oung girl
concluded her touching song.

[Footnote 73: The duchess's own words. See Voyage en Italie, etc., p.
305.]

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

This sorrowful pilgrimage was at last at an end. Hortense was once more
in her mountain-home, in the charming villa overlooking the Lake of
Constance, and commanding a lovely view of the majestic lake, with its
island and its surrounding cities and villages.

Honor to the Canton Thurgau, which, when all the world turned its back
on the queen upon whom all the governments and destiny alike
frowned--when even her nearest relatives, the Grand-duke and the
Grand-duchess Stephanie of Baden, were compelled to forbid her residence
in their territory--still had the courage to offer the Duchess of St.
Leu an asylum, and to accord her, on the free soil of the little
republic, a refuge from which the ill-will and distrust of the mighty
could not drive her!

In Arenenberg, Hortense reposed from her weariness. With a bleeding
breast she returned home, her heart wounded by a fearful blow, the loss
of a noble and beloved son, broken in spirit, and bowed down by the
coldness and cruelty of the world, which, in the cowardly fear of its
egoism, had become faithless, even to the holiest and most imperishable
of all religions, the religion of memory!

How many, who had once vowed love and gratitude, had abandoned her! how
many, whom she had benefited had deserted her in the hour of peril!

In the generosity and kindliness of her heart, she forgave them all;
and, instead of nursing a feeling of bitterness, she pitied them! She
had done with the outer world! Arenenberg was now her world--Arenenberg,
in which her last and only happiness, her son, the heir of the imperial
name, lived with her--Arenenberg, which was as a temple of memory, in
which Hortense was the pious and believing priestess.

At Arenenberg Hortense wrote the sad and touching story of her journey
through Italy, France, and England, which she undertook, in the heroism
of maternal love, in order to rescue her son. The noblest womanhood, the
most cultivated mind, the proudest and purest soul, speaks from out this
book, with which Hortense has erected a monument to herself that is more
imperishable than all the monuments of stone and bronze, for this
monument speaks to the heart--those to the eyes only. Hortense wrote
this book with her heart often interrupted by the tears that dimmed her
eyes; she concludes it with a tou