney of the Beauharnais family for a long time, and
+Josephine now wished to withdraw from his hands, for her own disposal, a
+sum of money belonging to her that had been deposited with him.
+Bonaparte remained in the anteroom while Josephine went into the
+adjoining apartment, which was Ragideau's office.
+
+"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry again," said
+Josephine, with her winning smile, to Ragideau.
+
+The little attorney gave a friendly nod, as he replied: "You do well,
+and I congratulate you with all my heart, viscountess, for I am
+satisfied that you have made no other than a worthy choice."
+
+"Undoubtedly, a very worthy choice," exclaimed Josephine, with the proud
+and happy look of a person really in love. "My future husband is General
+Bonaparte!"
+
+The little great man (of a lawyer) fairly started with alarm. "How?"
+said he, "You!--the Viscountess Beauharnais, you--marry this little
+General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has already
+deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and throw him back
+into insignificance?"
+
+Josephine's only reply was this: "I love him."
+
+"Yes you love him, now," exclaimed Ragideau, warmly. "But you are wrong
+in marrying him, and you will one day, rue it. You are committing a
+folly, viscountess, for you want to marry a man who has nothing but his
+hat and his sword."
+
+"But who also has a future," said Josephine, gayly, and then, turning
+the conversation, she began to speak of the practical matters that had
+brought her thither.
+
+When her business with the notary had been concluded, Josephine returned
+to the anteroom where Bonaparte was waiting for her. He came, smiling,
+to meet her, but, at the same moment, he gave the notary, who was with
+her, so fierce and wrathful a glance that the latter shrank back in
+consternation. Josephine also remarked that Bonaparte's countenance was
+paler that day than usual, and that he was less communicative and less
+disposed to chat with her; but she had already learned that it was not
+advisable to question him as to the cause of his different moods. So,
+she kept silent on that score, and her cheerfulness and amiability soon
+drove away the clouds that had obscured the general's brow.
+
+The nuptials of Bonaparte and Josephine followed, on the 9th of March,
+1796; and the witnesses, besides Eugene and Hortense, Josephine's
+children, were Barras, Jean Lemarois, Tallien, Calmelet, and Leclerq.
+The marriage-contract contained, along with the absolutely requisite
+facts of the case, a very pleasant piece of flattery for Josephine,
+since, in order to establish an equality of ages between the two
+parties, Bonaparte had himself put down a year older, and Josephine four
+years younger, than they really were. Bonaparte was not, as the contract
+states, born on the 5th of February, 1768 but on the 15th of August,
+1769; and Josephine not, as the document represents, on the 23d of July,
+1767, but on the 23d of June, 1763[4].
+
+[Footnote 4: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 350.]
+
+Josephine acknowledged this gallant act of her young spouse in queenly
+fashion, for she brought him, as her wedding-gift, his appointment to
+the command of the Italian army, which Barras and Tallien had granted to
+her, at her own request.
+
+But, before the young bridegroom repaired to his new scene of activity,
+there to win fresh laurels and renown, he passed a few happy weeks with
+his lovely wife and his new family, in the small residence in the Rue
+Chautereine, which he had purchased a short time before his marriage,
+and which Josephine had fitted up with that elevated and refined good
+taste that had always distinguished her.
+
+One-half of Bonaparte's darling wish was at length fulfilled. He had his
+house, which was large enough to receive his friends. There was now only
+a carriage to be procured in order to make the general the "happiest
+of men."
+
+But, as the wishes of men always aspire still farther the farther they
+advance, Bonaparte was no longer content with the possession of a small
+house in Paris. He now wanted an establishment in the country also.
+
+"Look me up a little place in your beautiful valley of the Yonne," he
+wrote about this time to Bourrienne, who was then living on his property
+near Sens; "and as soon as I get the money, I will buy it. Then I will
+retire to it. Now, don't forget that I do not want any of the national
+domains[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 103.]
+
+As for the carriage, the peace of Campo Formio brought the victorious
+General Bonaparte a magnificent team of six gray horses, which was a
+present to the general of the French Republic from the Emperor of
+Austria, who did not dream that, scarcely ten years later, he would have
+him for a son-in-law.
+
+These superb grays, however, were--excepting the laurels of Arcola,
+Marengo, and Mantua, the only spoils of war that Bonaparte brought back
+with him from his famous Italian campaign--the only gift which the
+general had not refused to accept.
+
+It is true that the six grays could not be very conveniently hitched to
+a simple private carriage, but they had an imposing look attached to the
+gilded coach of state in which, a year later, the first consul made his
+solemn entry into the Tuileries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BONAPARTE IN ITALY.
+
+Josephine, now the wife of General Bonaparte, had but a few weeks in
+which to enjoy her new happiness, and then remained alone in Paris,
+doubly desolate, because she had to be separated, not only from her
+husband, but from her children. Eugene accompanied his young step-father
+to Italy, and Hortense went as a pupil to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school. The former, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette,
+had, at that time, opened an establishment for the education of young
+ladies, at St. Germain, and the greatest and most eminent families of
+newly-republicanized France liked to send their daughters to it, so that
+they might learn from the former court-lady the refined style and
+manners of old royalist times.
+
+Hortense was, therefore, sent to that boarding-school, and there, in the
+society of her new Aunt Caroline--the sister of Bonaparte, and afterward
+Queen of Naples--and the young Countess Stephanie Beauharnais, her
+cousin, passed a few happy years of work, of varied study, and of
+youthful maiden-dreams.
+
+Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm,
+to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of
+languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more
+in the mastering the so-called _bon ton_ and that aristocratic _savoir
+vivre_ of which Madame Campan was a very model. While Hortense was thus
+receiving instruction on the harp from the celebrated Alvimara, in
+painting from Isabey, dancing from Coulon, and singing from Lambert, and
+was playing on the stage of the amateur theatre at the boarding-school
+the parts of heroines and lady-loves; while she was participating in the
+balls and concerts that Madame Campan gave in order to show off the
+talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in a word,
+Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments of a
+distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful all these
+little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time, would one day be to
+her, and how good a thing it was that she had learned to play parts at
+Madame Campan's, and to appear in society as a great lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine was passing days of gratified pride and exulting
+triumph at Paris, for the star of her hero was ascending, brighter and
+brighter in its effulgence, above the horizon; the name of Bonaparte was
+echoing in louder and louder volume through the world, and filling all
+Europe with a sort of awe-inspired fear and trembling, as the sea
+becomes agitated when the sun begins to rise. Victory after victory came
+joyfully heralded from Italy, as ancient states fell beneath the iron
+tread of the victor, and new ones sprang into being. The splendid old
+Republic of Venice, once the terror of the whole world, the victorious
+Queen of the Adriatic, had to bow her haughty head, and her diadem fell
+in fragments at the feet of her triumphant conqueror. The lion of St.
+Mark's no longer made mankind tremble at his angry roar, and the slender
+monumental pillars on the Piazzetta were all that remained to the
+shattered and fallen Venetian Republic of her conquests in Candia,
+Cyprus, and the Morea. But, from the dust and ashes of the old
+commonwealth, there arose, at Bonaparte's command, a new state, the
+Cisalpine Republic, as a new and youthful daughter of the French
+Republic; and, when the last Doge of Venice, Luigi Manin, laid his
+peaked crown at the feet of Bonaparte, and then fainted away, another
+Venetian, Dandolo, the son of a family that had given Venice the
+greatest and most celebrated of her doges, stepped to the front at the
+head of the new republic--that Dandolo of whom Bonaparte had said that
+he was "a man."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Bonaparte one day to Bourrienne, "how seldom one
+meets _men_ in the world! In Italy there are eighteen millions of
+inhabitants, but I have found only two _men_ among them all--Dandolo and
+Melzi[6]."
+
+[Footnote 6: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 139.]
+
+But, while Bonaparte was despairing of _men_, in the very midst of his
+victories, he cherished the warmest, most impassioned love for his wife,
+to whom he almost daily wrote the tenderest and most ardent letters, the
+answers to which he awaited with the most impatient longing.
+
+Josephine's letters formed the sole exception to a very unusual and
+singular system that Bonaparte had adopted during a part of his
+campaign in Italy. This was to leave a11 written communications,
+excepting such as came to him by special couriers, unread for three
+weeks. He threw them all into a large basket, and opened them only on
+the twenty-first day thereafter. Still, General Bonaparte was more
+considerate than Cardinal Dubois, who immediately consigned _all_ the
+communications he received to the flames, _unread_, and--while the fire
+on his hearth was consuming the paper on which, perchance, was written
+the despairing appeal of a mother, imploring pardon for her son; of a
+disconsolate wife, beseeching pity for her husband; or the application
+of an ambitious statesman, desiring promotion--would point to them with
+a sardonic smile, and say, "There's _my_ correspondence!" Bonaparte, at
+least, gave the letters a perusal, three weeks after they reached him,
+indeed; but those three weeks saved him and his secretary, Bourrienne,
+much time and labor, for, when they finally went to work on them, time
+and circumstances had already disposed of four fifths of them, and thus
+only one fifth required answers--a result that made Bonaparte laugh
+heartily, and filled him with justifiable pride in what he termed his
+"happy idea."
+
+Josephine's letters, however, had not an hour or a minute to wait ere
+they were read. Bonaparte always received them with his heart bounding
+with delight, and invariably answered them, in such impassioned, glowing
+language as only his warm southern temperament could suggest, and
+contrasted with which even Josephine's missives seemed a little cool and
+passionless.
+
+Ere long Bonaparte ceased to be satisfied with merely getting letters
+from his Josephine. He desired to have her, in person, with him; and
+hardly had the tempest of war begun to lull, ere the general summoned
+his beloved to his side at Milan. She obeyed his call with rapture, and
+hastened to Italy to join him. Now came proud days of triumph and
+gratified affection. All Italy hailed Bonaparte as the conquering hero;
+all Italy did homage to the woman who bore his name, and whose
+incomparable fascination and amiability, gracefulness and beauty, won
+all hearts. Her life now resembled a magnificent, glorified, triumphal
+pageant; a dazzling fairy festival; a tale from the "Arabian Nights"
+that had become reality, with Josephine for its enchanted heroine,
+sparkling with stars, and gleaming with golden sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+VICISSITUDES OF DESTINY.
+
+Resplendent was the triumphal procession with which Bonaparte made his
+proud entry into Paris, on his return from Italy. In the front courtyard
+of the Luxembourg, the palace occupied by the _Corps Legislatif_, was
+erected a vast amphitheatre, in which sat all the high authorities of
+France; in the centre of the amphitheatre stood the altar of the
+country, surmounted by three gigantic statues, representing Freedom,
+Equality, and Peace. As Bonaparte stepped into this space, all the
+dense crowd that occupied the seats of the amphitheatre rose to their
+feet with uncovered heads, to hail the conqueror of Italy, and the
+windows of the palace were thronged with handsomely dressed ladies, who
+waved welcome to the young hero with their handkerchiefs. But suddenly
+this splendid festival was marred by a serious mischance. An officer of
+the Directory, who, the better to satisfy his curiosity, had clambered
+up on the scaffolding of the right-side wing of the palace, then
+undergoing extension, fell from it, and struck the ground almost at
+Napoleon's feet. A shout of terror burst almost simultaneously from a
+thousand throats, and the ladies turned pale and shrank back,
+shuddering, from the windows. The palace, which a moment before had
+exhibited such a wealth of adornment in these living flowers, now stood
+there bare, with empty, gaping casements. A perceptible thrill ran
+through the ranks of the _Corps Legislatif_, and here and there the
+whisper passed that this fall of an officer portended the early
+overthrow of the Directory itself, and that it, too, would soon, like
+the unfortunate victim of the accident, be lying in its death agonies at
+the feet of General Bonaparte.
+
+But the Directory, nevertheless, hastened to give the victor of Arcola
+new _fetes_ every day; and when these _fetes_ were over, and Bonaparte,
+fatigued with the speeches, the festivities, the toasts, etc., would be
+on his way returning homeward, there was the populace of Paris, who
+beset his path in crowds, to greet him with hearty cheers; and these
+persistent friends he had to recognize, with smiles and shakings of the
+hand, or with a nod and a pleasant glance.
+
+A universal jubilee of delight had seized upon the French. Each
+individual saw in Bonaparte renown and greatness reflected on himself.
+Every one regarded him as the most brilliant impersonation of his own
+inner personality, and, therefore, felt drawn toward him with a sort of
+reverential exultation.
+
+Josephine gave herself up with her whole soul to the enjoyment of these
+glorious occasions. While Bonaparte, almost completely overwhelmed and
+disturbed, could have held aloof from these ovations of the people of
+Paris, they, on the contrary, filled the heart of his wife with pride
+and joy. While in the theatre, he shrank back, abashed, behind his
+wife's chair when the audience, learning his presence, filled their
+noisy plaudits and clamored to have a glimpse at him, Josephine would
+thank the crowd on his behalf with a bewitching smile, and eyes swelling
+with tears for this proof of their regard, which to her seemed but a
+natural and appropriate tribute to her Achilles, her lion-hearted hero.
+But Bonaparte did not allow himself to be blinded by these
+demonstrations; and one day, when popular enthusiasm seemed as though it
+would never end, and the crowd were untiring in their cries of "_Vive
+Bonaparte!_" while Josephine turned her face toward him, glowing with
+delight, and called out, exultingly--"See, how they love you, these good
+people of Paris!" he replied, with an almost melancholy expression
+"Bah! The crowd would be just as numerous and noisy if they were
+conducting me to the scaffold!"
+
+However, these festivals and demonstrations at length subsided, and his
+life resumed its more tranquil course.
+
+Bonaparte could now once more spend a few secluded days of rest and calm
+enjoyment in his (by this time more richly-decorated) dwelling in the
+Rue Chautereine, the name of which the city authorities had changed to
+_Rue de la Victoire_, in honor of the conqueror at Arcola and Marengo.
+He could, after so many battles and triumphs, afford to repose a while
+in the arms of love and happiness.
+
+Nevertheless, this inactivity soon began to press heavily on his
+restless spirit. He longed for new exploits, for fresh victories. He
+felt that he was only at the commencement, and not at the end of his
+conquering career; he constantly heard ringing in his ears the notes of
+the battle-clarion, summoning him to renewed triumphs and to other paths
+of glory. Love could only delight his heart, but could not completely
+satisfy it. Repose he deemed but the beginning of death.
+
+"If I remain here inactive any longer, I am lost," said he. "They retain
+the resemblance of nothing whatever in Paris; one celebrity blots out
+another in this great Babylon; if I show myself much oftener to the
+public, they will cease to look at me, and if I do not soon undertake
+something new, they will forget me."
+
+And he did undertake something new, something unprecedented, that filled
+all Europe with astonishment. He left the shores of France with an army
+to conquer, for the French Republic, that ancient land of Egypt, on
+whose pyramids the green moss of long-forgotten ages was flourishing.
+
+Josephine did not accompany him. She remained behind in Paris; but she
+needed consolation and encouragement to enable her to sustain this
+separation, which Bonaparte himself had confessed to her might be just
+as likely to last six years as six months. And what could afford better
+consolation to a heart so tender as Josephine's than the presence of her
+beloved daughter? She had willingly given up her son to her husband, and
+he had accompanied the latter to Egypt, but her daughter remained, and
+her she would not give up to any one, not even to Madame Campan's
+boarding-school.
+
+Besides, the education of Hortense was now completed. She who had come
+to St. Germain as a child, left the boarding-school, after two years'
+stay, a handsome, blooming young lady, adorned with all the charms of
+innocence, youth, grace, and refinement.
+
+Although she was now a young lady of nearly sixteen, she had retained
+the thoughts and ways of her childhood. Her heart was as a white sheet
+of paper, on which no profane hand had ventured to write a mortal name.
+She loved nothing beyond her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She entertained a profound but speechless veneration for her
+young step-father. His burning gaze made her uneasy and timorous; his
+commanding voice made her heart throb anxiously; in fine, she
+reverenced him with adoring but too agitated an impression of awe to
+find it possible to love him. He was for her at all times the hero, the
+lord and master, the father to whom she owed implicit obedience, but she
+dared not love him; she could only look up to and honor him from
+a distance.
+
+Hortense loved nothing but her mother, her brother, the fine arts, and
+flowers. She still looked out, with the expectant eyes of a child, upon
+the world which seemed so beautiful and inviting to her, and from which
+she hoped yet to obtain some grand dazzling piece of good fortune
+without having any accurate idea in what it was to consist. She still
+loved all mankind, and believed in their truth and rectitude. No thorn
+had yet wounded her heart; no disenchantment, no bright illusion dashed
+to pieces, had yet left its shadow on that clear, lofty brow of
+transparent whiteness. The expression of her large blue eyes was still
+radiant and undimmed, and her laugh was so clear and ringing, that it
+almost made her mother sad to hear it, for it sounded to her like the
+last echo of some sweet, enchanting song of childhood, and she but too
+well knew that it would soon be hushed.
+
+But Hortense still laughed, still sang with the birds, rivalling their
+melodies; the world still lay before her like an early morning dream,
+and she still hoped for the rising of the sun.
+
+Such was Hortense when her mother took her from Madame Campan's
+boarding-school, to accompany her to the baths of Plombieres. But there
+it was that Hortense came near experiencing the greatest sorrow of her
+life, in nearly losing her mother.
+
+She was with Josephine and some other ladies in the drawing-room of the
+house they occupied at Plombieres. The doors facing the balcony were
+open, to let in the warm summer air. Hortense was sitting by the window
+painting a nosegay of wild flowers, that she had gathered with her own
+hands on the hills of Plombieres. Josephine found the atmosphere of the
+room too close, and invited some ladies to step out with her upon the
+balcony. A moment afterward there was heard a deafening crash, followed
+by piercing shrieks of terror; and when Hortense sprang in desperate
+fright to the front entrance, she found that the balcony on which her
+mother and the other ladies had stood had disappeared. Its fastenings
+had given way, and they had been precipitated with it into the street.
+Hortense, in the first impulse of her distress and horror, would have
+sprung down after her beloved mother, and could only be held back with
+the greatest difficulty. But this time fate had spared the young girl,
+and refrained from darkening the pure, unclouded heaven of her youth.
+Her mother escaped with no other injury than the fright, and a slight
+wound on her arm, while one of the ladies had both legs broken.
+
+Josephine's time to die had not yet come, for the prophecy of the
+fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the
+wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet "something more than
+a queen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.
+
+Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had adorned
+his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the returning
+conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first time, Hortense
+was present at the festivities which the city of Paris dedicated to her
+step-father; for the first time she saw the homage that men and women,
+graybeards and children alike, paid to the hero of Italy and Egypt.
+These festivities and this homage filled her heart with a tremor of
+alarm, and yet, at the same time, with joyous exultation. In the midst
+of these triumphs and these ovations which were thus offered to her
+second father, the young girl recalled the prison in which her mother
+had once languished, the scaffold upon which the head of her own father
+had fallen; and frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered
+uniform of her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the
+time when Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice,
+through the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.
+
+These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
+Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune, preserved
+to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her from entertaining
+any overweening or domineering propensity in her day of prosperity, or
+from seeming cast down and hopeless when adversity came. She never
+lulled herself with the idea of good fortune that could not pass away,
+but her remembrances kept her eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune
+came, it did not take her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to
+confront it.
+
+Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days in full
+draughts, delighted as she was to see the mother, of whom she was so
+fond, surrounded by such a halo of glory and gratified love; and in the
+name of her murdered father she thanked General Bonaparte with double
+fervor, from the bottom of her heart, for having been the means of
+procuring for her mother, who had suffered so deeply in her first wedded
+life, so magnificent a glow of splendor and happiness in her
+second marriage.
+
+In the mean while, new days of storm and tumult were at hand to dispel
+this brief period of tranquil enjoyment. A fresh revolution convulsed
+all France, and, ere long, Paris was divided into two hostile camps,
+burning to begin the work of mutual annihilation. On one side stood the
+democratic republicans, who looked back with longing regret to the days
+of terrorism and bloodshed, perceiving, as they did, that tranquillity
+and protracted peace must soon wrest the reins of power from their
+grasp, and therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the
+element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger,
+and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the _sans-culottes_ and
+the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of the
+imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the
+man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in
+the bonds of servitude.
+
+On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
+republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
+fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
+disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
+guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists and
+poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew that the
+days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic had brought not
+merely human beings, but also the arts and sciences, to the scaffold.
+With them, too, were arrayed the merchants and artisans, the bankers,
+the business-men, the property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the
+republic at least established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation,
+in order to have confidence in its durability and substantial character,
+and to commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success.
+And at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.
+
+The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was a
+fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in which
+little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were slaughtered.
+
+The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory,
+and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins
+of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate,
+rational republic of the year 1798. At its head were the three consuls,
+Bonaparte, Cambaceres, and Lebrun.
+
+On the day following, the 18th Brumaire, these three consuls entered the
+Luxembourg, amid the plaudits of the people, and slept, as conquerors,
+in the beds of the Directory of yesterday.
+
+From that day forward a new world began to take shape, and the forms of
+etiquette which, during the ascendency of the democratic republic, had
+slunk away out of sight into the darkest recesses of the Luxembourg and
+the Tuileries, began to reappear, slowly and circumspectly, 'tis true,
+in broad daylight. People were no longer required, in accordance with
+the spirit of equality, to ignore all distinctions of condition and
+culture, by the use of the words "citizen" and "citizeness;" or, in the
+name of brotherhood, to endure the close familiarities of every brawling
+street ruffian; or, in the name of liberty, to let all his own personal
+liberty and inclination be trampled under foot.
+
+Etiquette, as I have said, crept forth from the dark corners again; and
+the three consuls, who had taken possession of the Luxembourg, whispered
+the word "monsieur" in each other's ears, and greeted Josephine and her
+daughter, who were installed in the apartments prepared for them in the
+palace on the next day, with the title of "madame." Yet, only a year
+earlier, the two words "monsieur" and "madame" had occasioned revolt in
+Paris, and brought about bloodshed. A year earlier General Augereau had
+promulged the stern order of the day in his division, that, "whoever
+should use the word 'monsieur' or 'madame,' orally or in writing, on
+pretext whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable
+of ever again serving in the army of the republic[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 229.]
+
+Now, these two proscribed words made their triumphant entry, along with
+the three consuls, into the palace of the Luxembourg, which had been
+delivered from its democratic tyrants.
+
+Josephine was now, at least, "Madame" Bonaparte, and Hortense was
+"Mademoiselle" Beauharnais. The wife of Consul Bonaparte now required a
+larger retinue of servants, and a more showy establishment. Indeed,
+temerity could not yet go so far as to speak of the _court_ of Madame
+Bonaparte and the _court ladies_ of Mademoiselle Hortense; they had
+still to be content with the limited space of the diminutive Luxembourg,
+but they were soon to be compensated for all this, and, if they still
+had to call each other _monsieur_ and _madame_, they could, a few years
+later, say "your highness," "your majesty," and "monseigneur," in the
+Tuileries.
+
+The Luxembourg Palace was soon found to be too small for the joint
+residence of the three consuls, and too confined for the ambition of
+Bonaparte, who could not brook the near approach of the other two men
+who shared the supreme control of France with him. Too it was also for
+the longings that now spoke with ever louder and stronger accents in
+his breast, and pushed him farther and farther onward in this path of
+splendor and renown which, at first, had seemed to him but as the magic
+mirage of his dreams, but which now appeared as the glittering truth and
+reality of his waking hours. The Luxembourg was then too small for the
+three consuls, but they had to go very circumspectly and carefully to
+work to prepare the way to the old royal palace of the Bourbons. It
+would not do to oust the representatives of the people, who held their
+sessions there, too suddenly; the distrustful republicans must not be
+made to apprehend that there was any scheme on foot to revolutionize
+France back into monarchy, and to again stifle the many-headed monster
+of the republic under a crown and a sceptre. It was necessary, before
+entering the Tuileries, to give the French people proof that men might
+still be very good republicans, even although they might wish to be
+housed in the bedchamber of a king.
+
+Hence, before the three consuls transferred their quarters to the
+Tuileries, the royal palace had to be transformed to a residence worthy
+of the representatives of the republic. So, the first move made was to
+set up a handsome bust of the elder Brutus--a war-trophy of Bonaparte's,
+which he had brought with him from Italy--in one of the galleries of the
+Tuileries; and then David had to carve out some other statues of the
+republican heroes of Greece and Rome and place them in the saloons. A
+number of democratic republicans, who were defeated and exiled on the
+13th Vendemiaire, were permitted to return to France, and news of the
+death of WASHINGTON, the noblest and wisest of all republicans, arriving
+just at that time, Bonaparte ordered that the whole army should wear the
+badge of mourning for ten days. Black bands were worn on the arm, and
+sable streamers waved from the standards, in honor of the deceased
+republican hero.
+
+However, when these ten days were past, and France and her army had
+sufficiently expressed their regret, the three consuls entered the
+Tuileries through the grand portal, on the two sides of which towered
+aloft two liberty-poles that still bore the old inscription of the
+republic of 1792. On the tree to the right was the legend "August 10,
+1792," and on the one to the left, "Royalty in France is overthrown and
+will never rise again." It was between these two significant symbols
+that Bonaparte first strode into the Tuileries. It was a very long and
+imposing procession of carriages which moved that day toward the palace,
+through the streets of the capital. They only lacked the outward pomp
+and magnificence which rendered the latter _fetes_ of the empire so
+remarkable. With the exception of the splendid vehicle in which the
+three consuls rode, and which was drawn by the six grays presented by
+the Emperor of Austria, there were but few good equipages to be seen.
+France of the new day had not had the opportunity to build any
+state-coaches, and those of old France had been too shamefully misused
+to admit of their ever serving again; for it would be out of the
+question to employ, in this solemn procession of the three consuls, the
+state-carriages of the old aristocracy, that had served as the vehicles
+in which the democratic republic had transported dead dogs to their
+place of deposit. Such had been the fact in the September days of the
+year 1793.
+
+The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at that
+time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the streets and
+slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down from the guillotine
+and dyed the ground with the purple of the new system of
+popular liberty.
+
+The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which the
+guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their original
+savage propensities, and hence those who had been so fortunate as to
+escape the murderous axe of the _sans-culottes_ had now to apprehend the
+danger of falling a victim to the sharp teeth of these wild
+blood-hounds; and as the ferocious brutes knew no difference between
+aristocrats and republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it
+became necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
+So, the Champs Elysees were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were
+driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed
+down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three
+thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they
+continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen
+among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At
+length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to
+representative Gasparin, who was shrewd enough to convert the removal of
+the dead animals into a republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the
+_ci-devants_ and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite
+proper, therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.
+
+Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the fugitive
+and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their stables, and the
+carcasses of the dogs were flung into these emblazoned and escutcheoned
+vehicles of old France. Six grand coaches that had belonged to the king
+opened the procession, and the tails, heads, bodies and legs of the
+luckless quadrupeds could be seen behind the glittering glass panels
+heaped together in wild disorder[8].
+
+[Footnote 8: Memoires of the Marchioness de Crequi, vol. viii, p. 10.]
+
+After this public canine funeral celebration of the one and indivisible
+republic, the gilded state-coaches could not be consistently used for
+any human and less mournful occasion, and hence it was that the consular
+procession to the Tuileries was so deficient in carriages, and that
+public hacks on which the numbers were defaced had to be employed.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries the revolution was at an
+end. He laid his victorious sword across the gory, yawning chasm which
+had drunk the blood of both aristocrats and democrats; and of that sword
+he made a bridge over which society might pass from one century to the
+other, and from the republic to the empire.
+
+As Bonaparte was walking with Josephine and Hortense through the Diana
+Gallery on the morning after their entry into the Tuileries, and was
+with them admiring the statuary he had caused to be placed there, both
+of the ladies possessing much artistic taste, he paused in front of the
+statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius
+Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces;
+but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply
+raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon
+Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with
+blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts
+of both the ladies bound within their bosoms:
+
+"It is not enough to be in the Tuileries: one must remain there. And
+whom has not this palace held? Even street thieves and conventionists
+have occupied it! Did not I see with my own eyes how the savage Jacobins
+and cohorts of _sans-culottes_ surrounded the palace and led away the
+good King Louis XVI. as a prisoner! Ah! never mind, Josephine; have no
+fear for the future! Let them but dare to come hither once more[9]!"
+
+[Footnote 9: Bourrienne, vol. vi, p. 3.]
+
+And, as Bonaparte stood there and thus spoke in front of the statues of
+Brutus and Julius Caesar, his voice re-echoed like angry thunder through
+the long gallery, and made the figures of the heroes of the dead
+republic tremble on their pedestals.
+
+Bonaparte lifted his arm menacingly toward the statue of Brutus, as
+though he would, in that fierce republican who slew Caesar, challenge
+all republican France, whose Caesar and Augustus in one he aspired to
+be, to mortal combat.
+
+The revolution was closed. Bonaparte had installed himself in the
+Tuileries with Josephine and her two children. The son and daughter of
+General Beauharnais, whom the republic had murdered, had now found
+another father, who was destined to avenge that murder on the
+republic itself.
+
+The revolution was over!
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+_THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A FIRST LOVE.
+
+With the entry of Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution closed,
+and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity followed. Josephine
+and Hortense were the cynosure of all these festivals, for they were,
+likewise, the animating centre whence the grace and beauty, the
+attractive charm, and the intellectual significance of them all,
+proceeded.
+
+Hortense was passionately fond of dancing, and no one at "the court of
+Josephine" tripped it with such gracefulness and such enchanting
+delicacy as she. Now, as the reader will observe, people already began
+to speak of the "court" of Madame Bonaparte, the powerful wife of the
+First Consul of France. Now, also, _audiences_ were held, and Josephine
+and Hortense already had a court retinue who approached them with the
+same subserviency and humility as though they had been princesses of
+the blood.
+
+Madame Bonaparte now rode with her daughter through the streets of
+Paris in a richly-gilded coach, under a military escort, and wherever
+the populace caught a glimpse of them they greeted the wife and daughter
+of the first consul with applauding shouts.
+
+Bonaparte's coachmen and servants had now a livery, and made their
+appearance in green coats with gold embroidery and galloons. There were
+chamberlains and lackeys, grooms and outriders; splendid dinners and
+evening parties were given, and the ambassadors of foreign powers were
+received in solemn audience; for, now, all the European states had
+recognized the French Republic under the consulate, and, as Bonaparte
+had concluded peace with England and Austria, these two great powers
+also sent envoys to the court of the mighty consul.
+
+Instead of warlike struggles, the Tuileries now witnessed contentions of
+the toilet, and _powder or no powder_ was one of the great questions of
+etiquette in which Josephine gave the casting vote when she said that
+"every one should dress as seemed best and most becoming to each, but
+yet endeavor to let good taste pervade the selection."
+
+For some time, meanwhile, Hortense had participated with less zest than
+formerly in the amusements and parties of the day; for some time she had
+seemed to prefer being alone more than in previous years, and held
+herself aloof in the quiet retirement of her own apartments, where the
+melancholy, tender, and touching melodies which she drew from her harp
+in those lonely hours seemed to hold her better converse than all the
+gay and flattering remarks that she was accustomed to hear in her
+mother's grand saloons.
+
+Hortense sought solitude, for to solitude alone could she confide what
+was weighing on her heart; to it alone could she venture to confess that
+she was in love, and with all the innocent energy, all the warmth and
+absolute devotion of a first attachment. How blissful were those hours
+of reverie, of expectant peering into the future, which seemed to
+promise the rising of another sun of happiness to her beaming gaze! For
+this young girl's passion had the secret approbation of her mother and
+her step-father, and both of them smilingly pretended not to be, in the
+least degree, aware of the tender understanding that subsisted between
+Hortense and General Duroc, Bonaparte's chief adjutant; only that, while
+Josephine took it to be the first tender fluttering of a young girl's
+heart awaking to the world, Bonaparte ascribed a more serious meaning to
+it, and bestowed earnest thought upon the idea of a union between
+Hortense and his friend. He was anxious, above all other things, to give
+Duroc a more important and imposing status, and therefore sent him as
+ambassador to St. Petersburg, to convey to the Emperor Alexander, who
+had just ascended his father's throne, the congratulations and good
+wishes of the First Consul of France.
+
+The poor young lovers, constantly watched as they were, and as
+constantly restrained by the rules of an etiquette which was now
+becoming more and more rigid, had not the consolation accorded to them
+of exchanging even one last unnoticed pressure of the hand, one last
+tender vow of eternal fidelity, when they took leave of each other. But
+they hoped in the future, and looked forward to Duroc's return, and to
+the precious recompense that Bonaparte had significantly promised to his
+friend. That recompense was the hand of Hortense Until then, they had to
+content themselves with that sole and sweetest solace of all parted
+lovers, the letters that they interchanged, and which Bourrienne,
+Bonaparte's secretary, faithfully and discreetly transmitted.
+
+"Nearly every evening," relates Bourrienne, in his Memoires, "I played a
+game of billiards with Mademoiselle Hortense, who was an adept at it.
+When I said, in a low tone to her, 'I have a letter,' the game would
+cease at once, and she would hasten to her room, whither I followed her,
+and took the letter to her. Her eyes would instantly fill with tears of
+emotion and delight, and it was only after a long lapse of time that she
+would go down to the saloon whither I had preceded her[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 319.]
+
+Hortense, thus busied only with her young lover and her innocent dreams
+of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking
+place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make
+her young heart the plaything of domestic and political intrigue.
+
+Bonaparte's brothers, who were jealous of the sway that the beautiful
+and fascinating Josephine still exerted over the first consul, as in the
+first days of their wedded life, were anxious, by separating Hortense
+from her mother, to deprive Josephine of one of the strongest supports
+of her influence, and thus, by isolating Josephine, bring themselves
+nearer to their brother. They well knew the affection which Bonaparte,
+who was particularly fond of children, entertained for those of his
+wife, and they also knew that Eugene and Hortense had, one day, not by
+their entreaties or their tears, but by their mere presence, prevented
+Josephine and Bonaparte from separating.
+
+This was at the time when the whisperings of his brothers and of Junot
+had succeeded in making Bonaparte jealous on his return from Egypt.
+
+At that time, Bonaparte had resolved to separate from a woman, against
+whom, however, his anger was thus fiercely aroused, simply because he
+was so strongly attached to her; and when Bourrienne implored him, at
+least, to hear Josephine before condemning her, and to see whether she
+could not clear herself, or he could not forgive her, he had replied:
+
+"I forgive her? Never! Were I not sure of myself this time, I would tear
+my heart out and throw it into the fire!" And, as Bonaparte spoke, his
+voice trembling the while with rage, he clutched his breast with his
+hand as though he would indeed rend it to pieces. This scene occurred in
+the evening, but, when Bourrienne came into the office next morning,
+Bonaparte stepped forward to meet him with a smile on his face, and a
+little confused.
+
+"Now, Bourrienne," said he, "you will be content--she is here! Don't
+suppose that I have forgiven her--no not at all! No, I reproached her
+vehemently, and sent her away. But, what would you have?--when she left
+me, weeping, I went after her, and, as she descended the stairs with her
+head drooping, I saw Eugene and Hortense, who went with her, sobbing
+violently. I have not the heart to look unmoved on any one in tears.
+Eugene had accompanied me to Egypt, and I have accustomed myself to
+regard him as my adopted son; he is so gallant, so excellent a young
+man. Hortense is just coming out into the world of society, and every
+one who knows her speaks well of her. I confess, Bourrienne, that the
+sight of her moved me deeply, and the sobbing of those two poor children
+made me sad as well. I said to myself, 'Shall they be the victims of
+their mother's fault?' I called Eugene back. Hortense turned round and,
+along with Josephine, followed her brother. I saw the movement, and said
+nothing. What could I do? One cannot be a mortal man without having his
+hours of weakness!"
+
+"Be assured, general," exclaimed Bourrienne, "that your adopted children
+will reward you for it!"
+
+"They must do so, Bourrienne--they must do so; for it is a great
+sacrifice that I have made for them[11]!"
+
+[Footnote 11: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 119.]
+
+This sacrifice, however, had its recompense immediately, for Josephine
+had been able to set herself right, and Bonaparte had joyfully become
+convinced that the accusations of his jealous brothers had been unjust.
+
+Hence it was that Bonaparte's brothers wished to re move Hortense, since
+they knew that she was her mother's main stay; that she, with her
+gentle, amiable disposition, her tact and good sense, her penetrating
+and never-failing sagacity, stood like a wise young Mentor at the side
+of her beautiful, attractive, impulsive, somewhat vain, and very
+extravagant mother.
+
+It would be easier to set Josephine aside were Hortense first removed;
+and Josephine they wanted to get out of the way because she interfered
+with the ambitious designs of Bonaparte's brothers. Since they could not
+become great and celebrated by their own merits, they desired to be so
+through their illustrious brother; and, in order that they might become
+kings, Bonaparte must, above all things, wear a crown. Josephine was
+opposed to this project; she loved Bonaparte enough to fear the dangers
+that a usurpation of the crown must bring with it, and she had so little
+ambition as to prefer her present brilliant and peaceful lot to the
+proud but perilous exaltation to a throne.
+
+For this reason, then, Josephine was to be removed, and Bonaparte must
+choose another wife--a wife in whose veins there should course
+legitimate royal blood, and who would, therefore, be content to see a
+crown upon the head of her consort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS BONAPARTE AND DUROC.
+
+The brothers of Bonaparte went diligently to work then, above all
+things, to get Hortense out of the way. They told Bonaparte of the
+burning love of the young couple, of the letters which they sent to each
+other, and proposed to him that Duroc should be transferred to the
+Italian army with a higher command, and that Hortense should then be
+given to him. They persuaded the unsuspecting, magnanimous hero, who was
+easy to deceive in these minor matters and thus easy because he was
+occupied with grand designs and grand things; they persuaded him to keep
+the proposed union a secret for the present, and then on Duroc's early
+return to surprise the young couple and Josephine alike.
+
+But Josephine had, this time, seen through the plans of her hostile
+brothers-in-law. She felt that her whole existence, her entire future,
+was imperilled, should she not succeed in making friends and allies in
+the family of Bonaparte itself. There was only one of Bonaparte's
+brothers who was not hostile to her, but loved her as the wife of his
+brother, to whom he was, at that time, still devoted with the most
+enthusiastic and submissive tenderness.
+
+This one was Bonaparte's brother Louis, a young man of serious and
+sedate disposition, more of a scholar than a warrior, more a man of
+science than fit for the council-chamber and the drawing-room. His was
+a reserved, quiet, somewhat timid character, which, notwithstanding its
+apparent gentleness, developed an inflexible determination and energy at
+the right, decisive moment, and then could not be shaken by either
+threats or entreaties. His external appearance was little calculated to
+please, nay, was even somewhat sinister, and commanded the respect of
+others only in moments of excitement, through the fierce blaze of his
+large blue eyes, that seemed rather to look inward than outward.
+
+Louis Bonaparte was one of those deep, self-contained, undemonstrative,
+and by no means showy natures which are too rarely understood, because,
+in the noisy bustle of life, we have not the time and do not take the
+pains to analyze them. Only a sister or a mother is in a position to
+comprehend and love men of this stamp, because the confidential home
+relations of long years have revealed to them the hidden bloom of these
+sensitive plants which shrink back and close their leaves at every rude
+contact of the world. But rarely, however, do they find a loving heart
+outside, for, since their own hearts are too timid to seek for love, no
+one gives himself the trouble to discover them.
+
+The young brother of her husband, now scarcely twenty-four, was the one
+who seemed destined in Josephine's eyes to afford her a point of support
+in the Bonaparte family.
+
+Madame Letitia loved him more tenderly than she did any of them, next to
+her Napoleon, since he was the petted darling of the whole family of
+brothers, who had no fear of him, because he was neither egotistical nor
+ambitious enough to cross their plans, but quietly allowed them to have
+their way, and only asked that they would also leave him undisturbed to
+follow out his own quiet and unobtrusive inclinations. He was the
+confidant of his young and beautiful sisters, who were always sure to
+find in him a discreet counsellor, and never a betrayer. Finally, he was
+the one of the whole circle of brothers toward whom Napoleon felt the
+sincerest and warmest inclination, because he could not help esteeming
+him for his noble qualities, and because he was never annoyed by him as
+he was by his other brothers; for the ambition and the avarice of
+Jerome, Joseph, and Lucien, were even then a source of displeasure and
+chagrin to Bonaparte.
+
+"Were any one to hear with what persistency my brothers demand fresh
+sums of money from me, every day, he would really think that I had
+consumed from them the inheritance their father left," said Bonaparte,
+one day, to Bourrienne, after a violent scene between him and Jerome,
+which had ended, as they all did, in Jerome getting another draft on the
+private purse of the first consul.
+
+Louis, however, never asked for money, but always appeared thankfully
+content with whatever Bonaparte chose to give him, unsolicited, and
+there never were any wranglings with tradesmen on his account, or any
+debts of his to pay.
+
+This last circumstance was what filled Josephine with a sort of
+respectful deference for her young step-brother. He understood how to
+manage his affairs so well as never to run up debts, and this was a
+quality that was so sorely lacking in Josephine, that she could never
+avoid incurring debt. How many bitter annoyances, how much care and
+anxiety had not her debts cost her already; how often Bonaparte had
+scolded her about them; how often she had promised to do differently,
+and make no more purchases until she should be in a condition to pay
+at once!
+
+But this reform was to her thoughtless and magnanimous nature an
+impossibility; and however greatly she may have feared the flashing eyes
+and thundering voice of her husband when he was angered, she could not
+escape his wrath in this one point, for in that point precisely was it
+that the penitent sinner continually fell into fresh transgression--and
+again ran into debt!
+
+Louis, however, never had debts. He was as cautious and regular as her
+own Hortense, and therefore, thought Josephine, these two young,
+careful, thoughtful temperaments would be well adapted to each other,
+and would know how to manage their hearts as discreetly as they did
+their purses.
+
+So she wished to make a step-son of Louis Bonaparte, in order to
+strengthen her own position thereby. Josephine already had a premonitory
+distrust of the future, and it may sometimes have happened that she took
+the mighty eagle that fluttered above her head for a bird of evil omen
+whose warning cry she frequently fancied that she heard in the stillness
+of the night.
+
+The negress at Martinique had said to her, "You will be more than a
+queen." But now, Josephine had visited the new fortune-teller, Madame
+Villeneuve, in Paris, and she had said to her, "You will wear a crown,
+but only for a short time."
+
+Only for a short time! Josephine was too young, too happy, and too
+healthful, to think of her own early death. It must, then, be something
+else that threatened her--a separation, perhaps. She had no children,
+yet Bonaparte so earnestly desired to have a son, and his brothers
+repeated to him daily that this was for him a political necessity.
+
+Thus Josephine trembled for her future; she stretched out her hands for
+help, and in the selfishness of her trouble asked her daughter to give
+up her own dreams of happiness, in order to secure the real happiness of
+her mother.
+
+Yet Hortense was in love; her young heart throbbed painfully at the
+thought of not only relinquishing her own love, but of marrying an
+unloved man, whom she had never even thought of, and had scarcely
+noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked to sacrifice
+her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a cold-blooded calculation,
+an artificial family intrigue; and so, with all the enthusiasm of a
+first love, she swore rather to perish than to forego her lover.
+
+"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said Josephine.
+"What he is, he is only through the friendship of Bonaparte. He has no
+estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were Bonaparte to abandon him he
+would fall back into nothingness and obscurity again."
+
+Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and have no
+other ambition than to be his wife."
+
+"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to become
+your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own sake alone?"
+
+"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has told me
+that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal fidelity and love to
+me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to belong to each other."
+
+Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.
+
+"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is willing to
+marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that Bonaparte would
+then advance him the more rapidly?"
+
+"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing with
+honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far from all
+selfish calculation."
+
+"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine, irritated
+by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm for her
+own fortunes.
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated, so
+beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of death
+had passed over it.
+
+"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that Duroc loves
+me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give him up, and marry
+whom you will."
+
+Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey," she
+replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that he does
+not love you, but the family alliance which you present."
+
+Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc returns
+to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see him again--she
+should read consolation and love's assurance in his handsome manly face;
+not that she needed this to confirm her confidence, for she believed in
+him, and not the shadow of a doubt obscured her blissful greeting.
+
+Meanwhile, Josephine's pretty hands were busy drawing the meshes of this
+intrigue tighter every moment. She absolutely required a supporting ally
+in the family, _against_ the family itself; and for this reason Louis
+must become the husband of Hortense.
+
+Bonaparte himself was against this union, and was quite resolved to
+marry Duroc to his step-daughter. But Josephine managed to shake his
+resolve, by means of entreaties, representations, caresses, and little
+endearments, and even succeeded in such eloquent argument to show that
+Duroc did not cherish any love whatever for Hortense, but wanted to make
+an ambitious speculation out of her, that Bonaparte resolved, at least,
+to put his friend to the test, and, if Josephine turned out to be right,
+to marry Hortense to his own brother.
+
+After this last interview with Josephine, Bonaparte went back into his
+office, where he found Bourrienne, as ever, at the writing-desk.
+
+"Where is Duroc?" he hastily asked.
+
+"He has gone out--to the opera, I think."
+
+"So soon as he returns tell him that I have promised him Hortense--that
+he shall marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days, at
+the farthest. I give Hortense five hundred thousand francs, and I
+appoint Duroc to the command of the eighth military division. On the day
+after his wedding he shall start with his wife for Toulon, and we shall
+live apart. I will not have a son-in-law in my house; and, as I want to
+see these matters brought to an end, at last, let me know to-day whether
+Duroc accepts my propositions."
+
+"I don't think that he will, general."
+
+"Very good! Then, in that case, Hortense shall marry my brother Louis."
+
+"Will she consent?"
+
+"She will have to consent, Bourrienne."
+
+Duroc came in at a late hour that evening, and Bourrienne told him, word
+for word, the ultimatum of the first consul.
+
+Duroc listened to him attentively; but, as Bourrienne went on with his
+communication, his countenance grew darker and darker.
+
+"If such be the case," he exclaimed at last, when Bourrienne had got
+through, "if Bonaparte will do nothing more than that for his
+son-in-law, I must forego a marriage with Hortense, however painful it
+may be to do so: and then, instead of going to Toulon, I can remain in
+Paris." And, as he ceased to speak, Duroc took up his hat, without a
+trace of excitement or concern, and departed.
+
+That same evening, Josephine received from her husband his full consent
+to the marriage of her daughter to Louis Bonaparte.
+
+On that very evening, too, Josephine informed her daughter that Duroc
+had not withstood the test, and that he had now relinquished her,
+through ambition, as, through ambition, he had previously feigned
+to love her.
+
+Hortense gazed at her mother with tearless eyes. She had not a word of
+complaint or reproach to utter; she was conscious merely that a
+thunder-bolt had just fallen, and had forever dashed to atoms her love,
+her hopes, her future, and her happiness.
+
+But she no longer had the strength and the will to escape the evil that
+had flung its meshes around her; she submitted meekly to it. She had
+been betrayed by love itself; and what cared she now for her future, her
+embittered, bloomless, scentless life, when _he_ had deceived her
+--_he_, the only one whom she had loved?
+
+The next morning Hortense stepped, self-possessed and smiling, into
+Josephine's private cabinet, and declared that she was ready to fulfil
+her mother's wishes and marry Louis Bonaparte.
+
+Josephine clasped her in her arms, with exclamations of delight. She
+little knew what a night of anguish, of wailing, of tears, and of
+despair, Hortense had struggled through, or that her present smiling
+unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a worn-out
+heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in order that
+Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for him was dead,
+but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her tears, and
+conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too, enabled her to
+declare that she was ready to accept the husband whom her mother might
+present to her.
