ldren. Louis
Napoleon replied,

"Your affectionate heart will understand our determination. We have
contracted engagements which we can not break. Can we remain deaf to the
voice of the unfortunate who call to us? We bear a name which obliges us
to listen."

We have not here space to describe the conflict. The Italian patriots,
overwhelmed by the armies of Austria, were crushed or dispersed. The
elder of the sons of Hortense, Napoleon Louis, died from the fatigue and
exposure of the campaign, and was buried at Florence. The younger son,
Louis Napoleon, enfeebled by sickness, was in the retreat with the
vanquished patriots to Ancona, on the shores of the Adriatic. The
distracted mother was hastening to her children when she heard of the
death of the one, and of the sickness and perilous condition of the
other. She found Louis Napoleon at Ancona, in a burning fever. The
Austrians were gathering up the vanquished patriots wherever they could
be found in their dispersion, and were mercilessly shooting them.
Hortense was in an agony of terror. She knew that her son, if captured,
would surely be shot. The Austrians were soon in possession of Ancona.
They eagerly sought for the young prince, who bore a name which despots
have ever feared. A price was set upon his head. The sagacity of the
mother rescued the child. She made arrangements for a frail skiff to
steal out from the harbor and cross the Adriatic Sea to the shores of
Illyria. Deceived by this stratagem, the Austrian police had no doubt
that the young prince had escaped. Their vigilance was accordingly
relaxed. Hortense then took a carriage for Pisa. Her son, burning with
fever and emaciate from grief and fatigue, mounted the box behind in the
disguise of a footman. In this manner, exposed every moment to the
danger of being arrested by the Austrian police, the anxious mother and
her son traversed the whole breadth of Italy. As Louis Napoleon had,
with arms in his hands, espoused the cause of the people in their
struggle against Austrian despotism, he could expect no mercy, and there
was no safety for him anywhere within reach of the Austrian arm.

By a law of the Bourbons, enacted in 1816, which law was re-enacted by
the Government of Louis Philippe, no member of the Bonaparte family
could enter France but under the penalty of death. But Napoleon I., when
in power, had been very generous to the House of Orleans. Hortense,
also, upon the return of Napoleon from Elba,