 When Napoleon married Marie Louise, Hortense returned temporarily to the Netherlands, but found that the Dutch did not welcome her.She considered this the end of her marriage, and left for France shortly before her husband abdicated the throne to their oldest living son, Napoleon-Louis Bonaparte, making him Louis II of Holland.Hortense was now free to respond to the romantic overtures of the man whom she had long admired, Colonel Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, a sophisticated, handsome man rumoured to be the illegitimate son of Talleyrand.