Page images
PDF
EPUB

Vengeance is necessary and dear to imbecility and fear. I heard a noble of the king's guard, his front scared, not by war, but time, tricked out in a fantastic uniform, " a world too wide for his shrunk shanks," his hands trembling under hedger's gloves and sword of an age ago, exclaim, with a smile as ferocious as could be formed on his weazened cheeks, as he passed with the royal procession in the square Vendôme, "This "square smells of Bonaparte, we must purify it." He said this just under the column of the great army. A wounded soldier of the old imperial guard was standing by me, and heard the words; he turned round, and said not a single word; but two or three men and women, in plain clothes, walked away with a smile of scorn and disgust. The purification of France is begun at Marseilles, but will not stop there. Such a sight as the king's entry, I believe, was never witnessed. Louis, who compares himself to Henry IV. en tering Paris,

"Par droit de conquête, et par droit de naissance," thought he imitated that incomparable man, in saying a mass, pro defunctis, at St. Denis; as if an act of obsolete superstition, in the eyes of an enlightened people, bore any resemblance to a compliance with the prevailing piety of two centuries ago. It was at St. Denis

that Henry, at the head of a French army vic, torious over foreigners, sacrificed his own sen timents to please the majority of his subjects, and became a catholic to reign over catholics, as Elizabeth persevered in the reformed religion, in a kingdom where the greater part of the subjects were protestants. Louis, at the head of a foreign army victorious over Frenchmen, could hardly be thought to copy his great ancestor; but he had a glorious opportunity of emulating him in one respect, in giving a pledge of his love of France, by his reconciliation with the prejudices of Frenchmen. Nor was he without a monitor who intreated him to consider, "that as at St. Denis Henry the Great had swallowed a mass, it could be but a trifling sacrifice in his majesty to swallow a ribbon." The king is said to have replied to the Duke of Otranto, that the objection did not come from himself, but that his family would prefer retiring to Hartwell, to entering Paris with the tri-coloured cockade.

It is not the actual, but apparent importance of an object, which statesmen should take into consideration. You know the answer given to one of our queens, who asked how much it would cost to inclose the parks. Louis came into Paris in a shut coach, so full and so guarded, that his person was discernible only by repeated scrutiny;

and as there were three or four carriages exactly resembling his majesty's, it was difficult to know precisely when the monarch passed, and at which moment to applaud. He was preceded by a battalion or two of national guards of the northern departments, some troops of the line dressed in uniforms of English cloth and make, a detachment of Swiss guards, body-guards, foot and horse, royal volunteers, old coaches, diligences, military waggons, and a few cannon, and he was followed by a mass of troops of all nations, apparently composed of officers, the line being closed with a second train of carriages, tax-carts, cabriolets, and Paris hackney coaches, full of women of every description: the whole entry having the air of a returning colony, or the breaking up of a camp fair. The acclamations from the women and children were very long and loud, as also from a certain portion of the national guards in the procession, and from the degraded and numerous classes of municipal functionaries, who were de termined not to be thought equivocal: "quan

[ocr errors]

toque magis falsa erant quæ fiebant, tanto plura "facere."

LETTER XXXVI.

Saturday, July 15.

SINCE my last letter the Parisians have begun to find that their king reigns only in the Tuileries, which palace itself can scarcely be said to be under his command, as the Prussians still bivouack in the Place du Carousel, and have rendered the avenues on that side unapproachable. The interior of the triumphal arc is their slaughter-house: even the wretched royalist journalists begin to complain of the loaded cannon, lighted matches, and piled arms in front of their king, and on the bridges of his capital; and hint, that the conduct of the Prussians is such as the friends of the good cause must deplore. Marshal Blucher allows his subordinates every vengeance and pillage, which he seems inclined to direct against the town collectively, as well as individuals. The bridge of Jena had been mined by his order, and would have been blown up in spite of the king's remonstrances, had not the Duke of Wellington placed a sentry upon it,

[ocr errors]

who was ordered to quit his post preparatory to lighting the train, and actually saved this monument by adhering to his declaration, that he could not leave the place until he was relieved by the corporal. Malmaison has been half spoiled, out of spite, and not only the house, but the persons attached to Napoleon have been marked. for retribution. General Thielman being quartered with Madame la Marechale Ney, took away all the horses, carriages, and harness from her stables. The adjoint of the 10th arrondissement was threatened on Sunday last, that, if he did not provide ten thousand pairs of shoes in a given time, he should be sent to a fortress. This officer goes to the prefect Bondy, who informs him, that he has been ordered to procure ten millions of contributions, and takes him to Talleyrand that minister advises them both to keep out of the way, or to temporize, until the king, that is, the king of Prussia, shall arrive, when some means of remonstrance may be in their power. The Prussian marshal avowed, that he would sack the suburbs of St. Germain in three days if his demands were not satisfied; and, upon being told that the Duke of Wellington had made no such requisition, replied, "He may if he pleases, I shall not interfere." He laughs at the nomination of General Maison to

« PreviousContinue »