enewed
triumph in its restoration.

Hortense was intimately associated with all these scenes. Her father
fell beneath the slide of the guillotine; her mother was imprisoned and
doomed to die; and she and her brother were turned penniless into the
streets. By the marriage of her mother with Napoleon, she became the
daughter of the Emperor, and one of the most brilliant and illustrious
ladies of the imperial court. The triumph of the Allies sent her into
exile, where her influence and her instruction prepared her son to
contribute powerfully to the restoration of the Empire, and to reign
with ability which is admired by his friends and acknowledged by his
foes. The mother of Napoleon III. never allowed her royally-endowed son
to forget, even in the gloomiest days of exile and of sorrow, that it
might yet be his privilege to re-establish the Republican Empire, and to
restore the dynasty of the people from its overthrow by the despotic
Allies.

In this brief record of the life of one who experienced far more than
the usual vicissitudes of humanity, whose career was one of the saddest
upon record, and who ever exhibited virtues which won the enthusiastic
love of all who knew her, the writer has admitted nothing which can not
be sustained by incontrovertible evidence, and has suppressed nothing
sustained by any testimony worthy of a moment's respect. This history
will show that Hortense had her faults. Who is without them? There are
not many, however, who will read these pages without profound admiration
for the character of one of the noblest of women, and without finding
the eye often dimmed, in view of her heart-rending griefs.

This volume will soon be followed by the History of Louis Philippe.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 15

II. MARRIAGE OF JOSEPHINE AND GENERAL BONAPARTE 49

III. HORTENSE AND DUROC 80

IV. THE MARRIAGE OF HORTENSE 110

V. THE BIRTH OF LOUIS NAPOLEON AND THE DIVORCE OF JOSEPHINE 148

VI. THE DEATH OF JOSEPHINE 179

VII. THE SORROWS OF EXILE 211

VIII. PEACEFUL DAYS, YET SAD 239

IX. LIFE AT ARENEMBERG