who was naturally very retiring and reticent, took a ring
which his uncle Eugene had given him, and, stealing timidly over to
Alexander, slipped the ring into his hand, and, half frightened, ran
away with all speed. Hortense called the child to her, and asked him
what he had done. Blushing deeply, the warm-hearted boy said:

"'I have nothing but the ring. I wanted to give it to the Emperor,
because he is good to my mamma.'

"Alexander cordially embraced the prince, and, putting the ring upon his
watch-chain, promised that he would always wear it."

The remains of Napoleon Charles, who had died in Holland, had been
deposited, by direction of Napoleon, in the vaults of St. Denis, the
ancient burial-place of the kings of France. So great was the jealousy
of the Bourbons of the name of Napoleon, and so unwilling were they to
recognize in any way the right of the people to elect their own
sovereign, that the government of Louis XVIII. ordered the body to be
immediately removed. Hortense transferred the remains of her child to
the church of St. Leu.

Notwithstanding this jealousy, Alexander and the King of Prussia could
not ignore the imperial character of Napoleon, whose government they had
recognized, and with whom they had exchanged ambassadors and formed
treaties: neither could they deny that the King of Holland had won a
crown recognized by all Europe. They and the other crowned heads, who
paid their respects to Hortense, in accordance with the etiquette of
courts, invariably addressed each of the princes as _Your Royal
Highness_. Hortense had not accustomed them to this homage. She had
always addressed the eldest as Napoleon, the youngest as Louis. It was
her endeavor to impress them with the idea that they could be nothing
more than their characters entitled them to be. But after this, when the
Bourbon Government assumed that Napoleon was an usurper, and that
popular suffrage could give no validity to the crown, then did Hortense,
in imitation of Napoleon at St. Helena, firmly resist the insolence.
Then did she teach her children that they were princes, that they were
entitled to the throne of France by the highest of all earthly
authority--the almost unanimous voice of the French people--and that the
Bourbons, trampling popular rights beneath their feet, and ascending the
throne through the power of foreign bayonets, were usurpers.

[Illustration: HORTENSE AND HER CHILDREN.]

Madame Cochelet, the reader of Queen