The prince was at Schönbrunn with his tutors, when on a hot summer
morning a messenger arrived from Vienna, and desired to speak with
Monsieur Foresti. Their talk was long, and when they parted Foresti's
face was unusually grave, but he said nothing till the evening, when he
told the boy in a few words that the father of whom he thought so much
had died at St. Helena on May 5. Notwithstanding his occasional bursts
of temper, the duke's silence and reserve about his feelings had won him
the reputation of coldness of heart, and Foresti was amazed at the
torrent of tears which broke from him. Now indeed he was alone, with
only his shadowy recollections for company, and the stories of the
Emperor's greatness which he had heard from his French governesses five
years before. And during these five years his thoughts had never ceased
to hover round his father, all the more persistently, perhaps, from the
ignorance in which he had been kept concerning him. But well he
remembered how the portraits and miniatures of himself had from time to
time been sent to his father to Elba, to Fontainebleau, and some to St.
Helena—though exactly where St. Helena was he did not know. _That_ he
was to learn later, when his tutor bade him look it out on the map, and
gave him a lesson on its size and produce. Meanwhile he was put into
mourning, which Foresti and Collin wore also; but they had strict orders
not to go near any public places, where their black clothes might be
seen and noticed, as neither the Emperor nor his Court had made the
slightest change in their dress. The young duke's heart must have burned
within him at the double affront to himself and his father, but what
must his feelings have been if he ever heard of the conduct of his
mother! The letter which she wrote to her son must have sounded cold and
trifling even to a child; but perhaps the news may have been kept from
him that she declined to allow Napoleon's name to be inserted in the
prayers for the dead, and had refused his dying wish to have his heart
buried in Parma. 'It would be a fresh shock to me,' she wrote to Francis
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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