No. 78
Friedland.—On this day he wrote a further letter to the Queen of Holland (No. 12,761 of the Correspondence): “My daughter, I have your letter dated Orleans. Your grief pains me, but I should like you to possess more courage; to live is to suffer, and the true man is always fighting for mastery over himself. I do not like to see you unjust towards the little Napoleon Louis, and towards all your friends. Your mother and I had hoped to be more to you than we are.” She had been sent to take the waters of Cauterets, and had left her child Napoleon Louis (who died at Forli, 1831) with Josephine, who writes to her daughter (June 11th): “He amuses me much; he is so gentle. I find he has all the ways of that poor child that we mourn.” And a few days later: “There remains to you a husband, an interesting child, and a mother whose love you know.” Josephine had with women the same tact that her husband had with men, but the Bonaparte family, with all its good qualities, strained the tact and tempers of both to the utmost.