If he be dead,
it is to be supposed that, instead of lying a headless trunk
ignominiously in a ditch, or in the unconsecrated cemetery of Clamort,
he is reposing entire in the paternal tomb.
On the 15th of March, 1815, the Emperor landed at Cannes--he had
returned from the island of Elba. On the beach he was joined by one
man, at Antibes by a company, at Digne by a battalion, at Gap by a
regiment (that of Labedoyer), at Grenoble by an army. The hearts of
the soldiers of France went to him like steel to the loadstone--first
a drop, and then a torrent; the Empire, like a snowball, increased as
it progressed. At Lyons, the Count of Artois, the setting sun, is
obliged to go out of one gate the moment that Napoleon, the rising
sun, comes in at another. Smiles, orations, triumphal arches, and even
the discourses that had been prepared to welcome the Bourbons, were
used to congratulate their successor on his return. Cockades and flags
were altered to suit the occasion, by inserting a stripe of red here
and another of blue there. One national guard, but only one, remained
faithful to the Bourbons; he would neither alter his cockade nor his
colors, and remained true to his patrons in the hour of disaster.
Everybody asked, what would the Emperor do with him? Would he be
imprisoned or banished? Neither; the Emperor sent him a cross of the
order of merit! It is, no doubt, grand to have overthrown the
brilliant army of Murad Bey in Egypt; to have vanquished Melas,
Wurmser, and Davidowich in Italy; Bragation, Kutusoff, and Barclay de
Tolly in Russia; Mack in Germany; and thus to have reduced the entire
continent of Europe to subjection.
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