King Louis and Queen Hortense were exceedingly distressed; both foresaw the hopelessness of the Italian rising.  Queen Hortense went at once to Florence to consult her husband, and it was arranged that she should go in pursuit of her sons, inducing them, if possible, to give up all connection with so hopeless a cause.  But before she reached them, the insurgents, who seem to have had no fixed plan and no competent leader, had come to the conclusion that Bonapartes were not wanted in a struggle for republicanism; they therefore requested the young men to withdraw, and their mother went after them to Ancona.  On her way she was met by her son Louis, who was coming to tell her that his brother was dead.  There has always been mystery concerning the death of this young Napoleon.  The accredited account is that he sickened with the measles, and died at a roadside inn on his way to Ancona.  The unhappy mother went into that little town upon the Adriatic with her youngest son; but she soon found that the Austrians, having come to the help of the Pope, were at its gates.  Louis, too, had sickened with the measles.  She hid him in an inner chamber, and spread a report that he had escaped to Corfu.  She had with her an English passport for an English lady, travelling to England with her two sons.  She was obliged to substitute a young Italian, who was compromised, for her dead son; and as soon as Louis could rise from his bed, they set out, meeting With many adventures until they got beyond the boundaries of Italy.  Under cover of their English passport they crossed France, and visited the Chateau of Fontainebleau, where the mother pointed out to her son the scenes of his childhood.

The death of the Duc de Reichstadt in July, 1832, caused Louis Napoleon to consider himself the head of the Napoleonic family.  According to M. Claude, the French Minister of Police, he came on this occasion into Paris, and remained there long enough to dabble in conspiracy.

After spending a few months in England, mother and son went back to Arenenberg, where they kept up a close correspondence with all malcontents in France.  The Legitimists preferred them the house of Orleans, and the republicans of that period—­judging from their writings as well as their acts—­evidently believed that Louis Napoleon, now head of the house of Bonaparte, represented republican principles based on universal suffrage, as well as the glories of France.

One fine morning in October, 1836, Louis took leave of his mother at Arenenberg, telling her that he was going to visit his cousins at Baden.  Stephanie de Beauharnais in the days of the Empire had been married to the Grand Duke of that little country.  Queen Hortense knew her son’s real destination, no doubt, for she took leave of him with great emotion, and hung around his neck a relic which Napoleon had taken from the corpse of the Emperor Charlemagne when his tomb was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle.  It was a tiny fragment of wood, said to be from the True Cross, set beneath a brilliant emerald.  It seems possible that this may have been the little ornament found on the neck of the Prince Imperial after his corpse was stripped by savages in Zululand.