Louis XVI., Charlotte Corday, Marie Antoinette, Danton, Robespierre—oh, what dretful things to think on! But the murmur of the water as it spouted up and fell back in murmurs whispered of happier, more peaceful times.
In a place where stood the old prison of Bastille, a sile steeped with the tears and blood of the thousand and thousands of prisoners and victims, stands Liberty, a-standin’ upon a monument one hundred and fifty feet high. She always had to wade through blood, and always will, for all I know. She had a broken chain in one hand—the past is behind her, the chains are broke. She lifts up a torch in the other hand, its light streams into the futer. She don’t lay out to have any more sech deeds of darkness done if she can possibly help it—you can see that by the looks of her.
CHAPTER XXVII.
NAPOLEON AND OTHER GREAT FRENCHMEN.
One day I told Josiah that I must go to see the Invalides.
And he sez, “You better keep away, Samantha; you may ketch sunthin’.”
But I explained that I wanted to see the tomb of Napoleon, so he gin in, and we went there and stayed some time.
The big gilded dome of this meetin’-house towers up three hundred and fifty feet, and can be seen all over the city, and would be apt to keep Napoleon in memory if France wuz inclined to forgit him, which it hain’t. Here he lays, jest as he wanted to, by the banks of the waters he thought so much on, and with the French people he loved.
As you go in, you see under a gold and white canopy the form of our Lord upon the cross lookin’ down, down into a splendid tomb surrounded by a great laurel crown and twelve giant statutes of Victories a-towerin’ up all about it—you see the grave of the Great Conqueror. My emotions wuz a sight to behold; I couldn’t count ’em, nor did Josiah.
All the thoughts I had ever had about the Hero—and they’d been soarin’ ones and a endless variety on ’em seemin’ly—all seemed to be crystallized and run together as I stood in that spot. But how could I tell my feelin’s? I couldn’t no more’n them twelve marble figgers could, who lifted their grand colossial figgers all round his coffin; their great noble faces expressed a sight, and so I spoze mine did, but it would have been jest as vain for me to have told my emotions as it would for them to open their marble lips and told theirn.