+
+Thus, Josephine had accomplished her purpose; she had made one of
+Bonaparte's brothers her son. Now there remained the question whether
+she should attain her other aim through that son, and whether she should
+find in him a support against the intrigues of the other brothers of the
+first consul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONSUL AND KING.
+
+There was only two days' interval between the betrothal of the young
+couple and their wedding; and on the 7th of January, 1802, Hortense was
+married to Louis Bonaparte, the youngest brother but one of the first
+consul. Bonaparte, who contented himself with the civil ceremony, and
+had never given his own union with Josephine the sanction of the Church,
+was less careless and unconcerned with regard to this youthful alliance,
+which had, indeed, great need of the blessing of Heaven, in order to
+prove a source of any good fortune to the young couple. Perhaps he
+reasoned that the consciousness of the indissoluble character of their
+union would lead them to an honorable and upright effort for a mutual
+inclination; perhaps it was because he simply wished to render their
+separation impossible. Cardinal Caprara was called into the Tuileries,
+after the civil ceremony concluded, and had to bestow the blessing of
+God and of the Church upon the bride and bridegroom.
+
+Yet, not one word or one glance had thus far been interchanged by the
+young couple. It was in silence that they stepped, after the ceremonies
+were over, into the carriage that bore them to their new home, in the
+same small residence in the Rue de la Victoire which her mother had
+occupied in the first happy weeks of her youthful union with Bonaparte.
+
+Now, another young, newly-married pair were making their entry into this
+dwelling, but love did not enter with them; affection and happiness did
+not shine in their faces, as had been the case with Bonaparte and
+Josephine. The eyes of Hortense were dimmed with tears, and the
+countenance of her young husband was dark and gloomy. For, on his side,
+he, too, felt no love for this young woman; and, as she never forgave
+him for having accepted her hand, although he knew that she loved
+another, he, in like manner, could never forgive her having consented to
+be his wife, although he had not been the one to solicit it, and
+although he had never told her that he loved her. Both had bowed to the
+will of him who gave the law, not merely to all France, but also to his
+own family, and who had already become the lord and master of the
+republic. Both had married through obedience, not for love; and the
+consciousness of this compulsion rose like an impassable wall between
+these two otherwise tender and confiding young hearts. In the
+consciousness of this compulsion, too, they would not even try to love
+one another, or find in each other's society the happiness that they
+were forbidden to seek elsewhere.
+
+Pale and mournful, in splendid attire, but with a heavy heart, did
+Hortense make her appearance at the _fetes_ which were given in honor of
+her marriage; and it was with a beclouded brow and averted face that
+Louis Bonaparte received the customary congratulations. While every one
+around them exhibited a cheerful and joyous bearing, while parties were
+given in their honor, and people danced and sang, the young couple only,
+of all present, were dull and sad. Louis avoided speaking to Hortense,
+and she turned her gaze away from him, possibly so that he might not
+read in it her deep and angry aversion.
+
+But she had to accept her lot; and, since she was thus indissolubly
+bound up with another, she had to try to live with that other. Hortense,
+externally so gentle and yielding, so full of maiden coyness and
+delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and resolute soul, and, in the
+noble pride of her wounded heart, was unwilling to give any one the
+right to pity her. Her soul wept, but she restrained her tears and still
+tried to smile, were it only that Duroc might not perceive the traces
+of her grief upon her sunken cheeks. She had torn this love from her
+heart, and she rebuked herself that it had left a wound. She laid claim
+to happiness no more; but her youth, her proud self-respect, revolted at
+the idea of continuing to be the slave of misfortune henceforth, and so
+she formed her firm resolve, saying to herself, with a melancholy smile,
+"I must manage to be happy, without happiness. Let me try!"
+
+And she did try. She once more arrayed herself in smiles, and again took
+part in the festivities which now were filling the halls of St. Cloud,
+Malmaison, and the Tuileries, and which, too, were but the dying lay of
+the swan of the republic, or, if you will, the cradle-song of
+reviving monarchy.
+
+For things were daily sweeping nearer and nearer to that great
+turning-point, at which the French people would have to choose between a
+seeming republic and a real monarchy. France was already a republic but
+in name; the new, approaching monarchy was, indeed, but a new-born,
+naked infant as yet, but only a bold hand was wanting, that should
+possess the determined courage to clothe it with ermine and purple, in
+order to transform the helpless babe into a proud, triumphant man.
+
+That courage Bonaparte possessed; but he had, also, the higher courage
+to advance carefully and slowly. He let the infant of monarchy, that lay
+there naked and helpless at his feet, shiver there a little longer; but,
+lest it should freeze altogether, he threw over it, for the time being,
+the mantle of his "consulship for life." Beneath it, the babe could
+slumber comfortably a few weeks longer, while waiting for its
+purple robes.
+
+Bonaparte was now, by the will of the French people, consul for life. He
+stood close to the steps of a throne, and it depended only upon himself
+whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he
+would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his
+forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine
+implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a
+loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was
+too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every
+danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he
+would also have to think of becoming the founder of a dynasty; and in
+order to strengthen and fortify his position, he would have to place a
+legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no
+children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once, proposed
+to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it with the presence
+of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of royal dignity meant a
+separation from her; and Josephine still loved him too well, and too
+much with a young wife's love, to take so great a sacrifice upon her.
+
+Moreover, Josephine was at heart a royalist, and considered the Count de
+Lille, who, after so many agitations and wanderings, had found an asylum
+at Hartwell, in England, the legitimate King of France.
+
+The letters which the Count de Lille (afterward King Louis XVIII.) had
+written to Bonaparte, had filled Josephine's heart with emotion, and,
+with a kind of apprehensive foreboding, she had conjured her husband to,
+at least, give the brother of the beheaded king a mild and considerate
+answer. Yes, she had even ventured to beseech Bonaparte to comply with
+the request that Louis had made, and give him back the throne of his
+ancestors. But Bonaparte had laughed at this suggestion, as he would at
+some childish joke; for it had never entered into his head that any one
+could seriously ask him to lay his laurels and his trophies at the foot
+of a throne, which not he, but a member of that Bourbon family whom
+France had banished forever, should ascend.
+
+Louis had written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at
+Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola--the conqueror of Italy and Egypt--would
+not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing
+precious time. _We_ can secure the glory of France; I say _we_, because
+I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot complete it
+without me."
+
+But Bonaparte already felt strong enough to say, not "we," but "I," and
+to complete his work alone. Therefore, he replied to the Count de Lille:
+"You cannot desire your return to France, for you would have to enter it
+over a hundred thousand corpses; sacrifice your personal interests to
+the tranquillity and happiness of France. History will pay you a
+grateful acknowledgment."
+
+Louis had said in his letter to Bonaparte, "Choose your own position,
+and mark out what you want for your friends." And Bonaparte did choose
+his position; but unfortunately for the Count de Lille, it was the very
+one which the latter had wished to reserve for himself.
+
+Josephine would have been glad to vacate the king's place for him, could
+she but have retained her husband by so doing. She had no longings for a
+diadem which, by-the-way, her beautiful head did not require in order to
+command admiration.
+
+"You cannot avoid being a queen or an empress, one of these days," said
+Bourrienne to her, on a certain occasion.
+
+Josephine replied, with tears: "_Mon Dieu_! I am far from cherishing any
+such ambition. So long as I live, to be the wife of Bonaparte--of the
+first consul--is the sum total of my wishes! Tell him so; conjure him
+not to make himself king[12]."
+
+[Footnote 12: Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+But Josephine did not content herself with requesting Bourrienne to tell
+her husband this; she had the courage to say so to him herself.
+
+One day she went into Napoleon's cabinet, and found him at breakfast,
+and unusually cheerful and good-humored. She had entered without having
+been announced, and crept up on tiptoe to her husband, who sat with his
+back turned toward her, and had not yet noticed her. Lightly throwing
+her arm around his neck, and letting herself sink upon his breast, and
+then stroking his pale cheeks and glossy brown hair, with an expression
+of unutterable love and tenderness, she said:
+
+"I implore you, Bonaparte, do not mount the throne. Your wicked brother
+Lucien will urge you to it, but do not listen to him."
+
+Bonaparte laughed. "You are a little goose, poor Josephine," he said.
+"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La
+Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful
+stories; but you worry me to death with them. Come, now, don't bother me
+about them any more!"
+
+Bonaparte had put off Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he
+nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate
+personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown. In the course
+of one of these interviews, Bourrienne said to him:
+
+"As first consul, you are the leading and most famous man in all Europe;
+whereas, if you place the crown upon your head, you will be only the
+youngest in date of all the kings, and will have to yield precedence
+to them."
+
+Bonaparte's eyes blazed up with fiercer fire, and, with that daring and
+imposing look which was peculiar to him in great and decisive moments,
+he responded:
+
+"The youngest of the kings! Well, then, I will drive _all_ the kings
+from their thrones, and found a new dynasty: then, they will have to
+recognize me as the oldest prince of all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CALUMNY.
+
+The union of Hortense with Bonaparte's brother had not been followed by
+such good results for her as Josephine had anticipated. She had made a
+most unfortunate selection, for Louis Bonaparte was, of all the first
+consul's brothers, the one who concerned himself the least about
+politics, and was the least likely to engage in any intrigue. Besides,
+this alliance had materially diminished the affection which Louis had
+always previously manifested for Josephine. He blamed her, in the depths
+of his noble and upright heart, for having been so egotistic as to
+sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to her own personal welfare; he
+blamed her, too, for having forced him into a marriage which love had
+not concluded, and, although he never sided with her enemies, Josephine
+had, at least, lost a friend in him.
+
+The wedded life of this young couple was something unusually strange.
+They had openly confessed the repulsion they felt for each other, and
+reciprocally made no secret of the fact that they had been driven into
+this union against their own wishes. In this singular interchange of
+confidence, they went so far as to commiserate each other, and to
+condole with one another as friends, over the wretchedness they endured
+in their married bondage.
+
+They said frankly to each other that they could never love; that they
+detested one another: but they so keenly felt a mutual compassion, that
+out of that very compassion--that very hatred itself--love might
+possibly spring into being.
+
+Louis could already sit for hours together beside his wife, busied with
+the effort to divert her with amusing remarks, and to drive away the
+clouds that obscured her brow; already, too, Hortense had come to regard
+it as her holiest and sweetest duty to endeavor to compensate her
+husband, by her kindly deportment toward him, and the delicate and
+attentive respect that distinguished her bearing, for the unhappiness he
+felt beside her; already had both, in fine, begun to console each other
+with the reflection that the child which Hortense now bore beneath her
+heart would, one day, be to them a compensation for their ill-starred
+marriage and their lost freedom.
+
+"When I present you with a son," said Hortense, smiling, "and when he
+calls you by the sweet name of 'father,' you will forgive me for being
+his mother."
+
+"And when you press that son to your heart--when you feel that you love
+him with boundless affection," said Louis, "you will pardon me for being
+your husband, and you will cease to hate me, at least, for I will be the
+father of your darling child."
+
+Had sufficient time been allotted to these young, pure, and innocent
+hearts, to comprehend one another, they would have overcome their
+unhappiness, and love would have sprung up at last from hatred. But the
+world was pitiless to them; it had no compassion for their youth and
+their sufferings; with cruel hands it dashed away this tender blossoming
+of nascent affection, which was beginning to expand in their hearts.
+Josephine had wedded Hortense to her brother-in-law in order to secure
+in him an ally in the family, and to keep her daughter by her side; and
+now that daughter was made the target of insidious attacks and malicious
+calumnies--now another plan was adopted in order to remove Hortense from
+the scene. The conspirators had not succeeded in their designs by means
+of a matrimonial alliance, so they would now try the effect of calumny.
+
+They went about whispering from ear to ear that Bonaparte had married
+his step-daughter to his brother, simply because he was attached to her
+himself, and had been jealous of Duroc.
+
+These slanders were carried so far as to hint that the child whose birth
+Hortense expected was more nearly related to Bonaparte than merely
+through the fact that his step-daughter was his brother's wife.
+
+This was an infernal but skilfully-planned calumny; for those who
+devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such
+immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive
+it therefore would be to him to find himself made the object of such
+infamous slanders.
+
+The conspirators calculated that, in order to terminate these evil
+rumors, the first consul would send his brother and Hortense away to a
+distance, and that the fated Josephine, being thus isolated, could also
+be the more readily removed. Thus Bonaparte, being separated from his
+guardian angel, would no longer hear her whispering:
+
+"Bonaparte, do not ascend the throne! Be content with the glory of the
+greatest of mankind! Place no diadem upon thy brows; do not make
+thyself a king!"
+
+In Paris, as I have said, these shameful calumnies were but very lightly
+whispered, but abroad they were only the more loudly heard. Bonaparte's
+enemies got hold of the scandalous story, and made a weapon of it with
+which to assail him as a hero.
+
+One morning Bonaparte was reading an English newspaper which had always
+been hostile to him, and which, as he well knew, was the organ of Count
+d'Artois, then residing at Hartwell. As he continued to read, a dark
+shadow stole over his face, and he crumpled the paper in his clinched
+fist with a sudden and vehement motion. Then as suddenly again his
+countenance cleared, and a proud smile flitted across it. He had his
+master of ceremonies summoned to his presence, and bade him issue the
+necessary invitations for a court ball to be given, on the evening of
+the next day, at St. Cloud. He then went to Josephine to inform her in
+person of the projected _fete_, and to say that he wished her to tell
+Hortense, who had been ailing for some time, that he particularly
+desired her to be present.
+
+Hortense had been too long accustomed to obey her step-father's
+requests, to venture a refusal. She rose, therefore, from her couch on
+which she had been in the habit, for weeks past, of reclining, busied
+with her own dreams and musings, and bade her waiting women prepare her
+attire for the ball. Still she felt unwell, and seriously burdened by
+this festive attire, which harmonized so little with her feelings, and
+was so far from becoming to her figure, for she was only a few weeks
+from her confinement; but with her gentle and yielding disposition she
+did not venture, even in thought, to murmur at the compulsion imposed
+upon her by her step-father's command. She therefore repaired, at the
+appointed hour, to the ball at St. Cloud. Bonaparte stepped forward to
+meet her with a friendly smile, and, instead of thanking her for coming
+at all, earnestly urged her to dance.
+
+Hortense gazed at him with amazement. She knew that hitherto Bonaparte
+had always sought to avoid the sight of a woman in her condition; he had
+frequently said that he thought there was nothing more indecent than for
+a female to join in the dance under such circumstances, and now it was
+he who asked her to do that very thing.
+
+For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but Bonaparte
+grew only the more pressing and vehement in his request.
+
+"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with his
+irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take the floor
+only once, and that for but a single _contredance_."
+
+And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with shame at
+the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the gaze of all,
+obeyed and joined the dances.
+
+This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was
+Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually
+read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing flattery,
+and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her advanced state of
+pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure in the _contredance_, as
+a peculiar trait of amiability!
+
+Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very emphatic
+piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at once to the
+Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her how it was possible
+that, so early as the very next morning, there could be verses published
+in the newspapers concerning what had taken place at the ball on the
+preceding evening.
+
+Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came in, and
+was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an evasive and
+jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her mother, who was
+leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart
+oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but
+had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too
+full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble,
+for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.
+
+Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told
+her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses
+beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to
+dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have
+her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her
+pregnancy published in the next day's paper.
+
+Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for
+all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of
+the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and
+Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her
+participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read
+in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis
+Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some
+weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious
+statement.
+
+Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had
+not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this
+shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to
+take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of
+exertion to restore her to consciousness.
+
+A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so
+passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope
+of a better understanding between her and her husband.
+
+Hortense rose from her sick-bed with a firm, determined heart. In those
+long, lonely days that she had passed during her confinement, she had
+the time and opportunity to meditate on many things, and keenly to
+estimate her whole present position and probable future. She had now
+become a mother, without having a child; yet the resolute energy of a
+mother remained to her. The youthful, gentle, dreamy, enthusiastic girl
+had now become transformed into a determined, active, energetic woman,
+that would no longer bow submissively to the blows of fortune, but would
+meet them with an open and defiant brow. Since her fate could not be
+changed, she accepted it, all the while resolved no longer to bend to
+its yoke, but to subdue it, and try to be happy by force of resolution;
+and, since a charming, peaceful, and harmonious fireside at home was
+denied her, to at least make her house a pleasant gathering-point for
+her friends--for men of scientific and artistic attainments, for poets
+and singers, for painters and sculptors, and for men of learning. Ere
+long, all Paris was talking about Madame Louis Bonaparte's
+drawing-rooms, the agreeable and elegant entertainments that were given
+there, and the concerts there arranged, in which the first singers of
+the day executed pieces that Hortense had composed, and Talma recited,
+with his wonderful, sonorous voice, the poems that she had written.
+Every one was anxious for admission to these entertainments, in which
+the participants not merely performed their parts, but greatly enjoyed
+themselves as well; where the guests indulged in no backbiting or abuse,
+but found more worthy and elevated subjects of conversation; where, in
+fine, they could admire the works of poets and artists, and enjoy the
+newly, awakened intellectual spirit of the age.
+
+Hortense had firmly made up her mind that, since she had resigned
+herself to accept the burden of existence, she would strive to render it
+as agreeable as possible, and not to see any of its hateful and
+repulsive features, but to turn away from them with a noble and
+disdainful pride. She had never even referred to the frightful calumnies
+which her mother had privately made known to her, nor had she deemed any
+defence or proof of her innocence at all necessary. She felt that there
+were certain accusations against which to even undertake defence is to
+admit their possibility, and which, therefore, could only be combated by
+silence. The slanders that had been flung at her lay in a plane so far
+beneath her, that they could not rise high enough to reach her, but fell
+powerless at her feet, whence she did not deem it even worth her while
+to thrust them.
+
+But Bonaparte continued to feel outraged and wounded by this vile story,
+and it annoyed him deeply to learn that these rumors were still spread
+abroad, and that his foes still bestirred themselves to keep him ever on
+the alert, and, if possible, to dim the lustre of his gloriously-won
+laurels by the shadow of an infamous crime.
+
+"There are still rumors abroad of a _liaison_ between me and Hortense,"
+said he one day to Bourrienne. "They have even invented the most
+repulsive stories concerning her first infant. At the time, I thought
+that these calumnies were circulated among the public because the
+latter go earnestly desired that I might have a child to inherit my
+name. But it is still spoken of, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, general, it is still spoken of; and I confess that I did not
+believe this calumny would be so long continued."
+
+"This is really abominable!" exclaimed Bonaparte, his eyes flashing with
+anger. "You, Bourrienne, you best know what truth there is in it. You
+have heard and seen all; not the smallest circumstance could escape you.
+You were her confidant in her love-affair with Duroc. I expect you to
+clear me of this infamous reproach if you should some day write my
+history. Posterity shall not associate my name with such infamy. I shall
+depend on you, Bourrienne, and you will at least admit that you have
+never believed in this abominable calumny?"
+
+"No, never, general."
+
+"I shall rely on you, Bourrienne, not only on my own account, but for
+the sake of poor Hortense. She is, without this, unhappy enough, as is
+my brother also. I am concerned about this, because I love them both,
+and because this very circumstance gives color to the reports which idle
+chatterboxes have circulated regarding my relations to her. Therefore,
+bear this in mind when you write of me hereafter."
+
+"I shall do so, general; I shall tell the truth, but, unfortunately, I
+can not compel the world to believe the truth."
+
+Bourrienne has, at all events, kept his word, and spoken the truth.
+With deep indignation he spurns the calumny with which it has been
+attempted to sully the memory of Bonaparte and Hortense, even down to
+our time; and, in his anger, he even forgets the elegant and considerate
+language of the courteous diplomat, which is elsewhere always
+characteristic of his writings.
+
+"He lies in his throat," says Bourrienne, "who asserts that Bonaparte
+entertained other feelings for Hortense than those a step-father should
+entertain for his step-daughter! Hortense entertained for the first
+consul a feeling of reverential fear. She always spoke to him
+tremblingly. She never ventured to approach him with a petition. She was
+in the habit of coming to me, and I then submitted her wishes; and only
+when Bonaparte received them unfavorably did I mention the name of the
+petitioner. 'The silly thing!' said the first consul; 'why does she not
+speak to me herself? Is she afraid of me?' Napoleon always entertained a
+fatherly affection for her; since his marriage, he loved her as a father
+would have loved his child. I, who for years was a witness of her
+actions in the most private relations of life, I declare that I have
+never seen or heard the slightest circumstance that would tend to
+convict her of a criminal intimacy. One must consider this calumny as
+belonging to the category of those which malice so willingly circulates
+about those persons whose career has been brilliant, and which credulity
+and envy so willingly believe. I declare candidly that, if I entertained
+the slightest doubt with regard to this horrible calumny, I would say
+so. But Bonaparte is no more! Impartial history must not and shall not
+give countenance to this reproach; she should not make of a father and
+friend a libertine! Malicious and hostile authors have asserted,
+without, however, adducing any proof, that a criminal intimacy existed
+between Bonaparte and Hortense. A falsehood, an unworthy falsehood! And
+this report has been generally current, not only in France, but
+throughout all Europe. Alas! can it, then, be true that calumny
+exercises so mighty a charm that, when it has once taken possession of a
+man, he can never be freed from it again?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KING OR EMPEROR.
+
+Josephine's entreaties had been fruitless, or Bonaparte had, at least,
+only yielded to them in their literal sense. She had said: "I entreat
+you, do not make yourself a king!" Bonaparte did not make himself king,
+he made himself emperor. He did not take up the crown that had fallen
+from the head of the Bourbons; he created a new one for himself--a crown
+which the French people and Senate had, however, offered him. The
+revolution still stood a threatening spectre behind the French people;
+its return was feared, and, since the discovery of the conspiracy of
+Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru, the people anxiously asked themselves
+what was to become of France if the conspirators should succeed in
+murdering Bonaparte; and when the republic should again be sent adrift,
+without a pilot, on the wild sea of revolution. The people demanded that
+their institutions should be securely established and maintained, and
+believed that this could only be accomplished by a dynasty--by a
+monarchical form of government. The consulate for life must therefore be
+changed into an hereditary empire. Had not Bonaparte himself said: "One
+can be emperor of a republic, but not king of a republic; these two
+terms are incompatible!" They desired to make Napoleon emperor, because
+they flattered themselves that in so doing they should still be able to
+preserve the republic.
+
+On the 18th of May, of the year 1804, the plan that had been so long and
+carefully prepared was carried into execution. On the 18th of May, the
+Senate repaired to St. Cloud, to entreat Bonaparte, in the name of the
+people and army, to accept the imperial dignity, and exchange the Roman
+chair of a consul for the French throne of an emperor.
+
+Cambaceres, the late second consul of the republic, stood at the head of
+the Senate, and upon him devolved the duty of imparting to Bonaparte the
+wishes of the French people. Cambaceres--who, as a member of the
+Convention, had voted for the condemnation of Louis XVI., in order that
+royalty should be forever banished from French soil--this same
+Cambaceres, was now the first to salute Bonaparte with "imperial
+majesty," and with the little word, so full of significance, "sire." He
+rewarded Cambaceres, for this by writing to him on the game day, and
+appointing him high constable of the empire, as the first act of his
+imperial rule. In this letter, the first document in which Bonaparte
+signed himself merely Napoleon, the emperor retained the republican
+style of writing. He addressed Cambaceres, as "citizen consul," and
+followed the revolutionary method of reckoning time, his letter being
+dated "the 20th Floreal, of the year 12."
+
+The second act of the emperor, on the first day of his new dignity, was
+to invest the members of his family also with new dignities, and to
+confer upon them the rank of Princes of France, with the title "imperial
+highness." Moreover, he made his brother Joseph prince elector, and his
+brother Louis connetable. On the same day it devolved upon Louis, in his
+new dignity, to present the generals and staff officers to the emperor,
+and then to conduct them to the empress--the Empress Josephine.
+
+The prophecy of the negress of Martinique was now fulfilled. Josephine
+was "more than a queen." But Josephine, in the midst of the splendor of
+her new dignity, could only think, with an anxious heart, of the
+prophecy of the clairvoyante of Paris, who had told her, "You will wear
+a crown, but only for a short time." She felt that this wondrous fortune
+could not last long--that the new emperor would have to do as the kings
+or old had done, and sacrifice his dearest possession to Fate, in order
+to appease the hungry demons of vengeance and envy; and that he would,
+therefore, sacrifice her, in order to secure the perpetuity of his
+fortune and dynasty.
+
+It was this that weighed down the heart of the new empress, and made her
+shrink in alarm from her new grandeur. It was, therefore, with a feeling
+of deep anxiety that she took possession of the new titles and honors
+that Fate had showered upon her, as from an inexhaustible horn of
+plenty. With a degree of alarm, and almost with shame, she heard herself
+addressed with the titles with which she had addressed the Queen of
+France years before, in these same halls, when she came to the Tuileries
+as Marquise de Beauharnais, to do homage to the beautiful Marie
+Antoinette. She had died on the scaffold and now Josephine was the
+"majesty" that sat enthroned in the Tuileries, her brilliant court
+assembled around her, while in a retired nook of England the legitimate
+King of France was leading a lonely and gloomy life.
+
+Josephine, as we have said, was a good royalist; and, as empress, she
+still mourned over the fate of the unfortunate Bourbons, and esteemed it
+her sacred duty to assist and advise those who, true to their principles
+and duties, had followed the royal family, or had emigrated, in order
+that they might, at least, not be compelled to do homage to the new
+system. Her purse was always at the service of the emigrants; and, if
+Josephine continually made debts, in spite of her enormous monthly
+allowance, her extravagance was not alone the cause, but also her
+kindly, generous heart; for she was in the habit of setting apart the
+half of her monthly income for the relief of poor emigrants, and, no
+matter how great her own embarrassment, or how pressing her creditors,
+she never suffered the amount devoted to the relief of misfortune and
+the reward of fidelity to be applied to any other purpose[13].
+
+[Footnote 13: Memoires sur la reine Hortense, par le Baron van Schelten,
+vol. i., p. 145.]
+
+Now that Josephine was an empress, her daughter, the wife of the High
+Constable of France, took the second position at the brilliant court of
+the emperor. The daughter of the beheaded viscount was now a "Princess
+of France," an "imperial highness," who must be approached with
+reverence, who had her court and her maids of honor, and whose liberty
+and personal inclinations, as was also the case with her mother, were
+confined in the fetters of the strict etiquette which Napoleon required
+to be observed at the new imperial court.
+
+But neither Josephine nor Hortense allowed herself to be blinded by this
+new splendor. A crown could confer upon Josephine no additional
+happiness; glittering titles could neither enhance Hortense's youth and
+beauty, nor alleviate her secret misery. She would have been contented
+to live in retirement, at the side of a beloved husband; her proud
+position could not indemnify her for her lost woman's happiness.
+
+But Fate seemed to pity the noble, gentle being, who knew how to bear
+misery and grandeur with the same smiling dignity, and offered her a
+recompense for the overthrow of her first mother's hope--a new
+hope--she promised to become a mother again.
+
+Josephine received this intelligence with delight, for her daughter's
+hope was a hope for her too. If Hortense should give birth to a son, the
+gods might be reconciled, and misfortune be banished from the head of
+the empress. With this son, the dynasty of the new imperial family would
+be assured; this son could be the heir of the imperial crown, and
+Napoleon could well adopt as his own the child who was at the same time
+his nephew and his grandson.
+
+Napoleon promised Josephine that he would do this; that he would rather
+content himself with an adopted son, in whom the blood of the emperor
+and of the empress was mixed, than be compelled to separate himself from
+her, from his Josephine. Napoleon still loved his wife; he still
+compared with all he thought good and beautiful, the woman who shed
+around his grandeur the lustre of her grace and loveliness.
+
+When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy and
+thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with
+exultation, exclaimed: "How glorious a music is this! These acclamations
+and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of Josephine! How
+proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a people[14]!"
+
+[Footnote 14: Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.]
+
+But his proud ambition was not yet sated. As he bad once said, upon
+entering the Tuileries as first consul, "It is not enough to _be_ in
+the Tuileries; one must also _remain_ there"--he now said: "It is not
+enough to have been made emperor by the French people; one must also
+have received his consecration as emperor from the Pope of Rome."
+
+And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world; not only
+to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his will.
+
+Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the Pope left
+the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new emperor the
+blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. This was a new
+halo around Napoleon's head--a new, an unbounded triumph, which he
+celebrated over France, over the whole world and its prejudices, and
+over all the dynasties by the "grace of God." The Pope came to Paris to
+crown the emperor. The German emperors had been compelled to make a
+pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the papal benediction, and now the Pope
+made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge
+the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church. All
+France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France
+adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and
+converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his
+grandeur. Napoleon's journey with Josephine through France, undertaken
+while they awaited the Pope's coming, was, therefore, a single,
+continuous triumph. It was not only the people who received him with
+shouts of joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her
+_sanctus, sanctus_, and the priests received him at the doors of their
+churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of France.
+Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal exultation,
+with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and solemn addresses
+of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a transcendental nature.
+
+"God created Bonaparte," said the Prefect of Arras, in his enthusiastic
+address to the emperor--"God created Bonaparte, and then He rested."
+And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet won over by the
+emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial court, whispered,
+quite audibly: "God would have done better had He rested a
+little sooner!"
+
+Finally, the intelligence overran all France, that the wonder, in which
+they had not yet dared to believe, had become reality, and that Pope
+Pius VII. had crossed the boundaries of France, and was now approaching
+the capital. The Holy Father of the Church, that had now arisen
+victoriously from the ruins of the revolution, was everywhere received
+by the people and authorities with the greatest honor. The old royal
+palace at Fontainebleau had, by order of the emperor, been refurnished
+with imperial magnificence, and, as a peculiarly delicate attention, the
+Pope's bedchamber had been arranged in exact imitation of his bedchamber
+in the Quirinal at Home. The emperor, empress, and their suite, now
+repaired to Fontainebleau, to receive Pope Pius VII. The whole ceremony
+had, however, been previously arranged, and understanding had with the
+Pope concerning the various questions of etiquette. In conformity with
+this prearranged ceremony, when the couriers announced the approach of
+the Pope, Napoleon rode out to the chase, to give himself the appearance
+of meeting the Pope accidentally on his way. The equipages and the
+imperial court had taken position in the forest of Nemours. Napoleon,
+however, attired in hunting-dress, rode, with his suite, to the summit
+of a little hill, which the Pope's carriage had just reached. The Pope
+at once ordered a halt, and the emperor also brought his suite to a
+stand with a gesture of his hand. A brief interval of profound silence
+followed. All felt that a great historical event was taking place, and
+the eyes of all were fastened in wondering expectation on the two chief
+figures of this scene--on the emperor, who sat there on his horse, in
+his simple huntsman's attire; and on the Pope, in his gold-embroidered
+robes, leaning back in his equipage, drawn by six horses.
+
+As Napoleon dismounted, the Pope hastened to descend from his carriage,
+hesitating a moment, however, after he had already placed his foot on
+the carriage-step; but Napoleon's foot had already touched the earth.
+Pius could, therefore, no longer hesitate; he must make up his mind to
+step, in his white, gold-embroidered satin slippers, on the wet soil,
+softened by a shower of rain, that had fallen on the previous day. The
+emperor's hunting-boots were certainly much better adapted to this
+meeting in the mud than the Pope's white satin slippers.
+
+Emperor and Pope approached and embraced each other tenderly; then,
+through the inattention of the coachmen, seemingly, the imperial
+equipage was set in motion, and, in its rapid advance, interrupted this
+tender embrace. It seemed to be the merest accident that the emperor
+stood on the right, and the Pope on the left side of the equipage, that
+had now been brought to a stand again. The two doors of the carriage
+were simultaneously thrown open by the lackeys; at the same time, the
+Pope entered the carriage on the left, and the emperor on the right
+side, both seating themselves side by side at the same time. This
+settled the question of etiquette. Neither had preceded the other, but
+the emperor occupied the seat of honor on the Pope's right.
+
+The coronation of the imperial pair took place on the 2d of December,
+1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Not only all Paris, but all
+France, was in motion on this day. An immense concourse of people surged
+to and fro in the streets; the windows of all the houses were filled
+with richly-adorned and beautiful women, the bells were ringing in all
+the churches, and joyous music, intermixed with the shouts of the
+people, was heard in every direction. For a moment, however, these
+shouts were changed into laughter, and that was when the papal
+procession approached, headed by an ass led by the halter, in accordance
+with an ancient custom of Rome. While the Pope, with the high
+dignitaries of the Church, repaired to the cathedral to await there the
+coming of the imperial couple, Napoleon was putting on the imperial
+insignia in the Tuileries, enveloping himself in the green velvet
+mantle, bordered with ermine, and thickly studded with brilliants, and
+arraying himself in the whole glittering paraphernalia of his new
+dignity. When already on the point of leaving the Tuileries with his
+wife, who stood at his side in her imperial attire, Bonaparte suddenly
+gave the order that the notary Ragideau should be called to the palace,
+as he desired to see him at once.
+
+A messenger was at once sent, in an imperial equipage, to bring him from
+his dwelling, and in a quarter of an hour the little notary Ragideau
+entered the cabinet of the empress, in which the imperial pair were
+alone, awaiting him in their glittering attire.
+
+His eyes beaming, a triumphant smile on his lips, Napoleon stepped
+forward to meet the little notary. "Well, Master Ragideau," said he,
+gayly, "I have had you called, merely to ask you whether General
+Bonaparte really possesses nothing besides his hat and his sword, or
+whether you will now forgive Viscountess Beauharnais for having married
+me;" and, as Ragideau looked at him in astonishment, and Josephine asked
+the meaning of his strange words, Bonaparte related how, while standing
+in Ragideau's antechamber on a certain occasion, he had heard the notary
+advising Josephine not to marry poor little Bonaparte; not to become the
+wife of the general, who possessed nothing but his hat and his sword.
+
+The notary's words had entered the ambitious young man's heart like a
+dagger, and had wounded him deeply. But he had uttered no complaint, and
+made no mention of it; but to-day, on the day of his supreme triumph,
+to-day the emperor remembered that moment of humiliation, and, arrayed
+with the full insignia of the highest earthly dignity, he accorded
+himself the triumph of reminding the little notary that he had once
+advised Josephine not to marry him, because of his poverty.
+
+The poor General Bonaparte had now transformed himself into the mighty
+Emperor Napoleon. Then he possessed nothing but his hat and his sword,
+but now the Pope awaited him in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, to place
+the golden imperial crown on his head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+NAPOLEON'S HEIR.
+
+Hortense had not been able to take any part in the festivities of the
+coronation; but another festivity had been prepared for her in the
+retirement of her apartments. She had given birth to a son; and in this
+child the happy mother found consolation and a new hope.
+
+Josephine, who had assumed the imperial crown with a feeling of
+foreboding sadness, received the intelligence of the birth of her
+grandson with exultation. It seemed to her that the clouds that had been
+gathering over her head were now dissipated, and that a day of
+unclouded sunshine now smiled down upon her. Hortense had assured her
+mother's future; she had given birth to a son, and had thus given a
+first support to the new imperial dynasty. There was now no longer a
+reason why Napoleon should entertain the thoughts of a separation, for
+there was a son to whom he could one day bequeath the imperial throne
+of France.
+
+The emperor also seemed to be disposed to favor Josephine's wishes, and
+to adopt his brother's son as his own. Had he not requested the Pope to
+delay his departure for a few days, in order to baptize the child? The
+Pope performed this sacred rite at St. Cloud, the emperor holding the
+child, and Madame Letitia standing at his side as second witness.
+Hortense now possessed an object upon which she could lavish the whole
+wealth of love that had until now lain concealed in her heart. The
+little Napoleon Charles was Hortense's first happy love; and she gave
+way to this intoxicating feeling with the most intense delight.
+
+Josephine's house was now her home in the fullest sense of the word; she
+no longer shared her home with her husband, and could now bestow her
+undivided love and care upon her child. Louis Napoleon, the
+Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of Piedmont by
+Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health, had not been
+compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to remain in her
+little house in Paris, which she could exchange when summer came for
+her husband's new estate, the castle of Saint-Leu.
+
+But the tranquillity which Josephine enjoyed with her child in this
+charming country-resort was to be of short duration. The brother and
+sister-in-law of the emperor could not hope to be permitted to lead a
+life of retirement. They were rays of the sun that now dazzled the whole
+world; they must fulfil their destiny, and contribute their light to the
+ruling sun.
+
+An order of Napoleon recalled the constable, who had returned from
+Piedmont a short time before, and repaired to Saint-Leu to see his son,
+to Paris. Napoleon had appointed his brother to a brilliant destiny; the
+Constable of France was to become a king. Delegates of the Republic of
+Batavia, the late Holland, had arrived in Paris, and requested their
+mighty neighbor, the Emperor Napoleon, to give them a king, who should
+unite them with the glittering empire, through the ties of blood.
+Napoleon intended to fulfil their wishes, and present them with a king,
+in the person of his brother Louis.
+
+But Louis was rather appalled than dazzled by this offer, and refused to
+accept the proposed dignity. In this refusal he was also in perfect
+harmony with his wife, who did all in her power to strengthen his
+resolution. Both felt that the crown which it was proposed to place on
+their heads would be nothing more than a golden chain of dependence;
+that the King of Holland could be nothing more than the vassal of
+France; and their personal relations to each other added another
+objection to this political consideration.
+
+In Paris, husband and wife could forget the chain that bound them
+together; there they were in the circle of their friends, and could
+avoid each other. The great, glittering imperial court served to
+separate and reconcile the young couple, who had never forgiven
+themselves for having fettered each other in this involuntary union. In
+Paris they had amusements, friends, society; while in Holland they would
+live in entire dependence on each other, and hear continually the
+rattling of the chain with which each had bound the other to the galley
+of a union without love.
+
+Both felt this, and both were, therefore, united in the endeavor to ward
+off this new misfortune that was suspended over their heads, in the form
+of a kingly crown.
+
+But how could they resist successfully the iron will of Napoleon?
+Hortense had never had the courage to address Napoleon directly on the
+subject of her wishes and petitions, and Josephine already felt that her
+wishes no longer exercised the power of earlier days over the emperor.
+She therefore avoided interceding where she was not sure of being
+successful.
+
+At the outset, Louis had the courage to resist his brother openly; but
+Napoleon's angry glance annihilated his opposition, and his gentle,
+yielding nature was forced to succumb. In the presence of the deputation
+of the Batavian Republic, that so ardently longed for a sceptre and
+crown, Napoleon appealed to his brother Louis to accept the crown which
+had been freely tendered him, and to be to his country a king who would
+respect and protect its liberties, its laws, and its religion.
+
+With emotion, Louis Bonaparte declared himself ready to accept this
+crown, and to be a good and true ruler to his new country.
+
+And to keep this oath faithfully was from this time the single and
+sacred endeavor to which he devoted his every thought and energy. The
+people of Holland having chosen him to be their king, he was determined
+to do honor to their choice; having been compelled to give up his own
+country and nationality, he determined to belong to his new country with
+his whole heart and being--to become a thorough Hollander, as he could
+no longer remain a Frenchman.
+
+This heretofore so gentle and passive nature now developed an entirely
+new energy; this dreamer, this pale, silent brother of the emperor, was
+now suddenly transformed into a bold, self-reliant man of action, who
+had fixed his gaze on a noble aim, and was ready to devote all the
+powers of his being to its attainment. As King of Holland, he desired,
+above all, to be beloved by his subjects, and to be able to contribute
+to their welfare and happiness. He studied their language with untiring
+diligence, and made himself acquainted with their manners and customs,
+for the purpose of making them his own. He investigated the sources of
+their wealth and of their wants, and sought to develop the former and
+relieve the latter. He was restless in his efforts to provide for his
+country, and to merit the love and confidence which his subjects
+bestowed on him.
+
+His wife also exerted herself to do justice to her new and glittering
+position, and to wear worthily the crown which she had so unwillingly
+accepted. In her drawing-rooms she brought together, at brilliant
+entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new nobility of Holland, and
+taught the stiff society of that country the fine, unconstrained tone,
+and the vivacious intellectual conversation of Parisian society. It was
+under Hortense's fostering hand that art and science first made their
+way into the aristocratic parlors of Holland, giving to their social
+reunions a higher and nobler importance.
+
+And Hortense was not only the protectress of art and science, but also
+the mother of the poor, the ministering angel of the unhappy, whose
+tears she dried, and whose misery she alleviated--and this royal pair,
+though adored and blessed by their subjects, could not find within their
+palaces the least reflection of the happiness they so well knew how to
+confer upon others without its walls. Between these two beings, so
+gentle and yielding to others, a strange antipathy continued to exist,
+and not even the birth of a second, and of a third, son could fill up
+the chasm that separated them.
+
+And this chasm was soon to be broadened by a new blow of destiny.
+Hortense's eldest, the adopted son of Napoleon, the presumptive heir to
+his throne, the child that Napoleon loved so dearly that he often played
+with him for hours on the terraces of St. Cloud, the child Josephine
+worshipped, because its existence seemed to assure her own happiness,
+the child that had awakened the first feeling of motherly bliss in
+Hortense's bosom, the child that had often even consoled Louis Bonaparte
+for the unenjoyable present with bright hopes for the future--the little
+Napoleon Charles died in the year 1807, of the measles.
+
+This was a terrific blow that struck the parents, and the imperial pair
+of France with equal force. Napoleon's eyes filled with tears when this
+intelligence was brought him, and a cry of horror escaped
+Josephine's lips.
+
+"Now I am lost!" she murmured in a low voice; "now my fate is decided.
+He will put me away."
+
+But after this first egotistical outburst of her own pain, she hastened
+to the Hague to weep with her daughter, and bring her away from the
+place associated with her loss and her anguish. Hortense returned with
+the empress to St. Cloud; while her husband, who had almost succumbed to
+his grief, was compelled to seek renewed health in the baths of the
+Pyrenees. The royal palace at the Hague now stood desolate again; death
+had banished life and joy from its halls; and, though the royal pair
+were subsequently compelled to return to it, joy and happiness came back
+with them no more.
+
+King Louis had returned from the Pyrenees in a more gloomy and
+ill-natured frame of mind than ever; a sickly distrust, a repulsive
+irritability, had taken possession of his whole being, and his young
+wife no longer had the good-will to bear with his caprices, and excuse
+his irritable disposition. They were totally different in their views,
+desires, inclinations, and aspirations; and their children, instead of
+being a means of reuniting, seemed to estrange them the more, for each
+insisted on considering them his or her exclusive property, and in
+having them educated according to his or her views and wishes.
+
+But Hortense was soon to forget her own household troubles and cares, in
+the greater misery of her mother. A letter from Josephine, an agonized
+appeal to her daughter for consolation, recalled Hortense to her
+mother's side, and she left the Hague and hastened to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PREMONITIONS.
+
+Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French clairvoyante, were
+now about to be fulfilled. The crown which Josephine had reluctantly and
+sorrowfully accepted, and which she had afterward worn with so much
+grace and amiability, with such natural majesty and dignity, was about
+to fall from her head. Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the
+dreamed-of future had been realized, to put away from him the woman who
+had loved him and chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his
+hopes for the future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave
+fidelity, had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation,
+was now to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
+widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should be
+done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
+pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to sacrifice
+to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good angel;" and
+he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the thought of her
+tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating gaze.
+
+But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
+threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
+countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from Vienna,
+had caused the door that connected his room with that of his wife to be
+locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers, who dared to address
+her with less reverence, but with a touch of compassionate sympathy; she
+heard it in the low whispering that ceased when she approached a group
+of persons in her parlors; it was betrayed to her in the covert,
+mysterious insinuations of the public press, which attached a deep and
+comprehensive significance to the emperor's journey to Vienna.
+
+She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too
+weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act her part as
+wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should not flow
+outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her
+sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.
+But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and
+show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.
+
+How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were
+shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
+daughter's ear!
+
+"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
+weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
+before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
+fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
+cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
+lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"
+
+[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]
+
+Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
+bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
+own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
+union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
+might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
+sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
+bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
+was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
+on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
+stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
+this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
+with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
+in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
+want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
+now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
+down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
+empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
+illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
+one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.
+
+A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
+to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
+gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
+now bowed, almost quailed.
+
+"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
+matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
+for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
+me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
+wife who can give the country an heir to the throne. Josephine has been
+living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end. You,
+Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more
+than all else in the world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother
+for this step? You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."
+
+Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her eyes on
+the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His glance again
+quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of a pure, innocent
+woman. Hortense had the courage to positively refuse the
+emperors request.
+
+"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then refuse my
+request?"
+
+"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears, "sire, I
+have not the strength to stab my mother to the heart[16]."
+
+[Footnote 16: Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.]
+
+And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the emperor's
+cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DIVORCE.
+
+Napoleon made one other attempt to impart to Josephine, through a third
+person, the distressing tidings of his determination with regard to
+herself. He begged Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, to come to Paris, and
+on his arrival informed him of his intentions and of his wish. Eugene,
+like his sister, received this intelligence in silent submissiveness,
+but like his sister, he refused to impart to his mother, tidings that
+must destroy her happiness forever.
+
+The emperor had finally to make up his mind to impart the distressing
+tidings in person.
+
+It was on the 30th of November, 1809. The emperor and empress dined, as
+usual, at the same table. His gloomy aspect on entering the room made
+Josephine's heart quake; she read in his countenance that the fatal hour
+had come. But she repressed the tears which were rushing to her eyes,
+and looked entreatingly at her daughter, who sat on the opposite side of
+the table, a deathly pallor on her countenance.
+
+Not a word was spoken during this gloomy, ominous dinner. The sighs and
+half-suppressed moaning that escaped Josephine's heaving breast were
+quite audible. Without, the wind shrieked and howled dismally, and drove
+the rain violently against the window-panes; within, an ominous,
+oppressive silence prevailed. The commotion of Nature contrasted, and
+yet, at the same time, harmonized strangely with this human silence.
+Napoleon broke this silence but once, and that was when, in a harsh
+voice, he asked the lackey, who stood behind him, what time it was. Then
+all was still as before.
+
+At last Napoleon gave the signal to rise from the table, and coffee was
+then taken standing. Napoleon drank hastily, and then set the cup down
+with a trembling hand, making it ring out as it touched the table. With
+an angry gesture he dismissed the attendants.
+
+"Sire, may Hortense remain?" asked Josephine, almost inaudibly.
+
+"No!" exclaimed the emperor, vehemently. Hortense made a profound
+obeisance, and, taking leave of her mother with a look of tender
+compassion, left the room, followed by the rest.
+
+The imperial pair were now alone. And how horrible was this being left
+alone under the circumstances; how sad the silence in which they sat
+opposite each other! How strange the glance which the emperor fastened
+on his wife!
+
+She read in his excited, quivering features the struggle that moved his
+soul, but she also read in them that her hour was come!
+
+As he now approached her, his outstretched hand trembled, and Josephine
+shudderingly recoiled.
+
+Napoleon took her hand in his, and laid it on his heart, regarding her
+with a long and sorrowful farewell-glance.
+
+"Josephine," said he, his voice trembling with emotion, "my good
+Josephine, you know that I have loved you! To you, and to you alone, do
+I owe the only moments of happiness I have enjoyed in this world.
+Josephine, my destiny is stronger than my will. My dearest desires must
+yield to the interests of France[17]."
+
+[Footnote 17: The emperor's own words. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+344.]
+
+"Speak no further," cried Josephine, withdrawing her hand angrily--"no,
+speak no further. I understand you, and I expected this, but the blow is
+not the less deadly."
+
+She could speak no further, her voice failed. A feeling of despair came
+over her; the long-repressed storm of agony at last broke forth. She
+wept, she wrung her hands; groans escaped her heaving breast, and a loud
+cry of anguish burst from her lips. She at last fainted away, and was
+thus relieved from a consciousness of her sufferings.
