Sire:—­The Emperor directs me to write to your Majesty as follows:—­ “It is the duty of every French Prince, and every member of the Imperial family, to reside in France, whence they cannot absent themselves without the permission of the Emperor.  Before the union of Holland to the Empire the Emperor permitted the King to reside at Toeplitz, is Bohemia.  His health appeared to require the use of the waters, but now the Emperor requires that Prince Louis shall return, at the latest by the 1st of December next, under pain of being considered as disobeying the constitution of the Empire and the head of his family, and being treated accordingly.”

I fulfil, Sire, word for word the mission with which I have been entrusted, and I send the chief secretary of the embassy to be assured that this letter is rightly delivered.  I beg your Majesty to accept the homage of my respect, etc.

(Signed)Otto.

—­[The eldest son of Louis, one of the fruits of his unhappy marriage with Hortense Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine, the wife of his brother Napoleon, was little more than six years of age when his father abdicated the crown of Holland in his favour.  In 1830-31 this imprudent young man joined the ill-combined mad insurrection in the States of the Pope.  He was present in one or two petty skirmishes, and was, we believe, wounded; but it was a malaria fever caught in the unhealthy Campagna of Rome that carried him to the grave in the twenty-seventh year of his age.—­Editor of 1836 edition.—­ The first child of Louis and of Hortense had died in 1807.  The second son, Napoleon Louis (1804-1831) in whose favour he abdicated had been created Grand Due de Berg et de Cleves by Napoleon in 1809.  He married to 1826 Charlotte, the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, and died in 1831, while engaged in a revolutionary movement in Italy.  On his death his younger brother Charles Louis Napoleon, the future Napoleon iii., first came forward as an aspirant.]—­

What a letter was this to be addressed by a subject to a prince and a sovereign.  When I afterwards saw M. Otto in Paris, and conversed with him on the subject, he assured me how much he had been distressed at the necessity of writing such a letter to the brother of the Emperor.  He had employed the expressions dictated by Napoleon in that irritation which he could never command when his will was opposed.

   —­[With regard to Louis and his conduct in Holland Napoleon thus
   spoke at St. Helena: 

“Louis is not devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a great deal of mischief.  Louis is naturally inclined to be capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have contributed to increase this disposition.  Seeking to obtain a reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself