Nine Short Essays | Page 5

about in the ghostly
walks.
Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, after a long walk through the
galleries of the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat down to rest on a
secluded bench in the southern grove of the garden; hidden from view
by the tree-trunks. Where I sat I could see the old men and children in

that sunny flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I could see the great
fountain-basin facing the Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard
the evening drumming, which was the signal for me to quit the garden;
for I suppose even the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive to the
throb of the glory-calling drum. But if I did hear it,--it was only like an
echo of the past, and I did not heed it any more than Napoleon in his
tomb at the Invalides heeds, through the drawn curtain, the chanting of
the daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I must have slept soundly.
When I awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into the
broad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of
the fountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from
the windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli,
dotted the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees.
There were the steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without,
but within was the stillness of death.
What should I do? I am not naturally nervous, but to be caught lurking
in the Tuileries Garden in the night would involve me in the gravest
peril. The simple way would have been to have gone to the gate nearest
the Pavillon de Marsan, and said to the policeman on duty there that I
had inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen
of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and
would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the
policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that
explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are
mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would
either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised
an alarm and called out the guards of the palace to hunt me down like a
rabbit.
A man in the Tuileries Garden at night! an assassin! a conspirator! one
of the Carbonari, perhaps a dozen of them--who knows?--Orsini bombs,
gunpowder, Greek-fire, Polish refugees, murder, emeutes,
REVOLUTION!
No, I'm not going to speak to that person in the cocked hat and dress-
coat under these circumstances. Conversation with him out of the best
phrase-books would be uninteresting. Diplomatic row between the two
countries would be the least dreaded result of it. A suspected
conspirator against the life of Napoleon, without a chance for

explanation, I saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched (my
minute notes of the Tuileries confiscated), and trundled off to the
Conciergerie, and hung up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, like
Ravaillac.
I drew back into the shade and rapidly walked to the western gate. It
was closed, of course. On the gate-piers stand the winged steeds of
Marly, never less admired than by me at that moment. They interested
me less than a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who lounged outside,
guarding the entrance from the square, and unsuspicious that any
assassin was trying to get out. I could see the gleam of the lamps on
their bayonets and hear their soft tread. Ask them to let me out? How
nimbly they would have scaled the fence and transfixed me! They like
to do such things. No, no--whatever I do, I must keep away from the
clutches of these cats of Africa.
And enough there was to do, if I had been in a mind to do it. All the
seats to sit in, all the statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell. The
southern terrace overlooking the Seine was closed, or I might have
amused myself with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial that ran
nearly the whole length of it, with its switches and turnouts and houses;
or I might have passed delightful hours there watching the lights along
the river and the blazing illumination on the amusement halls. But I
ascended the familiar northern terrace and wandered amid its bowers,
in company with Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I knew only
by sight, smelling the orange-blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the
old riding-school where the National Assembly sat in 1789.
It must have been eleven o'clock when I found myself down by the
private garden next the palace.