Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

his most devoted adherents had fallen around him; yet his iron soul bore up against his changing fortunes, and from the wrecks of storm and battle there returned
-------"the conqueror's broken car, The conqueror's yet unbroken heart."
But the spirit which had never quailed before his enemies was crushed by the desertion of his friends. He had now to feel that treason and ingratitude are attendants on adversity, and that the worshippers of power, like the Gheber devotee, turn their faces reverently towards the rising sun.
There are few things in history so touching as the position of Napoleon at Fontainebleau, during the few days which preceded his abdication and departure for the Island of Elba. Nearly all his superior officers forsook him, not even finding time to bid him adieu. Men whom he had covered with wealth and honors, who had most obsequiously courted his smiles, and been most vehement in their protestations of fidelity, were the first to leave him in his misfortune, forgetting, in their anxiety to conciliate his successor, to make the slightest stipulation for the protection of their benefactor. He was left in the vast apartments of that deserted palace, with hardly the footsteps of a domestic servant to break its monastic stillness; and, for the first time in his eventful life, he sat, hour after hour, without movement, brooding over his despair. At last, when all was ready for his departure, he called up something of his old energy, and again stood in the presence of what remained of the Imperial Guard, which was faithful to the end. These brave men had often encircled him, like a wall of granite, in the hour of utmost peril, and they were now before him, to look upon him, as they thought, for the last time. He struggled to retain his firmness, but the effort was beyond human resolution; his pride gave way before his bursting heart, and the stern vanquisher of nations wept with his old comrades.
Napoleon was gone. His empire was in the dust The streets of his capital were filled with strangers, and the volatile Parisians were almost compensated for the degradation, in their wonder at the novel garb and uncouth figures of their enemies. The Cossacks of the Don had made their threatened "hurra," and bivouacked on the banks of the Seine. Prussian and Austrian cannon pointed down all the great thoroughfares, and by their side, day and night, the burning match suggested the penalty of any popular commotion. The Bourbons were at the Tuileries, and France appeared to have moved back to the place whence she had started on her course of redemption. At length, slowly and prudently, the allied armies commenced their homeward march, and the reigning family were left to their own resources, to reconcile as they could the heterogeneous materials stranded by the receding tide of revolution. But concession formed no part of their character, and reconciliation was an unknown element in their plan of government. They took possession of the throne as though they had only been absent on a pleasure excursion, and, ignoring twenty years of parvenu glory, affected to be merely continuing an uninterrupted sovereignty. The pithy remark of Talleyrand, that "they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing," was abundantly verified. Close following in their wake, came hordes of emigrants famished by long exile and clamorous for the restitution of ancient privileges. There was nothing in common between them and the men of the Republic, or of the Empire. They assumed an air of superiority, which the latter answered with the most undisguised contempt. Ridicule, that fearful political engine, which, especially in France, is sufficient to batter down the hopes of any aspirant who lays himself open to it, and which Napoleon himself, in his greatest power, feared more than foreign armies or intestine conspiracies, was most unsparingly directed against them. The print-shops exposed them in every possible form of caricature, the theatres burlesqued their pretensions, songs and epigrams contributed to their discomfiture, and all the ingenuity of a witty and laughter-loving people was unmercifully poured out upon this resurrection of antediluvian remains. Their royal patrons came in for a full share of the general derision, but they seemed entirely unmindful that there was such a thing as popular opinion, or any other will than their own. There were objects all around them which might have preached to them of the uncertainty of human grandeur and the vanity of kingly pride, reminding them that there is but a step from the palace to the scaffold, which step had been taken by more than one of their family. The walls of their abode were yet marked by musket-balls, mementos of a day of appalling violence, and from the windows they could see the public square where the guillotine had permanently