+
+When she awoke she found herself on her bed, and Hortense and her
+physician Corvisart at her side. Josephine stretched out her trembling
+arms toward her daughter, who threw herself on her mother's heart,
+sobbing bitterly. Corvisart silently withdrew, feeling that he could be
+of no further assistance. It had only been in his power to recall
+Josephine to a consciousness of her misery; but for her misery itself he
+had no medicine; he knew that her tears and her daughter's sympathy
+could alone give relief.
+
+Josephine lay weeping in her daughter's arms, when Napoleon came in to
+inquire after her condition. As he seated himself at her bedside, she
+shrank back with a feeling of horror, her tears ceased to flow, and her
+usually so mild and joyous eyes now shot glances of anger and offended
+love at the emperor. But love soon conquered anger. She extended her
+tremulous hand to Napoleon; the sad, sweet smile, peculiar to woman,
+trembled on her lips, and, in a gentle, touching voice, she said: "Was
+I not right, my friend, when I shrank back in terror from the thought of
+becoming an empress[18]?"
+
+[Footnote 18: Josephine's own narrative. See Bourrienne, vol. iii., p.
+342, _et seq_.]
+
+Napoleon made no reply. He turned away and wept. But these farewell
+tears of his love could not change Josephine's fate; the emperor had
+already determined it irrevocably. His demand of the hand of the
+Archduchess Marie Louise had already been acceded to in Vienna. Nothing
+now remained to be done but to remove Josephine from the throne, and
+elevate a new, a legitimate empress, to the vacant place!
+
+The emperor could not and would not retrace his steps. He assembled
+about him all his brothers, all the kings, dukes, and princes, created
+by his mighty will, and in the state-chambers of the Tuileries, in the
+presence of his court and the Senate, the emperor appeared; at his side
+the empress, arrayed for the last time in all the insignia of the
+dignity she was about to lay aside forever.
+
+In a loud, firm voice the emperor declared to the assembly his
+determination to divorce himself from his wife; and Josephine, in a
+trembling voice, often interrupted by tears, repeated her husband's
+words. The arch-chancellor, Cambaceres, then caused the appropriate
+paragraph of the _Code Civile_ to be read, applied it to the case under
+consideration, in a short, terse address, and pronounced the union of
+the emperor and empress dissolved.
+
+This ended the ceremony, and satisfied the requirements of the law.
+Josephine had now only to take leave of her husband and of the court,
+and she did this with the gentle, angelic composure, in the graceful,
+sweet manner, which was hers in a degree possessed by few other women.
+
+As she bowed profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward
+emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his iron
+countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then walked
+through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on either side,
+and greeted all with a last soft look, a last inclination of the head,
+nothing could be heard but weeping, and even those who rejoiced over her
+downfall, because they hoped much from the new empress and the new
+dynasty, were now moved to tears by this silent and yet so eloquent
+leave-taking.
+
+The sacrifice was accomplished. Napoleon had sacrificed his dearest
+possession to ambition; he had divorced himself from Josephine.
+
+On the same day she left the Tuileries to repair to Malmaison, her
+future home--to Malmaison, that had once been the paradise, and was now
+to be the widow's seat, of her love.
+
+Josephine left the court, but the hearts of those who constituted this
+court did not leave her. During the next few weeks the crowds of the
+coming and going on the road from Paris to Malmaison presented the
+appearance of a procession; the equipages of all the kings and princes
+who were sojourning in Paris, and of all the nobles and dignitaries of
+the new France, were to be seen there. Even the Faubourg St.-Germain,
+that still preserved its sympathy for the Bourbons, repaired to the
+empress at Malmaison. And this pilgrimage was made by the poor and
+humble, as well as by the rich and great. All wished to say to the
+empress that they still loved and honored her, and that she was still
+enthroned in their hearts, although her rule on the throne was at
+an end.
+
+The whole people mourned with Josephine and her children. It was
+whispered about that Napoleon's star would now grow pale; that, with
+Josephine, his good angel had left him, and that the future would avenge
+her tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE KING OF HOLLAND.
+
+While Josephine was weeping over her divorce at Malmaison, Hortense was
+seeking one for herself. A divorce which her mother lamented as a
+misfortune, because she still loved her husband, would have conferred
+happiness upon Hortense, who never had loved her husband. Once again in
+harmony with her husband, Hortense entreated the emperor to permit them
+to be divorced, and the king united his entreaties with those of
+the queen.
+
+But Napoleon was unrelenting. His family should not appear before the
+people as disregarding the sanctity of the marriage bond. For state
+reasons he had separated from his wife, and for state reasons he could
+not give his consent to the dissolution of the union of his brother and
+step-daughter. They must, therefore, continue to drag the chain that
+united them; and they did, but with angry hearts.
+
+Louis returned to Holland in a more depressed state of mind than ever;
+while Hortense and her two children, in obedience to Napoleon's express
+command, remained in Paris for some time. They were to attend the
+festivities that were soon to take place at the imperial court in honor
+of the marriage of the emperor with the Archduchess Marie Louise of
+Austria. The daughter of the divorced empress, with the emperor's
+sisters, had been selected to carry the train of the new empress on the
+marriage-day. Napoleon wished to prove to France and to all Europe that
+there was no other law in his family than his will, and that the
+daughter of Josephine had never ceased to be his obedient daughter also.
+Napoleon wished, moreover, to retain near his young wife, in order that
+she might have at her side a gentle and tender mentor, the queen who had
+inherited Josephine's grace and loveliness, and who, in her noble
+womanhood, would set a good example to the ladies of his court. Hortense
+mutely obeyed the emperor's command; on the 1st of April, 1810, the day
+of the union of Marie Louise with the emperor, she, together with his
+sisters, bore the train of the new empress. She alone did this without
+making any resistance, while it was only after the most violent
+opposition to Napoleon's command that his sisters, Queen Caroline of
+Naples, the Duchess Pauline of Guastalla, and the Grand-duchess Elise of
+Tuscany, consented to undergo the humiliation of walking behind their
+new sovereign as humble subjects. And the emperor's sisters were not
+the only persons who regarded the imperial pair with displeasure on the
+day of the marriage celebration. Only a small number of the high
+dignitaries of the Church had responded to the invitation of the
+grand-master of ceremonies, and attended the marriage celebration in the
+chapel in the Tuileries.
+
+The emperor, who did not wish to punish his sisters for their
+opposition, could at least punish the absence of the cardinals, and he
+did this on the following day. He exiled those cardinals who had not
+appeared in the chapel, forbade them to appear in their red robes
+thenceforth, and condemned them to the black penitent's dress.
+
+The people of Paris also received the new empress with a languid
+enthusiasm. They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy forebodings;
+and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in
+honor of the imperial marriage, a short time afterward, the fearful fire
+occurred that cost so many human lives and destroyed so much family
+happiness, the people remembered with terror that other misfortune that
+had occurred on the day of the entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and
+called this fire an earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian"
+would bring upon France and the emperor.
+
+While Hortense was compelled to attend the festivities given in honor of
+the new empress in Paris, a dark storm-cloud was gathering over her
+husband's head, that was soon to threaten his life and his crown.
+
+When Louis, at the emperor's command, accepted the crown of Holland, he
+had solemnly sworn to be a faithful ruler to his new people, and to
+devote his whole being to their welfare. He was too honest a man not to
+keep this oath sacredly. His sole endeavor was to make such
+arrangements, and provide such laws, as the welfare and prosperity of
+Holland seemed to require, without in the least considering whether
+these laws were conducive to the interests of France or not. He would
+not regard Holland as a province dependent upon France, of which he was
+the governor, but as an independent land that had chosen him to be its
+free and independent king. But Napoleon did not view the matter in the
+same light; in his eyes it was sacrilege for the kingdom of Holland to
+refuse to conform itself in every respect to the interests of its
+powerful neighbor, France.
+
+When Napoleon invested his brother with the crown of Holland, he had
+charged him "to be a good king to his people, but at the same time to
+remain a good Frenchman, and protect the interests of France." Louis
+had, however, endeavored to become a good Hollander; and when the
+interests of France and Holland came into conflict, the king took the
+side of his new country, and acted as a Hollander. He was of the opinion
+that the welfare of Holland depended on its commerce and industry only,
+and that it could only be great through its commercial importance; he
+therefore reduced the army and navy, making merchantmen of the
+men-of-war, and peaceful sailors of their warlike seamen.
+
+Napoleon, however, regarded this conversion with dismay, and angrily
+reproached the King of Holland for "disarming whole squadrons,
+discharging seamen, and disorganizing the army, until Holland was
+without power, both on land and water, as though warehouses and clerks
+were the material elements of power." Napoleon reproached the king still
+more bitterly, however, for having re-established commercial relations
+with England, for having raised the blockade for Holland which France
+had established against England, and for having permitted the American
+ships, that had been banished from the ports of France, to anchor
+quietly in those of Holland.
+
+The emperor demanded of the King of Holland that he should conform
+himself to his will and to the interests of France unconditionally; that
+he should immediately break off all commercial relations between Holland
+and England; that he should re-establish a fleet, of forty
+ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and seven brigs, and an army of
+twenty-five thousand men, and that he should abolish all the privileges
+of the nobility that were contrary to the constitution.
+
+King Louis had the courage to resist these demands, in the name of
+Holland, and to refuse to obey instructions, the execution of which must
+necessarily have affected the material interests of Holland most
+injuriously.
+
+Napoleon responded to this refusal with a declaration of war. The
+ambassador of Holland received his passport, and a French army corps was
+sent to Holland, to punish the king's insolence.
+
+But the misfortune that threatened Holland had called the king's whole
+energy into activity, and Napoleon's anger and threats were powerless to
+break his resolution. As the commander of the French troops, the Duke of
+Reggio, approached Amsterdam, to lay siege to that city and thereby
+compel the king to yield, Louis determined rather to descend from his
+throne than to submit to the unjust demands of France. He, therefore,
+issued a proclamation to his people, in which he told them that he,
+convinced that he could do nothing more to promote their welfare, and,
+on the contrary, believing that he was an obstacle in the way of the
+restoration of friendly relations between his brother and Holland, had
+determined to abdicate in favor of his two sons, Napoleon Louis and
+Charles Louis Napoleon. Until they should attain their majority the
+queen, in conformity with the constitution, was to be regent. He then
+took leave of his subjects, in a short and touching address. He now
+repaired, in disguise, and under the name of Count de St. Leu, through
+the states of his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and through Saxony
+to Toeplitz.
+
+Here he learned that Napoleon, far from respecting and fulfilling the
+conditions of his abdication, had united the kingdom of Holland with the
+empire. The king published a protest against this action of the emperor,
+in which, in the name of his son and heir, Napoleon Louis, he denounced
+this act of the emperor as a totally unjustifiable act of violence, and
+demanded that the kingdom of Holland should be re-established, in all
+its integrity, declaring the annexation of Holland to France to be null
+and void, in the name of himself and his sons.
+
+Napoleon responded to this protest by causing the king to be informed by
+the French ambassador in Vienna that unless he returned to France by the
+1st of December, 1810, he should be regarded and treated as a rebel, who
+dared to resist the head of his family and violate the constitution of
+the empire.
+
+Louis neither answered nor conformed to this threat. He repaired to
+Graetz, in Styria, and lived there as a private gentleman, beloved and
+admired, not only by those who came in contact with him there, but
+enjoying the esteem of all Europe, which he had won by the noble and
+truly magnanimous manner in which he had sacrificed his own grandeur to
+the welfare of his people. Even his and Napoleon's enemies could not
+withhold from the King of Holland the tribute of their respect, and even
+Louis XVIII. said of him: "By his abdication, Louis Bonaparte has become
+a true king; in renouncing his crown, he has shown himself worthy to
+wear it. He is the first monarch who has made so great a sacrifice but
+of pure love for his people; others have also relinquished their
+thrones, but they did it when weary of power. But in this action of the
+King of Holland there is something truly sublime--something that was not
+duly appreciated at first, but which will be admired by posterity, if I
+mistake not, greatly[19]."
+
+[Footnote 19: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. v., p. 47.]
+
+In Graetz, Louis Bonaparte, Count de St. Leu, lived a few peaceful,
+tranquil years, perhaps the first years of happiness he had enjoyed in
+his short and hitherto stormy life. Occupied with work and study, he
+easily forgot his former grandeur and importance. As it had once been
+his ambition to become a good king, it was now his ambition to become a
+good writer. He published his romance Marie, and, encouraged by the
+success which it met with in his circle of friends, he also gave his
+poems to the public--poems whose tender and passionate language proved
+that this so often misunderstood, so often repulsed, and, therefore, so
+timid and distrustful heart, could warm with a tenderness of love that
+Marie Pascal, the beautiful artist of the harp, could hardly have had
+the cruelty to withstand.
+
+But a day came when Louis Bonaparte closed his ear to all these sweet
+voices of happiness, of peace, and of love, to listen only to the voice
+of duty, that appealed to him to return to France, to his brother's
+side. While the sun of fortune shone over Napoleon, the king, who had
+voluntarily descended from a throne, remained in obscurity; but when the
+days of misfortune came upon the emperor, there could be but one place
+for his brave and faithful brother, and that was at Napoleon's side.
+
+Madame de St. Elme, who was at Graetz at this time, and who witnessed the
+farewell scene between Louis Bonaparte and the inhabitants of Graetz,
+says: "On the day when Austria so unexpectedly sundered its alliance
+with France, King Louis felt the necessity of abandoning an asylum, for
+which he would henceforth have been indebted to the enemies of France,
+and hastened to claim of the great unjust man who had repulsed him, the
+only place commensurate with the dignity of his character, the place
+at his side.
+
+"This was a subject of profound sorrow and regret for the inhabitants of
+Graetz, and of all Styria, for there was not a pious or useful
+institution, or a poor family in Styria, that had not been the object of
+his beneficence, and yet it was well known that the king who had
+descended from his throne so hastily, and with so little preparation,
+had but small means, and denied himself many of the enjoyments of life,
+in order that he might lend a helping hand to others. He was entreated,
+conjured with tears, to remain, but he held firm to his resolution. And
+when the horses, that they had at first determined to withhold from him,
+were at last, at his earnest and repeated solicitation, provided, the
+people unharnessed these horses from his carriage, in order that they
+might take their places, and accompany him to the gates of the city with
+this demonstration of their love. This departure had the appearance of a
+triumphal procession; and this banished king, without a country, was
+greeted with as lively plaudits on leaving his place of exile as when he
+mounted his throne[20]."
+
+[Footnote 20: Memoires d'une contemporaine, vol. iv., p. 377.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+JUNOT, THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.
+
+While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render assistance to
+the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother Louis, forgetting
+the mortifications and injuries he had sustained at the emperor's hands,
+hastened to his side, there was one of the most devoted kept away from
+him by fate--one upon whom the emperor could otherwise have depended in
+life and death.
+
+This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who, descended from
+an humble family, had by his merit and heroism elevated himself to the
+rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed to respond when the ominous
+roll of the war-drum recalled all Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it
+was not his will, but fate, that kept him away.
+
+Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear and
+without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present governor of
+Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a visitation of the most
+fearful of all diseases--his brain was affected! The scars that covered
+his head and forehead, and testified so eloquently to his gallantry,
+announced at the same time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed
+by sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
+his brain.
+
+The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And yet,
+this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of Istria and
+Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these provinces, had
+invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the noble disposition,
+fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms, he had conferred upon him
+sovereign power to rule in his stead. There was, therefore, no one who
+could take the sceptre from his hand, and depose him from his high
+position. Napoleon had placed this sceptre in his hand, and he alone
+could demand it of him. Even the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers
+of Istria appealed for help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford
+them no relief. He could only say to them: "Send a courier to the
+emperor, and await his reply."
+
+But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a distance
+of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no telegraphs. The
+Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the emperor, with an entreaty
+for their relief, but the Russian proverb, "Heaven is high, and the
+emperor distant," applied to them also! Weeks must elapse before the
+courier could return with the emperor's reply; until then, there was no
+relief; and until then, there was no authority to obey but the Duke
+d'Abrantes, the poor madman!
+
+No other authority, no institution, had the right to place itself in his
+stead, or to assume his prerogatives for an instant even, without
+violating the seal of sovereignty that Napoleon had impressed on the
+brow of his governor!
+
+Napoleon, whose crown was already trembling on his head, who was
+already so near his own fall, still possessed such gigantic power that
+its reflection sufficed to protect, at a distance of a thousand miles
+from the boundaries of France, the inviolability of a man who had lost
+his reason, and no longer had the power of reflection and volition.
+
+How handsome, how amiable, how chivalrous, had Junot been in his earlier
+days! How well he had known how to charm beautiful women in the
+drawing-rooms, soldiers on the battle-field, and knights at the tourney!
+In all knightly accomplishments he was the master--always and everywhere
+the undisputed victor and hero. These accomplishments had won the heart
+of Mademoiselle de Premont. The daughter of the proud baroness of the
+Faubourg St. Germain had joyfully determined, in spite of her mother's
+dismay, to become the wife of the soldier of the republic, of Napoleon's
+comrade-in-arms. Although Junot had no possession but his pay, and no
+nobility but his sword and his renown, this nevertheless sufficed to win
+him the favor of the daughter of this aristocratic mother--of the
+daughter who was yet so proud of being the last descendant of the
+Comneni. Napoleon, who loved to see matrimonial alliances consummated
+between his generals and his nobility and the old legitimist nobility of
+France, rewarded the daughter of the Faubourg St. Germain richly for the
+sacrifice she had made for his comrade-in-arms, in giving up her
+illustrious name, and her coat-of-arms, to become the wife of a general
+without ancestors and without fortune. He made his friend a duke, and
+the Duchess d'Abrantes had no longer cause to be ashamed of her title;
+the descendant of the Comneni could content herself with the homage done
+her as the wife of the governor of Lisbon, contented with the laurels
+that adorned her husband's brow--laurels to which he added a new branch,
+but also new wounds, on every battle-field.
+
+The consequences of these wounds had veiled the hero's laurels with
+mourning-crape, and destroyed the domestic happiness of the poor duchess
+forever. She had first discovered her husband's sad condition, but she
+had known how to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. She had,
+however, refused to accompany the duke to Illyria, and had remained in
+Paris, still hoping that the change of climate and associations might
+restore him to health.
+
+But her hopes were not to be realized. The attacks of madness, that had
+hitherto occurred at long intervals only, now became more frequent, and
+were soon no longer a secret. All Illyria knew that its governor was a
+madman, and yet no one dared to oppose his will, or to refuse to obey
+his commands; all still bowed to his will, in humility and silent
+submissiveness, hopefully awaiting the return of the courier who had
+been dispatched to Napoleon at Paris.
+
+"But heaven is high, and the emperor distant!" And much evil could
+happen, and did happen, before the courier returned to Trieste, where
+Junot resided. The poor duke's condition grew worse daily; his attacks
+of madness became more frequent and more dangerous, and broke out on the
+slightest provocation.
+
+On one occasion a nightingale, singing in the bushes beneath his window,
+had disturbed his rest; on the following morning he caused the general
+alarm to be sounded, and two battalions of Croats to be drawn up in the
+park, to begin a campaign against the poor nightingale, who had dared to
+disturb his repose.
+
+On another occasion, Junot fancied he had discovered a grand conspiracy
+of all the sheep of Illyria; against this conspiracy he brought the
+vigilance of the police, all the means of the administration, and the
+whole severity of the law, into requisition for its suppression.
+
+At another time, he suddenly became desperately enamoured of a beautiful
+Greek girl, who belonged to his household. Upon her refusal to meet his
+advances favorably, a passionate desperation took possession of Junot,
+and he determined to set fire to his palace, and perish with his love in
+the flames. Fortunately, his purpose was discovered, and the fire he had
+kindled stifled at once.
+
+He would suddenly be overcome with a passionate distaste for the
+grandeur and splendor that surrounded him, and long to lay aside his
+brilliant position, and fly to the retirement of an humble and
+obscure life.
+
+It was his dearest wish to become a peasant, and be able to live in a
+hut; and, as there was no one who had the right to divest him of his
+high dignities and grant his desire, he formed the resolution to divest
+himself of this oppressive grandeur, by the exercise of his own fulness
+of power, and to withdraw himself from the annoyances imposed upon him
+by his high position.
+
+Under the pretence of visiting the provinces, he left Trieste, to lead
+for a few weeks an entirely new life--a life that seemed, for a brief
+period, to soothe his excited mind. He arrived, almost incognito, in the
+little city of Gorizia, and demanded to be conducted to the most
+unpretending establishment to which humble and honest laborers were in
+the habit of resorting for refreshment and relaxation. He was directed
+to an establishment called the Ice-house, a place to which poor daily
+laborers resorted, to repose after the labors of the day, and refresh
+themselves with a glass of beer or wine.
+
+In this Ice-house the governor of Illyria now took up his abode. He
+seldom quitted it, either by day or night; and here, like
+Haroun-al-Raschid, he took part in the harmless merriment of happy and
+contented poverty. And here this poor man was to find a last delight, a
+last consolation; here he was to find a last friend.
+
+This last friend of the Duke d'Abrantes--this Pylades of the poor
+Orestes--was--a madman!--a poor simpleton, of good family, who was so
+good-humored and harmless that he was allowed to go at large, and free
+scope given to his innocent freaks. He, however, possessed a kind of
+droll, pointed wit, which he sometimes brought to bear most effectively,
+sparing neither rank nor position. The half-biting, half-droll remarks
+of this Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the
+broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the
+social grandeur and distinctions that had cost him so dear made
+ridiculous by this half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to
+jeer at the pomp that surrounded the governor, and imitate French
+elegance in a highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor
+princely friend's delight knew no bounds.
+
+On one occasion, after the poor fellow had been entertaining him in this
+manner, the Duke d'Abrantes threw himself, in his enthusiasm, in his
+friend's arms, and invested him with the insignia of the Legion of
+Honor, by hanging around his neck the grand-cross of this order hitherto
+worn by himself. The emperor had given Junot authority to distribute
+this order to the deserving throughout the provinces of Illyria and
+Istria, and the governor himself having invested this mad Diogenes with
+the decoration, there was no one who was competent to deprive him of it.
+For weeks this mad fool was to be seen in the streets of Gorizia,
+parading himself like a peacock, with the grand-cross of the honorable
+order of the Emperor Napoleon, and, at the same time, uttering the most
+pointed and biting _bon mots_ at the expense of his own decoration. The
+duke often accompanied him in his wanderings through the town, sometimes
+laughing loudly at the fool's jests, sometimes listening with earnest
+attention, as though his utterances were oracles. Thus this strange
+couple passed the time, either lounging through the streets together, or
+seated side by side on a stone by the way, engaged in curious
+reflections on the passers-by, or philosophizing over the emptiness of
+all glory and grandeur, and over the littleness and malice of the world,
+realizing the heart-rending, impressive scenes between Lear and his
+fool, which Shakespeare's genius has depicted.
+
+After weeks of anxious suspense, the imperial message, relieving Junot
+of his authority, and placing the Duke of Otranto in his place, at last
+arrived. The poor Duke d'Abrantes left Illyria, and returned to France,
+where, in the little town of Maitbart, after long and painful struggles,
+he ended, in sadness and solitude, a life of renown, heroism, and
+irreproachable integrity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A VENDER OF VIOLETS.
+
+Gradually, the brilliancy of the sun that had so long dazzled the eyes
+of all Europe began to wax pale, and the luminous star of Napoleon to
+grow dim among the dark clouds that were gathering around him. Fortune
+had accorded him all that it could bestow upon a mortal. It had laid all
+the crowns of Europe at his feet, and made him master of all the
+monarchies and peoples. Napoleon's antechamber in Erfurt and in Dresden
+had been the rendezvous of the emperors, kings, and princes of Europe,
+and England alone had never disguised its hostility beneath the mask of
+friendship, and bent the knee to a hated and feared neighbor. Napoleon,
+the master of Europe, whom emperors and kings gladly called "brother,"
+could now proudly remember his past; he had now risen so high that he no
+longer had cause to deny his humble origin; this very lowliness had now
+become a new triumph of his grandeur.
+
+On one occasion, during the congress at Erfurt, all the emperors, kings,
+and princes, were assembled around Napoleon's table. He occupied the
+seat between his enthusiastic friend the Emperor of Russia, and his
+father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria. Opposite them sat the King of
+Prussia, his ally, although Napoleon had deprived him of the Rhine
+provinces; and the Kings of Bavaria and Wuertemberg, to whom Napoleon had
+given crowns, whose electorate and duchy he had converted into kingdoms,
+and of whom the first had given his daughter in marriage to Napoleon's
+adopted son, Eugene, and the second his daughter to Napoleon's brother
+Jerome. There were, further, at the table, the King of Saxony and the
+Grand-duke of Baden, to the latter of whom Napoleon had given the hand
+of Josephine's niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais. All these were princes,
+"by the grace of God," of brilliant and haughty dynasties; and in their
+midst sat the son of the advocate of Corsica--he, the Emperor of
+France--he, upon whom the gaze of all these emperors and kings was
+fastened in admiration and respect. Napoleon's extraordinary memory had
+just been the topic of conversation, and the emperor was about to
+explain how he had brought it to such a state of perfection.
+
+"While I was still a sub-lieutenant," began Napoleon, and instantly his
+hearers let fall their gaze, and looked down in shame at their plates,
+while a cloud of displeasure passed over the brow of the emperor of
+Austria at this mention of the low origin of his son-in-law. Napoleon
+observed this, and for an instant his eagle glance rested on the
+embarrassed countenances that surrounded him; he then paused for a
+moment. He began again, speaking with sharp emphasis: "When I still had
+the honor of being a sub-lieutenant," said he, and the Emperor Alexander
+of Russia, the only one of the princes who had remained unembarrassed,
+laid his hand on the emperor's shoulder, smiled approvingly, and
+listened with interest and pleasure to the emperor's narrative of the
+time when he "still had the honor of being a sub-lieutenant[21]."
+
+[Footnote 21: Bossuet, Memoires, vol. V.]
+
+Napoleon, as we have said, had already mounted so high that for him
+there was no longer a summit to be attained, and now his heart's last
+and dearest wish had been granted by destiny. His wife, Marie Louise,
+had given birth to a son on the 20th of May, 1811, and the advent of the
+little King of Rome had fulfilled the warmest desires of Napoleon and of
+France. The emperor now had an heir; Napoleon's dynasty was assured.
+
+Festivities were therefore held in honor of this event, in the
+Tuileries, at the courts, of the Queen of Naples, of the Grand-duchess
+de Guastalla, of all the dukes of the empire, and of the Queen
+of Holland.
+
+Hortense was ill and in pain; a nervous headache, that she had been
+suffering from for some time, betrayed the secret of the pain and grief
+she had so long concealed from observation. Her cheeks had grown pale,
+and her eyes had lost their lustre. Her mother wept over her lost
+happiness in Malmaison, and, when Hortense had wept with and consoled
+her mother, she was compelled to dry her eyes and hasten to the
+Tuileries, and appear, with a smiling countenance, before her who was
+now her empress and her mother's happy rival.
+
+But Hortense had accepted her destiny, and was determined to demean
+herself as became her own and her mother's dignity. She endeavored to be
+a true and sincere friend to the young empress, and fulfil the emperor's
+wishes, and to give brilliant entertainments in honor of the King of
+Rome, in spite of the pain it must cost her. "The emperor wills it, the
+emperor requires it;" that was sufficient for all who were about him,
+and it was sufficient for her. Her mother had gone because it was his
+will, she had remained because it was his will, and she now gave these
+entertainments for the same reason. But there was an element of sadness
+and gloom even in these festivities of the carnival of 1813; the
+presence of so many cripples and invalids recalled the memory of the
+reverses of the past year. At the balls there was a great scarcity of
+young men who could dance; incessant wars had made the youth of France
+old before their time, and had converted vigorous men into cripples.
+
+Her heart filled with dark forebodings, Hortense silently prepared
+herself against the days of misfortune which she knew must inevitably
+come. When these days should come, she wished to be ready to meet them
+with a brave heart and a resolute soul, and she also endeavored to
+impress on the minds of her two beloved sons the inconstancy of fortune,
+in order that they might look misfortune boldly in the face. She had no
+compassion with the tender youth of these boys, who were now eight and
+six years old; no compassion, because she loved them too well not to
+strive to prepare them for adversity.
+
+One day the Duchess of Bassano gave a ball in honor of the queen, and
+Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned her resolution
+to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion. Her blond hair, that
+reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed in the ancient Greek
+style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers, not natural flowers,
+however, but consisting of Hortensias in diamonds. Her dress was of
+pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias in silver. The hem of her dress
+and its train was encircled with a garland of flowers composed of roses
+and violets. A bouquet of Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom,
+and her necklace and bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias.
+In this rich and tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress
+Josephine the day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies
+and gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for
+the occasion.
+
+The parlor, filled with these ladies glittering with diamonds, and with
+these cavaliers in their rich, gold-embroidered uniforms, presented a
+brilliant spectacle. The queen's two sons, who came running into the
+room at this moment to bid their "bonne petite maman" adieu, stood still
+for an instant, dazzled by this magnificence, and then timidly
+approached the mother who seemed to them a queen from the fairy-realm
+floating in rosy clouds. The queen divined the thoughts of her boys,
+whose countenances were for her an open book in which she read
+every emotion.
+
+She extended a hand to each of her children, and led them to a sofa, on
+which she seated herself, taking the youngest, Louis Napoleon, who was
+scarcely six years old, in her lap, while his elder brother, Napoleon
+Louis, stood at her side, his curly head resting on Hortense's shoulder,
+gazing tenderly into the pale, expressive face of his beautiful mother.
+
+"I am very prettily dressed to-day, am I not, Napoleon?" said Hortense,
+laying her little hand, that sparkled with diamonds, on the head of her
+eldest son. "Would you like me less if I were poor, and wore no
+diamonds, but merely a plain black dress? Would you love me less then?"
+
+"No, _maman_!" exclaimed the boy, almost angrily, and little Louis
+Napoleon, who sat in his mother's lap, repeated in his shrill little
+voice: "No, _maman_!"
+
+The queen smiled. "Diamonds and dress do not constitute happiness, and
+we three would love each other just as much if we had no jewelry, and
+were poor. But tell me, Napoleon, if you had nothing, and were entirely
+alone in the world, what would you do for yourself?"
+
+"I would become a soldier," cried Napoleon, with sparkling eyes, "and I
+would fight so bravely that I should soon be made an officer."
+
+"And you, Louis, what would you do to earn your daily bread?"
+
+The little fellow had listened earnestly to his brother's words, and
+seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the knapsack
+and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and that he was, as
+yet, too weak to become a soldier.
+
+"I," said he, after a pause, "I would sell bouquets of violets, like the
+little boy who stands at the gates of the Tuileries, and from whom we
+buy our flowers every day."
+
+The ladies and cavaliers, who had listened to this curious conversation
+in silence, now laughed loudly at this naive reply of the little prince.
+
+"Do not laugh, ladies," said the queen, earnestly, as she now arose; "it
+was no jest, but a lesson that I gave my children, who were so dazzled
+by jewelry. It is the misfortune of princes that they believe that
+everything is subject to them, that they are made of another stuff than
+other men, and have no duties to perform. They know nothing of human
+suffering and want, and do not believe that they can ever be affected by
+anything of the kind. And this is why they are so astounded, and remain
+so helpless, when the hand of misfortune does strike them. I wish to
+preserve my sons from this[22]."
+
+[Footnote 22: The queen's own words.]
+
+She then stooped and kissed her boys, who, while she and her brilliant
+suite were driving to the Tuileries, busied their little heads,
+considering whether it was easier to earn one's bread as a soldier, or
+by selling violets at the gates of the Tuileries, like the little
+beggar-boy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE DAYS OF MISFORTUNE.
+
+The round of festivities with which the people of France endeavored to
+banish the shadow of impending misfortune, was soon to be abruptly
+terminated. The thunder of the cannon on the battle-fields of Hanau and
+Leipsic silenced the dancing-music in the Tuileries; and in the
+drawing-rooms of Queen Hortense, hitherto devoted to music and
+literature, the ladies were now busily engaged in picking lint for the
+wounded who were daily arriving at the hospitals of Paris from the army.
+The declaration of war of Austria and Russia had aroused France from its
+haughty sense of invincibility. All felt that a crisis was at hand. All
+were preparing for the ominous events that were gathering like
+storm-clouds over France. Each of the faithful hastened to assume the
+position to which honor and duty called him. And it was in response to
+such an appeal that Louis Bonaparte now returned from Graetz to Paris; he
+had heard the ominous tones of the voice that threatened the emperor,
+and wished to be at his side in the hour of danger.
+
+It was not as the wife, but in the spirit of a Frenchwoman and a queen,
+that Hortense received the intelligence of her husband's return. "I am
+delighted to hear it," said she; "my husband is a good Frenchman, and he
+proves it by returning at the moment when all Europe has declared
+against France. He is a man of honor, and if our characters could not be
+made to harmonize, it was probably because we both had defects that were
+irreconcilable.
+
+"I," added she, with a gentle smile, "I was too proud, I had been
+spoiled, and was probably too deeply impressed with a sense of my own
+worth; and this defect is not conducive to pleasant relations with one
+who is distrustful and low-spirited. But our interests were always the
+same, and his hastening to France, to enroll himself with all his
+brother Frenchmen, for the defence of his country, is worthy of the
+king's character. It is only by doing thus that we can testify our
+gratitude for the benefits the people have conferred upon our
+family[23]."
+
+[Footnote 23: Cochelet, Memoires sur la reine Hortense, vol. i., p.
+167.]
+
+In the first days of January, 1814, the news that the enemy had crossed
+the boundaries of France, and that the Austrians, Russians, and
+Prussians, were marching on Paris, created a panic throughout the entire
+city. For the first time, after so many years of triumph, France
+trembled for its proud army, and believed in the possibility of defeat.
+
+In the Tuileries, also, gloom and dejection ruled the hour for the first
+time; and while, when the army had heretofore gone forth, the question
+had been, "When shall we receive the first intelligence of victory?"
+there were now only mute, inquiring glances bent on the emperor's
+clouded countenance.
+
+On the 24th of January, Napoleon left Paris, in order to repair to the
+army. The empress, whom he had made regent, giving her a council,
+consisting of his brothers and the ministers, as a support--the empress
+had taken leave of him in a flood of tears, and Queen Hortense, who had
+alone been present on this occasion, had been compelled to remain for
+some time with the empress, in order to console and encourage her.
+
+But Hortense was far from feeling the confidence which she exhibited in
+the presence of the empress and of her own court. She had never believed
+in the duration of these triumphs and of this fortune; she had always
+awaited the coming evil in silent expectation, and she was therefore now
+ready to face it bravely, and to defend herself and her children against
+its attacks. She therefore was calm and self-possessed, while the entire
+imperial family was terror-stricken, while all Paris was in a panic,
+while the fearful intelligence, "The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks
+are marching on Paris!" was overrunning the city. "The Grand-duke
+Constantine has promised his troops that they shall warm themselves at
+the burning ruins of Paris, and the Emperor Alexander has sworn that he
+will sleep in the Tuileries."
+
+Nothing was now dreamed of but plundering, murder, and rapine; people
+trembled not only for their lives, but also for their property, and
+hastened to bury their treasures, their jewelry, their gold and silver,
+to secure it from the rapacious hands of the terrible Cossacks.
+Treasures were buried in cellars, or hid away in the walls of houses.
+The Duchess de Bassano caused all her valuable effects to be put in a
+hidden recess, and the entrance to the same to be walled up and covered
+with paper. There were among these valuable effects several large
+clocks, in golden cases, that were richly studded with precious stones,
+but it had unfortunately been forgotten to stop them, so that for the
+next week they continued to strike the hours regularly, and thereby
+betrayed to the neighbors the secret the duchess had so anxiously
+endeavored to conceal.
+
+But the cry, "The Cossacks are coming!" was not the only alarm-cry of
+the Parisians. Another, and a long-silent cry, was now heard in Paris--a
+strange cry, that had no music for the ear of the imperialist, but one
+that, to the royalist, had a sweet and familiar sound. This cry was,
+"The Count de Lille!" or, as the royalists said, "King Louis XVIII." The
+royalists no longer whispered this name, but proclaimed it loudly and
+with enthusiasm, and even those of them who had attached themselves to
+the imperial court, and played a part at the same, now dared to remove
+their masks a little, and show their true countenance.
+
+Madame Ducayla, one of the most zealous royalists, although attached to
+the court society of the Tuileries, had gone to Hartwell, to convey to
+him messages of love and respect in the name of all the royalists of
+Paris, and to tell him that they had now begun to smooth the way for his
+return to France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with
+authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them
+the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the
+glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in
+disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when
+Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from
+Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come from
+Hartwell, I have seen the king, and he has instructed me--" he
+interrupted her in loud and angry tones, exclaiming: "Are you mad,
+madame? You dare to confess such a crime to me?" He had, however, then
+added in a low voice: "You have seen him, then? Well, I am his most
+devoted servant[24]."
+
+[Footnote 24: Memoires d'une femme de qualite, vol. i., p. 133.]
+
+The royalists held meetings and formed conspiracies with but little
+attempt at concealment, and the minister of police, Fouche, whose eyes
+and ears were always on the alert, and who knew of everything that
+occurred in Paris, also knew of these conspiracies of the royalists; he
+did not prevent them, however, but advised caution, endeavoring to
+prove to them thereby the deep reverence which he himself experienced
+for the unfortunate royal family.
+
+In the midst of all this confusion and anxiety, Queen Hortense alone
+preserved her composure and courage, and far from endeavoring, like
+others, to conceal and secure her treasures, jewelry, and other
+valuables, she determined to make no change or reduction whatever in her
+manner of living; she wished to show the Parisians that the confidence
+of the imperial family in the emperor and his invincibility was not to
+be shaken. She therefore continued to conduct her household in truly
+royal style, although she had received from the exhausted state treasury
+no payment of the appanage set apart for herself and children for a
+period of three months. But she thought little of this; her generous
+heart was occupied with entirely different interests than those of her
+own pecuniary affairs.
+
+She wished to inspire Marie Louise, whom the emperor had constituted
+empress-regent on his departure for the army, with the courage which she
+herself possessed. She conjured her to show herself worthy of the
+confidence the emperor had reposed in her at this critical time, and to
+adopt firm and energetic measures. When, on the 28th of March, the
+terror-inspiring news was circulated that the hostile armies were only
+five leagues from Paris, and while the people were flying from the city
+in troops, Hortense hastened to the Tuileries to conjure the empress to
+be firm, and not to leave Paris. She entreated Marie Louise, in the
+name of the emperor, her husband, and the King of Rome, her son, not to
+heed the voice of the state council, who, after a long sitting, had
+unanimously declared that Paris could not be held, and that the empress,
+with her son and her council, should therefore leave the capital.
+
+But Marie Louise had remained deaf to all these pressing and energetic
+representations, and the queen had not been able to inspire her young
+and weak sister-in-law with her own resolution.
+
+"My sister," Hortense had said to her, "you will at least understand
+that by leaving Paris now you paralyze its defence, and thereby endanger
+your crown, but I see that you are resigned to this sacrifice."
+
+"It is true," Marie Louise had sadly replied. "I well know that I should
+act differently, but it is too late. The state council has decided, and
+I can do nothing!"
+
+In sadness and dejection Hortense had then returned to her dwelling,
+where Lavalette, Madame Ney, and the ladies of her court, awaited her.
+
+"All is lost," said she, sadly. "Yes, all is lost. The empress has
+determined to leave Paris. She lightly abandons France and the emperor.
+She is about to depart."
+
+"If she does that," exclaimed General Lavalette, in despair, "then all
+is really lost, and yet her firmness and courage might now save the
+emperor, who is advancing toward Paris by forced marches. After all this
+weighing and deliberating, they have elected to take the worst course
+they could choose! But, as this has finally been determined on, what
+course will your majesty now pursue?"
+
+"I remain in Paris," said the queen, resolutely; "as I am permitted to
+be mistress of my own actions, I am resolved to remain here and share
+the fortunes of the Parisians, be they good or evil! This is at least a
+better and worthier course than to incur the risk of being made a
+prisoner on the public highway."
+
+Now that she had come to a decision, the queen exhibited a joyous
+determination, and her mind recovered from its depression. She hastened
+to dispatch a courier to Malmaison to the Empress Josephine, now
+forgotten and neglected by all, to conjure her to leave for Novara at
+once. She then retired to her bedchamber to seek the rest she so much
+needed after so many hours of excitement.
+
+But at midnight she was aroused from her repose to a sad awakening. Her
+husband, with whom she had held no kind of intercourse since his return,
+had now, in the hour of danger, determined to assert his marital
+authority over his wife and children. He wrote the queen a letter,
+requiring her to leave Paris with her children, and follow the empress.
+
+Hortense replied with a decided refusal. A second categoric message from
+her husband was the response. He declared that if she should not at once
+conform to his will, and follow the empress with her children, he would
+immediately take his children into his own custody, by virtue of his
+authority as husband and father.
+
+At this threat, the queen sprang up like an enraged lioness from her
+lair. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes she commanded that her
+children should be at once brought to her, and then, pressing her two
+boys to her heart with passionate tenderness, she exclaimed: "Tell the
+king that I shall leave the city within the hour!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ALLIES IN PARIS.
+
+The anxiety of motherly love had effected what neither the departure of
+the empress nor the news of the approach of the Cossacks could do.
+Hortense had taken her departure. She had quitted Paris, with her
+children and suite, which had already begun to grow sensibly smaller,
+and arrived, after a hurried flight, endangered by bands of marauding
+Cossacks, in Novara, where the Empress Josephine, with tears of sorrow
+and of joy alike, pressed her daughter to her heart. Although her own
+happiness and grandeur were gone, and although the misfortunes of the
+Emperor Napoleon--whom she still dearly loved--oppressed her heart,
+Josephine now had her daughter and dearest friend at her side, and that
+was a sweet consolation in the midst of all these misfortunes and cares.
+
+At Novara, Hortense received the intelligence of the fall of the empire,
+of the capitulation of Paris, of the entrance of the allies, and of the
+abdication of Napoleon.
+
+When the courier sent by the Duke of Bassano with this intelligence
+further informed the Empress Josephine that the island of Elba had been
+assigned Napoleon as a domicile, and that he was on the point of leaving
+France to go into exile, Josephine fell, amid tears of anguish, into her
+daughter's arms, crying: "Hortense, he is unhappy, and I am not with
+him! He is banished to Elba! Alas! but for his wife, I would hasten to
+his side, to share his exile!"
+
+While the empress was weeping and lamenting, Hortense had silently
+withdrawn to her apartments. She saw and fully appreciated the
+consequences that must ensue to the emperor's entire family, from his
+fall; she already felt the mortifications and insults to which the
+Bonapartes would now be exposed from all quarters, and she wished to
+withdraw herself and children from their influence. She formed a quick
+resolve, and determined to carry it out at once. She caused Mademoiselle
+de Cochelet, one of the few ladies of her court who had remained
+faithful, to be called, in order that she might impart to her her
+resolution.
+
+"Louise," said she, "I intend to emigrate. I am alone and defenceless,
+and ever threatened by a misfortune that would be more cruel than the
+loss of crown and grandeur--the misfortune of seeing my children torn
+from me by my husband. My mother can remain in France--her divorce has
+made her free and independent; but I bear a name that will no longer be
+gladly heard in France, now that the Bourbons are returning. I have no
+other fortune than my diamonds. These I shall sell, and then go, with my
+children, to my mother's estate in Martinique. I lived there when a
+child, and have retained a pleasant remembrance of the place. It is
+undoubtedly hard to be compelled to give up country, mother, and
+friends; but one must face these great strokes of destiny courageously.
+I will give my children a good education, and that shall be my
+consolation."
+
+Mademoiselle de Cochelet burst into tears, kissed the queen's extended
+hand, and begged so earnestly that she might be permitted to accompany
+her, that Hortense at last gave a reluctant consent. It was arranged
+between them that Louise should hasten to Paris, in order to make the
+necessary preparations for the queen's long journey; and she departed on
+this mission, under the protection of the courier, on the
+following morning.
+
+How changed and terrible was the aspect Paris presented on her arrival!
+At the gate through which they entered Cossacks stood on guard; the
+streets were filled with Russian, Austrian, and Prussian soldiery, at
+whose side the proud ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were to be seen
+walking, in joyous triumph, bestowing upon the vanquishers of France as
+great a devotion as they could have lavished upon the beloved Bourbons
+themselves, whose return was expected in a few days.
+
+A Swedish regiment was quartered in the queen's dwelling; her servants
+had fled; her glittering drawing-rooms now sheltered the conquerors of
+France; and in the Tuileries preparations were already being made for
+the reception of the Bourbons.
+
+No one dared to pronounce the name of Napoleon. Those who were formerly
+his most zealous flatterers were now the most ready to condemn him.
+Those upon whom he had conferred the greatest benefits were now the
+first to deny him, hoping thereby to wipe out the remembrance of the
+benefits they had received. The most zealous Napoleonists now became the
+most ardent royalists, and placed the largest white cockades in their
+hats, in order that they might the sooner attract the attention of the
+new rulers.
+
+But there was still one man who pronounced the name of Napoleon loudly,
+and with affectionate admiration, and publicly accorded him the tribute
+of his respect.
+
+This one was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. He had loved Napoleon so
+dearly, that even the position of hostility which policy compelled him
+to assume could not banish from his heart friendship for the hero who
+had so long ruled Europe.
+
+Napoleon's fate was decided; and it was attributable to the zealous
+efforts of the czar that the allies had consented to the emperor's
+demands, and appointed him sovereign of the island of Elba. Now that
+Alexander could do nothing more for Napoleon, he desired to make himself
+useful to his family, at least, and thereby testify the admiration which
+he still felt for the fallen Titan.
+
+The Empress Marie Louise and the little King of Rome had no need of his
+assistance. The empress had not availed herself of the permission of the
+allies to accompany her husband to Elba, but had placed herself and son
+under the protection of her father, the Emperor of Austria.
+
+The Emperor Alexander therefore bestowed his whole sympathy upon
+Napoleon's divorced wife and her children, the Viceroy of Italy and the
+Queen of Holland. He took so great an interest in the queen, that he
+declared his intention, in case Hortense should not come to Paris, of
+going to Novara to see her, in order to learn from her own lips in what
+manner he could serve her, and how she desired that her future should
+be shaped.
+
+Count Nesselrode, the emperor's minister, was also zealous in his
+endeavors to serve the queen. The count had long been the intimate
+friend of Louise de Cochelet; and, desirous of giving her a further
+proof of his friendship, he knew of no better way of doing so than by
+rendering a service to Queen Hortense and her children. Louise informed
+the count of the queen's intended departure for Martinique. Count
+Nesselrode smiled sadly over this desperate resolve of a brave mother's
+heart, and instructed Louise to beg the queen to impart to him, through
+her confidante, all her wishes and demands, in order that he might lay
+them before the emperor.
+
+The queen's fate was the subject of great sympathy in all quarters.
+When, in one of the sessions of the ministers of the allies, in which
+the fate of France, of the Bourbons, and of the Bonapartes, was to be
+the subject of deliberation, the question of making some provision for
+the emperor's family came up for consideration, the prince of Benevento
+exclaimed: "I plead for Queen Hortense alone; for she is the only one
+for whom I have any esteem." Count Nesselrode added: "Who would not be
+proud to claim her as a countrywoman? She is the pearl of her France!"
+And Metternich united with the rest in her praise[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: Cochelet, vol. i., p 279.]
