re
swollen with an expression of the profoundest grief, which he seemed to
be struggling in vain to repress. Tremblingly he approached the Emperor,
and, throwing himself upon his knees, buried his face in his two hands
in the Emperor's lap, and burst into a flood of tears.

"What is the matter, Louis?" said the Emperor, kindly; "why do you
interrupt me, and why do you weep so?"

The young prince was so overcome with emotion that for some time he
could not utter a syllable. At last, in words interrupted by sobs, he
said,

"Sire, my governess has told me that you are going away to the war. Oh!
do not go! do not go!"

The Emperor, much moved, passed his fingers through the clustering
ringlets of the child, and said, tenderly,

"My child, this is not the first time that I have been to the war. Why
are you so afflicted? Do not fear for me. I shall soon come back
again."

"Oh! my dear uncle," exclaimed the child, weeping convulsively; "those
wicked Allies wish to kill you. Let me go with you, dear uncle, let me
go with you!"

The Emperor made no reply, but, taking Louis Napoleon upon his knee,
pressed him to his heart with much apparent emotion. Then calling
Hortense, the mother of the child, he said to her:

"Take away my nephew, Hortense, and reprimand his governess, who, by her
inconsiderate words, has so deeply excited his sympathies."

Then, after a few affectionate words addressed to the young prince, he
was about to hand him to his mother, when he perceived that Marshal
Soult was much moved by the scene.

"Embrace the child, Marshal," said the Emperor; "he has a warm heart and
a noble soul. _Perhaps he is to be the hope of my race!_"

Napoleon returned from the disaster at Waterloo with all his hopes
blighted. Hortense hastened to meet him, and to unite her fate with his.
"It is my duty," she said. "The Emperor has always treated me as his
child, and I will try, in return, to be his devoted and grateful
daughter." In conversation with Hortense, Napoleon remarked: "Give
myself up to Austria! Never. She has seized upon my wife and my son.
Give myself up to Russia! That would be to a single man. But to give
myself up to England, that would be to throw myself upon a _people_."
His friends assured him that, though he might rely upon the honor of the
British _people_, he could not trust to the British _Government_.
Hortense repaired to Malmaison with her two sons, where the Emperor soon
rejoined her. "She rest