1832-1834] Queen Hortense 263 



can never return for either of us but whatever returns as 

 before? It is our wisdom to separate and treasure up only 

 those remembrances that soothe. . . . We saw Glarus, . . . 

 Lucerne, Berne, Fribourg, and Vevay this took us exactly 

 a fortnight, and the expense as nearly as possible to a 

 Napoleon a day each, and travel as economically in Switzer- 

 land as you please you cannot spend less. At Constance 

 we spent a day with the Queen Hortense, 1 and it was the 

 most interesting of our journey. She is become fat, and 

 does not look as if she had ever been handsome, but she 

 has a very pleasing expression of sweet temper and great 

 kindness in manner. We arrived about 2 o'clock and did 

 not leave till 8, and the whole six hours were passed in 

 causerie, with the exception of a dinner of one course quickly 

 despatched, and I found it much too short for all she had to 

 tell and shew us. I felt much as if I was playing at Kings 

 and Queens, in addressing her as " Majesty," but a better 

 feeling than courtesy forbids us take away the title from the 

 unprosperous unless they have themselves the good sense 

 to drop it. She speaks of all her wrongs without the least 

 resentment, with a philosophic calmness that would indicate 

 a higher understanding than I suspect she possesses, but it 

 is only suspicion, for she might be very clever for anything 

 I know to the contrary. She talked very openly of her 

 past life, regretted she had not been earlier aware of the 

 importance and of the extraordinariness, please to let the 

 word pass of it, that she might have taken daily notes of 

 it. It seemed to her at the time the natural course of life, 

 and she passed through heedlessly. She read us part of her 

 journal or memoir that had reference to her mother's 

 divorce. It evinced the sternness of purpose that is always 

 given to Buonaparte, but it shewed also tenderness and 

 strength of affection in the bitter tears even to sobs which 

 he sometimes gave way to in carrying it through. She 

 shewed us in her cabinet a cast of Buonaparte taken after 



1 Ex- Queen of Holland, daughter of Beauharnais and the Empress 

 Josephine and mother of Louis Napoleon (afterwards Emperor), 

 now a youth of twenty-five. She was living apart from her husband. 



