ketry. We wondered at It, but could not conjecture its cause; and although we spoke of the trial of Marshal Ney, we had so little reason to suppose that his life was in jeopardy, that neither of us imagined that volley was his death-knell. As I continued on my way, I passed round the Boulevard, and reaching the spot I have named, I saw a few men and women, of the lowest class, standing together, while a sentinel paced to and fro before a wall, which was covered with mortar, and which formed one side of the place. I turned in to the spot and inquired what was the matter. A man replied,—“ Marshal Ney has been shot here, and his body has just been removed.” I looked at the soldier, but he was gravely going through his monotonous duty, and I knew that military rule forbade my addressing him. I looked down; the ground was wet with blood. I turned to the wall, and seeing it marked by balls, I attempted, with my knife, to dig out a memorial of that day’s sad work, but the soldier motioned me away. I afterwards revisited the place, but the wall had been plastered over, and no indications remained where the death-shot had penetrated.
The sensation produced by this event was profound and permanent. Many a heart, inclined towards the Bourbons, was alienated by it forever. Families which had rejoiced at the Restoration now cursed it in their bitterness, and from that day dated a hostility which knew no reconciliation. The army and the youth of France demanded, why a soldier, whose whole life had been passed in her service, should be sacrificed to appease a race that was a stranger to the country, and for which it had no sympathy. A gloom spread like a funeral pall over society, and even those who had blamed the Marshal for joining the Emperor were now among his warmest defenders. The print-shops were thronged with purchasers eager to possess his portrait and to hang it in their homes, with a reverence like that attaching to the image of a martyred saint. Had he died at Waterloo, as he led on the Imperial Guard to their last charge, when five horses were shot under him, and his uniform, riddled by balls, hung about him in tatters, he would not have had such an apotheosis as was now given him, with one simultaneous movement, by all classes of his countrymen.
The inveterate intention of the reigning family was to obliterate every mark that Lore the impress of Napoleon. Wherever the initial of his name had been inserted on the public edifices, it was carefully erased: his statues were broken or removed; prints of him could not be exposed for sale; and it appeared to be their fixed determination to drive him from men’s memories. But he had left mementos which jealousy could not conceal nor petty malice destroy. His Code was still the law of the land: the monuments of his genius were thickly scattered wherever his dominion had extended; his mighty name was on every tongue; and as time mellowed the remembrance of him, the good he had done survived and the evil was forgotten or extenuated.
Whoever would judge this man should consider the times which produced him and the fearful authority he wielded. He came to take his place among the rulers of the earth, while she was rocking with convulsions,—seeking regeneration through the baptism of blood. He came as a connecting link between anarchy and order, an agent of destiny to act his part in the great tragedy of revolution, the end of which is not yet. His mission was to give a lesson to sovereigns and people, to humble hereditary power, and to prove by his own career the unsubstantial character of a government which deludes the popular will that creates it. During his captivity, he understood the true causes of his overthrow, and talked of them with an intelligence which misfortune had saddened down into philosophy. He saw that the secret of his reverses was not to be found in the banded confederacy of kings, but in the forfeited sympathy of the great masses of men, who felt
