ess 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 c