of St. Leu.
II.--Louis Napoleon as a Child.
III.--The Revolution of 1830.
IV.--The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense.
V.--The Death of Prince Napoleon.
VI.--The Flight from Italy.
VII.--The Pilgrimage.
VIII.--Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu.
IX.--The Departure of the Duchess from Paris.
X.--Pilgrimage through France.
XI.--Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
XII.--The Pilgrim.
XIII.--Conclusion.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

General Bonaparte suppressing the Revolt of the Sections, _Frontispiece_.

View of the Tuileries.

Portrait of Queen Hortense.

Portrait of Madame de Stael.

QUEEN HORTENSE.

BOOK I.

_DAYS OF CHILDHOOD AND OF THE REVOLUTION._

CHAPTER I.

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

"One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death," says our
great German poet, and he may be right; but a moment of bliss purchased
with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.

And when did it come for her, this "moment of bliss?" When could
Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, "I am happy? Now,
let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will; I have tasted
felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable
and eternal!"

Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an
emperor to endure.

In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and
with tears; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was
not spared.

A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was
this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended
from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of
life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us
as a queen--no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen
of Flowers.

The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine's beautiful
daughter; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she
was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the
daughter of the "exile." Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued
to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared
to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his
"_Fleurs Animees_." Upon a mound of Hortensias rests the image of the
Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a
half-forgotten dream, are seen the