+
+But it was in vain that Louise de Cochelet imparted this intelligence to
+the queen; the entreaties and representations of her friends were
+powerless to persuade Hortense to leave her retirement and come
+to Paris.
+
+The following letter of the queen, written to Louise, concerning her
+affairs, will testify to her beautiful and womanly sentiments. This
+letter is as follows:
+
+"My dear Louise,--You and all my friends write me the same questions:
+'What do you want? What do you demand?' I reply to all of you: I want
+nothing whatever! What should I desire? Is not my fate already
+determined? When one has the strength to form a great resolution, and
+when one can firmly and calmly contemplate the idea of making a journey
+to India or America, it is unnecessary to demand any thing of any one. I
+entreat you to take no steps that I should be compelled to disavow; I
+know that you love me, and this might induce you to do so. I am really
+not to be pitied; it was in the midst of grandeur and splendor that I
+have suffered! I shall now, perhaps, learn the happiness of retirement,
+and prefer it to all the magnificence that once surrounded me. I do not
+believe I can remain in France; the lively interest now shown in my
+behalf might eventually occasion mistrust. This idea is annihilating; I
+feel it, but I shall not willingly occasion sorrow to any one. My
+brother will be happy; my mother can remain in her country, and retain
+her estates. I, with my children, shall go to a foreign land, and, as
+the happiness of those I love is assured, I shall be able to bear the
+misfortune that strikes only at my material interests, but not at my
+heart. I am still deeply moved and confounded by the fate that has
+overtaken the Emperor Napoleon and his family. Is it true? Has all been
+finally determined? Write me on this subject. I hope that my children
+will not be taken from me; in that case I should lose all courage. I
+will so educate them that they shall be happy in any station of life. I
+shall teach them to bear fortune and misfortune with equal dignity, and
+to seek true happiness in contentment with themselves. This is worth
+more than crowns. Fortunately, they are healthy. Thank Count Nesselrode
+for his sympathy. I assure you there are days that are properly called
+days of misfortune, and that are yet not without a charm; such are those
+that enable us to discern the true sentiments people hold toward us. I
+rejoice over the affection which you show me, and it will always afford
+me gratification to tell you that I return it. HORTENSE[26]."
+
+[Footnote 26: Cochelet, vol. i., pp. 275-277.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND LOUISE DE COCHELET.
+
+In the meanwhile, Hortense was still living with her mother in Novara,
+firmly resolved to remain in her retirement, sorrowing over the fate of
+the imperial house, but quite indifferent as to her own fate.
+
+But her friends--and even in misfortune Hortense still had friends--and
+above all her truest friend, Louise de Cochelet, busied themselves all
+the more about her future, endeavoring to rescue out of the general
+wreck of the imperial house at least a few fragments for the queen.
+
+Louise de Cochelet was still sojourning in Paris, and the letters which
+she daily wrote to the queen at Novara, and in which she informed her of
+all that was taking place in the city, are so true a picture of that
+strange and confused era, that we cannot refrain from here inserting
+some of them.
+
+In one of her first letters Louise de Cochelet relates a conversation
+which she had had with Count Nesselrode, in relation to the
+queen's future.
+
+"The Bourbons," she writes, "have now been finally accepted. I asked
+Count Nesselrode, whom I have just left: 'Do you believe that the queen
+will be permitted to remain in France? Will the new rulers consider this
+proper?' 'Certainly,' he replied, 'I am sure of it, for we will make it
+a condition with them, and without us they would never have come to the
+throne at all! It is not the Bourbons, but it is we, it is all Europe,
+that arranges and regulates these matters. I therefore trust that they
+will never violate the agreement. Rest assured that the Emperor
+Alexander will always support the right.'
+
+"All of these strangers here speak of you, madame, with great
+enthusiasm. Metternich, who doubtlessly recollects your great kindness
+to his wife and children, inquired after you with lively interest.
+Prince Leopold is devotedly attached to yourself and the Empress
+Josephine, and ardently desires to be able to serve you both. Count
+Nesselrode thinks it would be well for you to write to the Emperor
+Alexander, as he takes so warm an interest in your affairs.
+
+"The old nobility is already much discontented; it considers itself
+debased, because it sees itself mixed with so many new elements."
+
+"Come to Malmaison with the empress," she writes a few days later, "the
+Emperor Alexander will then go there at once to meet you; he is anxious
+to make your acquaintance, and you already owe him some thanks, as he
+devotes himself to your interests as though they were his own. The Duke
+of Vicenza, who demeans himself so worthily with regard to the Emperor
+Napoleon, requests me to inform you that the future of your children
+depends on your coming to Malmaison.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon has signed an agreement, that secures the future
+of all the members of his family; you can remain in France, and retain
+your titles. You are to have for yourself and children an income of four
+hundred thousand francs.
+
+"It is said here that the Faubourg St. Germain is furious over the
+brilliant positions provided for the imperial family and the empress.
+This is their gratitude for all her goodness to them.
+
+"You wish to make Switzerland your home. Count Nesselrode thinks you may
+be right, that it is a good retreat; but you should not give up the one
+you have here, and should in any event retain the right to return
+to France.
+
+"Fancy, madame, Count Nesselrode insists on my seeing his emperor! I
+have not yet consented, because I do not like to do any thing without
+your assent; but I confess I long to make his acquaintance. I am made
+quite happy by hearing you so well spoken of here.
+
+"Count Nesselrode said to me yesterday: 'Tell the queen that I shall be
+happy to fulfil all her wishes, and that I can do so, that I have the
+power.' For great security he wishes to have a future assured you that
+shall be independent of the treaty. I do not know what to say to him.
+Write to me, and demand something, I conjure you!"
+
+The queen's only response to this appeal was a letter addressed to the
+Emperor Napoleon, and sent to Count Nesselrode, with the request that it
+should be forwarded to its destination.
+
+"It is strange," wrote Louise de Cochelet in relation to this
+matter--"strange that all my efforts to serve you here have had no other
+result than your sending a commission to Count Nesselrode to forward to
+Fontainebleau a letter addressed to the Emperor Napoleon. He at first
+thought I was bringing him the letter he had solicited for his emperor;
+but he well knows how to appreciate all that is noble and great, and as
+he possesses the most admirable tact, he thinks the letter cannot well
+reach the emperor through him, and will therefore send it to the Duke of
+Vicenza, at Fontainebleau, to be delivered by him to the Emperor
+Napoleon."
+
+Another letter of Louise de Cochelet is as follows: "I have just seen
+Count Nesselrode again; he makes many inquiries concerning you; the
+Emperor of Russia now resides on the Elysee Bourbon. The count tells me
+a story that is in circulation here, and has reference to the Empress
+Marie Louise and the kings her brothers-in-law. They were about to force
+her to enter a carriage, in which they were to continue their journey
+with her; when she refused to enter, it is said the King of Westphalia
+became so violent that he gave her a little beating. She cried for help,
+and General Caffarelli[27], who commanded the guards, came to her
+rescue. On the following day she and her son were made prisoners, and
+all the crown diamonds in her possession seized by the authorities; but
+it seems as though capture was precisely what she wished.
+
+[Footnote 27: According to Napoleon's instructions, his brothers were to
+prevent the empress and the King of Rome from falling into the hands of
+the enemy. De Baussue narrates this scene in his memoirs, and it is
+self-evident that it was not so stormy as the gossip of Paris
+portrayed it.]
+
+"The Queen of Westphalia has just arrived in Paris; the Emperor
+Alexander, her cousin, called on her immediately. It is supposed that
+she will return to her father.
+
+"Your brothers future is not yet determined on, but it will certainly be
+a desirable and worthy one. There are many intrigues going on in
+connection with it, as Count Nesselrode informs me. As for the kingdom
+of Naples, it is no longer spoken of. By the details of the last war
+with us, narrated to me by the count, I see that he despises many of our
+ministers and marshals, and that these must be very culpable; and yet he
+tells me that they considered the result uncertain a week before our
+overthrow; as late as the 10th of March they believed that peace had
+been made with Prussia at least.
+
+"Do not grieve over the fate of the emperor on the island of Elba. The
+emperor selected it himself; the allies would have preferred any
+other place.
+
+"All the mails arriving at Paris have been seized by the allies. Among
+the letters there was one from the Empress Marie Louise to her husband.
+She writes that her son is well, but that on awakening from a good
+night's rest he had cried and told her he had dreamed of his father;
+notwithstanding all her coaxing and promises of playthings, he had,
+however, refused to tell what he had dreamed of his father, and that
+this circumstance had made her uneasy in spite of her will.
+
+"Prince Leopold resides in the same house with Countess Tascher; he is
+incessantly busied with yours and your mother's affairs; he at least is
+not oblivious of the kindness you have both shown him. I know that it is
+his intention to speak to the Emperor of Russia, and then write to you.
+
+"All your friends say that you must consider the interest of your
+children, and accept the future offered you. M. de Lavalette and the
+Duke of Vicenza are also of this opinion. You lose enough without this,
+and you may well permit the victors to return a small portion of that
+which they have taken from you, and which is rightfully yours.
+
+"In short, all your friends demand that you shall repair to Malmaison as
+soon as the Emperor Napoleon shall have departed from Fontainebleau. I
+am assured that the Emperor Alexander intends to hunt you up in Novara
+if you should not come to Malmaison. It will therefore be impossible to
+avoid him. Consider that the fate of your children lies in his hands! In
+the treaty of Fontainebleau you and your children were provided for
+together; this is a great point for you, and proves how highly you are
+thought of.
+
+"It is to the Emperor of Russia alone that you owe this; and when the
+Duke of Vicenza submitted this article of the treaty to the Emperor
+Napoleon for his signature, it met with his entire approval. Your sole
+and undivided authority over your children is thereby acknowledged. You
+should, therefore, not reject the good offered you for your children. I
+do not think it would require much persuasion to induce others to accept
+that which is tendered you.
+
+"Madame Tascher, who has proved herself to be your true friend and
+relative, has just had her first interview with the Duke of Dalberg, the
+member of the provisional government. She spoke of you, and I will here
+give you his response, word for word: 'She is considered as being
+altogether foreign to the Bonaparte family, because she has separated
+herself from her husband. She will be the refuge of her children, who
+are left to her. She is so dearly beloved and highly esteemed, that she
+can be very happy. She can remain in France, and do whatever she
+pleases; but she must now return to Paris.' Countess Tascher came to me
+immediately after leaving the duke, in order to acquaint me with what
+he had said.
+
+"Friends and foes alike say this about you: 'Those who are not delighted
+with what is being done for the queen are bad people! And as for her,
+what has she to regret in all this? Only the good she has done! Now, the
+world will dare to love her, and to express their love; she has so few
+wishes, she is so perfect!'
+
+"In short, it would seem almost that the people are pleased with the
+misfortune that places you in the right light, and they say, 'She is far
+more worthy in herself than when surrounded by a glittering court!'
+
+"Yesterday I saw the new arrivals from Fontainebleau, M. de Lascour and
+M. de Lavoestine. They came to me to learn where you were to be found,
+and intend visiting you at once, either at Novara or at Malmaison, as
+the case may be. These two gentlemen are true knights. 'No matter what
+she is to become,' said they; 'we can now show our devotion, without
+incurring the risk of being considered flatterers.'
+
+"The last two weeks at Fontainebleau have been a period of the greatest
+interest. All these young men, together with M. de Labedoyere and M. de
+Montesquieu, wished to accompany the emperor; but he forbade their doing
+so, and, in taking leave of them, appealed to them to remain, and to
+continue to serve their country zealously.
+
+"Lascour and Lavoestine, together with many other officers of the army,
+are much displeased with the generals who left Fontainebleau without
+taking leave of the emperor.
+
+"Upon taking leave of the Empress Josephine, the emperor is reported to
+have said: 'She was right; my separation from her has brought misfortune
+upon my head.'
+
+"It is said that the Duchess of Montebello will leave the Empress Marie
+Louise."
+
+But all these entreaties and flatteries, and these appeals to a mother's
+heart, were, as yet, powerless to break the queen's pride. She still
+considered it more worthy and becoming to remain away from the city in
+which the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were celebrating the orgies
+of their victorious royalism with the soldiers of the allied armies.
+Instead of yielding to Louise de Cochelet's entreaties, the queen wrote
+her the following letter:
+
+"My dear Louise,--My resolution gives you pain! You all accuse me of
+childish waywardness. You are unjust! My mother can follow the Duke de
+Vicenza's counsel; she will go to Malmaison, but _I remain here,_ and I
+have good reasons for doing so. I cannot separate my interests from
+those of my children. It is they, it is their nearest relatives, who are
+being sacrificed by all that is taking place, and I am, therefore,
+determined not to approach those who are working our ruin. I must be
+saddened by our great misfortune, and I will appear so, and abstain from
+approaching those who would still consider me a supplicant, even though
+I should demand nothing of them.
+
+"I can readily believe that the Emperor Alexander is kindly disposed
+toward me; I have heard much good of him, even from the Emperor
+Napoleon. Although I was once anxious to make his acquaintance, I at
+this moment have no desire to see him. Is he not our vanquisher? In
+their hearts, your friends must all approve of my determination,
+whatever they may say. I find retirement congenial. When you have seen
+enough of your friends, you will return to me. I am suffering in my
+breast, and shall perhaps go to some watering-place. I do not know
+whether it is due to the air of Novara, but since I have been here I
+cannot breathe. My friends maintain that it is due to the mental shocks
+resulting from the great events that have transpired; but they are in
+error; death has spared us all, and the loss of a glittering position is
+not the greatest loss one can sustain. What personal happiness do I
+lose? My brother will, I trust, be well and suitably provided for, and
+he will be no longer exposed to danger. He must be very uneasy on our
+account, and yet I dare not write to him, as my letters would probably
+never reach him; if an opportunity should present itself, please let him
+know that we are no longer surrounded by dangers. Adieu. I entreat you
+once more to undertake nothing in my behalf. I fear your impetuosity and
+friendship, and yet I love to be able to count on you. My children are
+well. My mother opposes all my plans; she asserts that she has need of
+me; but I shall, nevertheless, go to her who must now be more unhappy
+than all of us.
+
+HORTENSE."
+
+She of whom Hortense thought that she must be more unhappy than all of
+them, was the wife of Napoleon, Marie Louise, who had now left Blois, to
+which place she had gone as empress-regent, and repaired to Rambouillet,
+to await the decision of the allies with regard to the future of herself
+and son. It was certainly one of the most peculiar features of this
+period, so rich in extraordinary occurrences, to see the sovereigns of
+Europe, the overthrown rulers of France, and those who were about to
+grasp the sceptre once more, thrown confusedly together in Paris, and
+within a circuit of some fifty miles around that city: a Bourbon in the
+Tuileries, Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, his wife and his son at
+Rambouillet, the divorced empress at Novara, the Emperors of Russia and
+Austria, and the King of Prussia, at Paris; moreover, a whole train of
+little German potentates and princes, and the Napoleonic kings and
+princes, who were all sojourning in Paris or its vicinity.
+
+The Queen of Holland considered it her duty, in these days of misfortune
+and danger, to stand at the side of her whom Napoleon had commanded them
+to consider the head of the family, and to serve faithfully in life and
+death. Hortense therefore determined to go to the Empress Marie Louise
+at Rambouillet, in accordance with the emperor's commands.
+
+This determination filled the hearts of the queen's friends with sorrow;
+and Louise had no sooner received the letter in which the queen
+announced her impending departure, than she hastened to reply, imploring
+her to abandon this intention. M. de Marmold, the queen's equerry,
+departed with all speed to bring this letter to the queen at Louis,
+where she was to pass the night, and to add his entreaties to those
+of Louise.
+
+"M. de Marmold, the bearer of this letter, will deliver it to you at
+Louis, if he arrives there in good time," wrote Louise de Cochelet. "If
+you go to Rambouillet, you will destroy your own position, and also that
+of your children; this is the conviction of all your friends. I was so
+happy, for Prince Leopold had written you, in the name of the Emperor
+Alexander, and begged you to come to Malmaison. You could not have
+avoided seeing him, as he would even have gone to Novara. Instead,
+however, of returning with the Empress Josephine, you are on the point
+of uniting yourself with a family that has never loved you. With them
+you will experience nothing but distress, and they will not be thankful
+for the sacrifice you are about to make. You will regret this step when
+it is too late. I conjure you, do not go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Your course will touch those to whom you are going but little, and will
+displease the allies, who take so much interest in you.
+
+"The empress is a thorough Austrian at heart, and the visits of members
+of her husband's family are regarded with disfavor. I tell you this at
+the request of Prince Leopold and Madame de Caulaincourt. The latter, if
+you do not come here soon, will go to you, in spite of her great age.
+She conjures you not to go to Rambouillet, as your lady of honor, and
+the friend of your mother; she even forbids your doing so.
+
+"When I informed Prince Leopold of your intention to go to the Empress
+Marie Louise at Rambouillet, his eyes filled with tears. 'It is
+beautiful to be proud,' said he, 'but she can no longer retreat; she is
+already under obligations to the Emperor of Russia, who effected the
+treaty of the 11th of April. I await her reply, to deliver it to the
+emperor: she owes him a reply.'
+
+"I passed an hour with our good friend Lavalette this morning. This
+excellent man knew nothing of the measures we have been taking to
+persuade you to return, and said to me: 'How fortunate it would be for
+her and her children, if the emperor should desire to see her!' Do come,
+do come; show your friends this favor; we shall all be in despair if you
+go to Rambouillet!
+
+"Prince Leopold will write you a few lines. He could not be more devoted
+to yourself and the Empress Josephine if you were his mother and his
+sister. Count Tschernitscheff has been to see me. The Emperor of Austria
+arrives here to-morrow, and the new French princes and the king will
+soon follow. What a change!
+
+"You must see the Emperor of Russia, because he so much desires it. I
+conjure you, on my knees, to do me this favor! The emperor conducts
+himself so handsomely that every one is constrained to respect him; one
+forgets that he is the conqueror, and can only remember him as the
+protector. He seems to be the refuge of all those who have lost all, and
+are in distress. His conduct is admirable; he receives none but business
+calls, and such others as are absolutely necessary. The fair ladies of
+the Faubourg St. Germain cannot boast of his attention to them, and this
+does him all the more credit, he being, as it is said, very susceptible
+to the fair sex. He told Prince Leopold that he intended going to
+Novara, adding: 'You know that I love and esteem this family; Prince
+Eugene is the prince of knights; I esteem the Empress Josephine, Queen
+Hortense, and Prince Eugene, all the more from the fact that her
+demeanor toward the Emperor Napoleon has been so much more noble than
+that of so many others, who should have shown him more devotion.' How
+could it be possible not to respect a man of such nobility of character?
+I trust you will soon have an opportunity of judging of this yourself.
+For God's sake, return!
+
+LOUISE."
+
+But these entreaties were all in vain. M. de Marmold arrived at Louis in
+time to see the queen; he delivered the letters of her friends, and did
+all that lay in his power to persuade her not to go to Rambouillet.
+
+But Hortense held firmly to her intention. "You are right," said she.
+"All this is true; but I shall, nevertheless, go to the Empress Marie
+Louise, for it is my duty to do so. If unpleasant consequences should
+result from this step for me, I shall pay no attention to them, but
+merely continue to do my duty. Of all of us, the Empress Marie Louise
+must be the most unhappy, and must stand most in need of consolation; it
+is, therefore, at her side that I can be of most use, and nothing can
+alter my determination."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.
+
+Queen Hortense had gone to Rambouillet, in spite of the entreaties and
+exhortations of her friends. The Empress Marie Louise had, however,
+received her with an air of embarrassment. She had told the queen that
+she was expecting her father, the Emperor of Austria, and that she
+feared the queen's presence might make him feel ill at ease. Moreover,
+the young empress, although dejected and grave, was by no means so
+sorrowful and miserable as Hortense expected. The fate of her husband
+had not wounded the heart of Marie Louise as deeply as that of the
+Empress Josephine.
+
+Hortense felt that she was not needed there; that the presence of the
+Emperor of Austria would suffice to console the Empress of France for
+her husband's overthrow. She thought of Josephine, who was so deeply
+saddened by Napoleon's fate; and finding that, instead of consoling, she
+only embarrassed the Empress Marie Louise, she hastened to relieve her
+of her presence.
+
+And now, at last, Hortense bowed her proud, pure heart beneath the yoke
+of necessity; now, at last, she listened to the prayers and
+representations of her mother, who had returned to Malmaison, and of her
+friends, and went to Paris. It had been too often urged upon her that
+she owed it to her sons to secure their fortune and future, not to
+overcome her personal repugnance, and conform herself to this new
+command of duty.
+
+She had, therefore, returned to Paris for a few days, and taken up her
+abode in her dwelling, whose present dreariness recalled, with sorrowful
+eloquence, the grandeur of the past.
+
+These drawing-rooms, once the rendezvous of so many kings and princes,
+were now desolate, and bore on their soiled floors the footprints of the
+hostile soldiers who had recently been quartered there. At the czar's
+solicitation, they had now been removed; but the queen's household
+servants had also left it. Faithless and ungrateful, they had turned
+their backs on the setting sun, and fled from the storm that had burst
+over the head of their mistress.
+
+The Emperor Alexander hastened to the queen's dwelling as soon as her
+arrival in Paris was announced, the queen advancing to meet him as far
+as the outermost antechamber.
+
+"Sire," said she, with a soft smile, "I have no means of receiving you
+with due ceremony; my antechambers are deserted."
+
+The appearance of this solitary woman, this queen without a crown,
+without fortune, and without protection and support, who nevertheless
+stood before him in all the charms of beauty and womanhood, a soft smile
+on her lips, made a deep impression on the emperor, and his eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+The queen observed this, and hastened to say, "But what of that? I do
+not think that antechambers filled with gold-embroidered liveries would
+make those who come to see me happier, and I esteem myself happy in
+being able to do you the honors of my house alone. I have, therefore,
+only won."
+
+The emperor took her hand, and, while conducting the queen to her room,
+conversed with her, with that soft, sad expression peculiar to him,
+lamenting with bitter self-reproaches almost that he was himself, in
+part, to blame for the misfortunes that had overtaken the emperor and
+his family. He then conjured her to abandon her intention of leaving
+France, and to preserve herself for her mother and friends. He told her
+that, in abandoning her country, her friends, and her rights, she would
+be guilty of a crime against her own children, against her two sons, who
+were entitled to demand a country and a fortune at her hands.
+
+The queen, overcome at last by these earnest and eloquent
+representations, declared her readiness to remain in France, if the
+welfare of her sons should require it.
+
+"Until now," said she, "I had formed all my resolutions with reference
+to misfortune. I was entirely resigned, and I never thought of the
+possibility of any thing fortunate happening for me; and even yet, I do
+not know what I can desire and demand. I am, however, determined to
+accept nothing for myself and children that would be unworthy of us, and
+I do not know what that could be."
+
+With an assuring smile, the emperor extended his hand to the queen.
+"Leave that to me," said he. "It is, then, understood, you are to remain
+in France?"
+
+"Sire, you have convinced me that the future of my sons requires it. I
+shall therefore remain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE NEW UNCLES.
+
+Malmaison, to which place Hortense had returned after a short stay in
+Paris, and where the Empress Josephine was also sojourning, was a kind
+of focus for social amusement and relaxation for the sovereigns
+assembled in Paris. Each of these kings and princes wished to pay his
+homage to the Empress Josephine and her daughter, and thereby, in a
+measure, show the last honors to the dethroned emperor.
+
+On one occasion, when the King of Prussia, with his two sons, Prince
+Frederick William (the late king) and William, had come to Malmaison,
+and announced their desire to call on the empress, she sent them an
+invitation to a family dinner, at which she also invited the Emperor of
+Russia and his two brothers to attend.
+
+The emperor accepted this invitation, and on entering, with the young
+archdukes, the parlor in which the Duchess de St. Leu was sitting, he
+took his two brothers by the hand and conducted them to Hortense.
+
+"Madame," said he, "I confide my brothers to your keeping. They are now
+making their _debut_ in society. My mother fears their heads may be
+turned by the beauties of France; and in bringing them to Malmaison,
+where so many charming persons are assembled, I am certainly fulfilling
+my promise to preserve them from such a fate but poorly."
+
+"Reassure yourself, sire," replied the queen, gravely; "I will be their
+mentor, and I promise you a motherly surveillance."
+
+The emperor laughed, and, pointing to Hortense's two sons, who had just
+been brought in, he said: "Ah, madame, it would be much less dangerous
+for my brothers if they were of the age of these boys."
+
+He approached the two boys with extended hands, and while conversing
+with them in a kindly and affectionate manner, addressed them with the
+titles "monseigneur" and "imperial highness."
+
+The children regarded him wonderingly, for the Russian emperor was the
+first to address the little Napoleon and his younger brother, Louis
+Napoleon, with these imposing titles. The queen had never allowed them
+to be called by any but their own names. She wished to preserve them
+from vain pride, and teach them to depend on their own intrinsic merit.
+
+Shortly afterward the King of Prussia and his sons were announced, and
+the emperor and his brothers left the young princes, and advanced to
+meet the king.
+
+While the emperor and the king were exchanging salutations, Hortense's
+two sons inquired of their governess the names of the gentlemen who had
+just entered.
+
+"It is the King of Prussia," whispered the governess; "and the gentleman
+who has just spoken with you is the Emperor of Russia."
+
+The little Louis Napoleon regarded the tall figures of those princes
+thoughtfully for a moment, by no means impressed by their imposing
+titles. He was so accustomed to see his mother surrounded by kings, and
+these kings had always been his uncles.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said the little Louis Napoleon, after a short pause,
+"are these two new gentlemen, the emperor and the king, also our uncles,
+like all the others and must we call them so?"
+
+"No, Louis, you must simply call them 'sire.'"
+
+"But," said the boy, after a moment's reflection, "why is it that they
+are not our uncles?"
+
+The governess withdrew with the two children to the back of the parlor,
+and explained to them, in a low voice, that the emperors and kings then
+in Paris, far from being their uncles, were their vanquishers.
+
+"Then," exclaimed the elder boy, Napoleon Louis, his face flushing with
+anger, "then they are the enemies of my uncle, the emperor! Why did this
+Emperor of Russia embrace us?"
+
+"Because he is a noble and generous enemy, who is endeavoring to serve
+you and your mother in your present misfortune. Without him you would
+possess nothing more in the world, and the fate of your uncle, the
+emperor, would be much sadder than it already is."
+
+"Then we ought to love this emperor very dearly?" said the little Louis
+Napoleon.
+
+"Certainly; for you owe him many thanks."
+
+The young prince regarded the emperor, who was conversing with the
+empress Josephine, long and thoughtfully.
+
+When the emperor returned to Malmaison on the following day, and while
+he was sitting at his mother's side in the garden-house, little Louis
+Napoleon, walking on tiptoe, noiselessly approached the emperor from
+behind, laid a small glittering object in his hand, and ran away.
+
+The queen called him back, and demanded with earnest severity to know
+what he had done.
+
+The little prince returned reluctantly, hanging his head with
+embarrassment, and said, blushing deeply: "Ah, _maman,_ it is the ring
+Uncle Eugene gave me. I wished to give it to the emperor, because he is
+so good to my _maman_!"
+
+Deeply touched, the emperor took the boy in his arms, seated him on his
+knees, and kissed him tenderly.
+
+Then, in order to give the little prince an immediate reward, he
+attached the ring to his watch-chain, and swore that he would wear the
+token as long as he lived[28].
+
+[Footnote 28: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEATH OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
+
+Since Napoleon's star had grown pale, and himself compelled to leave
+France as an exile, life seemed to Josephine also to be enveloped in a
+gloomy mourning-veil; she felt that her sun had set, and night come upon
+her. But she kept this feeling a profound secret, and never allowed a
+complaint or sigh to betray her grief to her tenderly-beloved daughter.
+Her complaints were for the emperor, her sighs for the fate of her
+children and grandchildren. She seemed to have forgotten herself; her
+wishes were all for others. With the pleasing address and grace of which
+age could not deprive her, she did the honors of her house to the
+foreign sovereigns in Malmaison, and assumed a forced composure, in
+which her soul had no share. She would have preferred to withdraw with
+her grief to the retirement of her chambers, but she thought it her duty
+to make this sacrifice for the welfare of her daughter and
+grandchildren; and she, the loving mother, could do what Hortense's
+pride would not permit--she could entreat the Emperor Alexander to take
+pity on her daughter's fate.
+
+When, therefore, the czar had finally succeeded in establishing her
+future, and had received the letters-patent which secured to the queen
+the duchy of St. Leu Alexander hastened to Malmaison, to communicate
+this good news to the Empress Josephine.
+
+She did not reward him with words, but with gushing tears, as she
+extended to the emperor both hands. She then begged him, with touching
+earnestness, to accept from her a remembrance of this hour.
+
+The emperor pointed to a cup, on which a portrait of Josephine was
+painted, and begged her to give him that.
+
+"_No_, sire," said she; "such a cup can be bought anywhere. But I wish
+to give you something that cannot be had anywhere else in the world,
+and that will sometimes remind you of me. It is a present that I
+received from Pope Pius VII., on the day of my coronation. I present you
+with this token in commemoration of the day on which you bring my
+daughter the ducal crown, in order that it may remind you of mother and
+daughter alike--of the dethroned empress and of the dethroned queen."
+
+This present, which she now extended to the emperor with a charming
+smile, was an antique cameo, of immense size, and so wondrously-well
+executed that the empress could well say its equal was nowhere to be
+found in the world. On this cameo the heads of Alexander the Great and
+of his father, Philip of Macedonia, were portrayed, side by side; and
+the beauty of the workmanship, as well as the size of the stone, made
+this cameo a gem of inestimable value. And for this reason the emperor
+at first refused to accept this truly imperial present, and he yielded
+only when he perceived that his refusal would offend the empress, who
+seemed to be more pale and irritable than usual.
+
+Josephine was, in reality, sadder than usual, for the royal family of
+the Bourbons had on this day caused her heart to bleed anew. Josephine
+had read an article in the journals, in which, in the most contemptuous
+and cruel terms, attention was called to the fact that the eldest son of
+the Queen of Holland had been interred in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame,
+and that the Minister Blacas had now issued an order to have the coffin
+removed from its resting-place, and buried in an ordinary grave-yard.
+
+Hortense, who had read this article, had hastened to Paris, in order
+that she might herself superintend the removal of the body of her
+beloved child from Notre-Dame, and its reinterment in the Church of
+St. Leu.
+
+While she informed the emperor of this new insult, Josephine's whole
+figure trembled, and a deathly pallor overspread her countenance.
+Josephine lacked the strength to conceal her sufferings to-day, for the
+first time; Hortense was not present, and she might therefore, for once,
+allow herself the sad consolation of showing, bereft of its smile and
+its paint, the pale countenance, which death had already
+lightly touched.
+
+"Your majesty is ill!" exclaimed the emperor, in dismay.
+
+With a smile, which brought tears to Alexander's eyes, Josephine pointed
+to her breast, and whispered: "Sire, I have received the
+death-wound here!"
+
+Yes, she was right; she had received a fatal wound, and her heart was
+bleeding to death.
+
+Terrified by Josephine's condition, the emperor hurried to Paris, and
+sent his own physician to inquire after her condition. When the latter
+returned, he informed the emperor that Josephine was dangerously ill,
+and that he did not believe her recovery possible.
+
+He was right, and Alexander saw the empress no more! Hortense and
+Eugene, her two children, held a sad watch at their mother's bedside
+throughout the night. The best physicians were called in, but these
+only confirmed what the Russian physician had said--the condition of the
+empress was hopeless. Her heart was broken! With strong hands, she had
+held it together as long as her children's welfare seemed to require.
+Now that Hortense's future was also assured--now that she knew that her
+grandchildren would, at least, not be compelled to wander about the
+world as exiled beggars--now Josephine withdrew her hands from her
+heart, and suffered it to bleed to death.
+
+On the 29th of May, 1814, the Empress Josephine died, of an illness
+which had apparently lasted but two days. Hortense had not heard her
+mother's death-sigh; when she re-entered the room with Eugene, after her
+mother had received the sacrament from Abbe Bertrand--when she saw her
+mother, with outstretched arms, vainly endeavoring to speak to
+them--Hortense fainted away at her mother's bedside, and the empress
+breathed her last sigh in Eugene's arms.
+
+The intelligence of the death of the empress affected Paris profoundly.
+It seemed as though all the city had forgotten for a day that Napoleon
+was no longer the ruler of France, and that the Bourbons had reascended
+the throne of their fathers. All Paris mourned; for the hearts of the
+French people had not forgotten this woman, who had so long been their
+benefactress, and of whom each could relate the most touching traits of
+goodness, of generosity, and of gentleness.
+
+Josephine, now that she was dead, was once more enthroned as empress in
+the hearts of the French people and thousands poured into Malmaison, to
+pay their last homage to their deceased empress. Even the Faubourg St.
+Germain mourned with the Parisians; these haughty and insolent
+royalists, who had returned with the Bourbons, may, perhaps, for a
+moment, have recalled the benefits which the empress had shown them,
+when, as the mighty Empress of France, she employed the half of her
+allowance for the relief of the emigrants. They had returned without
+thinking of the thanks they owed their forgotten benefactress; now that
+she was dead, they no longer withheld the tribute of their admiration.
+
+"Alas!" exclaimed Madame Ducayla, the king's friend; "alas! how
+interesting a lady was this Josephine! What tact, what goodness! How
+well she knew how to do everything! And she shows her tact and good
+taste to the last, in dying just at this moment!"
+
+Immediately after the death of the empress, Eugene had conducted the
+queen from the death-chamber, almost violently, and had taken her and
+her children to St. Leu. The body of the empress was interred in
+Malmaison, and followed to the grave by her two grandchildren only.
+Grief had made both of her children severely ill, and the little princes
+were followed, not by her relatives, but by the Russian General Von
+Sacken, who represented the emperor, and by the equipages of all those
+kings and princes who had helped to hurl the Bonapartes from their
+thrones and restore the Bourbons.
+
+The emperor passed his last night in France, before leaving for
+England, at St. Leu; and, on taking leave of Eugene and Hortense, who,
+at the earnest solicitation of her brother, had left her room for the
+first time since her mother's death, for the purpose of seeing the
+emperor, he assured them of his unchangeable friendship and attachment.
+As he knew that, among those whom he strongly suspected, Pozzo di
+Borgo[29], the ambassador he left behind him in Paris, was an
+irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon and his family, he had assigned to duty
+at the embassy as _attache_, a gentleman selected for this purpose by
+Louise de Cochelet--M. de Boutiakin--and it was through him that the
+emperor directed that the letters and wishes of the queen and of her
+faithful young lady friend should be received and answered.
+
+[Footnote 29: Upon receiving the intelligence of the death of the
+emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill him, but I
+threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order that he might
+never rise again."]
+
+A few days later Eugene also left St. Leu and his sister Hortense, to
+return, with the King of Bavaria, to his new home in Germany. It was not
+until his departure that Hortense felt to its full extent the gloomy
+loneliness and dreary solitude by which she was surrounded. She had not
+wept over the downfall of all the grandeur and magnificence by which she
+had formerly been surrounded; she had not complained when the whirlwind
+of fate hurled to the ground the crowns of all her relations, but had
+bowed her head to the storm with resignation, and smiled at the loss of
+her royal titles; but now, as she stood in her parlor at St. Leu and saw
+none about her but her two little boys and the few ladies who still
+remained faithful--now, Hortense wept.
+
+"Alas!" she cried, bursting into tears, as she extended her hand to
+Louise de Cochelet, "alas! my courage is at an end! My mother is dead,
+my brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon forget his
+promised protection, and I alone must contend, with my two children,
+against all the annoyances and enmities to which the name I bear will
+subject me! I fear I shall live to regret that I allowed myself to be
+persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will the love I bear my country
+recompense me for the torments which are in store for me?"
+
+The queen's dark forebodings were to be only too fully realized. In the
+great and solemn hour of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal vision the
+veil that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan prophetess, we see
+the impending evil, powerless to avert it.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+_THE RESTORATION._
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.
+
+On the 12th of April, Count d'Artois, whom Louis XVIII. had sent in
+advance, and invested with the dignity of a lieutenant-general of
+France, made his triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the city,
+he was received by the newly-formed provisional government, Talleyrand
+at its head; and here it was that Count d'Artois replied to the address
+of that gentleman in the following words: "Nothing is changed in France,
+except that from to-day there will be one Frenchman more in the land."
+The people received him with cold curiosity, and the allied troops
+formed a double line for his passage to the Tuileries, at which the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, adorned with white lilies and white
+cockades, received him with glowing enthusiasm. Countess Ducayla,
+afterward the well-known friend of Louis XVIII., had been one of the
+most active instruments of the restoration, and she it was who had first
+unfolded again in France the banner of the Bourbons--the white flag. A
+few days before the entrance of the prince, she had gone, with a number
+of her royalist friends, into the streets, in order to excite the people
+to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty. But the people and the
+army had still preserved their old love for the emperor, and the
+proclamation of Prince Schwartzenberg, read by Bauvineux in the streets,
+was listened to in silence. True, the royalists cried, _"Vive le roi!"_
+at the end of this reading, but the people remained indifferent
+and mute.
+
+This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed to indicate a
+secret discontent with the new order of things. She felt that this
+sullen people must be inflamed, and made to speak with energy and
+distinctness. To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and proclamations
+had been attempted in vain; now the countess determined to attempt to
+arouse them by another means--to astonish them by the display of a
+striking symbol--to show them the white flag of the Bourbons!
+
+She gave her companion, Count de Montmorency, her handkerchief, that he
+might wave it aloft, fastening it to the end of his cane, in order that
+it should be more conspicuous. This handkerchief of Countess Ducayla,
+fastened to the cane of a Montmorency, was the first royalist banner
+that fluttered over Paris, after a banishment of twenty years. The
+Parisians looked at this banner with a kind of reverence and shuddering
+wonder; they did not greet it with applause; they still remained silent,
+but they nevertheless followed the procession of royalists, who marched
+to the boulevards, shouting, _"Vive le roi!"_ They took no part in their
+joyful demonstration, but neither did they attempt to prevent it.
+
+This demonstration of the royalists, and particularly of the royalist
+ladies, transcended the bounds of propriety, and of their own dignity.
+In their fanaticism for the legitimate dynasty, they gave the allies a
+reception, which almost assumed the character of a declaration of love,
+on the part of the fair ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, for all the
+soldiers and officers of the allied army. In a strange confusion of
+ideas, these warriors, who had certainly entered France as enemies,
+seemed to these fair ones to be a part of the beloved Bourbons; and they
+loved them with almost the same love they lavished upon the royal family
+itself. During several days they were, in their hearts, the daughters of
+all countries except their own!
+
+Louis XVIII. was himself much displeased with this enthusiasm of the
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and openly avowed to Countess
+Ducayla his dissatisfaction with the ridiculous and contemptible
+behavior of these ladies at that time. He was even of the opinion that
+it was calculated to injure his cause, as the nation had then not yet
+pronounced in his favor.
+
+"They should," said he, "have received the allies with a dignified
+reserve, without frivolous demonstrations, and without this
+inconsiderate devotion. Such a demeanor would have inspired them with
+respect for the nation, whereas they now leave Paris with the conviction
+that we are still--as we were fifty years ago--the most giddy and
+frivolous people of Europe. You particularly, ladies--you have
+compromised yourselves in an incomprehensible manner. The allies seemed
+to you so lovable _en masse,_ that you gave yourselves the appearance of
+also loving them _en detail_; and this has occasioned reports concerning
+you which do little honor to French ladies!"
+
+"But, _mon Dieu!_" replied Countess Ducayla to her royal friend, "we
+wished to show them a well-earned gratitude for the benefit they
+conferred in restoring to us your majesty; we wished to offer them
+freely what we, tired of resistance, were at last compelled to accord to
+the tyrants of the republic and the sabre-heroes of the empire! None of
+us can regret what we have done for our good friends the allies!"
+
+Nevertheless, that which the ladies "had done for their good friends the
+allies" was the occasion of many annoying family scenes, and the
+husbands who did not fully participate in the enthusiasm of their wives
+were of the opinion that they had good cause to complain of their
+inordinate zeal.
+
+Count G----, among others, had married a young and beautiful lady a few
+days before the restoration. She, in her youthful innocence, was
+entirely indifferent to political matters; but her step-father, her
+step-mother, and her husband, Count G----, were royalists of the
+first water.
+
+On the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris, step-father,
+step-mother, and husband, in common with all good legitimists, hurried
+forward to welcome "their good friends," and each of them returned to
+their dwelling with a stranger--the husband with an Englishman, the
+step-mother with a Prussian, and the step-father with an Austrian. The
+three endeavored to outdo each other in the attentions which they
+showered upon the guests they had the good fortune to possess. The
+little countess alone remained indifferent, in the midst of the joy of
+her family. They reproached her with having too little attachment for
+the good cause, and exhorted her to do everything in her power to
+entertain the gallant men who had restored to France her king.
+
+The husband requested the Englishman to instruct the young countess in
+riding; the marquise begged the Prussian to escort her daughter to the
+ball, and teach her the German waltz; and, finally, the marquis, who had
+discovered a fine taste for paintings in the Austrian, appealed to this
+gentleman to conduct the young wife through the picture-galleries.
+
+In short, every opportunity was given the young countess to commit a
+folly, or rather three follies, for she did not like to give the
+preference to any one of the three strangers. She was young, and
+inexperienced in matters of this kind. Her triple intrigue was,
+therefore, soon discovered, and betrayed to her family; and now husband,
+step-father, and step-mother, were exasperated. This exceeded even the
+demands of their royalism; and they showered reproaches on the head of
+the young wife.
+
+"It is not my fault!" cried she, sobbing. "I only did what you
+commanded. You ordered me to do everything in my power to entertain
+these gentlemen, and I could therefore refuse them nothing."
+
+But there were also cases in which the advances of the enthusiastic
+ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were repelled. Even the high-born and
+haughty Marquise M---- was to experience this mortification. She stepped
+before the sullen, sombre veterans of the Old Guard of the empire, who
+had just allowed Count d'Artois to pass before their ranks in dead
+silence. She ardently appealed to their love for the dynasty of their
+fathers, and, in her enthusiasm for royalism, went so far as to offer
+herself as a reward to him who should first cry _"Vive le roi!"_ But the
+faithful soldiers of the emperor stood unmoved by this generous offer,
+and the silence remained unbroken by the lowest cry!
+
+The princes who stood at the head of the allied armies were, of course,
+the objects of the most ardent enthusiasm of the royalist ladies; but it
+was, above all, with them that they found the least encouragement. The
+Emperor of Austria was too much occupied with the future of his daughter
+and grandson, and the King of Prussia was too grave and severe, to find
+any pleasure in the coquetries of women. The young Emperor Alexander of
+Russia, therefore, became the chief object of their enthusiasm and love.
+But their enthusiasm also met with a poor recompense in this quarter.
+Almost distrustfully, the czar held himself aloof from the ladies of the
+Faubourg St. Germain; and yet it was they who had decided the fate of
+France with him, and induced him to give his vote for the Bourbons; for
+until then it had remained undetermined whom the allies should call to
+the throne of France.
+
+In his inmost heart, the Emperor of Russia desired to see the
+universally-beloved Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, elevated to
+the vacant throne. The letter with which Eugene replied to the
+proposition of the allies, tendering him the ducal crown of Genoa, had
+won for Josephine's son the love and esteem of the czar for all time.
+Alexander had himself written to Eugene, and proffered him, in the name
+of the allies, a duchy of Genoa, if he would desert Napoleon, and take
+sides with the allies. Eugene Beauharnais had replied to him in the
+following letter:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"SIRE,--I have received your majesty's propositions. They are
+undoubtedly very favorable, but they are powerless to change my
+resolution. I must have known how to express my thoughts but poorly when
+I had the honor of seeing you, if your majesty can believe that I could
+sully my honor for any, even the highest, reward. Neither the prospect
+of possessing the crown of the duchy of Genoa, nor that of the kingdom
+of Italy, can induce me to become a traitor. The example of the King of
+Naples cannot mislead me; I will rather be a plain soldier than a
+traitorous prince.
+
+"The emperor, you say, has done me injustice; I have forgotten it; I
+only remember his benefits. I owe all to him--my rank, my titles, and
+my fortune, and I owe to him that which I prefer to all else--that which
+your indulgence calls my renown. I shall, therefore, serve him as long
+as I live; my person is his, as is my heart. May my sword break in my
+hands, if it could ever turn against the emperor, or against France! I
+trust that my well-grounded refusal will at least secure to me the
+respect of your imperial majesty. I am, etc."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor of Austria, on the other hand, ardently desired to secure
+the throne of France to his grandson, the King of Rome, under the
+regency of the Empress Marie Louise; but he did not venture to make this
+demand openly and without reservation of his allies, whose action he had
+promised to approve and ratify. The appeals of the Duke of Cadore, who
+had been sent to her father by Marie Louise from Blois, urging the
+emperor to look after her interests, and to demand of the allies that
+they should assure the crown to herself and son, were, therefore,
+fruitless.
+
+The emperor assured his daughter's ambassador that he had reason to hope
+for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist on any action
+in her behalf.
+
+"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my son-in-law,
+and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."
+
+"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice is
+required at your hands."
+
+"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor, "to
+sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised the allies
+to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to consent to all
+they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count Metternich, is at this
+moment with them, and I shall ratify everything which he has
+signed[30]."
+
+[Footnote 30: Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.]
+
+But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should sign for
+him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome was to be the
+King of France.
+
+But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this hope.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in Talleyrand's
+house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd French diplomat,
+who well knew how much easier it would be to bend the will of the
+Agamemnon of the holy alliance[31] to his wishes, when he should have
+him in hand, as it were, day and night. In offering the emperor his
+hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention to make him his prisoner,
+body and soul, and to use him to his own advantage.
+
+[Footnote 31: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite.]
+
+It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to concert
+measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had transformed himself
+into the zealous legitimist of to-day.
+
+Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the Russian
+emperor, and he succeeded.
+
+While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet,
+Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de Lemalle--endeavor
+to make a great stroke. The emperor is gallant, and what he denies to
+diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to the ladies."
+
+He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's cabinet
+alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees, and stretched
+out her arms.
+
+With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened forward to
+assist her to rise.
+
+"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A noble lady never has
+occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."
+
+"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it is my
+purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you alone can
+restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess Louis XVIII. once
+more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to us!"
+
+"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the Bourbon
+family?"
+
+"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole love!"
+
+"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies filled
+with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"
+
+"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis XVIII.,
+and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back. Let the
+legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be done[32]."
+
+[Footnote 32: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 179.]
+
+And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the legislative
+bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to communicate the hopes
+with which the emperor had inspired her to all Paris; on the evening
+after her interview with the emperor, she gave a grand _soiree_, to
+which she invited the most beautiful ladies of her party, and a number
+of senators.
+
+"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap the
+gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not know
+that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen vows?"
+
+On the following day the senate assembled, and elected a provisional
+government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of Dalberg, the Marquis
+of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the Abbe Montesquieu. The senate
+and the new provisional government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed
+from the throne, and recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus
+publicly and solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name
+of the French people, it at the same time testified to its own
+unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with its
+recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the salary
+which they had hitherto received, should be continued to them for life."
+While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took care to pay themselves
+for their trouble, and to secure their own future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.
+
+The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate and
+provisional government as the declaration of the people, and recalled to
+the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count de Lille, had so
+long languished in exile at Hartwell.
