The Second Funeral of Napoleon | Page 5

that you might perhaps while away
some long winter evening with an account of them, I have compiled the
following pages for your use. Newspapers have been filled, for some
days past, with details regarding the St. Helena expedition, many
pamphlets have been published, men go about crying little books and
broadsheets filled with real or sham particulars; and from these scarce
and valuable documents the following pages are chiefly compiled.
We must begin at the beginning; premising, in the first place, that
Monsieur Guizot, when French Ambassador at London, waited upon
Lord Palmerston with a request that the body of the Emperor Napoleon
should be given up to the French nation, in order that it might find a
final resting-place in French earth. To this demand the English
Government gave a ready assent; nor was there any particular
explosion of sentiment upon either side, only some pretty cordial
expressions of mutual good-will. Orders were sent out to St. Helena
that the corpse should be disinterred in due time, when the French
expedition had arrived in search of it, and that every respect and
attention should he paid to those who came to carry back to their
country the body of the famous dead warrior and sovereign.
This matter being arranged in very few words (as in England, upon
most points, is the laudable fashion), the French Chambers began to
debate about the place in which they should bury the body when they
got it; and numberless pamphlets and newspapers out of doors joined in
the talk. Some people there were who had fought and conquered and
been beaten with the great Napoleon, and loved him and his memory.
Many more were there who, because of his great genius and valor, felt
excessively proud in their own particular persons, and clamored for the
return of their hero. And if there were some few individuals in this
great hot-headed, gallant, boasting, sublime, absurd French nation, who
had taken a cool view of the dead Emperor's character; if, perhaps, such
men as Louis Philippe, and Monsieur A. Thiers, Minister and Deputy,

and Monsieur Francois Guizot, Deputy and Excellency, had, from
interest or conviction, opinions at all differing from those of the
majority; why, they knew what was what, and kept their opinions to
themselves, coming with a tolerably good grace and flinging a few
handfuls of incense upon the altar of the popular idol.
In the succeeding debates, then, various opinions were given with
regard to the place to be selected for the Emperor's sepulture. "Some
demanded," says an eloquent anonymous Captain in the Navy who has
written an "Itinerary from Toulon to St. Helena," "that the coffin should
be deposited under the bronze taken from the enemy by the French
army--under the Column of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine
one. This is the most glorious monument that was ever raised in a
conqueror's honor. This column has been melted out of foreign cannon.
These same cannons have furrowed the bosoms of our braves with
noble cicatrices; and this metal--conquered by the soldier first, by the
artist afterwards--has allowed to be imprinted on its front its own defeat
and our glory. Napoleon might sleep in peace under this audacious
trophy. But, would his ashes find a shelter sufficiently vast beneath this
pedestal? And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with
sufficient grandeur on this place: whereas the wheels of carriages and
the feet of passengers would profane the funereal sanctity of the spot in
trampling on the soil so near his head."
You must not take this description, dearest Amelia, "at the foot of the
letter," as the French phrase it, but you will here have a masterly
exposition of the arguments for and against the burial of the Emperor
under the Column of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine one,
granted; but, like all other ideas, it was open to objections. You must
not fancy that the cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit
of furrowing the bosoms of French braves, or any other braves, with
cicatrices: on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls make
wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially
healed); nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such
projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by
a score of them. No, my love; no bosom, however heroic, can stand
such applications, and the author only means that the French soldiers
faced the cannon and took them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that
the column was melted: it was the cannon was melted, not the column;

but such phrases are often used by orators when they wish to give a
particular force and emphasis to their opinions.
Well, again, although Napoleon