"Alexander cordially embraced the prince, and, putting the ring upon his watch-chain, promised that he would always wear it."
Removal of the remains of Napoleon Charles.
The remains of Napoleon Charles, who had died in Holland, had been deposited, by direction of Napoleon, in the vaults of St. Denis, the ancient burial-place of the kings of France. So great was the jealousy of the Bourbons of the name of Napoleon, and so unwilling were they to recognize in any way the right of the people to elect their own sovereign, that the government of Louis XVIII. ordered the body to be immediately removed. Hortense transferred the remains of her child to the church of St. Leu.
Titles of the princes.
Notwithstanding this jealousy, Alexander and the King of Prussia could not ignore the imperial character of Napoleon, whose government they had recognized, and with whom they had exchanged ambassadors and formed treaties: neither could they deny that the King of Holland had won a crown recognized by all Europe. They and the other crowned heads, who paid their respects to Hortense, in accordance with the etiquette of courts, invariably addressed each of the princes as Your Royal Highness. Hortense had not accustomed them to this homage. She had always addressed the eldest as Napoleon, the youngest as Louis. It was her endeavor to impress them with the idea that they could be nothing more than their characters entitled them to be. But after this, when the Bourbon Government assumed that Napoleon was an usurper, and that popular suffrage could give no validity to the crown, then did Hortense, in imitation of Napoleon at St. Helena, firmly resist the insolence. Then did she teach her children that they were princes, that they were entitled to the throne of France by the highest of all earthly authority—the almost unanimous voice of the French people—and that the Bourbons, trampling popular rights beneath their feet, and ascending the throne through the power of foreign bayonets, were usurpers.
HORTENSE AND HER CHILDREN.
Conversation with the princes.
Madame Cochelet, the reader of Queen Hortense, writes, in her interesting memoirs: "I have often seen her take her two boys on her knees, and talk with them in order to form their ideas. It was a curious conversation to listen to, in those days of the splendors of the empire, when those children were the heirs of so many crowns, which the Emperor was distributing to his brothers, his officers, his allies. Having questioned them on every thing they knew already, she passed in review whatever they should know besides, if they were to rely upon their own resources for a livelihood.