+
+The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to the
+decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of Rome, to be
+robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to fall from his
+daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as much astonished at
+this result as Marie Louise, for, until their entrance into Paris, the
+allies had flattered the Austrian emperor with the hope that the crown
+of France would be secured to his daughter and grandson. The emperor's
+astonishment at this turn of affairs was made the subject of a
+caricature, which, on the day of the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was
+affixed to the same walls on which Chateaubriand's enthusiastic
+_brochure_ concerning the Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of
+which thousands of copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the
+Emperor of Austria was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage;
+the Emperor Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England
+as postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up behind
+as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the carriage,
+holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of Austria,
+"Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And _taken me in_," was the
+reply of Francis I.
+
+The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was great, now
+that their king was at last restored to them, and they eagerly embraced
+every means of showing their gratitude to the Emperor of Russia. But
+Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to their homage; he even went
+so far as to avoid attending the entertainments given by the new king at
+the Tuileries, and society was shocked at seeing the emperor openly
+displaying his sympathy for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and
+repairing to Malmaison, instead of appearing at the Tuileries.
+
+Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet to
+inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the Faubourg St.
+Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's maid-of-honor, as he
+was in the habit of doing from time to time, for the purpose of
+discussing the queen's interests with her.
+
+"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards your
+majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It has even
+caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said he to me,
+recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high circles of
+society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay about it; it is
+feared that he is there subjected to influences to which policy
+requires he should not be exposed.'"
+
+"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor,
+laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the Faubourg
+St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that they have not
+made a conquest of me! I prefer the noble qualities of the soul to all
+outward appearances; and I find united in the Empress Josephine, in the
+Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene, all that is admirable and
+lovable. I am better pleased to be here with you in quiet, confidential
+intercourse, than with those who really demean themselves as though they
+were crazed, and who, instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared
+for them, are only intent on destroying their enemies, and have
+commenced with those who formerly accorded them such generous
+protection; they really weary one with their extravagances.
+
+"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of the
+conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew how far
+their amiability could extend; but their heart is undoubtedly no longer
+their own. I am therefore on my guard against being deceived by it, and
+I fancy these ladies love to please so well, that they are even angry
+with those who respond to the attentions which are so lavishly showered
+on them, with conventional politeness only."
+
+Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against the
+emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by the
+manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it was but
+natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm for a young
+emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light, and that they must
+necessarily, even without being coquettish, ardently desire to be
+noticed by him.
+
+"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these ladies
+only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart palpitate? I seek
+mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those who display a desire to
+exercise a control over my heart; in this I see nothing but self-love,
+and I hold myself aloof from such contact."
+
+While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
+lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the returned king of
+the boundless delight of his people, this people was already beginning
+to grumble. The allies had now completed their task, they had restored
+to France its legitimate king, and they now put the finishing-touch to
+their work by providing in the treaty, that France should be narrowed
+down to the boundaries it had had before the revolution.
+
+France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers. From the
+weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which they had been
+compelled to accord to the strength of the empire.
+
+All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much French
+blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be given up, and
+the great, extended France was to shrink back into the France it had
+been thirty years before! It was this that made the people murmur. The
+Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they had grown weary of endless
+wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the conquests they had made under
+their emperor. The surrender of these conquests wounded the national
+pride, and they were angry with their king for being so ready to put
+this shame upon France--for holding the crown of France in higher
+estimation than the honor of France!
+
+It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most bitterly felt
+the disgrace that attached to him in this re-establishment of France
+within its ancient boundaries, and he had endeavored to protest in every
+way against this demand of the allies. But his representative had been
+made to understand that if Louis XVIII. could not content himself with
+the France the allies were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to
+relinquish it to Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to
+yield to necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while
+his courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
+he was heard to whisper, "_Nos chers amis les ennemis_[33]!"
+
+[Footnote 33: "Our dear friends the enemies!"]
+
+Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great reluctance,
+and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII. consented to the
+demands made by the allies in behalf of the family of Napoleon. But the
+Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended the rights of the Queen of
+Holland and her children against the ill-will of the Bourbons, the
+dislike of the royalists, and the disinclination of the allies, alike.
+The family of the emperor owed it to him and to his firmness alone that
+the article of the treaty of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII.
+agreed "that the titles and dignities of all the members of the family
+of the Emperor Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not
+be deprived of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.
+
+It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last succeeded in
+obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate and a title, that
+secured her position. King Louis finally yielded to his urgent
+solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the title of Duchess of St.
+Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.
+
+But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under the
+pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given him his
+throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have forgotten as
+willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of the empire.
+
+For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep, and were
+not a little surprised to find that the world had progressed in the
+meanwhile.
+
+According to their ideas, every thing must have remained standing at the
+point where they had left it twenty years before; and they were at least
+determined to ignore all that had happened in the interval. King Louis
+therefore signed his first act as in "the nineteenth" year of his reign,
+and endeavored in all things to keep up a semblance of the continuation
+of his reign since the year 1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which
+King Louis appointed Hortense Duchess of St. Leu were drawn up in a
+manner offensive to the queen, for they contained the following: "The
+king appoints Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais Duchess of St. Leu."
+
+The queen refused to accept this title, under the circumstances, and
+rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had angrily
+demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier, consented to draw up
+the letters-patent in a different style. They read: "The king appoints
+Hortense Eugenie, included in the treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess
+of St. Leu." This was, to be sure, merely a negative and disguised
+recognition of the former rank of the queen; but it was, at least no
+longer a degradation to accept it.
+
+The Viceroy of Italy, the noble Eugene--who was universally beloved, and
+who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the czar, to secure his
+future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much annoyance and perplexity.
+
+The king could not refuse to recognize the brave hero of the empire and
+the son-in-law of the King of Bavaria, who was one of the allies; and,
+as Eugene desired an audience of the king, it was accorded him at once.
+
+But how was he to be received? With what title was Napoleon's step-son,
+the Viceroy of Italy, to be addressed? It would have been altogether too
+ridiculous to repeat the absurdity contained in Hortense's
+letters-patent, and call Eugene "Viscount de Beauharnais;" but to accord
+him the royal title would have compromised the dignity of the
+legitimate dynasty. A brilliant solution of this difficult question
+suggested itself to King Louis. When the Duke d'Aumont conducted Prince
+Eugene to the royal presence, the king advanced, with a cordial smile,
+and saluted him with the words, "M. Marshal of France, I am happy to
+see you."
+
+Eugene, who was on the point of making his salutation, remained silent,
+and looked over his shoulder to see whom the king was speaking with.
+Louis XVIII. smiled, and continued: "You, my dear sir, are a marshal of
+France. I appoint you to this dignity."
+
+"Sire," said Eugene, bowing profoundly, "I am much obliged to your
+majesty for your kind intentions, but the misfortune of the rank to
+which destiny has called me will not allow me to accept the high title
+with which you honor me. I thank you very much, but I must
+decline it[34]."
+
+[Footnote 34: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 267.]
+
+The king's stratagem had thus come to grief, and Eugene left the royal
+presence with flying colors. He was not under the necessity of accepting
+benefits from the King of France, for his step-father, the King of
+Bavaria, made Eugene a prince of the royal house of Bavaria, and created
+for him the duchy of Leuchtenberg. Hither Eugene retired, and lived
+there, surrounded by his wife and children, in peace and tranquillity,
+until death tore him from the arms of his sorrowing family, in the
+year 1824.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MADAME DE STAEL.
+
+The restoration, that had overthrown so many of the great, and that was
+destined to restore to the light so many names that had lain buried in
+obscurity, now brought back to Paris a person who had been banished by
+Napoleon, and who had been adding new lustre and renown to her name in a
+foreign land. This personage was Madame de Stael, the daughter of
+Necker, the renowned poetess of "Corinne" and "Delphine."
+
+It had been a long and bitter struggle between Madame de Stael and the
+mighty Emperor of the French; and Madame de Stael, with her genius and
+her impassioned eloquence, and adorned with the laurel-wreath of her
+exile, had perhaps done Napoleon more harm than a whole army of his
+enemies. Intense hatred existed on both sides, and yet it had depended
+on Napoleon alone to transform this hatred into love. For Madame de
+Stael had been disposed to lavish the whole impassioned enthusiasm of
+her heart upon the young hero of Marengo and Arcola--quite disposed to
+become the Egeria of this Numa Pompilius. In the warm impulse of her
+stormy imagination, Madame de Stael, in reference to Bonaparte, had
+even, in a slight measure, been regardless of her position as a lady,
+and had only remembered that she was a poetess, and that, as such, it
+became her well to celebrate the hero, and to bestow on the luminous
+constellation that was rising over France the glowing dithyrambic of her
+greetings.
+
+Madame de Stael had, therefore, not waited for Napoleon to seek her, but
+had made the first advances, and sought him.
+
+To the returning victor of Italy she wrote letters filled with
+impassioned enthusiasm; but these letters afforded the youthful general
+but little pleasure. In the midst of the din of battle and the grand
+schemes with which he was continually engaged, Bonaparte found but
+little time to occupy himself with the poetical works of Madame de
+Stael. He knew of her nothing more than that she was the daughter of the
+minister Necker, and that was no recommendation in Napoleon's eyes, for
+he felt little respect for Necker's genius, and even went so far as to
+call him the instigator of the great revolution. It was, therefore, with
+astonishment that the young general received the enthusiastic letter of
+the poetess; and, while showing it to some of his intimate friends, he
+said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "Do you understand these
+extravagances? This woman is foolish!"
+
+But Madame de Stael did not allow herself to be dismayed by Bonaparte's
+coldness and silence--she continued to write new and more
+glowing letters.
+
+In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate enthusiasm
+as to say, that it was a great error in human institutions that the
+gentle and quiet Josephine had united her faith with his; that she,
+Madame de Stael, and Bonaparte, were born for each other, and that
+Nature seemed to have created a soul of fire like hers, in order that it
+might worship a hero such as he was.
+
+Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he threw it
+in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of sentiment, should
+dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not answer these letters!"
+
+He did not answer them, but Madame de Stael did not, or rather would
+not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give up a resolution
+once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame de Stael was now also
+determined to have her way, and to approach Bonaparte despite his
+resistance.
+
+And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all obstacles, and
+the interview, so long wished for by her, and so long avoided by him, at
+last took place. Madame de Stael was introduced at the Tuileries, and
+received by Bonaparte and his wife. The personal appearance of this
+intellectual woman was, however, but little calculated to overcome
+Bonaparte's prejudice. The costume of Madame de Stael was on this
+occasion, as it always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and
+Napoleon loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired.
+In this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Stael gave free scope to her
+wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do, she only
+succeeded in depressing him.
+
+It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de Stael, in her
+ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay her a compliment, that
+Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat indiscreet question: "Who is
+in your eyes the greatest woman?" with the sarcastic reply, "She who
+bears the most children to the state."
+
+Madame de Stael had come with a heart full of enthusiasm; in her address
+to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to earth;" she had come
+an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an offended woman. Her wounded
+vanity never forgave the answer which seemed to make her ridiculous. She
+avenged herself, in her drawing-room, by the biting _bon mots_ which she
+hurled at Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully
+repeated to the first consul.
+
+But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded against the
+hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely than weapons of
+steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame de Stael was his
+superior, and the consciousness of this embittered Bonaparte all the
+more against the lady, who dared prick the heel of Achilles with the
+needle of her wit, and strike at the very point where he was most
+sensitive.
+
+A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest geniuses
+of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both with equal
+bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side, and could punish
+the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.
+
+He banished Madame de Stael from Paris, and soon afterward even from
+France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the praises of her
+"god descended from heaven," now went into exile his enemy and a
+royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius, in making
+proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the minds of men an
+invisible but none the less formidable army against her enemy the
+great Napoleon.
+
+Madame de Stael soon gave still greater weight to the flaming eruptions
+of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing renown and greatness;
+and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon became as redoubtable an
+opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia, or Austria, could be.
+
+But in the midst of the triumphs she was celebrating in her exile,
+Madame de Stael soon began to long ardently to return to France, which
+she loved all the more for having been compelled to leave it. She
+therefore used all the influence she possessed in Paris, to obtain from
+Napoleon permission to return to her home, but the emperor remained
+inexorable, even after having read Delphine.
+
+"I love," said he, "women who make men of themselves just as little as I
+love effeminate men. There is an appropriate _role_ for every one in the
+world. Of what use is this vagabondizing of fantasy? What does it
+accomplish? Nothing! All this is nothing but do rangement of mind and
+feeling. I dislike women who throw themselves in my arms, and for this
+reason, if for no other, I dislike this woman, who is certainly one of
+that number."
+
+Madame de Stael's petitions to be permitted to return to Paris were
+therefore rejected, but she was as little disposed to abandon her
+purpose now as she was at the time she sought to gain Bonaparte's
+good-will. She continued to make attempts to achieve her aim, for it was
+not only her country that she wished to reconquer, but also a million
+francs which she wished to have paid to her out of the French treasury.
+
+Her father, Minister Necker, had loaned his suffering country a million
+francs, at a time of financial distress and famine, to buy bread for the
+starving people, and Louis XVI. had guaranteed, in writing, that this
+"national debt of France" should be returned.
+
+But the revolution that shattered the throne of the unfortunate king,
+also buried beneath the ruins of the olden time the promises and oaths
+that had been written on parchment and paper.
+
+Madame de Stael now demanded that the emperor should fulfil the promises
+of the overthrown king, and that the heir of the throne of the Bourbons
+should assume the obligations into which a Bourbon had entered with
+her father.
+
+She had once called Napoleon a god descended from heaven; and she even
+now wished that he might still prove a god for her, namely, the god
+Pluto, who should pour out a million upon her from his horn of plenty.
+
+As she could not go to France herself, she sent her son to plead with
+the emperor, for herself and her children.
+
+Well knowing, however, how difficult it would be, even for her son to
+secure an audience of the emperor, she addressed herself to Queen
+Hortense in eloquent letters imploring her to exert her influence in her
+son's behalf.
+
+Hortense, ever full of pity for misfortune, felt the warmest sympathy
+and admiration for the genius of the great poetess, and interceded for
+Madame de Stael with great courage and eloquence. She alone ventured,
+regardless of Napoleon's frowns and displeasure, to plead the cause of
+the poor exile again and again, and to solicit her recall to France, as
+a simple act of justice; she even went so far in her generosity as to
+extend the hospitalities of her drawing-rooms to the poetess's son, who
+was avoided and fled from by every one else.
+
+Hortense's soft entreaties and representations were at last successful
+in soothing the emperor's anger. He allowed Madame de Stael to return to
+France, on the condition that she should never come to Paris or its
+vicinity; he then also accorded Madame de Stael's son the long-sought
+favor of an audience.
+
+This interview of Napoleon with Madame de Stael's son is as remarkable
+as it is original. On this occasion, Napoleon openly expressed his
+dislike and even his hatred as well of Madame de Stael as of her father,
+although he listened with generous composure to the warm defence of the
+son and grandson.
+
+Young Stael told the emperor of his mother's longing to return to her
+home, and touchingly portrayed the sadness and unhappiness of her exile.
+
+"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the emperor, "your mother is in a state of
+exaltation. I do not say that she is a bad woman. She has wit, and much
+intellect, perhaps too much, but hers is an inconsiderate, an
+insubordinate spirit. She has grown up in the chaos of a falling
+monarchy, and of a revolution, and she has amalgamized the two in her
+mind. This is all a source of danger; she would make proselytes, she
+must be watched; she does not love me. The interests of those whom she
+might compromise, require that I should not permit her to return to
+Paris. If I should allow her to do so, she would place me under the
+necessity of sending her to Bicetre, or of imprisoning her in the
+Temple, before six months elapsed; that would be extremely disagreeable,
+for it would cause a sensation, and injure me in the public opinion.
+Inform your mother that my resolution is irrevocable. While I live, she
+shall not return to Paris."
+
+It was in vain that young Stael assured him in his mother's name, that
+she would avoid giving him the least occasion for displeasure, and that
+she would live in complete retirement if permitted to return to Paris.
+
+"Ah, yes! I know the value of fine promises!" exclaimed the emperor. "I
+know what the result would be, and I repeat it, it cannot be! She would
+be the rallying-point of the whole Faubourg St. Germain. She live in
+retirement! Visits would be made her, and she would return them; she
+would commit a thousand indiscretions, and say a thousand humorous
+things, to which she attaches no importance, but which annoy me. My
+government is no jest, I take every thing seriously; I wish this to be
+understood, and you may proclaim it to the whole world!"
+
+Young Stael had, however, the courage to continue his entreaties; he
+even went so far as to inquire in all humility for the grounds of the
+emperor's ill-will against his mother. He said he had been assured that
+Necker's last work was more particularly the cause of the emperor's
+displeasure, and that he believed Madame de Stael had assisted in
+writing it. This was, however, not so, and he could solemnly assure the
+emperor that his mother had taken no part in it whatever. Besides,
+Necker had also done full justice to the emperor in this work.
+
+"Justice, indeed! He calls me the 'necessary man.' The necessary man!
+and yet, according to his book, the first step necessary to be taken,
+was to take off this necessary man's head! Yes, I was necessary to
+repair all that your grandfather had destroyed! It is he who overthrew
+the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold!"
+
+"Sire!" exclaimed the young man, deeply agitated, "you are then not
+aware that my grandfather's estates were confiscated because he defended
+the king!"
+
+"A fine defence, indeed! If I give a man poison, and then, when he lies
+in the death-struggle, give him an antidote, can you then maintain that
+I wished to save this man? It was in this manner that M. Necker defended
+Louis XVI. The confiscations of which you speak prove nothing.
+Robespierre's property was also confiscated. Not even Robespierre,
+Marat, and Danton, have brought such misery upon France as Necker; he it
+is who made the revolution. You did not see it, but I was present in
+those days of horror and public distress; but I give you my word that
+they shall return no more while I live! Your schemers write out their
+utopias, the simple-minded read these dreams, they are printed and
+believed in; the common welfare is in everybody's mouth, and soon there
+is no more bread for the people; it revolts, and that is the usual
+result of all these fine theories! Your grandfather is to blame for the
+orgies that brought France to desperation."
+
+Then lowering his voice, from the excited, almost angry tone in which he
+had been speaking, to a milder one, the emperor approached the young
+man, who stood before him, pale, and visibly agitated. With that
+charming air of friendly intimacy that no one knew so well how to assume
+as Napoleon, he gently pinched the tip of the young man's ear, the
+emperor's usual way of making peace with any one to whom he wished well,
+after a little difficulty.
+
+"You are still young," said he; "if you possessed my age and experience,
+you would judge of these matters differently. Your candor has not
+offended, but pleased me; I like to see a son defend his mother's cause!
+Your mother has entrusted you with a very difficult commission, and you
+have executed it with much spirit. It gives me pleasure to have
+conversed with you, for I love the young when they are straightforward
+and not too 'argumentative.' But I can nevertheless give you no false
+hopes! You will accomplish nothing! If your mother were in prison, I
+should not hesitate to grant you her release. But she is in exile, and
+nothing can induce me to recall her."
+
+"But, sire, is one not quite as unhappy far from home and friends, as in
+prison?"
+
+"Ah, bah! those are romantic notions! You have heard that said about
+your mother. She is truly greatly to be pitied. With the exception of
+Paris, she has the whole of Europe for her prison!"
+
+"But, sire, all her friends are in Paris!"
+
+"With her intellect, she will be able to acquire new ones everywhere.
+Moreover, I cannot understand why she should desire to be in Paris. Why
+does she so long to place herself in the immediate reach of tyranny? You
+see I pronounce the decisive word! I am really unable to comprehend it.
+Can she not go to Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London
+would be the right place! There she can perpetrate libels whenever she
+pleases. At all of these places I will leave her undisturbed with the
+greatest pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate
+those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what would
+happen, if I should permit your mother to return to Paris. She would
+commit new follies; she would corrupt those who surround me; she would
+corrupt Garat, as she once corrupted the tribunal; of course, she would
+promise all things, but she would, nevertheless, not avoid engaging in
+politics."
+
+"Sire," I can assure you that my mother does not occupy herself with
+politics at all; she devotes herself exclusively to the society of her
+friends, and to literature."
+
+"That is the right word, and I fully understand it. One talks politics
+while talking of literature, of morals, of the fine arts, and of every
+conceivable thing! If your mother were in Paris, her latest _bon mots_
+and phrases would be recited to me daily; perhaps they would be only
+invented; but I tell you I will have nothing of the kind in the city in
+which I reside! It would be best for her to go to London; advise her to
+do so. As far as your grandfather is concerned, I have certainly not
+said too much; M. Necker had no administrative ability. Once more,
+inform your mother that I shall never permit her to return to Paris."
+
+"But if sacred interests should require her presence here for a few
+days, your majesty would at least--"
+
+"What? Sacred interests? What does that mean?"
+
+"Sire," the presence of my mother will be necessary, in order to procure
+from your majesty's government the return of a sacred debt."
+
+"Ah, bah! sacred! Are not all the debts of the state sacred?"
+
+"Without doubt, sire; but ours is accompanied by peculiar
+circumstances."
+
+"Peculiar circumstances!" exclaimed the emperor, rising to terminate
+the long interview, that began to weary him. "What creditor of the state
+does not say the same of his debt? Moreover, I know too little of your
+relations toward my government. This matter does not concern me, and I
+will not be mixed up in it. If the laws are for you, all will go well
+without my interference; but if it requires influence, I shall have
+nothing to do with it, for I should be rather against than for you!"
+
+"Sire," said young Stael, venturing to speak once more, as the emperor
+was on the point of leaving, "sire, my brother and I were anxious to
+settle in France; but how could we live in a land in which our mother
+would not be allowed to live with us everywhere?"
+
+Already standing on the threshold of the door, the emperor turned to him
+hastily. "I have no desire whatever to have you settle here," said he;
+"on the contrary. I advise you not to do so. Go to England. There they
+have a _penchant_ for Genevese, parlor-politicians, etc.; therefore, go
+to England; for I must say, I should be rather ill than well disposed
+toward you[35]!"
+
+[Footnote 35: Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MADAME DE STAEL'S RETURN TO PARIS.
+
+Madame de Stael returned to her cherished France with the restoration.
+She came back thirsting for new honor and renown, and determined, above
+all, to have her work republished in Germany, its publication having
+been once suppressed by the imperial police. She entertained the
+pleasing hope that the new court would forget that she was Necker's
+daughter, receive her with open arms, and accord her the influence to
+which her active mind and genius entitled her.
+
+But she was laboring under an error, by which she was not destined to be
+long deceived. She was received at court with the cold politeness which
+is more terrible than insult. The king, while speaking of her with his
+friends, called Madame de Stael "a Chateaubriand in petticoats." The
+Duchess d'Angouleme seemed never to see the celebrated poetess, and
+never addressed a word to her; the rest of the court met Madame de Stael
+armed to the teeth with all the hatred and prejudices of the olden time.
+
+It was also in vain that Madame de Stael endeavored to act an important
+part at the new court; they refused to regard her as an authority or
+power, but treated her as a mere authoress; her counsel was ridiculed,
+and they dared even to question the renown of M. Necker.
+
+"I am unfortunate," said Madame de Stael to Countess Ducayla; "Napoleon
+hated me because he believed me to possess intellect; these people repel
+me because I at least possess ordinary human understanding! I can
+certainly get on very well without them; but, as my presence displeases
+them, I shall, at least, endeavor to get my money from them."
+
+The "sacred debt" had not been paid under the empire, and it was now
+Madame de Stael's intention to obtain from the king what the emperor
+had refused.
+
+She was well aware of the influence which Countess Ducayla exercised
+over Louis XVIII., and she now hastened to call on the beautiful
+countess--whose acquaintance she had made under peculiar circumstances,
+in a romantic love intrigue--in order to renew the friendship they had
+then vowed to each other.
+
+The countess had not forgotten this friendship, and she was now grateful
+for the service Madame de Stael had then shown her. She helped to secure
+the liquidation of the sacred debt, and, upon the order of King Louis,
+the million was paid over to Madame de Stael. "But," says the countess,
+in her memoirs, "I believe the recovery of this million cost Madame de
+Stael four hundred thousand francs, besides a set of jewelry that was
+worth at least one hundred thousand."
+
+The countess's purse and the jewelry case, however, doubtlessly bore
+evidence that she might as well have said "I know" as "I believe."
+
+Besides the four hundred thousand francs and the jewelry, Madame de
+Stael also gave the countess a piece of advice. "Make the most of the
+favor you now enjoy," said she to her; "but do so quickly, for, as
+matters are now conducted, I fear that the restoration will soon have to
+be restored."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked the countess, smiling.
+
+"I mean that, with the exception of the king, who perhaps does not say
+all he thinks, the others are still doing precisely as they always have
+done, and Heaven knows to what extremities their folly is destined to
+bring them! They mock at the old soldiers and assist the young priests,
+and this is the best means of ruining France."
+
+Countess Ducayla considered this prediction of her intellectual friend
+as a mere cloud with which discontent and disappointed ambition had
+obscured the otherwise clear vision of Madame de Stael, and ridiculed
+the idea, little dreaming how soon her words were to be fulfilled.
+
+Madame de Stael consoled herself for her cold reception at court, by
+receiving the best society of Paris in her parlors, and entertaining
+them with biting _bon mots_ and witty _persiflage_, at the expense of
+the grand notabilities, who had suddenly arisen with their imposing
+genealogical trees out of the ruins and oblivion of the past.
+
+Madame de Stael now also remembered the kindness Queen Hortense had
+shown her during her exile; and not to her only, but also to her friend,
+Madame Recamier, who had also been exiled by Napoleon, not, however, as
+his enemies said, "because she was Madame de Stael's friend," but
+simply because she patronized and belonged to the so-called "little
+church." The "little church" was an organization born of the spirit of
+opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a portion of the Catholic
+clergy, and was one of those things appertaining to the internal
+relations of France that were most annoying and disagreeable to
+the emperor.
+
+Queen Hortense had espoused the cause of Madame de Stael and of Madame
+Recamier with generous warmth. She had eloquently interceded for the
+recall of both from their exile; and, now that the course of events had
+restored them to their home, both ladies came to the queen to thank her
+for her kindness and generosity.
+
+Louise de Cochelet has described this visit of Madame de Stael so
+wittily, with so much _naivete_, and with such peculiar local coloring,
+that we cannot refrain from laying a literal translation of the same
+before the reader.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MADAME DE STAEL'S VISIT TO QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+Louise de Cochelet relates as follows: "Madame de Stael and Madame
+Recamier had begged permission of the queen to visit her, for the
+purpose of tendering their thanks. The queen invited them to visit her
+at St. Leu, on the following day.
+
+"She asked my advice as to which of the members of her social circle
+were best qualified to cope with Madame de Stael.
+
+"'I, for my part,' said the queen, 'have not the courage to take the
+lead in the conversation; one cannot be very intellectual when sad at
+heart, and I fear my dullness will infect the others.'
+
+"We let quite a number of amiable persons pass before us in review, and
+I amused myself at the mention of each new name, by saying, 'He is too
+dull for Madame de Stael.'
+
+"The queen laughed, and the list of those who were to be invited was at
+last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two ladies in great
+suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the queen, of being
+intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of conjuring up a somewhat
+embarrassed and stupid expression to our faces. We presented the
+appearance of actors on the stage looking at each other, while awaiting
+the rise of the curtain. Jests and _bon mots_ followed each other in
+rapid succession until the arrival of the carriage recalled to our faces
+an expression of official earnestness.
+
+"Madame Recamier, still young, and very handsome, and with an expression
+of _naivete_ in her charming countenance, made the impression on me of
+being a young lady in love, carefully watched over by too severe a
+_duenna,_ her timid, gentle manner contrasted so strongly with the
+somewhat too masculine self-consciousness of her companion. Madame de
+Stael is, however, generally admitted to have been good and kind,
+particularly to this friend, and I only speak of the impression she made
+on one to whom she was a stranger, at first sight.
+
+"Madame de Stael's extremely dark complexion, her original toilet, her
+perfectly bare shoulders, of which either might have been very
+beautiful, but which harmonized very poorly with each other; her whole
+_ensemble_ was far from approximating to the standard of the ideal I had
+formed of the authoress of Delphine and Corinne. I had almost hoped to
+find in her one of the heroines she had so beautifully portrayed, and I
+was therefore struck dumb with astonishment. But, after the first shock,
+I was at least compelled to acknowledge that she possessed very
+beautiful and expressive eyes; and yet it seemed impossible for me to
+find anything in her countenance on which love could fasten, although I
+have been told that she has often inspired that sentiment.
+
+"When I afterward expressed my astonishment to the queen, she replied:
+'It is, perhaps, because she is capable of such great love herself, that
+she succeeds in inspiring others with love; moreover, it flatters a
+man's self-love to be noticed by such a woman, and, in the end, one can
+dispense with beauty, when one has Madame de Stael's intellect.'
+
+"The queen inquired after Madame de Stael's daughter, who had not come
+with her, and who was said to be truly charming. I believe the young
+gentlemen of our party could have confronted the beautiful eyes of the
+daughter with still greater amiability than those of the mother, but an
+attack of toothache had prevented her coming.
+
+"After the first compliments and salutations, the queen proposed to the
+ladies to take a look at her park. They seated themselves on the
+cushions of the queen's large _char a banc_, which has become historic
+on account of the many high and celebrated personages who have been
+driven in it at different times. The Emperor Napoleon was, however, not
+one of this number, as he never visited St. Leu; but, with this
+exception, there are few of the great and celebrated who have not been
+seated in it at one time or another.
+
+"As they drove through the park and the forest of Montmorency, in a walk
+only, the conversation was kept up as in the parlor, and the consumption
+of intellectuality was continued. The beautiful neighborhood, that
+reminded one of Switzerland, as it was remarked, was duly admired. Then
+Italy was spoken of. The queen, who had been somewhat _distraite_, and
+had good cause to be somewhat sad, and disposed to commune with herself,
+addressed Madame de Stael with the question, 'You have been in
+Italy, then?'
+
+"Madame de Stael was, as it were, transfixed with dismay, and the
+gentlemen exclaimed with one accord: 'And Corinne? and Corinne?'
+
+"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarrassment, awakening, as it
+were, from her dreams.
+
+"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not read
+Corinne?'
+
+"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it again,'
+and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could understand, she
+abruptly changed the topic of conversation.
+
+"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that the book
+had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in Holland. The
+king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up to her grief,
+believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that it was necessary
+to arouse her from this state of mental dejection at all hazards. It was
+determined that I should read 'Corinne' to her. She was not in a
+condition to pay much attention to it, but she had involuntarily
+retained some remembrance of this romance. Since then, I had several
+times asked permission of the queen to read Corinne to her, but she had
+always refused. 'No, no,' said she, 'not yet; this romance has
+identified itself with my sorrow. Its name alone recalls the most
+fearful period of my whole life. I have not yet the courage to renew
+these painful impressions.'
+
+"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had embarrassed and
+moved the queen so much when she replied to the question addressed to
+her concerning Corinne. But the authoress could, of course, only
+interpret it as indicating indifference for her master-work, and I told
+the queen on the following day that it would have been better to have
+confessed the cause of her confusion to Madame de Stael.
+
+"'Madame de Stael would not have understood me,' said she; 'now, I am
+lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a simpleton, but it was
+not the time to speak of myself, and of my painful reminiscences.'
+
+"The large _char a banc_ was always preferred to the handsomest
+carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of two wooden
+benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each other), because it
+was more favorable for conversation. But it afforded no security against
+inclement weather, and this we were soon to experience. The rain poured
+in streams, and we all returned to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was
+there prepared and offered the ladies, in which they might repair the
+disarrangement of their toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them
+long, kept there by the questions of Madame de Stael concerning the
+queen and her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There
+was now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing,
+hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the display
+of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to admire but a
+moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face to face, like the
+rest of the world, with material life, these two celebrated women, who
+are everywhere sought after, and received with such marked
+consideration. There they are, as wet as myself, and as little poetic.'
+We were really behind the curtain, but it was shortly to rise again.
+
+"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a German accent
+was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed: 'Ah, that is
+Prince Augustus of Prussia!'
+
+"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two ladies had
+therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had come merely to pay
+the queen a visit, and it was so near dinner-time, that politeness
+required that he should be invited to remain. And this was doubtless
+what he wished.
+
+"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Stael on his left.
+The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig on her napkin,
+which she twisted between her fingers while speaking, as was her habit.
+The conversation was animated, and it was amusing to observe Madame de
+Stael gesticulating with the little twig in her fingers. One might have
+supposed that some fairy had given her this talisman, and that her
+genius was dependent upon this little twig.
+
+"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were well
+acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de Stael thought
+it would be a delightful task for an intellectual woman, to turn the
+sultan's head, and then to compel him to give his Turks a constitution.
+After dinner, freedom of the press was also a topic of conversation.
+
+"Madame de Stael astonished me, not only by the brilliancy of her
+genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she treated
+questions of that kind, for until then custom had not allowed women to
+discuss such matters. At entertainments, philosophy, morals, sentiment,
+heroism, and the like, had been the subjects of conversation, but the
+emperor monopolized politics. His era was that of actions, and, we may
+say it with pride, of great actions, while the era that followed was
+essentially that of great words, and of political and literary
+controversies.
+
+"Madame de Stael spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that which is
+right, happen what may.'
+
+"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,' said she,
+'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while doing so.'
+
+"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the reflection of
+inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no longer the woman
+of mind only, but also the woman of heart and feeling, and I
+comprehended at this moment how charming she could be.
+
+"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching the
+emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could not have
+known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go to Elba! Do you
+think he would receive me well? I was born to worship this man, and he
+has repelled me.'
+
+'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor say
+that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could compare his
+labors with the exertions of a man who, having the summit of a steep
+mountain ever before his eyes, strains every nerve to attain it, ever
+toiling painfully upward, and allowing his progress to be arrested by no
+obstacle whatever. "All the worse for those," said he, "who meet me on
+my course--I can show them no consideration."'
+
+"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have extended you
+a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his mountain.'
+
+"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Stael; 'I have been injured in
+his opinion.'
+
+"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him ill, if
+you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed you to be his
+enemy, and he feared you, which was something very unusual for him,'
+added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is unfortunate, you will show
+yourself his friend, and prove yourself to be such, and I am satisfied
+that he will receive you well.'
+
+"Madame de Stael also occupied herself a great deal with the young
+princes, but she met with worse success with them than with us. It was
+perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity, that she showered
+unsuitable questions upon them.
+
+"'Do you love your uncle?'
+
+"'Very much, madame!'
+
+"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'
+
+"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'
+
+'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing with the
+words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'
+
+"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not oftener than
+any other.'
+
+"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and
+precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest
+composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me and
+said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is that what
+you call being intellectual?'
+
+"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all indulged in
+an expression of opinion concerning them, and young Prince Napoleon was
+the one upon whom the ladies had made the least flattering impression,
+but he only ventured to intimate as much in a low voice.
+
+"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this visit. One
+could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its inconsiderateness,
+and its wanderings, but there was nothing pleasing, nothing graceful and
+womanly, in Madame de Stael's manner[36]."
+
+[Footnote 36: Cochelet, Memoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. i., pp.
+429-440.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.
+
+The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last withdrawn from
+the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the independent ruler of France.
+In him, in the returned members of his family, and in the emigrants who
+were pouring into the country from all quarters, was represented the
+old era of France, the era of despotic royal power, of brilliant
+manners, of intrigues, of aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury.
+Opposed to them stood the France of the new era, the generation formed
+by Napoleon and the revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no
+other ancestors than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had
+nothing to relate of the _oeil de boeuf_ and the _petites maisons_, but
+an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the hospitals
+in which their wounds had been healed.
+
+These two parties stood opposed to each other.
+
+Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous warfare at the
+court of Louis XVIII., with this difference, however, that young France,
+hitherto ever victorious, now experienced a continuous series of
+reverses and humiliations. Old France was now victorious. Not victorious
+through its gallantry and merit, but through its past, which it
+endeavored to connect with the present, without considering the chasm
+which lay between.
+
+True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April, that
+none of his subjects should be deprived of their titles and dignities;
+and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and barons, could
+therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad and humiliating
+_role_, and they were made to feel that they were only tolerated, and
+not welcome.
+
+The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been entitled to seats in
+the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but the doors of
+these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of the new Napoleonic
+nobility. "The ladies of the old era still retained their _tabouret,_ as
+well as their grand and little _entree_ to the Tuileries and the Louvre,
+and it would have been considered very arrogant if the duchesses of the
+new era had made claim to similar honors."
+
+It was the Duchess d'Angouleme who took the lead and set the Faubourg
+St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant pretensions in
+ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting enemy of the new era,
+born of the revolution, and of its representatives; it is true, however,
+that she, who was the daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had
+herself so long languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the
+horrors of the revolution in their saddest and most painful features.
+She now determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget
+this era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.
+
+At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the Duchess
+d'Angouleme, who sat next to the King of Bavaria, pointed to the
+Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the prince who married a
+princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness to ally one's self in
+such a manner with that general!"
+
+The duchess did not or would not remember that the King of Bavaria, as
+well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other side, and could
+well hear her words, had also allied themselves with General Bonaparte.
+
+After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had formerly
+occupied in the Tuileries, the duchess asked old Dubois, who had
+formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office under the empire,
+and who now showed her the new and elegant instruments provided by
+Josephine--she asked him: "What has become of my piano?"
+
+This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the duchess was
+surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty years had not
+passed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th of August, 1792,
+the day on which the populace demolished the Tuileries, had never been!
+
+But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and the
+Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than one night
+lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the levee of to-day of
+King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that persons they had known as
+children had grown up since they last saw them, and insisted on treating
+every one as they had done in 1789.
+
+After the Empress Josephine's death, Count d'Artois paid a visit to
+Malmaison, a place that had hardly existed before the revolution, and
+which owed its creation to Josephine's love and taste for art.
+
+The empress, who had a great fondness for botany, had caused magnificent
+greenhouses to be erected at Malmaison; in these all the plants and
+flowers of the world had been collected. Knowing her taste, all the
+princes of Europe had sent her, in the days of her grandeur, in order
+to afford her a moment's gratification, the rarest exotics. The Prince
+Regent of England had even found means, during the war with France, to
+send her a number of rare West-Indian plants. In this manner her
+collection had become the richest and most complete in all Europe.
+
+Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view this
+celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being conducted
+through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he recognized his old
+flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of Trianon!"
+
+And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also returned to
+France with the same ideas with which they had fled the country. They
+endeavored, in all their manners, habits, and pretensions, to begin
+again precisely where they had left off in 1789. They had so lively an
+appreciation of their own merit, that they took no notice whatever of
+other people's, and yet their greatest merit consisted in having
+emigrated.
+
+For this merit they now demanded a reward.
+
+All of these returned emigrants demanded rewards, positions, and
+pensions, and considered it incomprehensible that those who were already
+in possession were not at once deprived of them. Intrigues were the
+order of the day, and in general the representatives of the old era
+succeeded in supplanting those of the new era in offices and pensions as
+well as in court honors. All the high positions in the army were filled
+by the marquises, dukes, and counts, of the old era, who had sewed
+tapestry and picked silk in Coblentz, while the France of the new era
+was fighting on the battle-field, and they now began to teach the
+soldiers of the empire the old drill of 1780.
+
+The etiquette of the olden time was restored, and the same luxurious and
+lascivious disposition prevailed among these cavaliers of the former
+century which had been approved in the _oeil de boeuf_ and in the
+_petites maisons_ of the old era.
+
+These old cavaliers felt contempt for the young Frenchmen of the new era
+on account of their pedantic morality; they scornfully regarded men who
+perhaps had not more than one mistress, and to whom the wife of a friend
+was so sacred, that they never dared to approach her with a
+disrespectful thought even.
+
+These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
+reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of the
+many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which they
+unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their sweetest
+relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the remembrance of the old
+_regime_, and when they spoke of this era, they forgot their age and
+debility, and were once more the young _roues_ of the _oeil de boeuf_.
+
+Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis de
+Chimene and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the frivolous era,
+in which the boudoir and the _petites maisons_ were the battle-field,
+and the myrtle instead of the laurel the reward of victory, while these
+gentlemen were conversing of some occurrence under the old government,
+the Duke de Lauraguais, in order to more nearly fix the date of the
+occurrence of which they were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was
+in the year in which I had my _liaison_ with your wife."
+
+"Ah, yes," replied the marquis, with perfect composure, "that was in the
+year 1776."
+
+Neither of the gentlemen found anything strange in this allusion to the
+past. The _liaison_ in question had been a perfectly commonplace matter,
+and it would have been as ridiculous in the duke to deny it as for the
+marquis to have shown any indignation.
+
+The wisest and most enlightened of all these gentlemen was their head,
+King Louis XVIII. himself.
+
+He was well aware of the errors of those who surrounded him, and placed
+but little confidence in the representatives of the old court. But he
+was nevertheless powerless to withdraw himself from their influence, and
+after he had accorded the people the charter, in opposition to the will
+and opinion of the whole royal family, of his whole court and of his
+ministers, and had sworn to support it in spite of the opposition of
+"Monsieur" and the Prince de Conde, who was in the habit of calling the
+charter "_Mademoiselle la Constitution de 1791,_" Louis withdrew to the
+retirement of his apartments in the Tuileries, and left his minister
+Blacas to attend to the little details of government, the king deeming
+the great ones only worthy of his attention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KING LOUIS XVIII.
+
+King Louis XVIII. was, however, in the retirement of his palace, still
+the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the representatives of the old
+era; he clearly saw many things to which his advisers purposely closed
+their eyes. To his astonishment, he observed that the men who had risen
+to greatness under Bonaparte, and who had fallen to the king along with
+the rest of his inheritance, were not so ridiculous, awkward, and
+foolish, as they had been represented to be.
+
+"I had been made to suppose," said Louis XVIII., "that these generals of
+Bonaparte were peasants and ruffians, but such is not the case. He
+schooled these men well. They are polite, and quite as shrewd as the
+representatives of the old court. We must conduct ourselves very
+cautiously toward them."
+
+This kind of recognition of the past which sometimes escaped Louis
+XVIII., was a subject of bitter displeasure to the gentlemen of the old
+era, and they let the king perceive it.
+
+King Louis felt this, and, in order to conciliate his court, he often
+saw himself compelled to humiliate "the _parvenus_" who had forced
+themselves among the former.
+
+Incessant quarrelling and intriguing within the Tuileries was the
+consequence, and Louis was often dejected, uneasy, and angry, in the
+midst of the splendor that surrounded him.
+
+"I am angry with myself and the others," said he on one occasion to an
+intimate friend. "An invisible and secret power is ever working in
+opposition to my will, frustrating my plans, and paralyzing my
+authority."
+
+"And yet you are king!"
+
+"Undoubtedly I am king!" exclaimed Louis, angrily; "but am I also
+master? The king is he who all his life long receives ambassadors, gives
+tiresome audiences, listens to annihilating discourses, goes in state to
+Notre-Dame, dines in public once a year, and is pompously buried in St.
+Denis when he dies. The master is he who commands and can enforce
+obedience, who puts an end to intriguing, and can silence old women as
+well as priests. Bonaparte was king and master at the same time! His
+ministers were his clerks, the kings his brothers merely his agents, and
+his courtiers nothing more than his servants. His ministers vied with
+his senate in servility, and his _Corps Legislatif_ sought to outdo his
+senate and the church in subserviency. He was an extraordinary and an
+enviable man, for he had not only devoted servants and faithful friends,
+but also an accommodating church[37]."
+
+[Footnote 37: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. v., p. 35.]
+
+King Louis XVIII., weary of the incessant intrigues with which his
+courtiers occupied themselves, withdrew himself more and more into the
+retirement of his palace, and left the affairs of state to the care of
+M. de Blacas, who, with all his arrogance and egotism, knew very little
+about governing.
+
+The king preferred to entertain himself with his friends, to read them
+portions of his memoirs, to afford them an opportunity of admiring his
+verses, and to regale them with his witty and not always chaste
+anecdotes; he preferred all these things to tedious and useless disputes
+with his ministers. He had given his people the charter, and his
+ministers might now govern in accordance with this instrument.
+
+"The people demand liberty," said the king. "I give them enough of it to
+protect them against despotism, without according them unbridled
+license. Formerly, the taxes appointed by my mere will would have made
+me odious; now the people tax themselves. Hereafter, I have nothing to
+do but to confer benefits and show mercy, for the responsibility for all
+the evil that is done will rest entirely with my ministers[38]."
+
+[Footnote 38: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 410.]
+
+While his ministers were thus governing according to the charter, and
+"doing evil," the king, who now had nothing but "good" to do, was
+busying himself in settling the weighty questions of the old etiquette.
+
+One of the most important features of this etiquette was the question of
+the fashions that should now be introduced at court; for it was, of
+course, absurd to think of adopting the fashions of the empire, and
+thereby recognize at court that there had really been a change
+since 1789.
+
+They desired to effect a counter-revolution, not only in politics, but
+also in fashions; and this important matter occupied the attention of
+the grand dignitaries of the court for weeks before the first grand
+levee that the king was to hold in the Tuilerics. But, as nothing was
+accomplished by their united wisdom, the king finally held a private
+consultation with his most intimate gentleman and lady friends on this
+important matter, that had, unfortunately, not been determined by
+the charter.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies, M. de Brege, declared to the king that
+it was altogether improper to continue the fashions of the empire at the
+court of the legitimate King of France.
+
+"We are, therefore, to have powder, coats-of-mail, etc.," observed the
+king.
+
+M. de Brege replied, with all gravity, that he had given this subject
+his earnest consideration day and night, but that he had not yet arrived
+at a conclusion worthy of the grand-master of ceremonies of the
+legitimate king.
+
+"Sire," said the Duke de Chartres, smiling, "I, for my part, demand
+knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and the cue."
+
+"But I," exclaimed the Prince de Poir, who had remained in France during
+the empire, "I demand damages, if we are to be compelled to return to
+the old fashions and clothing before the new ones are worn out!"
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies replied to this jest at his expense with
+a profound sigh only; and the king at last put an end to this great
+question, by deciding that every one should be permitted to follow the
+old or new fashions, according to his individual taste and inclination.
+
+The grand-master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this royal
+decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness: "Your
+majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man; uniformity of
+attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads directly to an
+agrarian law."
+
+"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as Figaro. Many
+a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles before a
+procurator in a long gown[39]."
+
+[Footnote 39: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 384.]
+
+But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in fashions, he
+allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce the entire
+etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this etiquette, the king
+could not rise from his couch in the morning until the doors had been
+opened to all those who had the _grande entree_--that is to say, to the
+officers of his household, the marshals of France, several favored
+ladies; further, to his _cafetier_, his tailor, the bearer of his
+slippers, his barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
+apothecaries.
+
+The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored individuals,
+etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie himself, but
+requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their contents of the
+previous day.
+
+The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal family," was
+also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies not only found it
+necessary to make preparations for this dinner weeks beforehand, but the
+king was also compelled to occupy himself with this matter, and to
+appoint for this great ceremony the necessary "officers of
+provisions"--that is to say, the wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand
+doorkeepers, and the cook-in-chief.
+
+At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and indispensable
+"ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in front of the king's
+seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an antique work of art which
+the city of Paris had once presented to a King of France, had also been
+lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792, and the grand-master of ceremonies
+had been compelled to have a new one made by the court jeweller for the
+occasion. This "ship" was a work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel
+deprived of its masts and rigging; and in the same, between two golden
+plates, were contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance
+with the old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and princesses,
+could pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
+were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.
+
+The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the fashion of the
+"royal lady-friends."
+
+Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
+lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess Ducayla
+occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the king, and
+dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be seen on the
+brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by ill-health,
+weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him the _chronique
+scandaleuse_ of the imperial court; she reminded him of the old affairs
+of his youth, which the king knew how to relate with so much wit and
+humor, and which he so loved to relate; it devolved upon her to examine
+the letters of the "black cabinet," and to read the more interesting
+ones to the king.
