closely select her agreed camera

her son, and unintentionally
betray them.

They must pass through the grand-duchy of Tuscany, and there the
greatest danger menaced, for there her son was known to every one, and
every one might betray them. This part of the journey must therefore be
made, as far as possible, by night. The courier whom they had dispatched
in advance had everywhere ordered the necessary relays of horses; their
dismay was, therefore, great when they found no horses at the station
Camoscia, on the boundary of Tuscany, and were informed that several
hours must elapse before they could obtain any!

These hours of expectation and anxiety were fearful. Hortense passed
them in her carriage, breathlessly listening to the slightest noise that
broke upon the air.

Her son Louis had descended from the carriage, and seated himself on a
stone bench that stood in front of the miserable little station-house.
Worn out by grief and still weak from disease, indifferent to the
dangers that menaced from all sides, heedless of the night wind that
swept, with its icy breath, over his face, the prince sank down upon
this stone bench, and went to sleep.

Thus they passed the night. Hortense, once a queen, in a half-open
carriage; Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France, on a stone
bench, that served him as a couch!



CHAPTER VII.

THE PILGRIMAGE.

Heaven took pity on the agony of the unhappy Duchess of St. Leu. It
heard the prayer of her anxious mother's heart, and permitted mother and
son to escape the dangers that menaced them at every step in Italy.

At Antibes they succeeded in crossing the French boundary without being
recognized. They were now in their own country--in _la belle France_,
which they still loved and proudly called their mother, although it had
forsaken and discarded them. The death-penalty t