"One day, when she wished to know as usual, what we would like best, my brother, who was three years older than I, and consequently more full of sentiment, asked for a watch, with a portrait of our mother; but I, when the empress said: 'Louis, ask for whatever will give you the greatest pleasure,' begged to be allowed to go out and paddle in the gutter with the little boys in the street. Indeed, until I was seven years old it was a great grief to me to have to ride always in a carriage with four or six horses. When, in 1815, just before the arrival of the allied army in Paris, we were hurried by our tutor to a hiding-place, and passed on foot along the Boulevards, I felt the keenest sensations of happiness within my recollection. Like all children, though perhaps even more than most children, soldiers fixed my attention. Whenever at Malmaison I could escape from the _salon_, I was off to the great gates, where there were always grenadiers of the Garde Impériale. One day, from a ground-floor window I entered into conversation with one of these old _grognards_ who was on duty. He answered me laughing. I called out: 'I know my drill. I have a little musket!' Then the grenadier asked me to put him through his drill, and thus we were found, I shouting, 'Present arms! Carry arms! Attention!' the old grenadier obeying, to please me. Imagine my happiness! I often went with my brother to breakfast with the emperor. When he entered the room, he would come up to us, take our heads in his hands, and so lift us on the table. This frightened my mother very much, Dr. Corvisart having told her that such treatment was very bad for children." The day before the Emperor Napoleon left Paris for the campaign of Waterloo, Hortense carried her boys to the Tuileries to take leave of him. Little Louis Napoleon contrived to run alone to his uncle's cabinet, where he was closeted with Marshal Soult. As soon as the boy saw the emotion in the emperor's face, he ran up to him, and burying his head in his lap, sobbed out: "Our governess says you are going to the wars,--don't go; don't go, Uncle." "And why not, Louis? I shall soon come back." "Oh, Uncle, those wicked allies will kill you! Let me go with you." The emperor took the boy upon his knee and kissed him. Then, turning to Soult, who was moved by the little scene, he said, "Here, Marshal, kiss him; he will have a tender heart and a lofty spirit; he is perhaps the hope of my race." After Waterloo, the emperor, who passed one night in Paris, kissed the children at the last moment, with his foot upon the step of the carriage that was to carry him the first stage of his journey to St. Helena.