tter 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