Her *** was united, indirect, and alleges round the dwelling.

that it had been Hortense who had done the same for
the aunt of the present king, the Duchess of Orleans-Bourbon. Then, in
their joy over an assured and brilliant future, these ladies had written
the duchess the most affectionate and devoted letters; then they had
assured Hortense of their eternal and imperishable gratitude[64].
Perhaps Louis Philippe remembered this, and was desirous of rewarding
Hortense for her services to his mother and his aunt.

[Footnote 64: La Reine Hortense: Voyage en Italie, etc., p. 185.]

He solicited a visit from Hortense, and, on the second day of her
sojourn in Paris, M. de Houdetot conducted the Duchess of St. Leu to the
Tuileries, in which she had once lived as a young girl, as the
step-daughter of the emperor; then as Queen of Holland, as the wife of
the emperor's brother; and which she now beheld once more, a poor,
nameless pilgrim, a fugitive with shrouded countenance, imploring a
little toleration and protection of those to whom she had once accorded
toleration and protection.

Louis Philippe received the Duchess of St. Leu with all the elegance and
graciousness which the "Citizen King" so well knew how to assume, and
that had always been an inheritance of his house, with all the
amiability and apparent open-heartedness beneath which he so well knew
how to conceal his real disposition. Coming to the point at once, he
spoke of that which doubtlessly interested the duchess most, of the
decree of banishment.

"I am familiar," said the king, "with all the pains of exile, and it is
not my fault that yours have not been alleviated." He assured her that
this decree of banishment against the Bonaparte family was a heavy
burden on his heart; he went so far as to excuse himself for it by
saying that the exile pronounced against the imperial family was only an
article of the same law which the conventionists had abolished, and the
renewal of which had been so vehemently demanded by the country! Thus it
h


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