sed with the people who came to the store to purchase
their daily necessaries; on another occasion, she accosted a child on
the street, kissed it, and inquired after its parents; then, again, she
would converse with the peasants in the villages about their farms, and
the prospects of a plentiful harvest. The _naive_, strong, and healthy
disposition of the people delighted her, and, with the smiling pride of
a happy mother, she showed her son this great and beautiful family, this
French people, to which they, though banished and cast off,
still belonged.

In Chantilly, she showed the prince the palace of Prince Conde. The
forests that stood in the neighborhood had once belonged to the queen,
or rather they had been a portion of the appendage which the emperor,
since the union of Holland and France, had set apart for her second son,
Louis Napoleon. Hortense had never been in the vicinity, and could
therefore visit the castle without fear of being recognized.

They asked the guide, who had shown them the castle and the garden, who
had been the former possessor of the great forests of Chantilly.

"The step-daughter of the Emperor Napoleon, Queen Hortense," replied the
man, with perfect indifference. "The people continued to speak of her
here for a long time; it was said that she was wandering about in the
country in disguise, but for the last few years nothing has been heard
of her, and I do not know what has become of her."

"She is surely dead, the poor queen," said Hortense, with so sad a smile
that her son turned pale, and his eyes filled with tears.

From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and Morfontaine, for
Hortense desired to show her son all the places she had once seen in the
days of fortune with the emperor and her mother. These places now seemed
as solitary and deserted as she herself was. How great the splendor that
had once reigned in Ermenonville, when the emperor had visited the owner
of the place in order to enjoy with him the delights of the chase! In
the walks of the park, in which thousands of lamps had then shone, the
grass now grew rankly; a miserable, leaky boat was now the only
conveyance to the Poplar Island, sacred to the memory of Jean Jacques,
on whose monument Hortense and Louis Napoleon now inscribed their names.
Morfontaine appeared still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in
1815, and it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine, Hortense
had attended a magnificent fe