Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont (whom it is scarcely necessary to mention as being the daughter of Thomas H. Benton and the wife of John C. Fremont) says in “Souvenirs of My Life”: “We saw the official entrance into Paris of the Emperor, our position on the Champs Elysées being about midway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries. On that 2nd day of December, 1852, the courage of Louis Napoleon was tested. The republicans who had put him in power, had warned him that he should die if he altered the republican form of government. Whether he had courage or not I do not know. What I do know is that I saw him ride, alone, no troops, not a single officer within forty feet of him to his front or rear, and open space on either side of him, along the broad avenue densely lined by crowds. Quite separated and alone, his head bare, holding in one hand the reins, in the other his hat. Only his horse was to share any harm that might come to him. To us the thrill of response to such evident courage came with sudden conviction and the applause from our balcony was strong and sincere.” England hastened to recognize the new Emperor, and the other Great Powers promptly followed her example. Immense sums of money were voted by the National Assembly to be placed at the disposal of the Emperor in order to maintain the splendor of his position. The prisoner of Ham had become the absolute ruler of the foremost nation of continental Europe. In the hour of triumph, in the midst of his state and magnificence the friends of his years of adversity were not forgotten. Charles Thelin, the devoted valet, became Treasurer of the Privy Purse—a purse much heavier than the one from which Thelin had paid for the workman’s costume at Ham! None of the adherents of the evil days of Louis Napoleon were forgotten; in his heart there seemed to rest a grateful memory of every kindness. “Now, too, the joy most like divine, Of all I ever dreamed or knew; To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine— Oh, Fate, and wilt thou give that, too?” To most men comes love’s young dream, and then ambition. To this, which is the common fate, this man of strange destiny, Louis Napoleon, was to offer a contradiction. His life was now passed under triumphal arches, listening to words of adulation. It was at Fontainebleau that the great Emperor had signed his abdication and taken leave of his guard as he departed for his first captivity upon the Island of Elba. And it was at Fontainebleau that Napoleon III sat unmoved and listened to these words: “Our single wish is that, having been the last to salute Napoleon I, we may be the first to salute Napoleon III.” But it is with emotion which he could not control that on the spot where he and his mother had stood together, sad pilgrims (1831), he heard these words in her honor: “Crowned artist, queen of grace and genius, mother of a glorious child, preserved by her through exile and danger to give repose to France.”