+
+King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he rewarded her
+in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing _ennui_ from his
+apartments. Finding that the countess had no intimate acquaintance with
+the contents of the Bible, he gave her the splendid Bible of Royaumont,
+ornamented with one hundred and fifty magnificent engravings, after
+paintings of Raphael. Instead of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note
+covered each of these engravings[40].
+
+[Footnote 40: Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France, par St. Edme,
+vol. ii., p. 383. Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 409.]
+
+On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;" and in
+this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note, as in
+the Bible.
+
+For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful countess,
+perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal snuff-box," which
+appellation had its origin in the habit which the king fondly indulged
+in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely shoulder, and then
+snuffing it up with his nose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being introduced
+anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was governing in
+complacent recklessness, time was progressing, notwithstanding his
+endeavors to turn it backward in his flight.
+
+While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new France,
+a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor of Elba, was
+forming great plans of conquest, and preparing in secret understanding
+with the faithful, to leave his place of exile and return to France.
+
+He well knew that he could rely on his old army--on the army who loudly
+cried, "_Vive le roi!_" and then added, _sotto voce_, "_de Rome, et son
+petit papa_[41]!"
+
+[Footnote 41: Cochelet, Memoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. iii, p.
+121.]
+
+Hortense, the new Duchess of St. Leu, took but little part in all these
+things. She had, notwithstanding her youth and beauty, in a measure
+taken leave of the world. She felt herself to be no longer the woman,
+but only the mother; her sons were the objects of all her tenderness and
+love, and she lived for them only. In her retirement at St. Leu, her
+time was devoted to the arts, to reading, and to study; and, after
+having been thus occupied throughout the day, she passed the evening in
+her drawing-room, in unrestrained intellectual conversation with
+her friends.
+
+For she had friends who had remained true, notwithstanding the obscurity
+into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although they filled
+important positions at the new court, had retained their friendship for
+the solitary dethroned queen.
+
+With these friends the Duchess of St. Leu conversed, in the evening, in
+her parlor, of the grand and beautiful past, giving themselves up
+entirely to these recollections, little dreaming that this harmless
+relaxation could awaken suspicion.
+
+For the Duke of Otranto, who had succeeded in his shrewdness in
+retaining his position of minister of police, as well under Louis XVIII.
+as under Napoleon, had his spies everywhere; he knew of all that was
+said in every parlor of Paris; he knew also that it was the custom, in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu, to look from the dark present
+back at the brilliant past, and to console one's self for the littleness
+of the present, with the recollection of the grandeur of departed days!
+And Fouche, or rather the Duke of Otranto, knew how to utilize
+everything.
+
+In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of security,
+to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking place, Fouche
+told him that a conspiracy against the government was being formed in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu; that all those who were secret
+adherents of Bonaparte were in the habit of assembling there, and
+planning the deliverance of the emperor from Elba. In order, however, on
+the other hand, to provide against the possibility of Napoleon's return,
+the Duke of Otranto hastened to the Duchess of St. Leu, to warn her and
+conjure her to be on her guard against the spies by whom she was
+surrounded, as suspicion might be easily excited against her at court.
+
+Hortense paid no attention to this warning; she considered precaution
+unnecessary, and was not willing to deprive herself of her one
+happiness--that of seeing her friends, and of conversing with them in a
+free and unconstrained manner.
+
+The parlors of the duchess, therefore, continued to be thrown open to
+her faithful friends, who had also been the faithful servants of the
+emperor; and the Dukes of Bassano, of Friaul, of Ragusa, of the Moskwa,
+and their wives, as well as the gallant Charles de Labedoyere, and the
+acute Count Renault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, still continued to meet in
+the parlors of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The voice of hostility was raised against them with ever-increasing
+hostility; the reunions that took place at St. Leu were day by day
+portrayed at the Tuileries in more hateful colors; and the poor duchess,
+who lived in sorrow and retirement in her apartments, became an object
+of hatred and envy to these proud ladies of the old aristocracy, who
+were unable to comprehend how this woman could be thought of while they
+were near, although she had been the ornament of the imperial court, and
+who was considered amiable, intellectual, and beautiful, even under the
+legitimate dynasty.
+
+Hortense heard of the ridiculous and malicious reports which had been
+circulated concerning her, and, for the sake of her friends and sons,
+she resolved to put an end to them.
+
+"I must leave my dear St. Leu and go to Paris," said she. "There they
+can better observe all my actions. Reason demands that I should conform
+myself to circumstances."
+
+She therefore abandoned her quiet home at St. Leu, and repaired with her
+children and her court to Paris, to again take up her abode in her
+dwelling in the Rue de la Victoire.
+
+But this step gave fresh fuel to the calumnies of her enemies, who saw
+in her the embodied remembrance of the empire which they hated and at
+the same time feared.
+
+The Bonapartists still continued their visits to her parlors, as before;
+and no appeals, no representations could induce Hortense to close her
+doors against her faithful friends, for fear that their fidelity might
+excite suspicion against herself.
+
+In order, however, to contradict the report that adherents of Napoleon
+only were in the habit of frequenting her parlors, the duchess also
+extended the hospitalities of her parlors to the strangers who brought
+letters of recommendation, and who desired to be introduced to her.
+Great numbers hastened to avail themselves of this permission.
+
+The most brilliant and select circle was soon assembled around the
+duchess. There, were to be found the great men of the empire, who came
+out of attachment; distinguished strangers, who came out of admiration;
+and, finally, the aristocrats of the old era, who came out of curiosity,
+who came to see if the Duchess of St. Leu was really so intelligent,
+amiable, and graceful, as she was said to be.
+
+The parlors of the duchess were therefore more talked of in Paris than
+they had been at St. Leu. The old duchesses and princesses of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, with all their ancestors, prejudices, and
+pretensions, were enraged at hearing this everlasting praise of the
+charming queen, and endeavored to appease their wrath by renewed
+hostilities against its object.
+
+It was not enough that she was calumniated, at court and in society, as
+a dangerous person; the arm of the press was also wielded against her.
+
+As we have said, Hortense was the embodied remembrance of the empire,
+and it was therefore determined that she should be destroyed.
+_Brochures_ and pamphlets were published, in which the king was appealed
+to, to banish from Paris, and even from France, the dangerous woman who
+was conspiring publicly, and even under the very eyes of the government,
+for Napoleon, and to banish with her the two children also, the two
+Napoleons; "for," said these odious accusers, "to leave these two
+princes here, means to raise in France wolves that would one day ravage
+their country[42]."
+
+[Footnote 42: Cochelet, Memoires sur la Reins Hortense, vol. ii., p.
+330.]
+
+Hortense paid but little attention to these reports and calumnies. She
+was too much accustomed to being misunderstood and wrongly judged, to
+allow herself to be disquieted thereby. She knew that calumnies were
+never refuted by contradiction, and that it was therefore better to meet
+them with proud silence, and to conquer them by contempt, instead of
+giving them new life by combating and contradicting them.
+
+She herself entertained such contempt for calumny that she never allowed
+anything abusive to be said in her presence that would injure any one in
+her estimation. When, on one occasion, while she was still Queen of
+Holland, a lady of Holland took occasion to speak ill of another lady,
+on account of her political opinions, the queen interrupted her, and
+said: "Madame, here I am a stranger to all parties, and receive all
+persons with the same consideration, for I love to hear every one well
+spoken of; and I generally receive an unfavorable impression of those
+only who speak ill of others[43]."
+
+[Footnote 43: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+And, strange to say, she herself was ever the object of calumny and
+accusation.
+
+"During twenty-five years, I have never been separated from Princess
+Hortense," says Louise de Cochelet, "and I have never observed in her
+the slightest feeling of bitterness against any one; ever good and
+gentle, she never failed to take an interest in those who were unhappy;
+and she endeavored to help them whenever and wherever they presented
+themselves. And this noble and gentle woman was always the object of
+hatred and absurd calumnies, and against all this she was armed with the
+integrity and purity of her actions and intentions only[44]."
+
+[Footnote 44: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 378.]
+
+Nor did Hortense now think of contradicting the calumnies that had been
+circulated concerning her. Her mind was occupied with other and far more
+important matters.
+
+An ambassador of her husband, who resided in Florence, had come to Paris
+in order to demand of Hortense, in the name of Louis Bonaparte, his
+two sons.
+
+After much discussion, he had finally declared that he would be
+satisfied, if his wife would send him his eldest son, Napoleon
+Louis, only.
+
+But the loving mother could not and would not consent to a separation
+from either of her children; and as, in spite of her entreaties, her
+husband persisted in refusing to allow her to retain both of them, she
+resolved, in the anguish of maternal love, to resort to the most extreme
+means to retain the possession of her sons.
+
+She informed her husband's ambassador that it was her fixed purpose to
+retain possession of her children, and appealed to the law to recognize
+and protect them, and not allow her sons to be deprived of their rights
+as Frenchmen, by going into a compulsory exile.
+
+While the Duchess of St. Leu was being accused of conspiring in favor of
+Napoleon, her whole soul was occupied with the one question, which was
+to decide whether one of her sons could be torn from her side or not;
+and, if she conspired at all, it was only with her lawyer in order to
+frustrate her husband's plans.
+
+But the calumnies and accusations of the press were nevertheless
+continued; and at last her friends thought it necessary to lay before
+the queen a journal that contained a violent and abusive article against
+her, and to request that they might be permitted to reply to it.
+
+"With a sad smile, Hortense read the article and returned the newspaper.
+
+"It is extremely mortifying to be scorned by one's countrymen," said
+she, "but it would be useless to make any reply. I can afford to
+disregard such attacks--they are powerless to harm me."
+
+But when on the following morning the same journal contained a venomous
+and odious article levelled at her husband, Louis Bonaparte, her
+generous indignation was aroused, and, oblivious of all their
+disagreements, and even of the process now pending between them, she
+remembered only that it was the father of her children whom they had
+dared to attack, and that he was not present to defend himself. It
+therefore devolved upon her to defend him.
+
+"I am enraged, and I desire that M. Despres shall reply to this article
+at once," said Hortense. "Although paternal love on the one side, and
+maternal love on the other, has involved us in a painful process, it
+nevertheless concerns no one else, and it disgraces neither of us. I
+should be in despair, if this sad controversy were made the pretext for
+insulting the father of my children and the honored name he bears. For
+the very reason that I stand alone, am I called on to defend the absent
+to the best of my ability. Therefore let M. Despres come to me; I will
+instruct him how to answer this disgraceful article!"
+
+On the following day, an able and eloquent article in defence of Louis
+Bonaparte appeared in the journal--an article that shamed and silenced
+his accusers--an article which the prince, whose cause it so warmly
+espoused, probably never thought of attributing to the wife to whose
+maternal heart be had caused such anguish[45].
+
+[Footnote 45: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 303.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE BURIAL OF LOUIS XVI. AND HIS WIFE.
+
+The earnest endeavors of the Bourbon court to find the resting-place of
+the remains of the royal couple who had died on the scaffold, and who
+had expiated the crimes of their predecessors rather than their own,
+were at last successful. The remains of the illustrious martyrs had
+been sought for in accordance with the directions of persons who had
+witnessed their sorrowful and contemptuous burial, and the body of Louis
+XVI. was found in a desolate corner of the grave-yard of St. Roch, and
+in another place also that of Queen Marie Antoinette.
+
+It was the king's wish, and a perfectly natural and just one, to inter
+these bodies in the royal vault at St. Denis, but he wished to do it
+quietly and without pomp; his acute political tact taught him that these
+sad remains should not be made the occasion of a political
+demonstration, and that it was unwise to permit the bones of Louis XVI.
+to become a new apple of discord.
+
+But the king's court, even his nearest relatives, his ministers, and the
+whole troop of arrogant courtiers, who desired, by means of an
+ostentatious interment, not only to show a proper respect for the
+beheaded royal pair, but also to punish those whom they covertly called
+"regicides," and whom they were nevertheless now compelled to
+tolerate--the king's entire court demanded a solemn and ceremonious
+interment; and Louis, who, as he himself had said, "was king, but not
+master," was compelled to yield to this demand.
+
+Preparations were therefore made for an ostentatious interment of the
+royal remains, and it was determined that the melancholy rites should
+take place on the 21st of January, 1815, the anniversary of painful
+memories and unending regret for the royal family.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand, the noble and intelligent eulogist and friend of
+the Bourbons, caused an article to be inserted in the _Journal des
+Debats_, in which he announced the impending ceremony. This article was
+then republished in pamphlet form; and so great was the sympathy of the
+Parisians in the approaching event, that thirty thousand copies were
+disposed of, in Paris alone, in one day.
+
+On the 20th of January the graves of the martyrs were opened, and all
+the princes of the royal house who were present, knelt down at the edge
+of the grave to mingle their prayers with those of the thousands who had
+accompanied them to the church-yard.
+
+But the king was right. This act, that appeared to some to be a mere act
+of justice, seemed an insult to others, and reminded them of the dark
+days of error and fanaticism, in which they had allowed themselves to be
+drawn into the vortex of the general delirium. Many of those who in the
+Assembly had voted for the death of the king, were now residing at
+Paris, and even at court, as for instance Fouche, and to them the
+approaching ceremony seemed an insult.
+
+"Are you aware," exclaimed Descourtis, as he rushed into the apartment
+of Cambaceres, who was at that moment conversing with the Count de Pere,
+"have you already been informed that this ceremony is really to take
+place to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, to-morrow is the fated day. To-morrow we are to be delivered over
+to the daggers of fanatics."
+
+"Is this the pardon that was promised us?"
+
+"As for that," exclaimed the Count de Pere (a good royalist), "I was
+not aware that there was an article in the constitution forbidding the
+reinterment of the mortal remains of the royal pair. The proceeding will
+be perfectly lawful."
+
+"It is their purpose to infuriate the populace," exclaimed Descourtis,
+pale with inward agitation. "Old recollections are to be recalled and a
+mute accusation hurled at us. But we shall some day be restored to power
+again, and then we will remember also!"
+
+Cambaceres, who had listened to this conversation in silence, now
+stepped forward, and, taking Descourtis's hand in his own, pressed
+it tenderly.
+
+"Ah, my friend," said he, in sad and solemn tones, "I would we were
+permitted to march behind the funeral-car in mourning-robes to-morrow!
+We owe this proof of repentance to France and to ourselves!"
+
+The solemn funeral celebration took place on the following day. All
+Paris took part in it. Every one, even the old republicans, the
+Bonapartists as well as the royalists, joined the funeral procession, in
+order to testify that they had abandoned the past and were repentant.
+
+Slowly and solemnly, amid the ringing of all the bells, the roll of the
+drum, the thunders of artillery, and the chants of the clergy, the
+procession moved onward.
+
+The golden crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, shone
+lustrously in the sunlight. It had fallen from the heads of the royal
+pair while they still lived; it now adorned them in death.
+
+Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived at the
+Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre. Suddenly a
+terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the air.
+
+The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen down,
+touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into fragments
+on the glittering snow of the street.
+
+This occurred on the 21st of January; two months later, at the same
+hour, and on the same day, the crown of Louis XVIII. fell from his head,
+and Napoleon placed it on his own!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.
+
+A cry of tremendous import reverberated through Paris, all France, and
+all Europe, in the first days of March, 1815. Napoleon, it was said, had
+quitted Elba, and would soon arrive in France!
+
+The royalists heard it with dismay, the Bonapartists with a delight that
+they hardly took the pains to conceal.
+
+Hortense alone took no part in the universal delight of the
+imperialists. Her soul was filled with profound sadness and dark
+forebodings. "I lament this step," said she; "I would have sacrificed
+every thing to prevent his return to France, because I am of the belief
+that no good can come of it. Many will declare for, and many against
+him, and we shall have a civil war, of which the emperor himself may be
+the victim[46]."
+
+[Footnote 46: Cochelet, vol. ii., p. 348.]
+
+In the meanwhile the general excitement was continually increasing; it
+took possession of every one, and at this time none would have been
+capable of giving cool and sensible advice.
+
+Great numbers of the emperor's friends came to the Duchess of St. Leu,
+and demanded of her counsel, assistance, and encouragement, accusing her
+of indifference and want of sympathy, because she did not share their
+hopes, and was sad instead of rejoicing with them.
+
+But the spies of the still ruling government, who lay in wait around the
+queen's dwelling, did not hear her words; they only saw that the
+emperor's former generals and advisers were in the habit of repairing to
+her parlors, and that was sufficient to stamp Hortense as the head of
+the conspiracy which had for its object the return of Napoleon
+to France.
+
+The queen perceived the danger of her situation, but she bowed her head
+to receive the blows of Fate in silent resignation. "I am environed by
+torments and perplexities," said she, "but I see no means of avoiding
+them. There is no resource for me but to arm myself with courage, and
+that I will do."
+
+The royal government, however, still hoped to be able to stem the
+advancing tide, and compel the waves of insurrection to surge backward
+and destroy those who had set them in motion.
+
+They proposed to treat the great event which made France glow with new
+pulsations, as a mere insurrection, that had been discovered in good
+time, and could therefore be easily repressed. They therefore
+determined, above all, to seize and render harmless the "conspirators,"
+that is to say, all those of whom it was known that they had remained
+faithful to the emperor in their hearts.
+
+Spies surrounded the houses of all the generals, dukes, and princes of
+the empire, and it was only in disguise and by the greatest dexterity
+that they could evade the vigilance of the police.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was at last also compelled to yield to the urgent
+entreaties of her friends, and seek an asylum during these days of
+uncertainty and danger. She quitted her dwelling in disguise, and,
+penetrating through the army of spies who lay in wait around the house
+and in the street in which she resided, she happily succeeded in
+reaching the hiding-place prepared for her by a faithful servant of her
+mother. She had already confided her children to another servant who had
+remained true to her in her time of trouble.
+
+The Duke of Otranto, now once more the faithful Fouche of the empire,
+was also to have been arrested, but he managed to effect his escape.
+General Lavalette--who was aware that the dwelling of the Duchess of St.
+Leu was no longer watched by the police, who had discovered that the
+duchess was no longer there--Lavalette took advantage of this
+circumstance, and concealed himself in her dwelling, and M. de Dandre,
+the chief of police, who had vainly endeavored to catch the so-called
+conspirators, exclaimed in anguish: "It is impossible to find any one;
+it has been so much noised about that these Bonapartists were to be
+arrested, that they are now all hidden away."
+
+Like a bombshell the news suddenly burst upon the anxious and doubting
+capital: "The emperor has been received by the people in Grenoble with
+exultation, and the troops that were to have been led against him have,
+together with their chieftain, Charles de Labedoyere, gone over to the
+emperor. The gates of the city were thrown open, and the people advanced
+to meet him with shouts of welcome and applause; and now Napoleon stood
+no longer at the head of a little body of troops, but at the head of a
+small army that was increasing with every hour."
+
+The government still endeavored, through its officials and through the
+public press, to make the Parisians disbelieve this intelligence.
+
+But the government had lost faith in itself. It heard the old, the hated
+cry, "Vive l'empereur!" resounding through the air; it heard the
+fluttering of the victorious battle-flags of Marengo, Arcola, Jena, and
+Austerlitz! The Emperor Napoleon was still the conquering hero, who
+swayed destiny and compelled it to declare for him.
+
+A perfect frenzy of dismay took possession of the royalists; and when
+they learned that Napoleon had already arrived in Lyons, that its
+inhabitants had received him with enthusiasm, and that its garrison had
+also declared for him, their panic knew no bounds.
+
+The royalist leaders assembled at the house of Count de la Pere, for the
+purpose of holding a last great discussion and consultation. The most
+eminent persons, men and women, differing widely on other subjects, but
+a unit on this point, assembled here with the same feelings of patriotic
+horror, and with the same desire to promote the general welfare. There
+were Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant, Count Laine, and Chateaubriand;
+there were the Duke de Nemours, and Count de la Pere, and around them
+gathered the whole troop of anxious royalists, expecting and hoping that
+the eloquent lips of these celebrated personages who stood in their
+midst would give them consolation and new life.
+
+Benjamin Constant spoke first. He said that, to Napoleon, that is, to
+force, force must be opposed. Bonaparte was armed with the love of the
+soldiers, they must arm themselves with the love of the citizens. His
+appearance was imposing, like the visage of Caesar; it would be
+necessary to oppose to him an equally sublime countenance. Lafayette
+should, therefore, be made commander-in-chief of the French army.
+
+M. de Chateaubriand exclaimed, with noble indignation, that the first
+step to be taken by the government was to punish severely a ministry
+that was so short-sighted, and had committed so many faults. Laine
+declared, with a voice tremulous with emotion, that all was lost, and
+that but one means of confounding tyranny remained; a scene, portraying
+the whole terror, dismay and grief of the capital at the approach of the
+hated enemy, should be arranged. In accordance with this plan, the whole
+population of Paris--the entire National Guard, the mothers, the young
+girls, the children, the old and the young--were to pass out of the
+city, and await the tyrant; and this aspect of a million of men fleeing
+from the face of a single human being was to move or terrify him who
+came to rob them of their peace!
+
+In her enthusiastic and energetic manner, Madame de Stael pronounced an
+anathema against the usurper who was about to kindle anew, in weeping,
+shivering France, the flames of war.
+
+All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do nothing
+but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent lips of
+these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were, nothing more
+than a bulletin concerning the condition of the patient, and concerning
+the mortal wounds which he had received. This patient was France; and
+the royalists, who were assembled in the house of Count de la Pere, now
+felt that the patient's case was hopeless, and that nothing remained to
+them but to go into exile, and bemoan his sad fate[47]!
+
+[Footnote 47: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 99.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.
+
+While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and despairing,
+King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and sense of
+security. That is to say, they had taken care not to inform him of the
+real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had been informed that
+Bonaparte had been everywhere received with coldness and silence, and
+that the army would not respond to his appeal, but would remain true to
+the king. The exultation with which the people everywhere received the
+advancing emperor found, therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the
+crowd who pressed around the king when he repaired to the hall of the
+_Corps Legislatif_ to hold an encouraging address, was not the people,
+but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and gentlemen of
+the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the first entrance, acted
+the part to which the people were not disposed to adapt themselves, and
+transformed themselves for a moment into the people, in order to show to
+the king the demonstrations of his people's love.
+
+The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
+continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance was
+in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this deception so far
+that they had informed the king that Lyons had closed its gates to
+Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet him, vowing that he would
+bring the emperor back to Paris in an iron cage.
+
+The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute, when
+suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of Orleans, who,
+according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a victor, arrived in
+Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their soldiers and servants, and
+informed Louis that Lyons had received the emperor with open arms, and
+that no resource had been left them but to betake themselves to flight.
+
+And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence followed the
+first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his tottering throne,
+Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile position toward his old
+companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the emperor, and his army had
+followed him with exultation.
+
+The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and learned how
+greatly he had been deceived.
+
+"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not listen to
+the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell me the truth!"
+
+At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to his
+brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who surrounded
+him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and the Minister
+Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of victory, now stepped
+in pale and trembling.
+
+The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now plainly
+impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had desired to
+hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling minister.
+
+A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all were
+fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general silence, he was
+heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion: "Sire, all is lost; the
+army, as well as the people, betray your majesty. It will be necessary
+for your majesty to leave Paris."
+
+The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an
+inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared to
+return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down sorrowfully.
+
+The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his breast.
+
+"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile; "heretofore it
+has been your purpose to make me govern for you, hereafter I shall
+govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to the throne of my
+fathers once more, you will be made to understand that I will profit by
+the experience you have given me[48]!"
+
+[Footnote 48: The king's own words. Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite,
+vol. i. p. 156.]
+
+A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count Blacas,
+without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing a torch, the
+king left the once more desolate and solitary Tuileries, and fled
+to Holland.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon
+entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts of the
+people, and the thundering "_Vive l'empereur_" of the troops. On the
+same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had but yesterday
+fluttered, the _tricolore_ of the empire now flung out its folds to
+the breeze.
+
+In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his generals,
+and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing and greeting
+him. An immense concourse of people surged around the entrance on the
+stair-ways and in the halls.
+
+Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor was
+carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while shouts of
+joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined the more
+fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his apartments, and rent the
+air with exulting cries of "_Vive l'empereur_!"
+
+In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was received
+by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen Hortense, who had
+abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried to the Tuileries to
+salute the emperor.
+
+Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the health
+of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have placed my
+nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain in the midst
+of my enemies."
+
+Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The emperor seemed
+not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship of my enemies," said
+he, "and have placed yourself under obligations to the Bourbons. I
+depend on Eugene; I hope he will soon be here. I wrote to him
+from Lyons."
+
+This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He was angry
+with her for having remained in France, and at the same time the flying
+Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of her: "The Duchess of
+St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues alone have brought Napoleon
+back to Paris."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE HUNDRED DAYS.
+
+The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a myth of
+the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds
+with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp
+of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within the
+space of a minute.
+
+These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these hundred
+days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth can offer of
+fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as well as of all
+that the earth contains that is disgraceful, miserable, traitorous, and
+perfidious.
+
+Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed to hail
+the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to assure him
+of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that they had only
+obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.
+
+The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the Tuileries,
+where the emperor now held his glittering court again. There was,
+however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the honors of the
+court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who had not returned
+with her husband; and the emperor could not now show the people his own
+son, but could only point to his two nephews, the sons of Hortense.
+
+The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had been
+compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations; he had
+comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her children, in
+continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her reluctance. After
+this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon extended his hand to
+Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and begged her to name a wish, in
+order that he might fulfil it.
+
+Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned by the
+royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing Bourbons to be
+the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now entreated the emperor
+to permit the Duchess d'Orleans, who had not been able to leave Paris on
+account of a broken limb, to remain, and to accord her a pension
+besides. She told the emperor that she had received a letter from the
+duchess, in which she begged for her intercession in obtaining some
+assistance from the emperor, assuring her that it was urgently Deeded,
+in her depressed circumstances.
+
+The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter Hortense;
+and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon accorded a pension
+of four hundred thousand francs to the Duchess d'Orleans, the mother of
+King Louis Philippe[49].
+
+[Footnote 49: La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et en Angleterre.
+Ecrit par elle-meme, p. 185.]
+
+A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two hundred
+thousand francs was also accorded to the Duchess of Bourbon, who had
+also besought the queen to exert her influence in her behalf; and both
+ladies now hastened to assure Hortense of their everlasting gratitude.
+The fulfilment of her wish filled Hortense with delight; she was as
+proud of it as of a victory achieved.
+
+"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for these
+ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a few clays
+before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a state!"
+
+But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was now no
+longer the Duchess of St. Leu, but the queen and the ornament of the
+court once more; all heads now bowed before her again, and the high-born
+ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her existence during the past year,
+now hastened to do homage to the queen.
+
+"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen, "unfortunately, you
+were always absent in the country when I called to pay my respects
+during the past winter."
+
+The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which she
+accompanied with a smile.
+
+Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point of
+attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public officials
+now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in order to pay
+their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each day beheld new
+_fetes_ and ceremonies.
+
+The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of the
+_Champ de Mai_, that took place on the first of June, and at which the
+emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace, presented to his
+army the new eagles and flags, which they were henceforth to carry into
+battle instead of the lilies of the Bourbons.
+
+It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of human
+beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made the welkin
+ring with their "_Vive l'empereur_!"--to behold the proud, triumphant
+soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles consecrated by the priests
+at the altar that stood before the emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle
+to behold the hundreds of richly-attired ladies glittering with
+diamonds, who occupied the tiers of seats that stood immediately behind
+the emperor's chair, and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the
+first seats.
+
+The air was so balmy, the sun shone so lustriously over all this
+splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and the
+strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while all were
+applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the emperor's chair
+covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay before her, the grand
+ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her, "might perhaps be the last
+of the empire[50]."
+
+[Footnote 50: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.]
+
+Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this universal
+delight and contentment.
+
+The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she already
+perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the mutterings of the
+storm that was soon, and this time forever, to hurl the emperor's throne
+to the ground. She knew that a day would suddenly come when all this
+brightness would grow dim, and when all those who now bowed so humbly
+before him, would turn from him again--a day when they would deny and
+desert the emperor as they had already done once before, and that, from
+that day on, the present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as
+a debt. But this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarrassment.
+
+The emperor was once more there; he was the lord and father left her by
+her mother Josephine, and it was her duty and desire to be true and
+obedient to him as long as she lived.
+
+The sun still shone lustrously over the restored empire, and in the
+parlors of Queen Hortense, where the diplomats, statesmen, artists, and
+all the notables of the empire were in the habit of assembling, gayety
+reigned supreme. There music and literature were discussed, and homage
+done to all the fine arts.
+
+Benjamin Constant, who had with great rapidity transformed himself from
+an enthusiastic royalist into an imperial state-councillor, came to the
+queen's parlors and regaled her guests by reading to them his romance
+Adolphe; and Metternich, the Austrian ambassador seemed to have no other
+destiny than to amuse the queen and the circle of ladies assembled
+around them, and to invent new social games for their entertainment.
+
+Metternich knew how to bring thousands of charming little frivolities
+into fashion; he taught the ladies the charming and poetic language of
+flowers, and made it a symbolic means of conversation and correspondence
+in the queen's circle. He also, to the great delight of the court,
+invented the alphabet of gems; in this alphabet each gem represented its
+initial letter, and, by combinations, names and devices were formed,
+which were worn in necklaces, bracelets, and rings.
+
+The little games with which the diplomatic Metternich occupied himself
+during the hundred days at the imperial court at Paris, were, it
+appears, of the most innocent and harmless nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+NAPOLEON'S LAST ADIEU.
+
+The storm, of the approach of which Queen Hortense had so long had a
+foreboding, was preparing to burst over France. All the princes of
+Europe who had once been Napoleon's allies had now declared against him.
+They all refused to acknowledge Napoleon as emperor, or to treat with
+him as one having any authority.
+
+"No peace, no reconciliation with this man," wrote the Emperor Alexander
+to Pozzo di Borgo; "all Europe is of the same opinion concerning him.
+With the exception of this man, any thing they may demand; no preference
+for any one; no war after this man shall have been set aside[51]."
+
+[Footnote 51: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 90.]
+
+But, in order to "set this man aside," war was necessary. The allied
+armies therefore advanced toward the boundaries of France; the great
+powers declared war against France, or rather against the Emperor
+Napoleon; and France, which had so long desired peace, and had only
+accepted the Bourbons because it hoped to obtain it of them, France was
+now compelled to take up the gauntlet.
+
+On the 12th of June the emperor left Paris with his army, in order to
+meet the advancing enemy. Napoleon himself, who had hitherto gone into
+battle, his countenance beaming with an assurance of victory, now looked
+gloomy and dejected, for he well knew that on the fate of his army now
+depended his own, and the fate of France.
+
+This time it was not a question of making conquests, but of saving the
+national independence, and it was the mother-earth, red with the blood
+of her children, that was now to be defended.
+
+Paris, that for eighty days had been the scene of splendor and
+festivity, now put on its mourning attire. All rejoicings were at an
+end, and every one listened hopefully to catch the first tones of the
+thunder of a victorious battle.
+
+But the days of victory were over; the cannon thundered, the battle was
+fought, but instead of a triumph it was an overthrow.
+
+At Waterloo, the eagles that had been consecrated on the first of June,
+on the _Champ de Mai_, sank in the dust; the emperor returned to Paris,
+a fugitive, and broken down in spirit, while the victorious allies were
+approaching the capital.
+
+At the first intelligence of his return, Hortense hastened to the
+Elysee, where he had taken up his residence, to greet him. During the
+last few days she had been a prey to gloomy thoughts; now that the
+danger had come, now when all were despairing, she was composed,
+resolute, and ready to stand at the emperor's side to the last.
+
+Napoleon was lost, and Hortense knew it; but he now had most need of
+friends, and she remained true, while so many of his nearest friends and
+relatives were deserting him.
+
+On the twenty-second day of June the emperor sent in his abdication in
+favor of his son, the King of Rome, to the chambers; and a week later
+the chambers proclaimed Napoleon's son Emperor of France, under the name
+of Napoleon II.
+
+But this emperor was a child of four years, and was, moreover, not in
+France, but in the custody of the Emperor of Austria, whose army was now
+marching on Paris with hostile intent!
+
+Napoleon, now no longer Emperor of France, had been compelled to take
+the crown from his head a second time; and for the second time he
+quitted Paris to await the destiny to be appointed him by the allies.
+
+This time he did not repair to Fontainebleau, but to Malmaison--to
+Malmaison, that had once been Josephine's paradise, and where her heart
+had at last bled to death. This charming resort had passed into the
+possession of Queen Hortense; and Napoleon, who but yesterday had ruled
+over a whole empire, and to-day could call nothing, not even the space
+of ground on which he stood, his own, Napoleon asked Hortense to receive
+him at Malmaison.
+
+Hortense accorded his request joyfully, and, when her friends learned
+this, and in their dismay and anxiety conjured her not to identify in
+this manner herself and children with the fate of the emperor, but to
+consider well the danger that would result from such a course, the queen
+replied resolutely: "That is an additional reason for holding firm to my
+determination. I consider it my sacred duty to remain true to the
+emperor to the last, and the greater the danger that threatens the
+emperor, the happier I shall be in having it in my power to show him my
+entire devotion and gratitude."
+
+And when, in this decision, when her whole future hung in the balance,
+one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind the queen of
+the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once been put in
+circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon, and suggested that
+she would give new strength to them by now receiving the emperor at
+Malmaison, Hortense replied with dignity: "What do I care for these
+calumnies? I fulfil the duty imposed on me by feeling and principle. The
+emperor has always treated me as his child; I shall therefore ever
+remain his devoted and grateful daughter; it is my first and greatest
+necessity to be at peace with myself[52]."
+
+[Footnote 52: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 149.]
+
+Hortense therefore repaired with the emperor to Malmaison, and the
+faithful, who were not willing to leave him in his misfortune, gathered
+around him, watched over his life, and gave to his residence a fleeting
+reflection of the old grandeur and magnificence. For they who now stood
+around Napoleon, guarding his person from any immediate danger that
+threatened him at the hands of fanatic enemies or hired assassins, were
+marshals, generals, dukes, and princes.
+
+But Napoleon's fate was already decided--it was an inevitable one, and
+when the intelligence reached Malmaison that the enemy was approaching
+nearer and nearer, and that resistance was no longer made anywhere, and
+when Napoleon saw that all was lost, his throne, his crown, and even the
+love which he imagined he had for ever built up for himself in the
+hearts of the French people by his great deeds and victories--when he
+saw this he determined to fly, no matter whither, but away from the
+France that would no longer rally to his call, the France that had
+abandoned him.
+
+The emperor resolved to fly to Rochefort, and to embark there in order
+to return to Elba. The provisional government that had established
+itself in Paris, and had sent an ambassador to Napoleon at Malmaison
+with the demand that he should depart at once, now instructed this
+ambassador to accompany the emperor on his journey, and not to leave him
+until he should have embarked.
+
+Napoleon was ready to comply with this demand. He determined to depart
+on the afternoon of the 30th of June. He had nothing more to do but to
+take leave of his friends and family. He did this with cold, tearless
+composure, with an immovable, iron countenance; no muscle of his face
+quivered, and his glance was severe and imperious.
+
+But, when Hortense brought in her two sons, when he had clasped them in
+his arms for the last time, then a shadow passed over his countenance;
+then his pale compressed lips quivered, and he turned away to conceal
+the tears that stood in his eyes.
+
+But Hortense had seen them, and in her heart she preserved the
+remembrance of these tears as the most precious gem of her departed
+fortune. As the emperor then turned to her to bid her adieu in his
+former cold and immovable manner, Hortense, who well knew that a volcano
+of torments must be glowing under this cold lava, entreated him to grant
+her a last favor.
+
+A painful smile illumined the emperor's countenance for a moment. There
+was, it seemed, still something that he could grant; he was not
+altogether powerless! With a mute inclination of the head he signified
+his assent. Hortense handed him a broad black belt.
+
+"Sire," said she, "wear this belt around your body and beneath your
+clothing. Conceal it carefully, but in the time of necessity remember it
+and open it."
+
+The emperor took the belt in his hand, and its weight startled him.
+
+"What does it contain?" asked he: "I must know what it contains!"
+
+"Sire," said Hortense, blushing and hesitating: "Sire, it is my large
+diamond necklace that I have taken apart and sewed in this belt. Your
+majesty may need money in a critical moment, and you will not deny me
+this last happiness, your acceptance of this token."
+
+The emperor refused, but Hortense entreated him so earnestly that he was
+at last compelled to yield, and accept this love-offering.
+
+They then took a hasty and mute leave of each other, and Hortense, in
+order to hide her tears, hastened with her children from the room.
+
+The emperor summoned a servant, and ordered that no one else should be
+admitted; but at this moment the door was hastily thrown open, and a
+national guard entered the room.
+
+"Talma!" exclaimed the emperor, almost gayly, as he extended his hand.
+
+"Yes, Talma, sire," said he, pressing the emperor's hand to his lips.
+"I disguised myself in this dress, in order that I might get here to
+take leave of your majesty."
+
+"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor, sadly.
+"I shall never be able to admire you in your great _roles_ again, Talma.
+I am about to depart, never to return again. You will play the emperor
+on many an evening, but not I, Talma! My part is at an end!"
+
+"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma, with
+generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown and the
+purple robe."
+
+"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.
+
+"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a throne that
+is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected for yourself on
+the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the books of history. And
+every one, no matter to what nation he may belong, who reads of your
+great deeds, will be inspired by them, and will acknowledge himself to
+be one of your people, and bow down before the emperor in reverence."
+
+"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
+deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"
+
+"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will also one
+day regret, having deserted the great man he once called brother!" And,
+in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind Napoleon of one of his
+moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your majesty perhaps remembers
+that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor of Russia made you so tender a
+declaration of his love, publicly and before the whole world? But no,
+you cannot remember it; for you it was a matter of no moment; but I--I
+shall never forget it! It was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.'
+I looked up at the box in which your majesty sat, between the King of
+Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second
+Alexander of Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft
+and saw you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship
+of a great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
+Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears
+choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this applause
+was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor Alexander[53]!"
+
+[Footnote 53: This scene is entirely historical. See Bossuet, Memoires;
+Bourrienne, Memoires; Cochelet and Une Femme de Qualite.]
+
+While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes flashing, a
+rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for an instant, he
+smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised up the humiliated
+emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.
+
+Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand to bid
+him adieu.
+
+As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up in
+front of the house. It was Letitia, the emperor's mother, who had come
+to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless suspense; in
+his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to witness this
+leave-taking.
+
+"Madame mere" walked past Talma in silence, and without observing him.
+She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the room, his sombre
+and flashing glance fastened on her with an unutterable expression. Now
+they stood face to face, mother and son. The emperor's countenance
+remained immovable as though hewn out of marble.
+
+They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly trickled
+down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background, weeping
+bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Letitia now raised both hands and
+extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said she, in full and
+sonorous tones.
+
+Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and
+fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother, adieu!"
+
+Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her hand fall.
+Letitia turned to go, and at this moment General Bertrand appeared at
+the door to announce that all was prepared for the journey[54].
+
+[Footnote 54: This leave-taking was exactly as above described, and
+Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See her Memoires, vol.
+iii, P. 173.]
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+_THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE BANISHMENT OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the protection
+of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of France. But this
+time he did not return with his former mild and conciliatory
+disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came unaccompanied by
+mercy. The old generals and marshals of the empire, who had not been
+able to resist their chieftain's call, were now banished, degraded, or
+executed. Ney and Labedoyere paid for their fidelity to the emperor with
+their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the Bonapartes
+were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been circulated in
+1814 against the Duchess of St. Leu were now to bear bitter fruit. These
+were the dragon's teeth from which the armed warriors had sprung, who
+now levelled their swords at the breast of a defenceless woman.
+
+King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had not
+forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The Duchess of St. Leu
+is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon back!" Now that
+he was again king, he thought of it, and determined to punish her. He
+requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he should this time not call
+on the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation concerning
+Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering web with which
+Madame de Kruedener had enveloped him, and separated from the reality of
+the world, acceded to the wishes of the Bourbons, and abandoned the
+queen. This was the signal that let loose the general wrath of the
+royalists; they could now freely utter their scorn and malice. By low
+calumnies they could now compensate themselves for their humiliation of
+the past, for having been compelled to approach the daughter of
+Viscountess de Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.
+
+They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with boundless fury,
+for this very fury proved their royalism, and to hate and calumniate
+Bonaparte and his family was to love and flatter the Bourbons.
+
+Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the duchess,
+whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of the empire,
+and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as well as the column
+on the _Place Vendome_.
+
+While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her apartments, in
+sadness and desolation, the report was circulated that she was again
+conspiring, and that she was in the habit of leaving her house every
+evening at twilight, in order to incite the populace to rise and demand
+the emperor's return, or at least the instalment of the little King of
+Rome on the throne instead of Louis de Bourbon.
+
+When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet, informed her of
+these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and indifferent.
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure as if I
+were reciting a story of the last century!"
+
+"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we have lost
+all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us, with the
+composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it natural that they
+should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear a name that has made
+the whole world tremble, and that will still be great, though we all be
+trodden in the dust. But I will shield myself and children from this
+hatred. We will leave France and go to Switzerland, where I possess a
+little estate on the Lake of Geneva."
+
+But time was not allowed the duchess to prepare for her departure. The
+dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her to drive her from the
+city. A defenceless woman with two young children seemed to be an object
+of anxiety and terror to the government, and it made haste to get rid
+of her.
+
+On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian General
+de Mueffling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to the dwelling of the
+Duchess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant, M. Deveaux, that the
+duchess must leave Paris within two hours, and it was only at the urgent
+solicitation of the intendant, that a further sojourn of four hours was
+allowed her.
+
+Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and depart
+without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for her
+journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she of
+course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a troop of
+enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching departure, had quitted
+Paris to lie in wait for her on her road, "in order to rob her of the
+millions in her custody."
+
+The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with her, but
+only that which was absolutely necessary.
+
+General de Mueffling offered her an escort of his soldiers; Hortense
+declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian officer might be
+allowed to accompany her for the protection of herself and children on
+the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of Prince Schwartzenberg, was
+selected for this purpose.
+
+On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the Duchess of St. Leu took
+her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet in Paris
+to arrange her affairs, and assure the safe-keeping of her jewelry.
+Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count Boyna, her
+children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been a queen left
+Paris to go into exile.
+
+It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her beloved
+France, that she could no longer call her country, and that now seemed
+as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it had once
+passionately loved them.
+
+In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had everywhere
+hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their real disposition
+beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom Hortense met on her journey
+were therefore all royalists, who thought they could give no better
+testimony to their patriotism than by persecuting with cries of scorn,
+with gestures of hatred, and with loud curses, the woman whose only
+crime was that she bore the name of him whom France had once adored, and
+whom the royalists hated.
+
+Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and her
+children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger against
+her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it necessary to call
+on the Austrian military stationed there for assistance in protecting
+the duchess and her children from the attacks of an infuriated crowd,
+led by royal guards and beautiful ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned
+with the lilies of the Bourbons[55].
+
+[Footnote 55: Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.]
+
+Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced,
+Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being able to
+retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the storms of
+life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The French ambassador
+in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed the authorities of that
+city that his government would not tolerate the queen's sojourn so near
+the French boundary, and demanded that she should depart. The
+authorities of Geneva complied with this demand, and ordered the Duchess
+of St. Leu to leave the city immediately.
+
+When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the duchess, and asked
+her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed despair found
+utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into the lake, then we
+shall all be at rest!"
+
+But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly
+submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last possession,
+the charming little Pregny, from her "_reve de chalet_."
+
+In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in Aix, where
+she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen, and where she was
+at least permitted to live in retirement with her children and a few
+faithful adherents.
+
+But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her fell
+upon her!
+
+Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814, shortly
+before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that she should
+deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody of his father.
+Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him, Louis demanded that
+this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron von Zuyten to Aix to bring
+back the prince to his father then residing in Florence.
+
+The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard command; she
+was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms to a father who
+was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore could not love.
+
+It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his mother,
+and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before been
+separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his neck,
+tearfully entreating him to stay with him.
+
+But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two weeping
+children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while Napoleon Louis
+followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as though his heart would
+break. When Hortense heard the carriage driving off, she uttered a cry
+of anguish and fell to the ground in a swoon, and a long and painful
+attack of illness was the consequence of this sorrowful separation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.
+
+The Duchess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose in Aix;
+the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still fearing the
+name whose first and greatest representative was now languishing on a
+solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons considered it dangerous
+that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter, and her son, whose name of
+Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living monument of the past, should be
+permitted to sojourn so near the French boundary. They therefore
+instructed their ambassador to the government of Savoy to protest
+against the further sojourn of the queen in Aix, and Hortense was
+compelled to undertake a new pilgrimage, and to start out into the world
+again in search of a home.
+
+She first turned to Baden, whose duchess, Stephanie, was so nearly
+related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore well expect a
+kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify his cousin's hopes;
+he had not the courage to defy the jealous fears of France, and it was
+only at the earnest solicitation of his wife that he at last consented
+that Hortense should take up her residence at the extreme end of the
+grand-duchy, at Constance, on the Lake of Constance; and this permission
+was only accorded her on the express condition that neither the duchess
+nor her son should ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife,
+Stephanie, should never visit her cousin at Constance.
+
+Hortense accepted this offer with its conditions, contented to find a
+place where she could rest after her long wanderings, and let the
+bleeding wounds of her heart heal in the stillness and peace of
+beautiful natural scenery. She passed a few quiet, happy years in
+Constance desiring and demanding nothing but a little rest and peace,
+aspiring to but one thing--to make of the son whom Providence had given
+her as a compensation for all her sufferings, a strong, a resolute, and
+an intelligent man.
+
+Her most tender care and closest attention were devoted to the education
+of this son. An excellent teacher, Prof. Lebas, of Paris, officiated as
+instructor to the young prince. She herself gave him instruction in
+drawing, in music, and in dancing; she read with him, sang with him, and
+made herself a child, in order to replace to her lonely boy the playmate
+Fate had torn from his side.
+
+While reposing on her _chaise-longue_ on the long quiet evenings, her
+boy seated on a cushion at her feet, she would speak to him of his great
+uncle, and of his heroic deeds, and of his country, of France that had
+discarded them, to be able to return to which was, however, her most
+ardent wish, and would continue to be while life lasted. She would then
+inspire the boy's soul with the description of the great battles which
+his uncle had won in Italy, on the Nile, on the Rhine, and on the
+Danube; and the quiet, pale boy, with the dark, thoughtful eyes, would
+listen in breathless suspense, his weak, slender body quivering with
+emotion when his mother told him how dearly his uncle had loved France,
+and that all his great and glorious deeds had been done for the honor
+and renown of France alone.
+
+One day, while he was sitting before her, pale and trembling with
+agitation, his mother pointed to David's splendid painting, representing
+Napoleon on the heights of the Alps, the genial conception of which
+painting is due to Napoleon's own suggestions.
+
+"Paint me tranquilly seated on a wild horse," Napoleon had said to
+David, and David had so painted him--on a rearing steed, on the summit
+of a rock which bears the inscription "Hannibal" and "Caesar." The
+emperor's countenance is calm, his large eyes full of a mysterious
+brilliancy, his hair fluttering in the wind, the whole expression
+thoughtful and earnest; the rider heedless of the rearing steed, which
+he holds firmly in check with the reins.
+
+A beautiful copy of this great painting hung in the parlor of the
+duchess; and to this she now pointed while narrating the history of the
+emperor's passage over the Great St. Bernard with an army, a feat never
+before performed except by Hannibal and Caesar, and perhaps never to be
+performed again.
