Sire,—The birth of a prince in your Majesty's family is a happy event for all your subjects. I feel the importance of it more particularly on account of the sentiment, the respect and the gratitude which bind me to your Majesty. I entreat you to accept with favour my congratulations, as well as my ardent wishes, formed every moment of my life for the prosperity of your august family, which cannot be sufficiently numerous for the peace and prosperity of the world.
I entreat your Majesty to graciously accept the assurance of profound esteem with which I subscribe myself,
Your Imperial and Royal Majesty's
faithful servant and subject
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand,
Prince de Benevento.
SIGNATURE OF EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AS REGENT, JULY, 1813.
A.L.S. OF JOSEPH BONAPARTE, AFTERWARDS KING OF SPAIN, JANUARY, 1806.
In this letter, dated April 20, 1808, Talleyrand conveys to the Emperor, then at Bayonne, his congratulations on the birth of the future Emperor, Napoleon III., at which he was present, and it must have been written the very day when that event took place. In his "Life of Napoleon III.," at page 10, the late Mr. Archibald Forbes writes thus: "It was on the afternoon of April 20, 1808, in her hôtel in the Rue Cérutti, now the banking-house of the Rothschilds in the Rue Lafitte, that Queen Hortense gave birth to her third son, the future Napoleon III. The Empress was then at Bordeaux and the Emperor at Bayonne. Talleyrand, with other high officers, had been commanded by Napoleon to be present at the impending accouchement of Queen Hortense. She thus notes regarding him: 'The visit of M. de Talleyrand aggravated my nervous state. He constantly wore powder, the scent of which was so strong that when he approached me I was nearly suffocated.' Talleyrand looked down solemnly on the new-born infant; some thirty years later, in Lady Tankerville's drawing-room in London, he did not choose to recognise the son of Hortense. The heir of the Empire was then an exile, and Talleyrand was serving a new master."