Nine Short Essays | Page 6

Many of the lights in the offices of the
household had been extinguished, but the private apartments of the
Emperor in the wing south of the central pavilion were still illuminated.
The Emperor evidently had not so much desire to go to bed as I had. I
knew the windows of his petits appartements--as what good American
did not?--and I wondered if he was just then taking a little supper, if he
had bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was alone in his room,
reflecting upon his grandeur and thinking what suit he should wear on
the morrow in his ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was dictating an editorial
for the official journal; perhaps he was according an interview to the
correspondent of the London Glorifier; perhaps one of the Abbotts was

with him. Or was he composing one of those important love-letters of
state to Madame Blank which have since delighted the lovers of
literature? I am not a spy, and I scorn to look into people's windows
late at night, but I was lonesome and hungry, and all that square round
about swarmed with imperial guards, policemen, keen-scented Zouaves,
and nobody knows what other suspicious folk. If Napoleon had known
that there was a
MAN IN THE GARDEN!
I suppose he would have called up his family, waked the drum-corps,
sent for the Prefect of Police, put on the alert the 'sergents de ville,'
ordered under arms a regiment of the Imperial Guards, and made it
unpleasant for the Man.
All these thoughts passed through my mind, not with the rapidity of
lightning, as is usual in such cases, but with the slowness of conviction.
If I should be discovered, death would only stare me in the face about a
minute. If he waited five minutes, who would believe my story of going
to sleep and not hearing the drums? And if it were true, why didn't I go
at once to the gate, and not lurk round there all night like another
Clement? And then I wondered if it was not the disagreeable habit of
some night-patrol or other to beat round the garden before the Sire went
to bed for good, to find just such characters as I was gradually getting
to feel myself to be.
But nobody came. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock sounded from the tower
of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whose belfry the signal
was given for the beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--the
same bells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on,
while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre
upon stray fugitives on the quay--bells the reminiscent sound of which,
a legend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine de
Medici from the Tuileries.
One o'clock! The lights were going out in the Tuileries, had nearly all
gone out. I wondered if the suspicious and timid and wasteful Emperor
would keep the gas burning all night in his room. The night-roar of
Paris still went on, sounding always to foreign ears like the beginning
of a revolution. As I stood there, looking at the window that interested
me most, the curtains were drawn, the window was opened, and a form
appeared in a white robe. I had never seen the Emperor before in a

night-gown, but I should have known him among a thousand. The Man
of Destiny had on a white cotton night-cap, with a peaked top and no
tassel. It was the most natural thing in the land; he was taking a last
look over his restless Paris before he turned in. What if he should see
me! I respected that last look and withdrew into the shadow. Tired and
hungry, I sat down to reflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital.
One o'clock and a half! I had presence of mind enough to wind my
watch; indeed, I was not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily on
my hands. It was a gay capital. Would it never put out its lights, and
cease its uproar, and leave me to my reflections? In less than an hour
the country legions would invade the city, the market-wagons would
rumble down the streets, the vegetable-man and the strawberry-woman,
the fishmongers and the greens-venders would begin their melodious
cries, and there would be no repose for a man even in a public garden.
It is secluded enough, with the gates locked, and there is plenty of room
to turn over and change position; but it is a wakeful situation at the best,
a haunting sort of place, and I was not sure it was not haunted.
I had often wondered as I strolled about the place in the daytime or
peered through the iron fence