The commandant and two jailors were charged with complicity in the escape of the prince. Judgment was rendered the next day and they were acquitted. Dr. Conneau was condemned to six months’ imprisonment and no one ever saw a more cheerful condemned man. Charles Thelin was condemned in default to six months’ imprisonment.
The prince wrote at once:
London, May 27th, 1846.—My Dear Father: The desire to see you again made me attempt what otherwise I should never have done. I have eluded the vigilance of four hundred men and arrived in London safe and sound. I have powerful friends here and I am going to put them in use in trying to reach you. I entreat you, my dear father, to do all in your power in order that I may speedily rejoin you. My address is Count d’Arenenberg, Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn Street, London.
Every effort was made by the prince to reach his dying father; but at every embassy he met refusal. King Louis, counting the days and hours, watched for the coming of his son. Alas! in vain. Without having been granted his prayer to see and bless his only child, he died sad and alone in Italy, July 25th, 1846. If to-day all men go freely everywhere it is due to the suffering caused Louis Napoleon at this time. He resolved that if ever he should come into power, he would at once suppress all such impediments as had caused him such torture. He kept his resolution; other governments were brought to act like his; and now travelers may go without passports.
Few destinies have been so melancholy as that of Louis Bonaparte, former King of Holland. Against his own inclinations he yielded to his brother’s will and contracted a marriage with Hortense Beauharnais, the stepdaughter of his brother; and yielding to the same powerful will he became most reluctantly, King of Holland. Upon the downfall of the great emperor, he began, at the age of thirty-one, a life of exile in foreign countries. He was absolutely unlike his great brother. His expression was kindly; his eyes were full of gentleness and in this his son resembled him, as well as in a propensity to melancholy, a blending of coldness and affability, and a taste for literature and humanitarian dreams. He was, however, far more ardent, more ambitious, more daring than his father. His personal charm was greater; he knew how to attract and win attachment; and he had a confidence in his star which was entirely wanting in King Louis. Indeed, in the year 1846, there seemed but one person in the world who believed in the star of Louis Napoleon; and that person was himself. Calmly and patiently he waited for the moment when it should rise above the horizon, as yet absolutely hazy. Who could have predicted that in less than two years he would be, by legal means, the head of the French Government? And what imagination could have pictured the triumphal entrance into London of the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the great ally of England in whose honor all the pomp and pageantry of the British Empire was displayed? Let writers of romance look always to the truths of history for the wonderful.
His cousin, the daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden, said to him one evening in London: “Now that you are at liberty, will you resign yourself to repose? Will you give up these illusions which have cost you so dear and whose cruel deceptions have been so keenly felt by all who love you?”
“My cousin,” replied the prince, “I do not belong to myself but to my name and my country. Although fortune has twice betrayed me, my destiny will be accomplished all the more speedily.”
And, indeed, the hour expected by this man of destiny was about to strike.
[To be continued.]