And it has been her special honour to
cherish with affection, even warmer in their adversity, the friends
who had gained her regard when their prosperity seemed as bright and
their great position as assured as her own. Visiting the Emperor
Napoleon in his splendid capital, feted and welcomed by him and his
Empress with every flattering form of honour that his ingenuity could
devise or his power enable him to show, she did not forget the
Orleans family and their calamities, but frankly urged on her host
the injustice of the confiscations with which he had requited the
supposed hostility of those princes, and endeavoured to persuade him
to milder measures. She visited in his company the tomb of the
lamented Duke of Orleans; and her first care on returning to England
was to show some kindly attention to the discrowned royalties who
were now her guests. In the same spirit, in after years, she extended
a friendly hand to the exiled Empress Eugenie, escaping from new
revolutionary perils to English safety, and altogether declined to
consider her personal regard for the lady, whose attractions had
deservedly gained it in brighter days, as being in any sense
complicated with matters political.
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