h 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