Come where the pots hold more;
Come where the boss is a bit of a Joss,
Come to the pub. next door.
There the story unfortunately ends, without the Queen's comment. But in the pages of Punch we read how in 1869, when the Constitutional régime had just been inaugurated in France under Emile Ollivier, the programme of one of the Queen's State concerts included "Heaven Preserve the Emperor, with variations," which prompts Punch to ask, "Would not this do for the French National Anthem?" In 1865 Punch devoted a cartoon to commemorate the completion of fifty years of peace between England and France, and in 1869 another on the centenary of the first Napoleon. With the catastrophe of 1870, Sedan and its sequel of exile and suffering, Punch's hostility changed to compassion, and his In memoriam verses on the Emperor, though too laboured and too frequently disfigured by inversions to attain to the dignity of poetry, form one of the best of contemporary summaries and estimates of the career and character of the dead ruler:—
Already scores of ready penmen draft
Of his life's course to power their bird's-eye view,
Through poverty and perjury and craft,
And redder stains that the blurred track imbrue.
Let whoso will count of his faults the cost,
And point a moral in his saddened end;