BONAPARTE'S RETURN FROM EGYPT.

Bonaparte had got back from Egypt. His victory at Aboukir had adorned
his brows with fresh laurels, and all France hailed the returning
conqueror with plaudits of exulting pride. For the first time, Hortense
was present at the festivities which the city of Paris dedicated to her
step-father; for the first time she saw the homage that men and women,
graybeards and children alike, paid to the hero of Italy and Egypt.
These festivities and this homage filled her heart with a tremor of
alarm, and yet, at the same time, with joyous exultation. In the midst
of these triumphs and these ovations which were thus offered to her
second father, the young girl recalled the prison in which her mother
had once languished, the scaffold upon which the head of her own father
had fallen; and frequently when she glanced at the rich gold-embroidered
uniform of her brother, she reminded him with a roguish smile of the
time when Eugene went in a blue blouse, as a carpenter's apprentice,
through the streets of Paris with a long plank on his shoulder.

These recollections of the first terrible days of her youth kept
Hortense from feeling the pride and arrogance of good fortune, preserved
to her modest, unassuming tone of mind, prevented her from entertaining
any overweening or domineering propensity in her day of prosperity, or
from seeming cast down and hopeless when adversity came. She never
lulled herself with the idea of good fortune that could not pass away,
but her remembrances kept her eyes wide open, and hence, when misfortune
came, it did not take her by surprise, but found her armed and ready to
confront it.

Nevertheless, she drank in the pleasure of these prosperous days in full