The pushback I get for sharing the truth about Napoleon is certainly no illusion. This is how I have learned that even today, there is real fear relating to just the idea of the truth about Napoleon. Hortense discusses this matter and how painful it is to disappoint her sons.
Translation.
Continued from here.
it the foreign enemy that the Bonapartes challenged? Was it not only France that she had served? To fear this family, is to crown it with honor even if it is repulsed. The head of this family does not exist any more! If he generated a grandeur and a glory that one finally accepts, must one repulse all that has belonged to him? Instead of paying a sacred debt, his family continues to be banished? No member of this family is still thinking of coming to France. There are conveniences of our position we are forced to protect and that’s without the invitation of a nation that does not present itself.
Here they are again, misfortunes. My sons who are without protection, exposed to all the vexations with which a government is pleased to overwhelm them! What can I say to my children, I, who was not moderate in their youth? I impressed upon them frequently to care for their love of country and justice.
Now I can only teach them that men are ungrateful and selfish. Yet we must still love ourselves, and always be kind anyway. - Farewell, you have desired my news. You see that the impression of the moment is painful. I did not intend to go to Paris. Far from it, I was planning my trip to Italy. But the sight of this law, which expels us forever from that France we love so much, where we still hoped to die, has come to renew all my troubles.
This banishment pronounced in unhappy times was, no doubt, sad; but it was done by enemies. Renewed by those who were believed to be friends, it strikes right at heart.
HORTENSE.
P. S. My son is still with the pupils of Thun, engaged in military reconnaissance in the mountains. They range ten to twelve leagues a day, on foot, with a bag on their back. They sleep in a tent at the foot of a glacier. He should be back in ten days.
Why Hortense broke the law is here.