"He seemed out of spirits. He went soon to his own room and shut himself in;" and at this report they sympathized with his loneliness.
Betsy and Jane, fortunately, were not to be shut off altogether from their friend. Their father was purveyor to the Emperor, and this meant that he had a general order to visit Longwood and could take his daughters with him. Thus it happened that hardly a week passed without their going there to call, to their own great delight as well as to the satisfaction of Napoleon, who never tired of them.
Usually their visits were so timed that they could breakfast with the Emperor at one, and for the most part they found him much the same as he had been at The Briars. After a while, however, they could not help noticing that he was less cheerful than formerly.
About a week after his departure, Betsy and her mother and sister made their first visit to Longwood to call on the Emperor.
"Ah, there he is," Betsy cried; and looking ahead, they saw him seated on the steps of the billiard-room, talking to little Tristram Montholon. The moment Napoleon caught sight of them, he hastened toward them. Saluting them pleasantly, he kissed Mrs. Balcombe and Jane on each cheek, while he pinched Betsy's ear, as he said: "Ah, Mdlle. Betsee, etes-vous sage, eh, eh?"
Then, with the eagerness of a boy anxious to display a new toy, he added, "What do you think of the place? I must show you over it. Come, follow me!"
So the Emperor walked ahead of Mrs. Balcombe and her daughters, leading them first to his bedroom. Betsy thought this room small and cheerless, though she did not say so to Napoleon.
As she looked about she observed that the walls were covered with fluted nankeen, that on the wall were many family pictures that she recognized, while the bed was the well-known camp bed with the green silk hangings, the bed Napoleon had used in his Marengo and Austerlitz campaigns. There, on one side, was the silver wash-hand basin and ewer, and on the mantelpiece over the bed was a portrait of Maria Louisa, so placed as to be the first thing to meet Napoleon's eye when he awoke in the morning. Off the bedroom was a small chamber with a bath that he showed to them. A dressing-room, dining-room, billiard and drawing room made up the Emperor's own special suite. The billiard-room, which had been built according to Sir George Cockburn's orders, was large and well proportioned. It was the best apartment in the house, and the girls expressed their admiration for it, although Betsy, when her eye fell on the billiard table and balls, thought the game a foolish one for men to play.
"Now to the kitchen!" Napoleon exclaimed, at last. "M. Piron will be so pleased. Aha, Piron, here is Mees Betsee; you know how she loves creams. Send her some and some bonbons. See, regardez, mademoiselle, voilà un mouton pour mon diner, dont on fait une lanterne," pointing to the lean carcass of a sheep hanging up in the kitchen, in which the French servants had placed a candle which shone through. "But I know," he continued, "you are dying to see the baby;" and the sisters went with him to Madame Montholon's apartment to see her six-weeks-old girl.
Napoleon took his little god-daughter in his arms.