I mention this incident as an evidence of what diversified materials an army is composed, and that the instruments of military despotism are not necessarily endowed with personal courage, the discipline of the mass compensating for individual imperfection. It also gives evidence that luck has much to do in the fortunes of this world, and that many a man who “bears his blushing honors thick upon him” would as poorly stand a scrutiny as to the means by which they were acquired, as our friend, the drummer, had he been enabled to strut about, in piping times of peace, with a strip of red ribbon at his button-hole.
While preparations were making for the defence of Paris, and the alarmed citizens feared, what was at one time threatened, that the defenders would be driven in, and the streets become a scene of warfare, involving all conditions in the chances of indiscriminate massacre, the powers that were saw the futility of resistance, and opening negotiations with the enemy, closed the war by capitulation. Whatever relief this may have been to the people generally, it was a sad blow to the martial ardor of my schoolmates. Their opinion of the transaction was expressed in language by no means complimentary to their temporary rulers. To lose such an opportunity for a fight was a height of absurdity for which treason and cowardice were inadequate terms. Their military visions melted away, the field-pieces were wheeled off, the army officers bade them farewell, they were required to deliver up their arms, and they found themselves back again to their old bondage, reduced to the inglorious necessity of attending prayers and learning lessons.
The Hundred Days were over. The Allies once more poured into France, and in their train came back the poor, despised, antiquated Bourbons, identifying themselves with the common enemy, and becoming a byword and a reproach, which were to cling to them until they should be driven into hopeless banishment. The King reentered Paris, accompanied by foreign soldiers. I saw him pass the Boulevard, and I then hastened across the Garden to await his arrival at the Tuileries, standing near the spot where, three months before, I had seen Napoleon. The tricolor was no longer there, but the white flag again floated over the place so full of historical recollections. Louis XVIII. soon reached this ancestral abode of his family, and having mounted, with some difficulty and expenditure of breath, to the second story, he waddled into the balcony which overlooked the crowd silently waiting for the expected speech, and, leaning ponderously on the railing, he kissed his hand, and said, in a loud voice, “ Good day, my children.” This was the exordium, body, and peroration of his address, and it struck his audience so ludicrously, that a laugh spread among them, until it became general, and all seemed in the best possible humor. The King laughed, too, evidently regarding his reception as highly flattering. The affair turned out well, for the multitude parted in a merry mood, considering his Majesty rather a jolly old gentleman, and making sundry comparisons between him and the late tenant, illustrative of the difference between King Stork and King Log.
Paris was crowded with foreign soldiers. The streets swarmed with them; their encampments filled the public gardens; they drilled in the open squares and on the Boulevards; their sentinels stood everywhere. Their presence was a perpetual commentary on the vanity of that glory which is dependent on the sword. They gazed at triumphal monuments erected to commemorate battles which had subjected their own countries to the iron rule of conquest. They stood by columns on which the history of their defeat was cast from their captured cannon, and by arches whose friezes told a boastful tale of their subjugation. They passed over bridges whose names reminded them of fields which had witnessed their headlong rout. They strolled through galleries where the masterpieces of art hung as memorials that
