From this hospital we took a very long drive to another, going almost from the extremest east to the extremest west of Paris. The Invalides was now our object; and its pleasant, easy, comfortable aspect offered a very agreeable contrast to the scene we had left. We had become taciturn and melancholy at La Salpêtrière; but this interesting and noble edifice revived our spirits completely. Two of the party had never been there before, and the others were eloquent in pointing out all that their former visits had shown them. No place can be better calculated to stimulate conversation; there is so much to be said about our own Greenwich and Queen Elizabeth, versus Louis le Grand and the Invalides. Then we had the statue of a greater than he—even of Napoleon—upon which to gaze and moralise. Some veteran had climbed up to it, despite a wooden leg, or a single arm perhaps, and crowned the still-honoured head with a fresh wreath of bays.
While we stood looking at this, the courteous bow and promising countenance of a fine old man arrested the whole party, and he was questioned and chatted to, till he became the hero of his own tale, and we soon knew exactly where he had received his first wound, what were his most glorious campaigns, and, above all, who was the general best deserving the blessing of an old soldier.
Those who in listening to such chronicles in France expect to hear any other name than that of Napoleon will be disappointed. We may talk of his terrible conscriptions, of poisonings at Jena or forsakings at Moscow, as we will; the simple fact which answers all is, that he was adored by his soldiers when he was with them, and that his memory is cherished with a tender enthusiasm to which history records no parallel. The mere tone of voice in which the name of "Napoleon!" or the title of "L'Empereur!" is uttered by his veterans, is of itself enough to prove what he was to them. They stand taller by an inch when he is named, and throw forward the chest, and snuff the air, like an old war-horse that hears the sound of a trumpet.
But still, with all these interesting speculations to amuse us, we did not forget what must ever be the primary object of a stranger's visit to the Invalides—the interior of the dome. But this is only to be seen at particular hours; and we were too late for the early, and too early for the late, opening of the doors for this purpose. Four o'clock was the hour we had to wait for—as yet it was but three. We were invited into the hall and into the kitchen; we were admitted, too, into sundry little enclosures, appropriated to some happy individuals favoured for their skill in garden craft, who, turning their muskets into hoes and spades, enjoy their honourable leisure ten times more than their idle brethren. In three out of four of these miniature domains we found plaister Napoleons of a foot high stuck into a box-tree or a rose-bush: one of these, too, had a wreath of newly-gathered leaves twisted round the cocked-hat, and all three were placed and displayed with as much attention to dignity and effect as the finest statues in the Tuileries.
If the spirit of Napoleon is permitted to hover about Paris, to indulge itself in gathering the scattered laurels of his posthumous fame, it is not to the lofty chambers of the Tuileries that it should betake itself;—nor would it be greatly soothed by listening to the peaceful counsels of his once warlike maréchals. No—if his ghost be well inspired, it will just glide swiftly through the gallery of the Louvre, to compare it with his earthly recollections; balance itself for a moment over the statue of the Place Vendôme, and abide, for the rest of the time allotted for this mundane visit, among his faithful invalids. There only would he meet a welcome that would please him. The whole nation, it is true, dearly love to talk of his greatness; but there is little now left in common between them and their sometime emperor.
France with a charter, and France without, differs not by many degrees so widely as France military, and France bourgeoise and boursière. Under Napoleon she was the type of successful war; under Louis-Philippe, she will, I think—if the republicans will let her alone—become that of prosperous peace: a sword and a feather might be the emblem of the one—a loom and a long purse of the other.
But still it was not four o'clock. We were next invited to enter the chapel; and we did so, determined to await the appointed hour reposing ourselves on the very comfortable benches provided for the veterans to whose use it is appropriated.
Here, stretched and lounging at our ease, we challenged each other to discover English colours among the multitude of conquered banners which hung suspended above our heads. It is hardly possible that some such should not be there; yet it is a positive fact, that not all our familiar acquaintance with the colours we sought could enable us to discover them. There is indeed one torn and battered relic, that it is just possible might have been hacked and sawed from the desperately firm grasp of an Englishman; but the morsel of rag left is so small, that it was in fact more from the lack of testimony than the presence of it that we at length came to the conclusion that this relic of a stick might once have made part of an English standard.