I must go back one more day, and tell you how I went to be described for a passport to La Force on Saturday, and how I thought Mr. Bruce more of a hero young man than any I have ever seen. I recollect seeing him before, and thinking him a coxcomb, but a few years have mellowed all that into a very fine young man.
Making every allowance for seeing him in his dungeon in La Force, I think you would be delighted with his countenance. He spoke his sentiments with manly freedom, and yet with the liberality of one who thinks it possible a man may differ from him without being a fool, or a rascal. Lucy and Louisa would certainly have fallen in love with his fine Roman head, which his prison[306] costume of a great coat and no neckcloth showed to great advantage.
And now, adieu Paris! At 2 o'clock on Wednesday a green coach, which none of you could see without ten minutes' laughing at least—three horses and a postillion! (what would I give just to drive up to Winnington with the whole equipage!)—carried us to Versailles, and there I longed for Louis XIV. as much as for Buonaparte at St. Cloud; for one cannot fancy any one living in those rooms or walking in those gardens without hoops and Henri quatre plumes. If one could but people them properly for a couple of hours, what a delightful recollection it would be! Versailles ought to be seen last. It is so magnificent that every other thing of the sort is quite lost in the comparison. I am glad I saw Paris and the Tuilleries and St. Cloud first. We saw the Palace, and then we dined, and then we set out for the Trianon, and then we met with a guide who entertained us so much as to put Louis XIV. and all his court out of my head. Buonaparte never went to Versailles but once to look at it, but at the Trianon he and Joséphine lived, and it is impossible, in seeing those places, not to feel the principal interest to be in the inquiry—where he lived? where he sat? where he walked? where he slept?—so accordingly we asked our guide. "Monsieur, je ne connais point ce coquin là" soon told us what we were to expect from him, but his silence and his loyalty, and the combat between his hatred of the English[307] and his hatred of Buonaparte was so amusing that we soon forgave him for not telling us anything about him. He said "Bony" was only "fit to be hanged." "Why did you not hang him, then?" He could only shrug his shoulders. "We should have hung him for you if he had come to England." "Ma foi! Monsieur, je crois que non." He told us the stories of the rooms and the pictures with all the vivacity and rapidity of a Frenchman, and with pretty little turns of wit.... Donald asked him if a cabinet in one of the rooms had not been given by the Empress of Russia to Buonaparte? He instantly seized him by the button with an air of triumph. "Tenez, Monsieur, quand l'Empereur de Russie était ici, il a vu ce Cabinet et a dit; otez cette Volaille là" (pointing to the compartment in which the Imperial Eagles had been changed into Angels). "Je l'ai donné aux Français, et lui—il n'était pas Français."
In all the royal house the servants are equally impenetrable on the subject of Buonaparte. But sometimes it seems put on, sometimes they really do not know from having been only lately put there, but this man was a genuine Bourbonist and a genuine Frenchman.
We just got to St. Germain in time to walk on the Terrace before evening closed in over the beautiful view. The Palace and the Town put me quite [308]in mind of the deserted court in the "Arabian Nights." ...
Edward Stanley to his Nieces. Tuesday morning.
I could fill another letter with the interesting things we saw yesterday at St. Denis and Malmaison, but we are off in an hour, and it is possible you may hear no more from these
Happy Travellers.