s
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into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although they filled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 provid