His instinct, as is well known, showed itself under memorable circumstances. On the 29th March, 1814, when the Empress Marie-Louise abandoned the Tuileries for Rambouillet, and when they wished to take the child to his mother, who was waiting for him, he opposed a stout resistance to being removed; shouted that they were betraying his papa, and refused to stir. Mme. de Montesquiou’s moral influence over the lad was brought to bear in vain; she only succeeded by force, and even then she had to promise to bring him back soon. The poor lad guessed, as it were, that he would never more behold the Tuileries. His quickness of intellect showed itself in everything connected with his illustrious and ill-fated sire. On the day before our visit, the English commodore, Sir Neil Campbell, who accompanied Napoleon to Elba, was presented to his son. ‘Are you not pleased, prince, to see this gentleman, who left your father only a few days ago?’ asked Mme, de Montesquiou, presenting the officer. ‘Yes,’ was the answer, ‘I am pleased.’ Then, putting his finger to his lips, he added, ‘But we must not say so.’ The commodore took the child into his arms. ‘Your papa has told me to kiss you for him,’ he said, suiting the action to the word, after which he gently put him down. The child had a German top in his hands. He flung it down with such force as to break it to pieces. ‘Poor papa!’ he gasped, bursting into tears.[47] What were the thoughts that moved him, and how, at his tender age, could he grasp the whole extent of the ambiguous and false position of the son of Napoleon being a prisoner, as it were, in the Austrian palace of Schönbrunn! With regard to the loss of the sovereignty bestowed upon him at his birth, he expressed himself with a melancholy and touching resignation. ‘I see very well that I am no longer a king,’ he repeated during his journey from Rambouillet to Vienna; ‘I have no longer any pages.’[48] The Prince de Ligne having shown him some medals struck on the occasion of his birth, he remarked, ‘I remember them; they were made when I was king.’ This plucky resignation, which was the most conspicuous trait of his character, abided with him up to his last moments. When, at the age of twenty-two, undermined by a most painful malady, he was dying at that same palace of Schönbrunn, and beheld Death advancing slowly but surely, he, handsome, young, talented, and the offspring of a great man, talked of his impending end with those surrounding him, taking, as it were, a cruel pleasure in dispelling all the illusions of hope.