+
+As she concluded her narrative, an almost angry expression flitted
+across the young prince's countenance. Rising from his seat, and holding
+himself perfectly erect, he exclaimed: "Oh, mamma, I shall also cross
+the Alps some day, as the emperor did!"
+
+And while thus speaking, a glowing color suffused his face; his lips
+trembled, and the feverish beating of his heart was quite audible.
+
+Hortense turned in some anxiety to her friend Louise de Cochelet, and
+begged her in a low voice to soothe the child with the recital of some
+merry narrative. As Louise looked around the room thoughtfully and
+searchingly, a cup that stood on the mantel-piece arrested her gaze. She
+hastened to the mantel, took the cup, and returned with it to little
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+"Mamma has been explaining a very grave picture to you, Louis," said
+she; "I will now show you a merry one. Look at it--isn't it charming?"
+
+The prince cast a hasty, absent-minded look at the cup, and nodded
+gravely. Louise laughed gayly.
+
+"You see, Louis," said she, "that this is the exact counterpart of the
+picture of the Emperor Napoleon, who, while riding over the Alps,
+encounters on their summit the great spirits of Hannibal and Caesar.
+Here is a little Napoleon, who is not climbing up the Alps, but climbing
+down from his bed, and who, on this occasion, meets a black spirit, in
+the person of a chimney-sweep. This is the history of the great and of
+the little Napoleon; the great meets Hannibal, the little the
+chimney-sweep."
+
+"Am I the little Napoleon?" asked the boy, gravely.
+
+"Yes, Louis, you are, and I will now tell you the story of this cup.
+One day, when we were all still in Paris, and while your great uncle was
+still Emperor of France--one day, you met in your room a little Savoyard
+who had just crept out of the chimney in his black dress, his black
+broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and were about to run
+away, but I held you back and told you that these chimney-sweeps were
+poor boys, and that their parents were so poor that they could not
+support their children, but were compelled to send them to Paris to earn
+their bread by creeping into and cleaning our hot and dirty chimneys,
+with great trouble, and at the risk of their lives. My story touched
+you, and you promised me never to be afraid of the little chimney-sweeps
+again. A short time afterward, you were awakened early in the morning by
+a strange noise, your brother still lay asleep at your side, and your
+nurse was absent from the room. This noise was made by a chimney-sweep
+who had just come down the chimney and now stood in your room. As soon
+as you saw him, you remembered his poverty, jumped out of bed in your
+night-clothes, and ran to the chair on which your clothes lay. You took
+out of your pocket the purse you were compelled to carry with you on
+your walks to give money to the poor, and you emptied its entire
+contents into the black, sooty hand of the young Savoyard. You then
+tried to get back to bed, but it was too high for you; you could not
+climb over the railing. Seeing this, the chimney-sweep came to your
+assistance, and took the little prince in his arms to help him into bed.
+At this moment, your nurse entered the room, and your brother who had
+just awakened, cried loudly when he saw Louis in the arms of a
+chimney-sweep.
+
+"This is the story of little Napoleon and the chimney-sweep! Your
+grandmother, the Empress Josephine was so much pleased with this story,
+that your mother had the scene painted on a cup, and presented it to the
+empress, in order to afford her a gratification. And what do you think,
+Louis--this cup was also the cause of a punishment being remitted your
+cousin, the King of Rome, who now lives in Vienna!"
+
+"Tell me all about it, Louise," said the prince, smiling.
+
+"You shall hear it! Your mother had instructed me to take the cup to
+Malmaison to the empress. But before going, I endeavored to obtain some
+news about the little King of Rome for the empress. Your good
+grandmother loved him as though he had been her own child, although she
+had never seen him. I therefore went to the Tuileries to see the little
+King of Rome, with whose governess, Madame de Montesquieu, I was
+intimately acquainted. On entering the apartment, I saw the king
+cowering behind a chair in a corner of the room; Madame de Montesquieu
+intimated by a look that he was undergoing a punishment; I understood
+it, and first conversed with his governess for a short time. When I then
+turned and approached him, he concealed the tearful, flushed face, that
+his long blond curls covered as with a golden veil, whenever he moved
+behind the chair.
+
+"'Sire,' said Madame de Montesquieu to him, 'sire, do you not intend to
+bid Mademoiselle de Cochelet good-morning? She came here expressly
+to see you.'
+
+"'Your majesty does not recognize me,' said I, attempting to take his
+small hand in mine. He tore it from me, and cried in a voice almost
+choked with sobbing: 'She will not let me look at the soldiers of
+my papa!'
+
+"Madame de Montesquieu told me that it was the little prince's greatest
+pleasure to see the Guards exercising on the _Place de Carrousel_, but
+that she had deprived Mm of this pleasure to-day, because he had been
+naughty and disobedient; that, when he heard the music and drums, his
+despair and anger had become so great that she had been forced to resort
+to severe means, and make him stand in the corner behind a chair. I
+begged for the young king's pardon; I showed him the cup, and explained
+the scene that was painted on it. The king laughed, and Madame de
+Montesquieu pardoned him for the sake of his little cousin, Louis
+Napoleon, who was so well behaved, and who was always held up to him as
+a model[56]. Now you have heard the whole story, are you pleased with
+it, Louis?"
+
+[Footnote 56: Cochelet, vol. i., p. 212.]
+
+"I like it very much," said the grave boy, "but I do not like my
+cousin's governess, for having intended to prevent him from looking at
+his father's soldiers. Oh, how handsome they must have been, the
+soldiers of the emperor! Mamma, I wish I were also an emperor, and had
+ever so many handsome soldiers."
+
+Hortense smiled sadly, and laid her hand on the boy's head as if to
+bless him. "Oh, my son," said she, "it is no enviable fortune to wear a
+crown. It is almost always fastened on our head with thorns!"
+
+From this day on, Prince Louis Napoleon would stand before his uncle's
+portrait, lost in thought, and after looking at it to his satisfaction,
+he would run out and call the boys of the neighborhood together, in
+order to play soldier and emperor with them in the large garden that
+surrounded his mother's house, and teach the boys the first exercise.
+
+One day, in the zeal of play, he had entirely forgotten his mother's
+command, not to go out of the garden, and had inarched into the open
+field with his soldiers. When his absence from the garden was noticed,
+all the servants were sent out to look for him, and the anxious duchess,
+together with her ladies, assisted in this search, walking about in
+every direction through the cold and the slush of the thawing snow.
+Suddenly they came upon the boy barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves,
+wading toward them through the mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused
+at this unexpected meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he
+had been playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor
+and ragged that it was painful to look at them. As he had no money to
+give them, he had put his shoes on one child, and his coat on
+another[57].
+
+[Footnote 57: Cochelet, vol. iv., p. 303.]
+
+The duchess did not have the courage to scold him; she stooped down and
+kissed her son; but when her ladies commenced to praise him, she
+motioned to them to be silent, and said in a loud voice that what her
+son had done was quite a matter of course, and therefore deserved
+no praise.
+
+An ardent desire to gladden others and make them presents was
+characteristic of little Louis Napoleon. One day, Hortense had given him
+three beautiful studs for his shirt, and on the same day the prince
+transferred them to one of his friends who admired them.
+
+When Hortense reproached her son for doing so, and threatened to make
+him no more presents, as he always gave them away again directly, Louis
+Napoleon replied, "Ah, mamma, this is why your presents give me double
+pleasure--once when you give them to me, and the second time when I make
+others happy with them[58]."
+
+[Footnote 58: Cochelet, vol. i, p. 355.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.
+
+Fate seemed at last weary of persecuting the poor Duchess of St. Leu. It
+at least accorded her a few peaceful years of repose and comfort; it at
+least permitted her to rest from the weariness of the past on the bosom
+of Nature, and to forget her disappointments and sorrows. The Canton of
+Thurgau had had the courage to extend permission to the duchess to take
+up her residence within its borders, at the very moment when the
+Grand-duke of Baden, who had been urged to the step by Germany and
+France, had peremptorily ordered Hortense to leave Constance and his
+grand-duchy without delay.
+
+Hortense had thankfully accepted the offer of the Swiss canton, and had
+purchased, on the Swiss side of the Lake of Constance, an estate, whose
+beautiful situation on the summit of a mountain, immediately on the
+banks of the lake, with its magnificent view of the surrounding country,
+and its glittering glaciers on the distant horizon, made it a most
+delightful place of sojourn. Hortense now caused the furniture of her
+dwelling in Paris, that had been sold, to be sent to her. The sight of
+these evidences of her former grandeur awakened sweet and bitter
+emotions in her heart, as they were one after another taken out of the
+cases in which they had been packed--these sofas, chairs, divans,
+carpets, chandeliers, mirrors, and all the other ornaments of the
+parlors in which Hortense had been accustomed to receive kings and
+emperors, and which were now to adorn the Swiss villa that was outwardly
+so beautiful because of the vicinity, and inwardly so plain and simple.
+
+But Hortense knew how to make an elegant and tasteful disposition of all
+these articles; she herself arranged every thing in her house, and took
+true feminine delight in her task. And when all was at last
+arranged--when she walked, with her son at her side, through the suite
+of rooms, in which every ornament and piece of furniture reminded her
+of the past--when these things recalled the proud days of state when so
+many friends, relatives, and servants, had surrounded her--a feeling of
+unutterable loneliness, of painful desolation, came over her, and she
+sank down on a sofa and wept bitterly. But there was nevertheless a
+consolation in having these familiar articles in her possession once
+more; these mute friends often awakened in the solitary queen's heart
+memories that served to entertain and console her. Arenenberg was a
+perfect temple of memory; every chair, every table, every article of
+furniture, had its history, and this history spoke of Napoleon, of
+Josephine, and the great days of the empire.
+
+In Arenenberg Hortense had at last found a permanent home, and there she
+passed the greater part of the year; and it was only when the autumnal
+storms began to howl through her open and lightly-constructed villa,
+that Hortense repaired to Rome, to pass the winter months in a more
+genial climate, while her son Louis Napoleon was pursuing his studies at
+the artillery school at Thun.
+
+And thus the years passed on, quiet and peaceful, though sometimes
+interrupted by new losses and sorrows. In the year 1821 the hero, the
+emperor, to whose laurel-crown the halo of a martyr had now also been
+added, died on the island-rock, St. Helena.
+
+In the year 1824 Hortense lost her only brother, Eugene, the Duke of
+Leuchtenberg.
+
+The only objects of Hortense's love were now her two sons, who were
+prospering in mind and body, and were the pride and joy of their mother,
+and an object of annoyance and suspicion to all the princes of Europe.
+For these children bore in their countenance, in their name, and in
+their disposition, too plain an impress of the great past, which they
+could never entirely ignore while Bonaparte still lived to testify
+to it.
+
+And they lived and prospered in spite of the Bourbons; they lived and
+prospered, although banished from their country, and compelled to lead
+an inactive life.
+
+But at last it seemed as though the hour of fortune and freedom had come
+for these Bonapartes--as though they, too, were to be permitted to have
+a country to which they might give their devotion and services.
+
+The thundering voice of the revolution of 1830 resounded throughout
+trembling Europe. France, on whom the allies had imposed the Bourbons,
+arose and shook its mane; with its lion's paw it overthrew the Bourbon
+throne, drove out the Jesuits who had stood behind it, and whom Charles
+X. had advised to tear the charter to pieces, to destroy the freedom of
+the press, and to reintroduce the _autos da fe_ of the olden time.
+
+France had been treated as a child in 1815, and was now determined to
+assert its manhood; it resolved to break entirely with the past, and
+with its own strength to build up a future for itself.
+
+The lilies of the Bourbons were to bloom no more; these last years of
+fanatical Jesuit tyranny had deprived them of life, and France tore the
+faded lily from her bosom in order to replace it with a young and
+vigorous plant. The throne of the Bourbons was overthrown, but the
+people, shuddering at the recollection of the sanguinary republic,
+selected a king in preference. It stretched out its hand after him it
+held dearest; after him who in the past few years had succeeded in
+winning the sympathy of France. It selected the Duke of Orleans, the son
+of Philippe Egalite, for its king.
+
+Louis Philippe, the enthusiastic republican of 1790, who at that time
+had caused the three words "_Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_" and the
+inscription "_Vive la Republique,"_ to be burnt on his arm, in order to
+prove his republicanism; the proscribed Louis Philippe, who had wandered
+through Europe a fugitive, earning his bread by teaching writing and
+languages--the same Louis Philippe now became King of France.
+
+The people called him to the throne; they tore the white flag from the
+roof of the Tuileries, but they knew no other or better one with which
+to replace it than the _tricolore_ of the empire.
+
+Under the shadow of this _tricolore_ Louis Philippe mounted the throne,
+and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the glorious era of
+the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in order to indulge
+their sympathies they demanded for France--not the son of Napoleon, not
+Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and the emperor's statue on the
+Palace Vendome. Louis Philippe accorded them both, but with these
+concessions he thought he had done enough. He had accepted the
+_tricolore_ of the empire; he had promised that the emperor should watch
+over Paris from the summit of the Vendome monument, and to cause his
+ashes to be brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.
+
+They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it would be
+worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course might easily
+shake the new throne, and recall the allies to Paris.
+
+The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still continued
+against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich said, "a
+principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the throne."
+
+The European powers had signified to the King of France, through their
+diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but they exacted
+one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe should confirm or renew
+the decree of exile fulminated by the Bourbons against the Bonapartes.
+
+Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes, whose
+only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of the deceased
+emperor, before whom not only France, but all the princes of Europe, had
+once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once more declared strangers to
+their country, and condemned to exile!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.
+
+It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of banishment!
+Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts, annihilating their
+holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their joy over the glorious
+and heroic revolution of July gave place to a bitter sense of
+disappointment.
+
+Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life to which
+they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console themselves, for
+their new disappointment, with the arts and sciences.
+
+At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to leave
+Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the habit of doing
+every year.
+
+But this time she first went to Florence, where her elder son, Napoleon
+Louis, recently married to his cousin, the second daughter of King
+Joseph, was now living with his young wife. The heart of the tender
+mother was filled with anxiety and care; she felt and saw that this new
+French Revolution was likely to infect all Europe, and that Italy, above
+all, would be unable to avoid this infection. Italy was diseased to the
+core, and it was to be feared that it would grasp at desperate means in
+its agony, and proceed to the blood-letting of a revolution, in order to
+restore itself to health. Hortense felt this, and feared for her sons.
+
+She feared that the exiled, the homeless ones who had been driven from
+their country, and were not permitted to serve it, would devote their
+services to those who were unhappy and who suffered like themselves. She
+feared the enthusiasm, the generous courage, the energy of her sons, and
+she knew that, if a revolution should break out in Italy, it would
+gladly adorn itself with the name of Napoleon.
+
+Hortense, therefore, conjured her sons to hold themselves aloof from all
+dangerous undertakings, and not to follow those who might appeal to them
+with the old word of magic power, "liberty;" that, in spite of the tears
+and blood it has already caused mankind, can never lose its
+wondrous power.
+
+Her two sons promised compliance; and, much relieved, Hortense left
+Florence, and went, with her younger son, Louis Napoleon, to Rome.
+
+But Rome, otherwise so aristocratic and solemn, assumed an unusual, an
+entirely new, physiognomy this winter. In society the topics of
+conversation were no longer art and poetry, the Pantheon and St. Peter,
+or what the newest amusement should be; but politics and the French
+Revolution were the all-engrossing topics, and the populace listened
+anxiously for the signal that should announce that the revolution in
+Italy had at last begun.
+
+Even the populace of Rome, usually addicted to lying so harmlessly in
+the sunshine, now assembled in dense groups on the streets, and strange
+words were heard when the police cautiously approached these groups for
+the purpose of listening. But they now lacked the courage to arrest
+those who uttered those words; they felt that such a provocation might
+suffice to tear away the veil behind which the revolution still
+concealed itself.
+
+The whole energy and watchfulness of the Roman government was therefore
+employed in endeavoring to avert the revolution, if possible; not,
+however, by removing the cause and occasion, but by depriving the people
+of the means. The son of Hortense, Louis Napoleon, seemed to the
+government a means which the revolution might use for its purposes, and
+it was therefore determined that he should be removed.
+
+His name, and even the three-colored saddle-blanket of his horse, with
+which he rode through the streets of Rome, were exciting to the
+populace, in whose veins the fever of revolution was already throbbing.
+Louis Napoleon must therefore be removed.
+
+The Governor of Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle, Cardinal
+Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to remove the
+young prince from Rome for a few weeks.
+
+But the cardinal indignantly declared that his nephew, who had done
+nothing, should not be compelled to leave Rome merely on account of his
+name and his saddle-blanket, and that he would never advise the Duchess
+of St. Leu to do anything of the kind.
+
+The Roman government therefore determined to adopt energetic means. It
+caused the dwelling of the duchess to be surrounded by soldiers, while
+a papal office presented himself before Hortense, and announced that he
+had received orders to remove Prince Louis from the city at once, and to
+conduct him without the papal territory.
+
+The fear of approaching evil caused the government to forget the respect
+due to nobility in misfortune and the emperor's nephew was turned out of
+the city like a criminal!
+
+Hortense received this intelligence almost with joy. Far from Rome, it
+seemed to her that he would be safer from the revolution, whose approach
+she so much dreaded; and it therefore afforded her great satisfaction to
+send the prince to Florence, to his father, believing that he would
+there be shielded from the dangerous political calumnies that threatened
+him in Rome. She therefore permitted him to depart; and how could she
+have prevented his departure--she, the lone, powerless woman, to whom
+not even the French ambassador would have accorded protection! No one
+interceded for her--no one protested against the violent and brutal
+course pursued toward Louis Napoleon--no one, except the Russian
+ambassador.
+
+The Emperor of Russia was the only one of all the sovereigns of Europe
+who felt himself strong enough not to ignore the name of Napoleon, and
+the consideration due to the family of a hero and of an emperor.
+
+The Emperor of Russia had, therefore, never refused his protection and
+assistance to the Bonapartes, and his ambassador was now the only one
+who protested against the violent course taken by the Roman government.
+
+The revolution at last broke forth. Italy arose as France had done,
+resolved to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, and be free!
+The storm first broke out in Modena. The duke saw himself compelled to
+fly, and a provisional government under General Menotti placed itself in
+his stead. But, while this was taking place in Modena, the populace of
+Rome was holding high festival in honor of the newly-chosen Pope Gregory
+XVI., who had just taken his seat in the chair of the deceased Pope Pius
+VIII., and these festivities, and the Carnival, seemed to occupy the
+undivided attention of the Romans; under the laughing mask of these
+rejoicings the revolution hid its grave and threatening visage, and it
+was not until _mardi-gras_ that it laid this mask aside and showed its
+true countenance.
+
+The people had been accustomed to throw confectionery and flowers on
+this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable by a shower of
+stones and bullets; this time they were not to appear in the harlequin
+jacket, but in their true form, earnest, grand, commanding,
+self-conscious, and self-asserting.
+
+But the government had been informed of the intention of the
+conspirators to avail themselves of the drive to the Corso, to begin the
+revolution, and this procession was prohibited an hour before the time
+appointed for its commencement.
+
+The people arose against this prohibition, and the revolution they had
+endeavored to repress by this means now broke out.
+
+The thunder of cannon and the rattling of musketry now resounded through
+the streets of Rome, and the people everywhere resisted the papal
+soldiery with energy and determination.
+
+The new pope trembled in the Quirinal, the old cardinals lost courage,
+and in dismay recoiled a step at every advancing stride of the
+insurgents. Gregory felt that the papal crown he had just achieved was
+already on the point of falling from his head, to be trodden in the dust
+by the victorious populace; he turned to Austria, and solicited help and
+assistance.
+
+But young Italy, the Italy of enthusiasm, of liberty, and of hope,
+looked to France for support. Old Italy had turned to Austria for help;
+young Italy looked for assistance to the free, newly-arisen France, in
+which the revolution had just celebrated a glorious victory. But France
+denied its Italian brother, and denied its own origin; scarcely had the
+revolution seated itself on the newly-erected kingly throne and invested
+itself with the crown and purple robe, when, for its own safety, it
+became reactionary, and denied itself.
+
+With all Italy, Rome was resolved to shake off the yoke of oppression;
+the whole people espoused this cause with enthusiasm; and in the streets
+of Rome--at other times filled with priests and monks and holy
+processions--in these streets, now alive with the triumphant youth of
+Rome, resounded exultant songs of freedom.
+
+The strangers, terrified by this change, now quitted the holy city in
+crowds, and hastened to their homes. Hortense desired to remain; she
+knew that she had nothing to fear from the people, for all the evil that
+had hitherto overtaken her, had come, not from the people, but always
+from the princes only[59]. However, letters suddenly arrived from her
+sons, conjuring her to leave Rome and announcing that they would leave
+Florence within the hour, in order to hasten forward to meet
+their mother.
+
+[Footnote 59: La Reine Hortense, p. 63.]
+
+Upon reading this, Hortense cried aloud with terror--she, who knew and
+desired no other happiness on earth than the happiness of her children,
+she whose only prayer to God had ever been, that her children might
+prosper and that she might die before them, now felt that a fearful
+danger threatened her sons, and that they were now about to be swept
+into the vortex of the revolution.
+
+They had left Florence, and their father, and were now on the way to
+Rome, that is, on the way to the revolution that would welcome them with
+joy, and inscribe the name Napoleon on its standards!
+
+But it was perhaps still time to save them; with her prayers and
+entreaties she might still succeed in arresting them on the verge of the
+abyss into which they were hastening in the intoxication of their
+enthusiasm. As this thought occurred to her, Hortense felt herself
+strong, determined, and courageous; and, on the same day on which she
+had received the letters, she left Rome, and hurried forward to meet
+her sons. She still hoped to be in time to save them; she fancied she
+saw her sons in every approaching carriage--but in vain!
+
+They had written that they would meet her on the road, but they were not
+there!
+
+Perhaps they had listened to the representations of their father;
+perhaps they had remained in Florence and were awaiting their mother's
+arrival there.
+
+Tormented by fear and hope, Hortense arrived in Florence and drove to
+the dwelling in which her son Louis Napoleon had resided. Her feet could
+scarcely bear her up; she hardly found strength to inquire after her
+son--he was not there!
+
+But he might be with his father, and Hortense now sent there for
+intelligence of her sons. The messenger returned, alone and dejected:
+her sons had left the city!
+
+The exultant hymn of liberty had struck on their delighted ear, and they
+had responded to the call of the revolution.
+
+General Menotti had appealed to them, in the name of Italy, to assist
+the cause of freedom with their name and with their swords, and they had
+neither the will nor the courage to disregard this appeal.
+
+A servant, left behind by her younger son, delivered to the duchess a
+letter from her son Louis Napoleon, a last word of adieu to his
+beloved mother.
+
+"Your love will understand us," wrote Louis Napoleon. "We cannot
+withdraw ourselves from duties that devolve upon us; the name we bear
+obliges us to listen to the appeal of unhappy nations. I beg you to
+represent this matter to my sister-in-law as though I had persuaded my
+brother to accompany me; it grieves him to have concealed from her one
+action of his life[60]."
+
+[Footnote 60: La Reine Hortense, p. 78.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DEATH OF PRINCE NAPOLEON.
+
+That which Hortense most dreaded had taken place: the voice of
+enthusiasm had silenced every other consideration; and the two sons of
+the Duchess of St. Leu, the nephews of the Emperor Napoleon, now stood
+at the head of the revolution. From Foligno to Civita Castellano, they
+organized the defence, and from the cities and villages the young people
+joyously hurried forth to enroll themselves under their banners, and to
+obey the Princes Napoleon as their leaders; the crowds which the young
+princes now led were scarcely armed, but they nevertheless advanced
+courageously, and were resolved to attempt the capture of Civita
+Castellano, in order to liberate the state prisoners who had been
+languishing in its dungeons for eight years.
+
+This was the intelligence brought back by the couriers whom Hortense had
+dispatched to her sons with letters entreating them to return.
+
+It was too late--they neither would nor could return.
+
+Their father wrung his hands in despair, and conjured his wife, he
+being confined to his arm-chair by illness and the gout, to do all in
+her power to tear their sons from the fearful danger that menaced them.
+For the revolution was lost; all who were cool and collected felt and
+saw this. But the youth refused to see it; they still continued to flock
+to the revolutionary banners; they still sang exultant hymns of freedom,
+and, when their parents endeavored to hold them back, they fled from the
+parental house secretly, in order to answer the call that resounded on
+their ear in such divine notes.
+
+One of the sons of the Princess of Canino, the wife of Lucien Bonaparte,
+had fled from his father's castle in order to join the insurgents. They
+succeeded in finding, and forcing him to return, and as the family were
+under obligations to the pope for having created the principalities of
+Canino and Musignano, for Lucien Bonaparte and his eldest son, the most
+extreme measures were adopted to prevent the young prince from fighting
+against the troops of the pope;
+
+The Princess of Canino, as a favor, requested the Grand-duke of Tuscany
+to confine her son in one of the state prisons of Tuscany; her request
+was granted, and her son taken to a prison, where he was kept during the
+entire revolution. It was proposed to the Duchess of St. Leu to adopt
+this same means of prevention, but, in spite of her anxiety and care,
+and although, in her restlessness and feverish disquiet, she wandered
+through her rooms day and night, she declined to take such a course.
+She was not willing to subject her sons to the humiliation of such
+compulsion; if their own reason, if the prayers and entreaties of their
+mother, did not suffice, force should not be resorted to, to bring them
+back. The whole family was, however, still employing every means to
+induce the two Princes Napoleon to withdraw from the revolution, which
+must inevitably again draw down upon the name Napoleon the suspicion of
+the angry and distrustful princes of Europe.
+
+Cardinal Fesch and King Jerome conjured their nephews, first in
+entreating, and then in commanding letters, to leave the insurgent army.
+
+With the consent of their father, Louis Bonaparte, they wrote to the
+provisional government at Bologna that the name of the two princes was
+injuring the cause of the revolution, and to General Armandi, the
+minister of war of the insurgent government, entreating him to recall
+the princes from the army. Every one, friend and foe, combined to
+neutralize the zeal and efforts of the two princes, and to prove to them
+that they could only injure the cause to which they gave their names;
+that foreign powers, considering the revolution a matter to be decided
+by Italy alone, would perhaps refrain from intervening; but that they
+would become relentless should a Bonaparte place himself at the head of
+the revolution, in order perhaps to shake the thrones of Europe anew.
+
+The two princes at last yielded to these entreaties and representations;
+they gave up their commands, and resigned the rank that had been
+accorded them in the insurgent army; but, as it was no longer in their
+power to serve the revolution with their name and with their brains,
+they were at least desirous of serving it with their arms: they resigned
+their commands, but with the intention of remaining in the army as
+simple soldiers and volunteers without any rank.
+
+And when their father and their uncles, not yet satisfied with what they
+had done, urged them still further the two princes declared that, if
+these cruel annoyances were continued, they would go to Poland, and
+serve the revolution there[61].
+
+[Footnote 61: La Reine Hortense, p. 93.]
+
+Hortense had taken no part in these attempts and efforts of her family;
+she knew that it was all in vain; she understood her sons better than
+they, and she knew that nothing in the world could alter a resolution
+they had once formed. But she also knew that they were lost, that the
+revolution must be suppressed, that they would soon be proscribed
+fugitives, and she quietly prepared to assist them when the evil days
+should come. She armed herself with courage and determination, and made
+her soul strong, in order that she might not be overwhelmed by the
+misfortune that was so near at hand.
+
+While all about her were weeping and lamenting, while her husband was
+wringing his hands in despair, and complaining of the present, Hortense
+quietly and resolutely confronted the future, and prepared to defy it.
+
+That which she dreaded soon took place. An Austrian fleet sailed into
+the Adriatic; an Austrian army was marching on the insurrectionary
+Italian provinces. Modena had already been reconquered; the insurgents
+were already flying in crowds before the Austrian cannon, whose
+thundering salvos were destined to destroy once more the hopes of the
+youth of Italy.
+
+Like an enraged lioness glowing with enthusiasm and courage, Hortense
+now sprang up. The danger was there, and she must save her sons! She had
+long considered how it was to be done, and whither she was to go with
+them. She had first resolved to go with them to Turkey, and to take up
+her residence in Smyrna, but the presence of the Austrian fleet which
+ruled the Adriatic made this plan impracticable. At this moment of
+extreme danger, a volume of light suddenly beamed in upon her soul, and
+pointed out the way to safety. "I will take them by a road," said she to
+herself, "on which they will be least expected. I will conduct them
+through France, through Paris. The death-penalty will there hang
+suspended over them, but what care I for that? Liberty, justice, and
+humanity, still exercise too much control over France to make me
+apprehend such severe measures. I must save my sons; the way through
+France is the way of safety, and I shall therefore follow it!"
+
+And Hortense immediately began to carry her plan into execution. She
+requested an Englishman residing in Florence, to whose family she had
+once rendered important services in France, to call on her, and begged
+him to procure her a passport for an English lady and her two sons
+through France to England.
+
+The lord understood her, and gladly consented to assist her and her two
+sons.
+
+On the following day he brought her the required passport, and Hortense,
+who well knew that the best way to keep a secret was to have no
+confidants, now declared to her husband, as well as to her family and
+her friends that she was resolved to find her sons, and to embark with
+them from Ancona for Corfu!
+
+For this purpose she demanded a passport of the government of Tuscany,
+and it was accorded her.
+
+Her sons were still in Bologna, but it was known that this city must
+fall into the hands of the Austrians in a few days, and all was lost
+unless Hortense arrived there before them. She sent a trusty servant to
+her sons to announce her coming. Then, at nightfall, she herself
+departed, accompanied by one of her ladies only. She was courageous and
+resolute, for she knew that the safety of her sons, her only happiness,
+was at stake.
+
+Her rapidly-driven carriage had soon passed without the city, and she
+now found herself in a part of the country still occupied by the
+insurgents. Here all still breathed courage, joyousness, and confidence.
+The entire population, adorned with cockades and three-colored ribbons,
+seemed happy and contented, and refused to believe in the danger that
+threatened.
+
+Festivals were everywhere being held in honor of the revolution and of
+liberty, and those who spoke of the advancing Austrians and of dangers
+were ridiculed. Instead of making preparations for their defence, the
+insurgents folded their hands in contentment, rejoicing over that which
+they had already attained, and blind to the tide that was rolling down
+upon them.
+
+In the mean while, the insurgent army was in position near Bologna, and
+also still occupied the two cities of Terni and Soleta, which they had
+courageously defended against the papal troops. Every one expected that
+a decisive battle would soon take place, and every one looked forward to
+it with a joyous assurance of victory.
+
+Hortense was far from participating in this general confidence. In
+Foligno, where she had remained to await her sons, she passed several
+sorrowful days of expectancy and suspense, alarmed by every noise, and
+ever looking forward with an anxiously-throbbing heart to the moment
+when her sons should come to her as fugitives, perhaps covered with
+wounds, perhaps dying, to tell her that all was lost! Her anxiety at
+last became so great, that she could no longer remain in Foligno; she
+must be nearer her sons, she must view the dangers that encompassed
+them, and, if need be, share them. Hortense, therefore, left Foligno,
+and started for Ancona.
+
+On her arrival at the first station, she saw a man descend from a
+carriage and approach her. He was unknown to her, and yet she felt a
+dark foreboding at his approach. The mother's heart already felt the
+blow that awaited her.
+
+This man was a messenger from her sons. "Prince Napoleon is ill," said
+he.
+
+Hortense remembered that she had heard that a contagious disease was
+ravaging the vicinity. "Is he indeed ill?" cried she, in dismay.
+
+"Yes; and he earnestly desires to see you, madame!"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Hortense, in terror, "if he calls for me, he must be
+very ill indeed!--Forward, forward, with all possible speed; I must
+see my son!"
+
+And onward they went with the speed of the wind from station to station,
+approaching nearer and nearer to their destination; but as they neared
+their destination, the faces they met grew sadder and sadder. At every
+station groups of people assembled about her carriage and gazed at her
+sorrowfully; everywhere she heard them murmur: "Napoleon is dead! Poor
+mother! Napoleon is dead!" Hortense heard, but did not believe it! These
+words had not been spoken by men, but were the utterances of her anxious
+heart! Her son was not dead, he could not be dead. Napoleon lived, yes,
+he still lived! And again the people around her carriage murmured,
+"Napoleon is dead!"
+
+Hortense reclined in her carriage, pale and motionless. Her thoughts
+were confused, her heart scarcely beat.
+
+At last she reached her destination; her carriage drove up to the house
+in Pesaro, where her sons were awaiting her.
+
+At this moment a young man, his countenance of a deathly pallor, and
+flooded with tears, rushed out of the door and to her carriage. Hortense
+recognized him, and stretched out her arms to him. It was her son Louis
+Napoleon, and on beholding his pale, sorrowful countenance, and his
+tear-stained eyes, the unhappy mother learned the truth. Yes, it was not
+her heart, it was the people who had uttered the fearful words:
+"Napoleon is dead! Poor mother! Napoleon is dead!"
+
+With a heart-rending cry, Hortense sank to the ground in a swoon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FLIGHT FROM ITALY.
+
+But Hortense now had no leisure to weep over the son she had so dearly
+loved; the safety of the son who remained to her, whom she loved no
+less, and on whom her whole love must now be concentrated, was at stake.
+
+She still had a son to save, and she must now think of him--of Louis
+Napoleon, who stood in sorrow at her side, lamenting that Fate had not
+allowed him to die with his brother.
+
+Her son must be saved. This thought restored Hortense to health and
+strength. She is informed that the authorities of Bologna have already
+tendered submission to the Austrians; that the insurgent army is already
+scattering in every direction; that the Austrian fleet is already to be
+seen in the distance, approaching, perhaps with the intention of landing
+at Sinigaglia, in order to surround the insurgents and render flight
+impossible.
+
+This intelligence aroused Hortense from her grief and restored her
+energy. She ordered her carriage and drove with her son to Ancona, in
+full view of the people, in order that every one should know that it was
+her purpose to embark with her son for Corfu at that seaport. At Ancona,
+immediately fronting the sea, stood her nephew's palace, and there
+Hortense descended from her carriage.
+
+The waves of the storm-tossed sea sometimes rushed up to the windows of
+the room occupied by the duchess; from there she could see the port, and
+the crowds of fugitives who were pressing forward to save themselves on
+the miserable little vessels that there lay at anchor.
+
+And these poor people had but little time left them in which to seek
+safety. The Austrians were rapidly advancing; on entering the papal
+territory, they had proclaimed an amnesty, from the benefits of which
+Prince Louis Napoleon, General Zucchi, and the inhabitants of Modena,
+were, however, excepted. The strangers who had taken part in the
+insurrection were to be arrested and treated with all the severity
+of the law.
+
+The young people who had flocked from Modena, Milan, and from all Italy,
+to enroll themselves under the banner of the Roman revolution, now found
+it necessary to seek safety from the pursuing Austrians in flight.
+
+Louis Napoleon also had no time to lose; each moment lost might render
+flight impossible! Hortense was weary and ill, but she now had no time
+to think of herself; she must first save her son, then she could die,
+but not sooner.
+
+With perfect composure she prepared for her double (her feigned and her
+real) departure.
+
+Outwardly, she purposed embarking with her son at Corfu; secretly, it
+was her intention to fly to England through France! But the English
+passport that she had received for this purpose mentioned two sons, and
+Hortense now possessed but one; and it was necessary for her to provide
+a substitute for the one she had lost.
+
+She found one in the person of the young Marquis Zappi, who, compromised
+more than all the rest, joyfully accepted the proposition of the Duchess
+of St. Leu, promising to conform himself wholly to her arrangements,
+without knowing her plans and without being initiated in her secrets.
+
+Hortense then procured all that was necessary to the disguise of the
+young men as liveried servants, and ordered her carriage to be held in
+readiness for her departure.
+
+While this was being done in secret, she publicly caused all
+preparations to be made for her journey to Corfu. She sent her passport
+to the authorities for the purpose of obtaining the official _visa_ for
+herself and sons, and had her trunks packed. Louis Napoleon had looked
+on, with cold and mute indifference, while these preparations were being
+made. He stood by, pale and dejected, without complaining or giving
+utterance to his grief.
+
+Becoming at last convinced that he was ill, Hortense sent for a
+physician.
+
+The latter declared that the prince was suffering from a severe attack
+of fever, which might become dangerous unless he sought repose at once.
+It was therefore necessary to postpone their departure for a day, and
+Hortense passed an anxious night at the bedside of her fever-shaken,
+delirious son.
+
+The morning at last dawned, the morning of the day on which they hoped
+to fly; but when the rising sun shed its light into the chamber in which
+Hortense stood at her son's bedside, who can describe the unhappy
+mother's horror when she saw her son's face swollen, disfigured, and
+covered with red spots!
+
+Like his brother, Louis Napoleon had also taken the same disease.
+
+For a moment Hortense was completely overwhelmed, and then, by the
+greatest effort of her life, she summoned her fortitude to her aid. She
+immediately sent for the physician again, and, trusting to a sympathetic
+human heart, she confided all to him, and he did not disappoint her.
+What is to be done must be done quickly, immediately, or it will be
+in vain!
+
+Hortense thinks of all, and provides for all. Especially, she causes her
+son's passport to Corfu to be signed by the authorities, and a passage
+to be taken for him on the only ship destined for Corfu now lying in the
+harbor. She instructs the servants, who are conveying trunks and
+packages to the vessel, to inform the curious spectators of her son's
+intended departure on this vessel. She at the same time causes the
+report to be circulated that she has suddenly been taken ill, and can
+therefore not accompany her son.
+
+The physician confirms this statement, and informs all Ancona of the
+dangerous illness of the Duchess of St. Leu.
+
+And after all this had been done, Hortense causes her son's bed to be
+carried into the little cabinet adjoining her room, and falling on her
+knees at his bedside, and covering her face with her hands, she prays to
+God to preserve the life of her child!
+
+On the evening of this day the vessel destined for Corfu hoisted its
+anchor. No one doubted that Louis Napoleon had embarked on it, and every
+one pitied the poor duchess, who, made ill by grief and anxiety, had not
+been able to accompany her son.
+
+In the mean while Hortense was sitting at the bedside of her delirious
+son. But she no longer felt weak or disquieted; nervous excitement
+sustained her, and gave her strength and presence of mind. Her son was
+at the same time threatened by two dangers--by the disease, which the
+slightest mistake might render mortal; and by the arrival of the
+Austrians, who had expressly excepted her son Louis Napoleon from the
+benefits of the amnesty. She must save her son from both these
+dangers--this thought gave her strength.
+
+Two days had now passed; the last two vessels had left the harbor,
+crowded with fugitives; and now the advance-guard of the Austrians was
+marching into Ancona.
+
+The commandant of the advance-guard, upon whom the duty of designating
+quarters for the following army devolved, selected the palace of
+Princess Canino, where the Duchess of St. Leu resided, as headquarters
+for the commanding general and his staff. Hortense had expected this,
+and had withdrawn to a few small rooms in advance, holding all the
+parlors and large rooms in readiness for the general. When they,
+however, demanded that the entire palace should be vacated, the wife of
+the janitor, the only person whom Hortense had taken into her
+confidence, informed them that Queen Hortense, who was ill and unhappy,
+was the sole occupant of these reserved rooms.
+
+Strange to relate, the Austrian captain who came to the palace to make
+the necessary preparations for his general's reception was one of those
+who, in the year 1815, had protected the queen and her children from the
+fury of the royalists. For the second time he now interested himself
+zealously in behalf of the duchess, and hastened forward to meet the
+general-in-chief, Baron Geppert, who was just entering the city, in
+order to acquaint him with the state of affairs. He, in common with all
+the world, convinced that her son, Louis Napoleon, had fled to Corfu,
+declared his readiness to permit the duchess to retain the rooms she was
+occupying, and begged permission to call on her. But the duchess was
+still ill, and confined to her bed, and could receive no one.
+
+The Austrians took up their quarters in the palace; and in the midst of
+them, separated from the general's room by a locked door only, were
+Hortense and her sick son. The least noise might betray him. When he
+coughed it was necessary to cover his head with the bedclothes, in order
+to deaden the sound; when he desired to speak he could only do so in a
+whisper, for his Austrian neighbors would have been astonished to hear a
+male voice in the room of the sick duchess, and their suspicions might
+have been thereby aroused.
+
+At last, after eight days of torment and anxiety, the physician declared
+that Louis Napoleon could now undertake the journey without danger, and
+consequently the duchess suddenly recovered! She requested the Austrian
+general, Baron Geppert, to honor her with a call, in order that she
+might thank him for his protection and sympathy; she told him that she
+was now ready to depart, and proposed embarking at Livorno, in order to
+join her son at Malta, and go with him to England. As she would be
+compelled to pass through the whole Austrian army-corps on her way, she
+begged the general to furnish her with a passport through his lines over
+his own signature; requesting in addition that, in order to avoid all
+sensation, the instrument should not contain her name.
+
+The general, deeply sympathizing with the unhappy woman who was about to
+follow her proscribed son, readily accorded her request.
+
+Hortense purposed beginning her journey on the following day, the first
+day of the Easter festival; and, on sending her farewell greeting to the
+Austrian general, she informed him that she would start at a very early
+hour, in order to hear mass at Loretto.
+
+During the night all necessary preparations for the journey were made,
+and Louis Napoleon was compelled to disguise himself in the dress of a
+liveried servant; a similar attire was also sent to Marquis Zappi, who
+had hitherto been concealed in the house of a friend, and in this attire
+he was to await the duchess below at the carriage.
+
+At last, day broke and the hour of departure came. The horn of the
+postilion resounded through the street. Through the midst of the
+sleeping Austrian soldiers who occupied the antechamber through which
+they were compelled to pass, Hortense walked, followed by her son loaded
+with packages, in his livery. Their departure was witnessed by no one
+except the sentinel on duty.
+
+Day had hardly dawned. In the first carriage sat the duchess, with a
+lady companion, and in front, on the box, her son, as a servant, at the
+side of the postilion; in the second carriage her maid, behind her the
+young Marquis Zappi.
+
+As the sun arose and shone down upon the beautiful Easter day, Ancona
+was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side of Louis
+Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her to succeed so
+far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be merciful in the
+future. But there were still many dangers to be overcome; the slightest
+accident might still betray them. The danger consisted not only in
+having to pass through all the places where the Austrian troops were
+stationed; General Geppert's pass was a sufficient protection against
+any thing that might threaten them from this quarter.
+
+The greatest danger was to be apprehended from their friends--from some
+one who might accidentally recognize her son, and unintentionally
+betray them.
+
+They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
+greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one, and
+every one might betray them. This part of the journey must therefore be
+made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom they had dispatched
+in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary relays of horses; their
+dismay was, therefore, great when they found no horses at the station
+Camoscia, on the boundary of Tuscany, and were informed that several
+hours must elapse before they could obtain any!
+
+These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense passed
+them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the slightest noise that
+broke upon the air.
+
+Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated himself on a
+stone bench that stood in front of the miserable little station-house.
+Worn out by grief and still weak from disease, indifferent to the
+dangers that menaced from all sides, heedless of the night wind that
+swept, with its icy breath, over his face, the prince sank down upon
+this stone bench, and went to sleep.
+
+Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a half-open
+carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France, on a stone
+bench, that served him as a couch!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE PILGRIMAGE.
+
+Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu. It
+heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted mother and
+son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every step in Italy.
+
+At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary without being
+recognized. They were now in their own country--in _la belle France_,
+which they still loved and proudly called their mother, although it had
+forsaken and discarded them. The death-penalty threatened the Bonapartes
+who should dare to set foot on French soil. But what cared they for
+that? Neither Hortense nor her son thought of it. They only knew that
+they were in their own country. They inhaled with delight the air that
+seemed to them better and purer than any other; with hearts throbbing
+with joy, they listened to the music of this beautiful language that
+greeted them with the sweet native melodies.
+
+At Cannes they passed the first night. What recollections did this place
+recall to Hortense! Here it was that Napoleon had landed on his return
+from Elba to France; from Cannes he had commenced his march to Paris
+with a handful of soldiers, and had arrived there with an army. For the
+people had everywhere received him with exultation; the regiments that
+had been sent out against the advancing general had everywhere joyously
+gone over to his standard. Charles de Labedoyere, this enthusiastic
+adherent of the emperor, had been the first to do this. He was to have
+advanced against the emperor from Grenoble; but, with the exulting cry,
+"_Vive l'empereur!_" the entire regiment had gone over to its adored
+chieftain. Labedoyere had paid dearly for the enthusiasm of those
+moments; for, the for-the-second-time restored Bourbons punished his
+fidelity with death. Like Marshal Ney, Charles de Labedoyere was also
+shot; like the emperor himself, he paid for the triumph of the hundred
+days with his liberty and with his life!
+
+Of all these names and events of the past, Hortense thought, while
+enjoying the first hours of repose in their room at an hotel in Cannes.
+Leaning back in her chair, her large eyes gazing dreamily at the ceiling
+above her, she told the attentive prince of the days that had been, and
+spoke to him of the days in which they were now living--of these days of
+humiliation and obscurity--of those days in which the French nation had
+risen, and, shaking its lion's mane, hurled the Bourbons from their
+ancestral throne, and out of the land they had hitherto proudly called
+their own. On driving out the Bourbons, the people had freely chosen
+another king--not the King of Rome, who, in Vienna, as Duke of
+Reichstadt, had been made to forget the brilliant days of his
+childhood--not the son of the Emperor Napoleon. The people of France had
+chosen the Duke of Orleans as their king, and Louis Philippe's first act
+had been to renew the decree of banishment which the Bourbons had
+fulminated against the Bonapartes, and which declared it to be a
+capital crime if they should ever dare to set foot on the soil
+of France.
+
+"The people acted freely and according to their own will," said
+Hortense, with a sad smile, as she saw her son turn pale, and wrinkles
+gather on his brow. "Honor the will of the people, my son! In order to
+reward the emperor for his great services to the country, the people of
+France had unanimously chosen him their emperor. The people who give
+have also the right to take back again. The Bourbons, who consider
+themselves the owners of France, may reclaim it as an estate of which
+they have been robbed by the house of Orleans. But the Bonapartes must
+remember that they derived all their power from the will of the people.
+They must be content to await the future expression of its will, and
+then submit, and conform themselves to it[62]."
+
+[Footnote 62: The duchess's own words. See La Reine Hortense en Italie,
+Suisse, France, etc., p. 79.]
+
+Louis Napoleon bowed his head and sighed. He must conform to the will of
+the people; cautiously, under a borrowed name, he must steal into the
+land of his longing and of his dreams; he must deny his nationality, and
+be indebted, for his name and passport, to the country that had bound
+his uncle, like a second Prometheus, to the rock, and left him there to
+die! But he did it with a sorrowful, with a bleeding heart; he wandered
+with his mother, who walked heavily veiled at his side, from place to
+place, listening to her reminiscences of the great past. At her
+relation of these reminiscences, his love and enthusiasm for the
+fatherland, from which he had so long been banished, burned brighter and
+brighter. The sight, the air of this fatherland, had electrified him; he
+entertained but one wish: to remain in France, and to serve France,
+although in the humble capacity of a private soldier.
+
+One day Louis Napoleon entered his mother's room with a letter in his
+hand, and begged her to read it. It was a letter addressed to Louis
+Philippe, in which Louis Napoleon begged the French king to annul his
+exile, and to permit him to enter the French army as a private soldier.
+
+Hortense read the letter, and shook her head sadly. It wounded her just
+pride that her son, the nephew of the great emperor, should ask a favor
+of him who had not hesitated to make the most of the revolution for
+himself, but had nevertheless lacked the courage to help the banished
+Bonapartes to recover their rights, and enable them to return to their
+country. In his ardent desire to serve France, Louis Napoleon had
+forgotten this insult of the King of France.
