Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/224

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208
Napoleon.

of the monument destined for General Morland, the barrel in which he had been placed was still standing in one of the rooms of the School of Medicine when Napoleon lost the Empire in 1814. Not long afterwards the barrel broke, through decay, and people were much surprised to find that the rum had made the general's moustaches grow to such an extraordinary extent that they fell below his waist. The corpse was in perfect preservation, but in order to get possession of it, the family were obliged to bring an action against some scientific man who had made a curiosity of it. Cultivate the love of glory and go and get killed, to let some oaf of a naturalist set you up in his library between a rhinoceros horn and a stuffed crocodile!"

VIII.

NAPOLEON AND HIS TROOPS.

The main interest of these volumes, of course, is their picture of Napoleon; and, accordingly, I extract by choice the passages which refer to him and help to complete his portrait. Here, for instance, is an example of the manner in which he managed to win the hearts of his soldiers:

"Our road lay by Aschaffenburg, whence we went on to Wurzburg. There we found the Emperor, who held a march-past of the troops of the 7th corps, amid great enthusiasm. Napoleon, who was in possession of notes about all the