She returned to her father's home in the fall, though she had written shortly before that she was glad to be among strangers, because "in Baltimore, where people are always on the watch," she would be more observed. On August 12, 1807, Jerome married Princess Frederika Catherine, daughter of the King of Wurtemburg. As King of Westphalia he offered Elizabeth a home within his dominions, with the title of Princess of Smalcalden and a pension of two hundred thousand francs per year. In regard to the former, she replied that Westphalia was a large kingdom, but not quite large enough for two queens, and with regard to the pension, having already accepted Napoleon's annuity of sixty thousand francs, she made the oft-quoted response that she preferred "being sheltered under the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a goose." Napoleon, with his high appreciation of a _bon mot_, desired to know what favor he could bestow upon a woman capable of this witticism. Elizabeth replied through the French Minister at Washington that she was ambitious, and would like to be a duchess. The Emperor promised the gift, but never conferred it. Notwithstanding her unremitting yet ever futile struggle for recognition, Madame Bonaparte cherished always the most enthusiastic admiration for the genius of the man who had blighted her life. In one of her letters to her father, written from Europe, whither she returned after the fall of the Empire, she said, "They do not in England pretend to revile Napoleon as we have done. His stupendous abilities are admitted; his misfortunes almost respected by his enemies. I listen silently to any discussion in which he bears a part. I easily perceive that he has more justice done him here than with us." In a subsequent letter she details more fully her attitude towards the entire family. "I cannot say," she writes, also to her father, "that I have the least reliance on that family, although I am inclined to reciprocate their kind words and receive their offers of friendship without allowing myself to be deceived by either." And farther on in the same letter she says, in regard to allowing her son to visit Pauline Bonaparte, then the Princess Borghese, at Rome, "My resolution is uninfluenced by personal feelings, never having felt the least resentment towards any individual of that family, who certainly injured me, but not from motives which could offend me. I was sacrificed to political considerations, not to the gratification of bad feelings, and under the pressure of insupportable disappointment became not unjust." From her letters there seem to have been frequent rumors afloat in regard to her marrying again, both in this country and in Europe, where she was greatly admired. In one letter to her father, written in 1823, she says that while the American newspapers were marrying her she was making her will.