they reached Calais, where they found the ship that was to
convey them to England in readiness to sail. Hortense was to leave her
country once more as a fugitive and exile! She was once more driven out,
and condemned to live in a foreign country! Because the French people
still refused to forget their emperor, the French kings hated and feared
the imperial family. Under the old Bourbons, they had been hated; Louis
Philippe, who had attained his crown through the people, felt that it
was necessary to flatter the people, and show some consideration for
their sympathies. He declared to the people that he entertained the most
profound admiration for their great emperor, and yet he issued a decree
of banishment against the Bonapartes; he ordered that the _Vendome_
column, with its bronze statue of the emperor, should be adorned, and at
the same time his decree banished the daughter and the nephew of the
emperor from France, and drove them back into a foreign country.

Hortense went, but she felt, in the pain it caused her, that she was
leaving her country--the countr