less, at her side the son who was not only menaced by the
French decree of banishment, but also by the Austrian edict of
proscription.

But yet she was once more in Paris, once more at home, and she wept with
joy at beholding once more the streets and places about which the
memories of her youth clustered.

By a strange chance, it was at the "_Hotel de Hollande_" that the former
Queen of Holland descended from her carriage, and took up her residence,
holding thus, in a measure, her entrance into Paris, under the
fluttering banner of the past. In the little _Hotel de Hollande_, the
Queen of Holland took possession of the apartments of the first floor,
which commanded a view of the boulevard and the column of the _Place
Vendome._ "Say to the column on the _Place Vendome_ that I am dying,
because I cannot embrace it," the Duke de Reichstadt once wrote in the
album of a French nobleman, who had succeeded, in spite of the watchful
spies, who surrounded the emperor's son, in speaking to him of his
father and of the empire. This happiness, vainly longed for by the
emperor's son, was at least to be enjoyed by his nephew.

Louis Napoleon could venture to show himself. In Paris he was entirely
unknown, and could therefore be betrayed by no one. He could go down
into the square and hasten to the foot of the _Vendome_ column, and in
thought at least kneel down before the monument that immortalized the
renown and grandeur of the emperor. Hortense remained behind, in order
to perform a sacred duty, imposed on her, as she believed, by her own
honor and dignity.

She was not willing to sojourn secretly, like a fugitive criminal, in
the city that in the exercise of its free will had chosen itself a king,
but not a Bonaparte. She was not willing to partake of French
hospitality and enjoy French protection by stealth; she was not willing
to go about in disguise, deceiving the government with a false pass and
a borrowed name. She had the courage of truth and sincerity, and she
resolved to say to the King of France that she had come, not to defy his
decree of banishment by her presence, not for the purpose of intriguing
against his new crown, by arousing the Bonapartists from their sleep of
forgetfulness by her appearance, but solely because there was no other
means of saving her son; because she must pass through France with him
in order to reach England.

Revolution, which so strangely intermingles the destinies of men, had
surround