Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/252

222 Not long after the departure of Las Cases, Napoleon was greatly disturbed because the Governor would not let him receive a visit from a botanist just arrived from Europe, who was known lately to have seen Maria Louisa and the little King of Rome. Betsy sympathized with him in his indignation at this and other needless restrictions.

Sometimes, however, she felt like laughing at him.

"Where is the Emperor, where is the Emperor?" she asked one morning, when staying at Longwood after a ball.

At first no one could inform her, but at last someone said, "Go over there; he is building a ditch."

Going in the direction indicated, the young girl found Napoleon superintending the building of a trench that he was having constructed, so that he might have a place where he could walk unobserved.

"Do not laugh!" he said, after Betsy had come upon him, standing with folded arms and downcast gaze. "Do not laugh! I must have a walk of my own, where no one can look at me when I go out."