offin, 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,
afterwar