He appears to have had an instinctive knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.  Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince Napoleon complains of.  Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the events of his own and of his father’s life, long before the advent of Marmont as his tutor.  For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing with this distinguished man.  The young Duke knew that Prokesch had broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things to the Count.  He informs him that he has “known him a long while, and loved him because he defended his father’s honour at a time when all the world vied with each other to slander his name”; and then he continues:  “I have read your ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ and in order to impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor indolent when his father’s fame and his own interests were in question.

One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the intense interest his mother’s husband began to take in him, and he probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father’s deeds.  Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in the most intimate way.  If he perceived the immoral relations between Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it; but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for his father’s memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it, not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch, Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his grandfather.  It may be that the circumstances of his life made him cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong being done to his Imperial father.

The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have been put on the throne of the land of his birth.