+
+"My children," says Hortense, in her memoirs, "my children, who had been
+cruelly persecuted by all the courts, even by those who owed every thing
+to the emperor, their uncle, loved their country with whole-souled
+devotion. Their eyes ever turned toward France, busied with the
+consideration of institutions that might make France happy; they knew
+that the people alone were their friends; the hatred of the great had
+taught them this. To conform to the will of the people with resignation
+was to them a duty, but to devote themselves to the service of France
+was their hearts' dearest wish. It was for this reason that my son had
+written to Louis Philippe hoping to be permitted to make himself useful
+to his country in some way."
+
+Hortense advised against this venturous step; and when she saw how much
+this grieved her son, and observed his eyes filling with tears, she
+begged that he would at least wait and reflect, and postpone his
+decision until their arrival in Paris.
+
+Louis Napoleon yielded to his mother's entreaties, and in silence and
+sadness these two pilgrims continued their wandering through the country
+and cities, that to Hortense seemed transformed into luminous monuments
+of departed glory.
+
+In Fontainebleau Hortense showed her son the palace that had been the
+witness of the greatest triumphs and also of the most bitter grief of
+his great uncle. Leaning on his arm, her countenance concealed by a
+heavy black veil, to prevent any one from recognizing her, Hortense
+walked through the chambers, in which she had once been installed as a
+mighty and honored queen, and in which she was now covertly an exile
+menaced with death. The servants who conducted her were the same who had
+been there during the days of the emperor! Hortense recognized them at
+once; she did not dare to make herself known, but she nevertheless felt
+that she, too, was remembered there. She saw this in the expression
+with which the servants opened the rooms she had once occupied; she
+heard it in the tone in which they mentioned her name! Every thing in
+this palace had remained as it then was! There was the same furniture in
+the rooms which the imperial family had occupied after the peace of
+Tilsit, and in which they had given such brilliant _fetes_, and received
+the homage of so many of the kings and princes of Europe, all of whom
+had come to implore the assistance and favor of their vanquisher! There
+were also the apartments which the pope had occupied, once voluntarily;
+subsequently, under compulsion. Alas! and there was also the little
+cabinet, in which the emperor, the once so mighty and illustrious ruler
+of Europe, had abdicated the crown which his victories, his good deeds,
+and the love of the French people, had placed on his head! And, finally,
+there were also the chapel and the altar before which the Emperor
+Napoleon had stood god-father to his nephew Louis Napoleon! All was
+still as it had been, except that the garden, that Hortense and her
+mother had laid out and planted, had grown more luxuriant, and now sang
+to the poor banished pilgrim with its rustling tree-tops a melancholy
+song of her long separation from her home!
+
+The sorrowing couple wandered on, and at last arrived before the gates
+of Paris. At this moment, Hortense was a Frenchwoman, a Parisian only,
+and, forgetting every thing else, all her grief and sufferings, she
+sought only to do the honors of Paris for her son. She ordered the
+coachman to drive them through the boulevards to the Rue de la Paix,
+and then to stop at the first good hotel. This was the same way over
+which she had passed sixteen years before, escorted by an Austrian
+officer. Then she had quitted Paris by night, driven out in a measure by
+the allies, who so much feared her, the poor, weak woman with her little
+boys, that troops had been placed under arms at regular intervals on her
+way, in order, as it was given out, to secure her safe passage. Now,
+after sixteen years, Hortense returned to Paris by the same route, still
+exiled and homeless, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
+French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
+proscription.
+
+But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she wept with
+joy at beholding once more the streets and places about which the
+memories of her youth clustered.
+
+By a strange chance, it was at the "_Hotel de Hollande_" that the former
+Queen of Holland descended from her carriage, and took up her residence,
+holding thus, in a measure, her entrance into Paris, under the
+fluttering banner of the past. In the little _Hotel de Hollande_, the
+Queen of Holland took possession of the apartments of the first floor,
+which commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the _Place
+Vendome._ "Say to the column on the _Place Vendome_ that I am dying,
+because I cannot embrace it," the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the
+album of a French nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful
+spies, who surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his
+father and of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the
+emperor's son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.
+
+Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was entirely
+unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He could go down
+into the square and hasten to the foot of the _Vendome_ column, and in
+thought at least kneel down before the monument that immortalized the
+renown and grandeur of the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order
+to perform a sacred duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own
+honor and dignity.
+
+She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive criminal, in
+the city that in the exercise of its free will had chosen itself a king,
+but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to partake of French
+hospitality and enjoy French protection by stealth; she was not willing
+to go about in disguise, deceiving the government with a false pass and
+a borrowed name. She had the courage of truth and sincerity, and she
+resolved to say to the King of France that she had come, not to defy his
+decree of banishment by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing
+against his new crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
+forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no other
+means of saving her son; because she must pass through France with him
+in order to reach England.
+
+Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of men, had
+surrounded the new king almost entirely with the friends and servants
+of the emperor and of the Duchess of St. Leu. But, in order not to
+excite suspicion against these, Hortense now addressed herself to him
+with whom she had the slightest acquaintance and whose devotion to the
+Orleans family was too well known to be called in doubt by her
+undertaking. Hortense therefore addressed herself to M. de Houdetot, the
+adjutant of the king, or rather, she caused her friend Mlle. de Massuyer
+to write to him. She was instructed to inform the count that she had
+come to Paris with an English family, and was the bearer of a commission
+from the Duchess of St. Leu to M. de Houdetot.
+
+M. de Houdetot responded to her request, and came to the _Hotel de
+Hollande_ to see Mlle. Massuyer. With surprise and emotion, he
+recognized in the supposititious English lady the Duchess of St. Leu,
+who was believed by all the world to be on the way to Malta, and for
+whom her friends (who feared the fatigue of so long a journey would be
+too much for Hortense in her weak state of health) had already taken
+steps to obtain for her permission to pass through France on her way
+to England.
+
+Hortense informed Count Houdetot of the last strokes of destiny that had
+fallen upon her, and expressed her desire to see the king, in order to
+speak with him in person about the future of her son.
+
+M. de Houdetot undertook to acquaint the king with her desire, and came
+on the following day to inform the duchess of the result of his mission.
+He told the duchess that the king had loudly lamented her boldness in
+coming to France, and the impossibility of his seeing her. He told her,
+moreover, that, as the king had a responsible ministry at his side, he
+had been compelled to inform the premier of her arrival, and that
+Minister Casimir Perrier would call on her during the day.
+
+A few hours later, Louis Philippe's celebrated minister arrived. He came
+with an air of earnest severity, as it were to sit in judgment upon the
+accused duchess, but her artless sincerity and her gentle dignity
+disarmed him, and soon caused him to assume a more delicate and
+polite bearing.
+
+"I well know," said Hortense in the course of the conversation, "I well
+know that I have broken a law, by coming hither; I fully appreciate the
+gravity of this offence; you have the right to cause me to be arrested,
+and it would be perfectly just in you to do so!"--Casimir Perrier shook
+his head slowly, and replied: "Just, no! Lawful, yes[63]!"
+
+[Footnote 63: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 110.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LOUIS PHILIIPE AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.
+
+The visit which Casimir Perrier had paid the duchess seemed to have
+convinced him that the fears which the king and his ministry had
+entertained had really been groundless, that the step-daughter of
+Napoleon had not come to Paris to conspire and to claim the still
+somewhat unstable throne of France for the Duke de Reichstadt or for
+Louis Napoleon, but that she had only chosen the way through France, in
+the anxiety of maternal love in order to rescue her son.
+
+In accordance with this conviction, Louis Philippe no longer considered
+it impossible to see the Duchess of St. Leu, but now requested her to
+call. Perhaps the king, who had so fine a memory for figures and
+money-matters, remembered that it had been Hortense (then still Queen of
+Holland) who, during the hundred days of the empire in 1815, had
+procured for the Duchess Orleans-Penthievre, from the emperor,
+permission to remain in Paris and a pension of two hundred thousand
+francs per annum; that it had been Hortense who had done the same for
+the aunt of the present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in
+their joy over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written
+the duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
+assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable gratitude[64].
+Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of rewarding
+Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.
+
+[Footnote 64: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 185.]
+
+He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of her
+sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St. Leu to the
+Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl, as the
+step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as the wife of
+the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once more, a poor,
+nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded countenance, imploring a
+little toleration and protection of those to whom she had once accorded
+toleration and protection.
+
+Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the elegance and
+graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how to assume, and
+that had always been an inheritance of his house, with all the
+amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which he so well knew
+how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the point at once, he
+spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the duchess most, of the
+decree of banishment.
+
+"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile, and it is
+not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He assured her that
+this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte family was a heavy
+burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse himself for it by
+saying that the exile pronounced against the imperial family was only an
+article of the same law which the conventionists had abolished, and the
+renewal of which had been so vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it
+had seemed as though he had uttered a new decree of banishment, while in
+point of fact he had only renewed a law that had already existed under
+the consulate of Napoleon. "But," continued the king with exultation,
+"the time is no longer distant when there will be no more exiles; I will
+have none under my government!"
+
+Then, as if to remind the duchess that there had been exiles and
+decrees of banishment at all times, also under the republic, the
+consulate, and the kingdom, he spoke of his own exile, of the needy and
+humiliating situation in which he had found himself, and which had
+compelled him to hire himself out as a teacher and give instruction for
+a paltry consideration.
+
+The duchess had listened to the king with a gentle smile, and replied
+that she knew the story of his exile, and that it did him honor.
+
+Then the duchess informed the king that her son had accompanied her on
+her journey, and was now with her in Paris; she also told him that her
+son, in his glowing enthusiasm for his country, had written to the king,
+begging that he might be permitted to enter the army.
+
+"Lend me the letter," replied Louis Philippe; "Perrier shall bring it to
+me, and, if circumstances permit, I shall be perfectly willing to grant
+your son's request; and it will also give me great pleasure to serve you
+at all times. I know that you have legitimate claims on the government,
+and that you have appealed to the justice of all former ministries in
+vain. Write out a statement of all that France owes you, and send it _to
+me alone_. I understand business matters, and constitute myself from
+this time on your _charge d'affaires_[65]. The Duke of Rovigo," he
+continued, "has informed me that the other members of the imperial
+family have similar claims. It will afford me great pleasure to be of
+assistance to all of you, and I shall interest myself particularly for
+the Princess de Montfort[66]."
+
+[Footnote 65: The king's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 201.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The Princess de Montfort was the wife of Jerome, the
+sister of the King of Wuertemberg, and a cousin of the Emperor
+of Russia.]
+
+Hortense had listened to the king, her whole face radiant with delight.
+The king's beneficent countenance, his friendly smile, his hearty and
+cordial manner, dispelled all doubt of his sincerity in Hortense's mind.
+She believed in his goodness and in his kindly disposition toward
+herself; and, in her joyous emotion, she thanked him with words of
+enthusiasm for his promised benefits, never doubting that it was his
+intention to keep his word.
+
+"Ah, sire!" she exclaimed, "the entire imperial family is in misfortune,
+and you will have many wrongs to redress. France owes us all a great
+deal, and it will be worthy of you to liquidate these debts."
+
+The king declared his readiness to do every thing. He who was so fond of
+taking in millions and of speculating, smilingly promised, in the name
+of France, to disburse millions, and to pay off the old state debt!
+
+The duchess believed him. She believed in his protestations of
+friendship, and in his blunt sincerity. She allowed him to conduct her
+to his wife, the queen, and was received by her and Madame Adelaide with
+the same cordiality the king had shown. Once only in the course of the
+conversation did Madame Adelaide forget her cordial disposition. She
+asked the duchess how long she expected to remain in Paris, and when the
+latter replied that she intended remaining three days longer, Madame
+exclaimed, in a tone of anxious dismay: "So long! Three days still! And
+there are so many Englishmen here who have seen your son in Italy, and
+might recognize you here!"
+
+But Fate itself seemed to delay the departure of the duchess and her
+son. On returning home from her visit to the Tuileries, she found her
+son on his bed in a violent fever, and the physician who had been called
+in declared that he was suffering from inflammation of the throat.
+
+Hortense was to tremble once more for the life of a son, and this son
+was the last treasure Fate had left her.
+
+Once more the mother sat at the bedside of her son, watching over him,
+lovingly, day and night. That her son's life might be preserved was now
+her only wish, her only prayer; all else became void of interest, and
+was lost sight of. She only left her son's side when Casimir Perrier
+came, as he was in the habit of doing daily, to inquire after her son's
+condition in the name of the king, and to request the duchess to name
+the amount of her claims against France, and to impart to him all her
+wishes with regard to her future. Hortense now had but one ardent
+wish--the recovery of her son; and her only request was, that she might
+be permitted to visit the French baths of the Pyrenees during the
+summer, in order to restore her failing health.
+
+The minister promised to procure this permission of the king, and of the
+Chambers, that were soon to be convened. "In this way we shall gradually
+become accustomed to your presence," observed Casimir Perrier. "As far
+as you are personally concerned, we shall be inclined to throw open the
+gates of the country to you. But with your son it is different, his name
+will be a perpetual obstacle in his way. If he should really desire at
+any time to take service in the army, it would be, above all, necessary
+that he should lay aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the
+wishes of foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties,
+that a war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change his
+name, if--"
+
+But now the duchess, her cheeks glowing, blushing with displeasure and
+anger, interrupted him. "What!" exclaimed she, "lay aside the noble name
+with which France may well adorn itself, conceal it as though we had
+cause to be ashamed of it?"
+
+Beside herself with anger, regardless, in her agitation, even of the
+suffering condition of her son, she hastened to his bedside, to inform
+him of the proposition made to her by Louis Philippe's minister.
+
+The prince arose in his couch, his eyes flaming, and his cheeks burning
+at the same time with the fever-heat of disease and of anger.
+
+"Lay aside my name!" he exclaimed. "Who dares to make such a proposition
+to me? Let us think of all these things no more, mother. Let us go back
+to our retirement. Ah, you were right, mother: our time is passed, or it
+has not yet come!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS FROM PARIS.
+
+Excitement had made the patient worse, and caused his fever to return
+with renewed violence. Hortense was now inseparable from his bedside;
+she herself applied ice to his burning throat, and assisted in applying
+the leeches ordered by the physician. But this continuous anxiety and
+excitement, all these troubles of the present, and sad remembrances of
+the past, had at last exhausted the strength of the delicate woman; the
+flush of fever now began to show itself on her cheeks also, and the
+physician urged her to take daily exercise in the open air if she
+desired to avoid falling ill.
+
+Hortense followed his advice. In the evening twilight, in plain attire,
+her face concealed by a heavy black veil, she now daily quitted her
+son's bedside, and went out into the street for a walk, accompanied by
+the young Marquis Zappi. No one recognized her, no one greeted her, no
+one dreamed that the veiled figure that walked so quietly and shyly was
+she who, as Queen of Holland, had formerly driven through these same
+streets in gilded coaches, hailed by the joyous shouts of the people.
+
+But, in these wanderings through Paris, Hortense also lived in her
+memories only. She showed the marquis the dwelling she had once
+occupied, and which had for her a single happy association: her sons had
+been born there. With a soft smile she looked up at the proud _facade_
+of this building, the windows of which were brilliantly illumined, and
+in whose parlors some banker or ennobled provision-dealer was now
+perhaps giving a ball; pointing to these windows with her slender white
+hand, she said: "I wished to see this house, in order to reproach myself
+for having been unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the
+midst of so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of
+the misfortune that was one day to come upon me[67]."
+
+[Footnote 67: The duchess's own words: see Voyage, etc., p. 225.]
+
+She looked down again and passed on, to seek the houses of several
+friends, of whom she knew that they had remained faithful; heavily
+veiled and enveloped in her dark cloak she stood in front of these
+houses, not daring to acquaint her friends with her presence, contented
+with the sweet sense of being near them!
+
+When, after having strengthened her heart with the consciousness of
+being near friends, she passed on through the streets, in which she, the
+daughter of France, was now unknown, homeless, and forgotten!--no, not
+forgotten!--as she chanced to glance in at a store she was just passing,
+she saw in the lighted window her own portrait at the side of that of
+the emperor.
+
+Overcome by a sweet emotion, Hortense stood still and gazed at these
+pictures. The laughing, noisy crowd on the sidewalk passed on, heedless
+of the shrouded woman who stood there before the shop-window, gazing
+with tearful eyes at her own portrait. "It seems we are still
+remembered," whispered she, in a low voice. "Those who wear crowns are
+not to be envied, and should not lament their loss; but is it possible
+that the love of the people, to receive which is so sweet, has not yet
+been wholly withdrawn from us?"
+
+The profound indifference with which France had accepted the exile of
+the Bonapartes had grieved her deeply. She had only longed for some
+token of love and fidelity in order that she might go back into exile
+consoled and strengthened. And now she found it. France proved to her
+through these portraits that she was not forgotten.
+
+Hortense stepped with her companion into the store to purchase the
+portraits of herself and of the emperor; and when she was told that
+these portraits were in great demand, and that many of them were sold to
+the people, she hardly found strength to repress the tears of blissful
+emotion that rose from her heart to her eyes. She took the portraits and
+hastened home, to show them to her son and to bring to him with them the
+love-greetings of France. While the duchess, her thoughts divided
+between the remembrances of the past and the cares and troubles of the
+present, had been sojourning in Paris for twelve days, all the papers
+were extolling the heroism of the duchess in having saved her son, and
+of her having embarked at Malta in order to take him to England.
+
+Even the king's ministerial council occupied itself with this matter,
+and thought it proper to make representations to his majesty on the
+subject. Marshal Sebastiani informed the king that the Duchess of St.
+Leu, to his certain knowledge, had landed at Corfu. With lively
+interest he spoke of the fatiguing journey at sea that the duchess would
+be compelled to make, and asked almost timidly if she might not be
+permitted to travel through France.
+
+The king's countenance assumed an almost sombre look, and he replied,
+dryly: "Let her continue her journey." Casimir Perrier bowed his head
+over the paper that lay before him, in order to conceal his mirth, and
+minister Barthe availed himself of the opportunity to give a proof of
+his eloquence and of his severity, by observing that a law existed
+against the duchess, and that a law was a sacred thing that no one
+should be permitted to evade.
+
+But the presence of the duchess, although kept a secret, began to cause
+the king and his premier Casimir Perrier more and more uneasiness. The
+latter had already once informed her through M. de Houdetot that her
+departure was absolutely necessary and must take place at once, and he
+had only been moved to consent to her further sojourn by the condition
+of the prince, whose inflammation of the throat had rendered a second
+application of leeches necessary.
+
+They were now, however, on the eve of a great and dangerous day, of the
+5th of May[68]. The people of Paris were strangely moved, and the new
+government saw with much apprehension the dawn of this day of such great
+memories for France. There seemed to be some justification for this
+apprehension. Since the break of day, thousands of people had flocked to
+the column on the _Place Vendome_. Silently and gravely they approached
+the monument, in order to adorn with wreaths of flowers the eagles, or
+to lay them at the foot of the column, and then to retire mournfully.
+
+[Footnote 68: The anniversary of Napoleon's death.]
+
+Hortense stood at the window of her apartment, looking on with folded
+hands and tears of bliss at the impressive and solemn scene that was
+taking place on the _Place Vendome_ beneath, when suddenly a violent
+knocking was heard at her door, and M. de Houdetot rushed in, a pale and
+sorrowful expression on his countenance.
+
+"Duchess," said he breathlessly, "you must depart immediately, without
+an hour's delay! I am ordered to inform you of this. Unless the life of
+your son is to be seriously endangered, you must leave at once!"
+
+Hortense listened to him tranquilly. She almost pitied the king--the
+government--to whom a weak woman and an invalid youth could cause such
+fear. How great must this fear be, when it caused them to disregard all
+the laws of hospitality and of decency! What had she done to justify
+this fear? She had not addressed herself to the people of France, in
+order to obtain help and protection for her son--for the nephew of the
+emperor; cautiously and timidly she had concealed herself from the
+people, and, far from being disposed to arouse or agitate her country,
+she had only made herself known to the King of France in order to
+solicit protection and toleration at his hands.
+
+She was distrusted, in spite of this candor; and her presence, although
+known to no one, awakened apprehensions in those in authority. Hortense
+pitied them; not a word of complaint or regret escaped her lips. She
+sent for her physician at once; and, after informing him that she must
+necessarily depart for London, she asked him if such a journey would
+endanger her son's life. The physician declared that, while he could
+have desired a few days more of repose, the prince would nevertheless,
+with proper care and attention, be able to leave on the following day.
+
+"Inform the king that I shall depart to-morrow," said Hortense; and,
+while M. de Houdetot was hastening to the king with this welcome
+intelligence, the duchess was making preparations for the journey, which
+she began with her son early on the following morning.
+
+In four days they reached Calais, where they found the ship that was to
+convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to leave her
+country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once more driven out,
+and condemned to live in a foreign country! Because the French people
+still refused to forget their emperor, the French kings hated and feared
+the imperial family. Under the old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis
+Philippe, who had attained his crown through the people, felt that it
+was necessary to flatter the people, and show some consideration for
+their sympathies. He declared to the people that he entertained the most
+profound admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree
+of banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the _Vendome_
+column, with its bronze statue of the emperor, should be adorned, and at
+the same time his decree banished the daughter and the nephew of the
+emperor from France, and drove them back into a foreign country.
+
+Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she was
+leaving her country--the country in which she had friends whom she had
+not seen again; the country in which lay her mother's grave, which she
+had not dared to visit; and, finally, the grave of her son! She once
+more left behind her all the remembrances of her youth--all the places
+she had loved; and her regret and her tears made known how dear these
+things still were to her; that the banished and homeless one was still
+powerless to banish the love of country from her heart, and that France
+was still her home!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+PILGRIMAGE THROUGH FRANCE.
+
+The sojourn of the Duchess of St. Leu in England where she arrived with
+her son after a stormy passage, was for both a succession of triumphs
+and ovations. The high aristocracy of London heaped upon her proofs of
+esteem, of reverence, and of love; every one seemed anxious to atone for
+the severity and cruelty with which England had treated the emperor, by
+giving proofs of their admiration and respect for his step-daughter. All
+these proud English aristocrats seemed desirous of proving to the
+duchess and her son that they were not of the same disposition as Hudson
+Lowe, who had slowly tormented the chained lion to death with petty
+annoyances.
+
+The Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Holland, and Lady Grey, in
+particular, were untiring in their efforts to do the honors of their
+country to Hortense, and to show her every possible attention. But
+Hortense declined their proffered invitations. She avoided all
+publicity; she feared, on her own and her son's account, that the tattle
+of the world and the newspapers might once more draw down upon her the
+distrust and ill-will of the French government. She feared that this
+might prevent her returning with her son, through France, to her quiet
+retreat on the Lake of Constance, in Switzerland, to her charming
+Arenenberg, where she had passed so many delightful and peaceful years
+of repose and remembrance.
+
+Hortense was right. Her sojourn in England excited, as soon as it became
+known, in every quarter, care, curiosity, and disquiet. All parties were
+seeking to divine the duchess's intention in residing in London. All
+parties were convinced that she entertained plans that might endanger
+and frustrate their own. The Duchess de Berri, who resided in Bath, had
+come to London as soon as she heard of the arrival of the Duchess of St.
+Leu, in order to inquire into Hortense's real intention. The bold and
+enterprising Duchess de Berri was preparing to go to France, in order
+to call the people to arms for herself and son, to hurl Louis Philippe
+from his usurped throne, and to restore to her son his rightful
+inheritance. They, therefore, thought it perfectly natural that Hortense
+should entertain similar plans for her son; that she, too, should
+purpose the overthrow of the French king in order to place her own son,
+or the son of the emperor, the Duke de Reichstadt, on the throne.
+
+On the other hand, it had been endeavored to persuade Prince Leopold, of
+Coburg, to whom the powers of Europe had just offered the crown of
+Belgium, that the Duchess of St. Leu had come to England in order to
+possess herself of Belgium by a _coup d'etat_, and to proclaim Louis
+Napoleon its king. But this wise and magnanimous prince laughed at these
+intimations. He had known the duchess in her days of magnificence, and
+he now hastened to lay the same homage at the foot of the homeless woman
+that he had once devoted to the adored and powerful Queen of Holland. He
+called on the duchess, conversed with her of her beautiful and brilliant
+past, and told her of the hopes which he himself entertained for the
+future. Deeply bowed down by the death of his beloved wife, Princess
+Charlotte of England, it was his purpose to seek consolation in his
+misfortune by striving to make his people happy. He had therefore
+accepted the crown tendered him by the people, and was on the point of
+departing for Belgium.
+
+While taking leave of the duchess, after a long and cordial
+conversation, he remarked, with a gentle smile: "I trust you will not
+take my kingdom away from me on your journey through Belgium?"
+
+While the new government of France, as well as the exiled Bourbons,
+suspected the Duchess of St. Leu and her son of entertaining plans for
+the subversion of the French throne, the imperialists and republicans
+were hoping that Hortense's influence might be exerted upon the
+destinies of France. Everywhere in France as well as in England, the
+people were of the opinion that the new throne of Louis Philippe had no
+vitality, because it had no support in the heart of the people. The
+partisans of the Bourbons believed that France longed for the grandson
+of St. Louis, for its hereditary king, Henry V.; the imperialists were
+convinced that the new government was about to be overthrown, and that
+France was more anxious than ever to see the emperors son, Napoleon II.,
+restored. The republicans, however, distrusted the people and the army,
+and began to perceive that they could only attain the longed-for
+republican institutions under a Bonaparte. They therefore sent their
+secret emissaries as well to the Duke de Reichstadt as to
+Louis Napoleon.
+
+The Duke de Reichstadt, to whom these emissaries proposed that he should
+come to France and present himself to the people, replied: "I cannot go
+to France as an adventurer; let the nation call me, and I shall find
+means to get there."
+
+To the propositions made to him, Louis Napoleon replied that he belonged
+to France under all circumstances; that he had proved this by asking
+permission to serve France, but he had been rejected. It would not
+become him to force to a decision by a _coup d'etat_ the nation whose
+decrees he would ever hold sacred.
+
+Hortense regarded these efforts of the imperialists and of the
+republicans to win her son to their purposes with a sorrowful and
+anxious heart. She hoped and longed for nothing more than the privilege
+of living in retirement with her memories; she felt exhausted and
+sobered by the few steps she had already taken into the great world;
+she, who had ever felt the most tender sympathy for the misfortunes of
+others, and the most ardent desire to alleviate them--she had nowhere
+found in her misfortune any thing but injustice, indifference,
+and calumny.
+
+Hortense longed to be back at Arenenberg, in her Swiss mountains.
+Thither she desired to return with her son, in order that she might
+there dream with him of the brilliant days that had been, and sing with
+him the exalted song of her remembrances! If the French government
+should permit her to journey with her son through France, she could
+easily and securely reach the Swiss Canton of Thurgau, where her little
+estate, Arenenberg, lay under the protection of the republic; the
+daughter of the emperor would there be certain to find peace and repose!
+
+The duchess there wrote to M. de Houdetot, begging him to procure for
+her from the French government a passport, permitting her to travel
+through France under some assumed name. It was promised her after long
+hesitation, but under the condition that she should not commence her
+journey until after July, until after the first anniversary of the
+coronation of Louis Philippe.
+
+Hortense agreed to this, and received on the first of August a passport,
+which permitted her, as Madame Arenenberg, to pass through France with
+her son in order to return to her estate in Switzerland.
+
+It was at first the duchess's intention, notwithstanding the unquiet
+movements that were taking place in the capital, to journey through
+Paris, for the very purpose of proving, by her quiet and uninterested
+demeanor, that she had no share whatever in these movements and riots.
+
+But, on informing Louis Napoleon of her intention, he exclaimed, with
+sparkling eyes: "If we go to Paris, and if I should see the people
+sabred before my eyes, I shall not be able to resist the inclination to
+place myself on its side[69]!"
+
+[Footnote 69: La Reine Hortense, p. 276.]
+
+Hortense clasped her son anxiously in her arms, as if to protect him
+from all danger, on her maternal heart. "We shall not go to Paris," said
+she, "we will wander through France, and pray before the monuments of
+our happiness!"
+
+On the 7th of August the Duchess of St. Leu left England with her son,
+Louis Napoleon, and landed after a pleasant passage at Boulogne.
+
+Boulogne was for Hortense the first monument of her happiness, at the
+foot of which she wished to pray! There, during the most brilliant
+period of the empire, she had attended the military _fetes_, in the
+midst of which the emperor was preparing to go forth to encounter new
+dangers, and to reap, perhaps, new renown. A high column designated the
+place where these camp-festivals had once taken place. It had been
+erected under the empire, but under the restoration the name of Louis
+XVIII. had been inscribed on it.
+
+Accompanied by the prince, the Duchess of St. Leu ascended this column,
+in order to show him from its summit the beautiful and flourishing
+France, that had once been her own and through which they must now pass
+with veiled countenances and borrowed names. From there she pointed out
+to him the situation of the different camps, the location of the
+imperial tent, then the place where the emperor's throne had stood, and
+where he had first distributed crosses of the legion of honor among
+the soldiers.
+
+With a glowing countenance and in breathless attention, Louis Napoleon
+listened to his mother's narrative. Hortense, lost in her recollections,
+had not noticed that two other visitors, a lady and a gentleman, were
+now also on the platform and had listened to a part of her narrative. As
+the duchess ceased speaking, they approached to tell her with what deep
+interest they had listened to her narrative of the most glorious period
+of French history. They were a young married couple from Paris, and had
+much to relate concerning the parties who were now arrayed against each
+other in France, and who made the future of the country so uncertain.
+
+In return for Hortense's so eloquent description of the past, they now
+told her of a _bon mot_ of the present that was going the rounds of
+Parisian society. It was there said that the best means of satisfying
+everybody and all parties would be, to convert France into a republic
+and to give it three consuls, the Duke of Reichstadt, the Duke of
+Orleans, and the Duke of Bordeaux. "But," added they, "it might easily
+end in the first consul's driving out the other two, and making
+himself emperor."
+
+Hortense found the courage to answer this jest with a smile, but she
+hastened to leave the place and to get away from the couple, who had
+perhaps recognized her, and told them of the _bon mot_ with a purpose.
+
+Sadly and silently, mother and son returned to their hotel, which was
+situated on the sea-side, and commanded a fine view of the surging,
+foaming waters of the channel and of the lofty column of the empire.
+
+They both stepped out on the balcony. It was a beautiful evening; the
+setting sun shed its purple rays over the surface of the sea. Murmuring
+and in melodious _tace_ the foaming waves rolled in upon the beach; on
+another side, the lofty column, glowing in the light of the setting sun,
+towered aloft like a pillar of fire, a memorial monument of fire!
+
+Hortense, who for some time had been silently gazing, first at the
+column, then at the sea, now turned with a sad smile to her son.
+
+"Let us spend an hour with recollections of the past," said she. "In the
+presence of this foaming sea and of this proud column, I will show you
+a picture of the past. Do you wish to see it?"
+
+His gaze fastened on the imperial column, Louis Napoleon silently nodded
+assent.
+
+Hortense went to her room, and soon returned to the balcony with a book,
+bound in red velvet. Often, during the quiet days of Arenenberg, the
+prince had seen her writing in this book, but never had Hortense yielded
+to his entreaties and permitted him to read any part of her memoirs.
+Unsolicited it was her intention to unfold before him to-day a brilliant
+picture; in view of the sad and desolate present, she wished to portray
+to him the bright and glittering past, perhaps only for the purpose of
+entertaining him, perhaps in order to console him with the hope that all
+that is passes away, and that the present would therefore also come to
+an end, and that which once was, again become reality for him, the heir
+of the emperor.
+
+She seated herself at her son's side, on a little sofa that stood on the
+balcony, and, opening her book, began to read.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FRAGMENT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+"The emperor had returned from Italy. The beautiful ceremony of the
+distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honor had taken place
+before his departure, and I had been present on the occasion; the
+emperor now repaired to Boulogne, in order to make a second
+distribution of the order in the army on his birthday. He had made my
+husband general of the army of the reserve, and sent him a courier, with
+the request that he should come with me and our son to the camp at
+Boulogne. My husband did not wish to interrupt the baths he was taking
+at St. Amand, but he requested me to go to Boulogne, to spend a week
+with the emperor.
+
+"The emperor resided at Boulogne in a little villa called _Pont de
+Brigue_. His sister, Caroline, and Murat, lived in another little villa
+near by. I lived with them, and every day we went to dine with the
+emperor. During two years, our troops had been concentrating in full
+view of England, and every one expected an attack. The camp at Boulogne
+was erected on the sea-side, and resembled a long and regularly-built
+city. Each hut had a little garden, flowers, and birds. In the middle of
+the camp, on an elevation, stood the emperor's tent; near by, that of
+Marshal Berthier. All the men-of-war on the water were drawn up in a
+line, only waiting the signal of departure. In the distance we could see
+England, and its beautiful ships that were cruising along the coast
+seemed to form an impenetrable barrier. This grand spectacle gave us for
+the first time an illustration of an unknown, hitherto not-dreamed-of
+power that stood opposed to us. Here every thing was calculated to
+excite the imagination. This boundless sea might soon transform itself
+into a battle-field, and swallow up the _elite_ of the two greatest
+nations. Our troops, proud in the feeling that there were no obstacles
+for them, made impatient by two years' repose, glowing with energy and
+bravery, already imagined themselves to have attained the opposite
+coast. When one considered their bravery and confidence, success seemed
+certain; but when the eye turned to the impenetrable forest of masts on
+the hostile ships, a feeling of anxiety and fear suddenly took
+possession of the heart. And yet nothing seemed to be wanting to the
+expedition but a favorable wind.
+
+"Of all the homage that a woman can receive, military homage has in the
+highest degree the chivalrous character, and it is impossible not to
+feel flattered by it.
+
+"There could not be any thing more delightful or imposing than the
+homage of which I was here the object, and it was only here that it made
+any impression on me.
+
+"The emperor gave me as an escort his equerry, General Defrance.
+Whenever I approached a camp division, the guard was called out and
+presented arms.
+
+"I had interceded for several soldiers who were undergoing punishment
+for breaches of discipline, and was on this account received everywhere
+with the liveliest enthusiasm. The entire mounted general staff escorted
+my carriage, and my approach was everywhere hailed by brilliant music.
+It was on such an occasion that I saw for the first time the urn which a
+grenadier wore attached to his belt; I was told that the emperor, in
+order to do honor to the memory of the gallant Latour d'Auvergne[70],
+had caused his heart to be enclosed in a leaden casket, which he had
+intrusted to the oldest soldier of the regiment, commanding that his
+name should always be called at the roll-call, as though he were
+present. He who bore the heart replied: 'Dead on the field of honor.'
+
+[Footnote 70: Latour d'Auvergne, a descendant of the celebrated Turenne,
+was known and honored throughout the whole army on account of the
+lion-hearted courage which he had exhibited on so many occasions. As he
+invariably declined the many advancements and honors that were tendered
+him, Napoleon appointed him first grenadier of the army. He fell in the
+action at Neuburg, and the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais,
+afterward caused a monument to be erected there in his memory.]
+
+"One day, a breakfast was given me at the camp of Ambleteuse. I desired
+to go by water, and, notwithstanding a contrary wind, the admiral took
+me. I saw the English ships, and we passed so near them, that they might
+easily have captured our yacht. I also visited the Dutch fleet commanded
+by Admiral Versuelt, where I was received with great applause, the
+sailors little dreaming that I would be their queen within the space of
+a year[71].
+
+[Footnote 71: In order to reach the harbor of Ambleteuse to which they
+had been assigned, the Dutch had first been compelled to do battle with
+the English fleet, and in this combat they had acquitted themselves with
+the greatest honor.]
+
+"On another occasion, the emperor ordered a review. The English, who
+felt disquieted, by the appearance of so many troops drawn up before
+them, approached nearer and nearer to our coasts, and even fired a few
+cannon-shots at us; the emperor was at the head of his French columns
+when they replied to these shots, and was thus placed between two fires.
+As we had followed him, we were now compelled to remain at his side. To
+his uncle's great joy, my son exhibited no symptom of fear whatever. But
+the generals trembled at seeing the emperor exposed to such danger. The
+ramrod of some awkward soldier might prove as dangerous as a ball. In
+the midst of this imposing spectacle, I was struck with astonishment at
+the contrast presented by the troops under different circumstances. When
+drawn up in line of battle, they glowed with gallantry and
+determination, but, in the days of repose, they resembled well-behaved
+children, who could amuse themselves with a flower or a bird. The most
+daring warrior was then often converted into the most diligent and
+submissive scholar.
+
+"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent, the
+grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several songs, and
+came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young girls. In the
+most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song full of the fiercest
+and most daring threats against England.
+
+"From the emperor's parlor we often saw the soldiers of his guard
+assemble on the grass-plot before the castle; one of them would play the
+violin and instruct his comrades in dancing. The beginners would study
+the '_jetes_' and '_assembles_' with the closest attention; the more
+advanced ones would execute a whole contredance. From behind the
+window-blinds we watched them with the greatest pleasure. The emperor,
+who often surprised us at this occupation, would laugh with us and
+rejoice at the innocent amusements of his soldiers.
+
+"Was this project of a landing in England really intended? Or was it
+the emperor's purpose by these enormous preparations to divert attention
+from other points, and fix it on this one only? Even to-day this is a
+question which I cannot venture to decide; here, as elsewhere, I only
+report what I have seen.
+
+"Madame Ney also gave me a brilliant festival at Montreuil, where her
+husband the marshal was in command. During the forenoon the troops were
+manoeuvred before me, in the evening a ball took place. But this was
+suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that the emperor had
+just embarked.
+
+"A number of young officers, who had been present at the ball, rushed
+out on the road to Boulogne; I followed them with the rapidity of
+lightning, escorted as usual by General Defrance, who burned with
+impatience to be again at the emperor's side. I myself felt unutterable
+emotion at the prospect of witnessing so great an occurrence. I imagined
+myself observing the battle from the summit of the tower that stood near
+the emperor's tent; beholding our fleet advance and sink down into the
+waves, I shuddered in anticipation.
+
+"At last I arrived. I inquired after the emperor, and learned that he
+had actually attended the embarkation of all his troops during the
+night, but that he had just returned to his villa.
+
+"I did not see him until dinner, at which he asked Prince Joseph, who
+was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed in this
+pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the soldiers.
+Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed that a departure
+was really intended, and that the soldiers had doubted it so little that
+they had sold their watches. The emperor also often asked if the
+telegraph had not yet announced the approach of the French squadron; his
+adjutant, Lauriston, was with the squadron, and the emperor seemed only
+to be awaiting Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to
+set sail.
+
+"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired, and I
+took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and Dunkirk. I saw
+troops defiling before me everywhere; and with regret and fear I left
+this magnificent army, thinking that they might perhaps in a few days be
+exposed to the greatest dangers.
+
+"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage of our
+fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving in our
+neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the Rhine. Austria
+had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris, to see the emperor
+once more before his departure for Germany[72]."
+
+[Footnote 72: La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc., p. 278.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PILGRIM.
+
+On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son, in
+order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
+her memories.
+
+It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although banished
+and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she still stood
+on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living in a foreign land,
+in a land whose language was unknown to her, and whose people she could
+therefore not understand. Now, on this journey through France, she
+rejoiced once more in being able to understand the conversation of the
+people in the streets, and of the peasants in the fields. It was a
+sensation of mingled bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a
+stranger among this people, and it therefore now afforded her the
+greatest delight to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
+_naive_ and artless words.
+
+As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in which she
+purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out into the streets
+on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into a booth, seated
+herself, and conversed with the people who came to the store to purchase
+their daily necessaries; on another occasion, she accosted a child on
+the street, kissed it, and inquired after its parents; then, again, she
+would converse with the peasants in the villages about their farms, and
+the prospects of a plentiful harvest. The _naive_, strong, and healthy
+disposition of the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of
+a happy mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
+French people, to which they, though banished and cast off,
+still belonged.
+
+In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince Conde. The
+forests that stood in the neighborhood had once belonged to the queen,
+or rather they had been a portion of the appendage which the emperor,
+since the union of Holland and France, had set apart for her second son,
+Louis Napoleon. Hortense had never been in the vicinity, and could
+therefore visit the castle without fear of being recognized.
+
+They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the garden, who
+had been the former possessor of the great forests of Chantilly.
+
+"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense," replied the
+man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued to speak of her
+here for a long time; it was said that she was wandering about in the
+country in disguise, but for the last few years nothing has been heard
+of her, and I do not know what has become of her."
+
+"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad a smile
+that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with tears.
+
+From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine, for
+Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once seen in the
+days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These places now seemed
+as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How great the splendor that
+had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the emperor had visited the owner
+of the place in order to enjoy with him the delights of the chase! In
+the walks of the park, in which thousands of lamps had then shone, the
+grass now grew rankly; a miserable, leaky boat was now the only
+conveyance to the Poplar Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques,
+on whose monument Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names.
+Morfontaine appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in
+1815, and it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense
+had attended a magnificent festival given by Joseph Bonaparte, then its
+owner, to his imperial brother.
+
+In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful remembrances for
+Hortense, for here was situated the great college for the daughters of
+high military officers, of which Hortense had been the protectress. She
+dared not show herself, for she well knew that she was not forgotten
+here; here there were many who still knew and loved her, and she could
+only show herself to strangers. But she nevertheless visited the church,
+and descended with Louis Napoleon into the vaults. Louis XVIII. alone
+reposed in the halls which the empire had restored for the reception of
+the new family of rulers, adopted by France. Alas! he who built these
+halls, the Emperor Napoleon, now reposed under a weeping-willow on a
+desolate island in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him now
+occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus of the emperor.
+
+While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls, Hortense thought
+of the day on which she had come hither with the emperor to inspect the
+building of the church. And that time she had been ill and suffering,
+and with the fullest conviction she had said to her mother that she,
+Queen Hortense, would be the first that would be laid to rest in the
+vault of St. Denis. Now, after so many years, she descended into it
+living and had hardly a right to visit it.
+
+But there was another grave, another monument to her memories, beside
+which Hortense desired to pray. This was the grave of the Empress
+Josephine, in the church at Ruelle.
+
+With what emotions did she approach this place and kneel down beside the
+grave-mound! Of all that Josephine had loved, there remained only
+Hortense and her son, a solitary couple, who were now secretly visiting
+the place where Hortense's mother reposed. The number of flowers that
+adorned the monument proved that Josephine was at least resting in the
+midst of friends, who still held her memory sacred, and this was a
+consolation for her daughter.
+
+From Ruelle and its consecrated grave they wandered on to Malmaison.
+Above all, Hortense wished to show this palace to her son! It was from
+this place that Napoleon had departed to leave France forever! Here
+Hortense had had the pleasure of sweetening for him, by her tender
+sympathy, the moment when all the world had abandoned him--the moment
+when he fell from the heights of renown into the abyss of misfortune.
+But, alas! the poor queen was not even to have the satisfaction of
+showing to her son the palace, sacred to so many memories that had once
+been her own! The present owner had given strict orders to give
+admission to the palace only upon presentation of permits that must be
+obtained of him beforehand, and, as Hortense had none, her entreaties
+were all in vain.
+
+She was cruelly repelled from the threshold of the palace in which in
+former days she had been so joyfully received by her devoted friends
+and servants!
+
+Sorrowfully, her eyes clouded with tears, she turned away and returned
+to her hotel, leaning on her son's arm.
+
+In silence she seated herself at his side on the stone bench that stood
+before the house, and gazed at the palace in which she had spent such
+happy and momentous days, lost in the recollections of the past!
+
+"It is, perhaps, natural," she murmured in a low voice, "that absence
+should cause those, who have the happiness to remain in their homes, to
+forget us. But, for those who are driven out into foreign lands, the
+life of the heart stands still, and the past is all to them; to the
+exiled the present and the future are unimportant. In France every thing
+has progressed, every thing is changed, I alone am left behind, with my
+sentiments of unchangeable love and fidelity! Alas! how sorrowful and
+painful it is to be forgotten[73]! How--"
+
+Suddenly she was interrupted by the tones of a piano, that resounded in
+her immediate vicinity. Behind the bench on which they were sitting,
+were the windows of the parlor of the hotel. These windows were open,
+and each tone of the music within could be heard with the greatest
+distinctness.
+
+The playing was now interrupted by a female voice, which said: "Sing us
+a song, my daughter."
+
+"What shall I sing?" asked another and more youthful voice.
+
+"Sing the beautiful, touching song your brother brought you from Paris
+yesterday. The song of Delphine Gay, set to music by M. de Beauplan."
+
+"Ah, you mean the song about Queen Hortense, who comes to Paris as a
+pilgrim? You are right, mamma, it is a beautiful and touching song, and
+I will sing it!"
+
+And the young lady struck the keys more forcibly, and began to play the
+prelude.
+
+Outside on the stone bench sat she who was once Queen Hortense, but was
+now the poor, solitary pilgrim. Nothing remained to her of the glorious
+past, but her son, who sat at her side! Hand in hand, both breathless
+with emotion, both pale and tearful, they listened until the young girl
+concluded her touching song.
+
+[Footnote 73: The duchess's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p.
+305.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was once more
+in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking the Lake of
+Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic lake, with its
+island and its surrounding cities and villages.
+
+Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned its back
+on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny alike
+frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and the
+Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her residence
+in their territory--still had the courage to offer the Duchess of St.
+Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil of the little
+republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and distrust of the mighty
+could not drive her!
+
+In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a bleeding
+breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful blow, the loss
+of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and bowed down by the
+coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the cowardly fear of its
+egoism, had become faithless, even to the holiest and most imperishable
+of all religions, the religion of memory!
+
+How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned her! how
+many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour of peril!
+
+In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them all;
+and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied them! She
+had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her world--Arenenberg,
+in which her last and only happiness, her son, the heir of the imperial
+name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which was as a temple of memory, in
+which Hortense was the pious and believing priestess.
+
+At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her journey
+through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in the heroism
+of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The noblest womanhood, the
+most cultivated mind, the proudest and purest soul, speaks from out this
+book, with which Hortense has erected a monument to herself that is more
+imperishable than all the monuments of stone and bronze, for this
+monument speaks to the heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote
+this book with her heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her
+eyes; she concludes it with a touching appeal to the French people,
+which it may well be permitted us to repeat here; it is as follows:
+
+"The renewal of the law of exile, and the assimilation made between us
+and the Bourbons, testify to the sentiments and fears that are
+entertained respecting us. No friendly voice has been raised in our
+behalf; this indifference has doubled the bitterness of our banishment!
+May they, however, still be happy--those who forget! May they, above
+all, make France happy! This is my prayer!
+
+"As for the people, it will, if it remembers its glory, its grandeur,
+and the incessant care of which it was the object, ever hold our memory
+dear. This is my firm conviction, and this thought is the sweetest
+consolation of an exile, the sweetest consolation he can take with him
+to the grave[74]!"
+
+Hortense still lived a few years of peaceful tranquillity; far from all
+she loved--far also from the son who was her last hope, never dreaming
+that destiny had so brilliant a future in store for him, and that Louis
+Napoleon, whom the Bourbons had banished from France as a child, and the
+Orleans as a youth--that Louis Napoleon would one day be enthroned in
+Paris as emperor, while the Bourbons and Orleans languish in foreign
+lands as exiles!
+
+In the year 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Bonapartes, died!
+
+Weary, at last, of misfortune, and of the exile in which she languished,
+she bowed her head, and went home to her great dead--home to Napoleon
+and Josephine!
+
+[Footnote 74: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 324.]
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Hortense, by L. Muehlbach
+
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