ch he asked Prince Joseph, who
was then colonel of a regiment, whether he had believed in this
pretended embarkation, and what effect it had had on the soldiers.
Joseph said that he, like all the world, had believed that a departure
was really intended, and that the soldiers had doubted it so little that
they had sold their watches. The emperor also often asked if the
telegraph had not yet announced the approach of the French squadron; his
adjutant, Lauriston, was with the squadron, and the emperor seemed only
to be awaiting Lauriston's arrival and a favorable wind, in order to
set sail.

"The eight days' absence accorded me by my husband had expired, and I
took leave of the emperor. I journeyed through Calais and Dunkirk. I saw
troops defiling before me everywhere; and with regret and fear I left
this magnificent army, thinking that they might perhaps in a few days be
exposed to the greatest dangers.

"At St. Amand we were every day expecting to hear of the passage of our
fleet to England, when we suddenly saw the troops arriving in our
neighborhood and passing on in forced marches toward the Rhine. Austria
had broken the peace. We hastened at once to Paris, to see the emperor
once more before his departure for Germany[72]."

[Footnote 72: La Reine Hortense en Italie, France, etc., p. 278.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE PILGRIM.

On the following morning the duchess left Boulogne with her son, in
order to wander on with him through the land of her youth and of
her memories.

It was a sad and yet heart-stirring pilgrimage; for, although banished
and nameless, she was nevertheless in her own country--she still stood
on French soil. For sixteen years she had been living in a foreign land,
in a land whose language was unknown to her, and whose people she could
therefore not understand. Now, on this journey through France, she
rejoiced once more in being able to understand the conversation of the
people in the streets, and of the peasants in the fields. It was a
sensation of mingled bitterness and sweetness to feel that she was not a
stranger among this people, and it therefore now afforded her the
greatest delight to chat with those she met, and to listen to their
_naive_ and artless words.

As soon as she arrived at her hotel in any city or village in which she
purposed enjoying a day's rest, Hortense would walk out into the streets
on her son's arm. On one occasion she stepped into a booth, seated
herself, and conver