Excerpt from Memoirs of Queen Hortense, Vol. 1 of 2: Mother of Napoleon III

Days of Childhood.

It has been written by a great German poet that "death is not too high a price to pay for a moment of happiness, " but a long life of torture and sorrow is too heavy a requital for a brief span of felicity. In the case of Hortense, the daughter of an Empress, and mother of an Emperor, it is hard to say when she knew that moment of happiness which was to reward her for life-enduring suffering. She wept much and endured much: from her earliest youth she learned to know tears and misfortune, nor were they afterwards spared to the maiden, the wife, and the mother.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.