ST. HELENA 243 



had assembled her thousands in the Champs Elysees on that day. 

 His faults, as well as the unbounded sacrifice made to his daring 

 ambition, seemed to be forgotten. Men appeared to point only to 

 the bright and burning spots in Napoleon's career, without recollecting 

 what they had proved to France and the world. It was a spectacle 

 of a nation paying homage in the names of freedom and honour to 

 the representative of military power. It has been said that French 

 enthusiasm is easily excited, and that it as easily cools, seldom lasting 

 long enough to ripen into the more dignified sentiment of traditional 

 veneration. Certainly it inconsistently decreed the honour of 

 national obsequies on Napoleon, whose fall was hailed by the great 

 bulk of the nation, after the battle of Waterloo, as the end of their 

 unbounded sacrifices, and as the second dawn of their public liber- 

 ties. But little penetration was required to discover that curiosity 

 was the strongest feeling exhibited, or at the most, it was a gal- 

 vanized excitement it wanted the reality of natural emotion. To 

 these few, whose lot it was to witness both the burials of Napoleon, 

 this must have been apparent. They could not fail to note the 

 contrast between the gorgeous display of the second ceremony and 

 the simple but deeply heartfelt funeral at St. Helena. In Paris 

 everything seemed unreal. For a burial, the second ceremony was 

 too far removed from the death ; people, if they had not forgotten, 

 had ceased to lament for him. The charger led before the hero's 

 hearse had never borne the hero. And for a commemoration it was 

 much too soon. True, the remembrance of his reverses and his 

 sufferings at St. Helena commanded the sympathy and reverence 

 of every Frenchman present ; doubtless they felt, and felt keenly, 

 the return of their former hero, though dead ; but the reflections 

 were bitter to their sensitive natures \ they felt that though the 

 bones of their idol were amongst them, yet the sentence which 

 indignant Europe had written on the rocks of St. Helena was not 

 erased, but was treasured in the depths of men's minds, and regis- 

 tered in the history of the world. 



As the catafalque slowly passed by, over the bridge, along the 

 Quay d'Orsay, until it was finally hidden from the view by the trees 

 of the Esplanade of the Invalides, it was evident, that, let his 

 countrymen do what they would, let them fire their cannon, sound 

 their trumpets, unfold their dusty banners of past wars, they failed 

 to impart to the memory of the vanquished of Waterloo a becoming 

 character ; their funeral ceremony wanted moral grandeur ; they 

 converted into a theatrical show what was intended for a national 

 solemnity, for mourners there were none ; his own uniforms were 

 not even seen around him, and the only eagles there were those 

 which were cut in yellow pasteboard. 



But the light had burned out which projected the gigantic shadow 

 on the canvas, and what was left behind ? nothing but a name 

 the sport of fortune and the jest of fame. 



An amusing act of gasconade, the performance of which rumour 

 awarded to the Prince de Joinville, was freely commented upon in 



