'I don't mind pledging that,' assented O'Hoolohan, 'but I wish all the same the lass and you had got spooney on each other. This sort of nuptial knot has a kink in it. As for Berthe and myself, we're happy as Midsummer Day, but conscientiously I can offer you no congratulations.'
'Your good wishes are all I want. There are marriages of affection, of interest, of spite, and of necessity; but this is the first time, I venture to say, you have heard of a marriage of esteem,' and O'Hara folded his arms and looked philosophic.
'By my hand,' remarked O'Hoolohan, 'you're an original. I can't make you out. I give you up.'
CHAPTER XV.
THE FIFTH OF MAY, 1870.
IT was the forty-ninth anniversary of the death of the eagle chained to the rock—of the Prometheus who was not unbound—of Napoleon Bonaparte imprisoned at St. Helena. Captivity, despair, dropsy—these were the last scenes in the great world-drama of the modern Cæsar, the little lieutenant of artillery, who sprang from the obscurity of his islet-home in the Mediterranean to the perilous eminence of the purple. This was the end of the spoiled child of victory.
On this day the veterans of his wars, 'the old of the old,' mustered at the foot of his monument in the Place Vendôme, in the core of the busy city—the monument which typified him as the Conquering Hero, who was the ideal of French martial aspirations—the being after the nation's heart. Proudly uprises in the middle of the square the tall pillar—an immense trophy covered with plates of bronze from the monster crucible in which the captured cannon of the Austrians were melted down. The statue of the Imperial soldier is on the summit, laurel-crowned, garbed in regal mantle, the sceptre in one hand, the orb in the other. It would have been better if it were sword or bâton, instead of sceptre or orb—the chasseur's jacket of Marengo, instead of the regal mantle—the three-cornered hat, instead of the garland of Roman triumph.
On this day the statue holds levée. Stooped veterans draw their old uniforms from the bottom of musty drawers, put on the plumed shako pierced with bullets, and the belts blackened with the powder of twenty battles, and march with tottering step to lay their memorial wreaths of the yellow-budded immortelles on the railings at the base.
'Tap! tap!' brattle the drum-sticks, plied by wrinkled fingers, and slowly comes in sight the slender company from the Hôtel des Invalides, for some of these warriors have to hobble to the rendezvous on crutches. The sight is one to thrill and sadden, as these glorious relics of an era that is past file feebly by, in every variety of military dress that recalls the First Empire. There are about five-and-thirty of them—no more. They halt and form into line in front of the entrance to the monument. The stalwart Municipal Guard on sentry presents arms; the withered commander of the band advances and hangs his huge votive circlet of flowers on a rail, the drummer makes his most vigorous attempt at a roulade, but there is the tremor of palsy in the sound; it is as the rattling of clay on a coffin-lid.
'Vive l'Empereur!' pipes the commander, and a faint cheer, a cheer as if from out the dimness of some distant vault, is the response from his companions.
'Live the Man!' exclaims a stooped officer in cocked hat, brandishing his stick as if it were a battle-blade. The stooped officer was Captain Chauvin. Having acquitted themselves of the duty of loyal love, the veterans broke up and dispersed, and our friend joined four bystanders on the pavement of the Rue Castiglione. They were M. and Madame O'Hoolohan, and M. and Madame O'Hara. They helped the aged warrior into a close carriage—for he had grown sadly helpless of late—and drove quietly to his apartment near the Panthéon. He complained of a coldness in the limbs. They sate him in an easy-chair before the stove, and wrapped him round with a warm cloak. He fell into a child-like slumber. This may have lasted an hour, and then, with a loud voice, a voice with the vibration of young manhood, the veteran exclaimed: