Bonaparte’s Wit.—Soon after Napoleon had attained the rank of captain, a soldier one day approached him, and showed him his coat which was in rags, at the same time demanding another in a dissatisfied tone. “A new coat?” replied the young officer; “you do not call to mind that your honorable scars would no longer be visible.” This well-timed compliment entirely satisfied the poor soldier.
After Napoleon became emperor, during a parade, a young officer stepped out of the ranks, in extreme agitation, to complain that he had been ill-used, slighted, and passed over, and that he had been five years a lieutenant, without being able to obtain promotion. “Calm yourself,” said the emperor; “I was seven years a lieutenant, and yet you see that a man may push himself forward for all that.” Everybody laughed, and the young officer, suddenly cooled by these words, returned to his place.
The following description of the gardens at the Tusculan villa, Belvidere, in Italy, is given by a traveller. “Behind the palace,” says he, “an aquatic stream dashes precipitately down a succession of terraces, and is tormented below, into a variety of tricks. The whole court seems alive at the turning of the cock. Water attacks you on every side; it is squirted in your face from invisible holes; it darts up in a constellation of jets d’eau; it returns in misty showers, which present against the sun a beautiful iris. Water is made to blow the trumpet of a centaur and the pipe of a cyclops; water plays two organs; makes the birds warble and the muses tune their reeds; it sets Pegasus neighing, and all Parnassus on music. I mention this magnificent touch as a specimen of Italian hydraulics. Its sole object is to surprise strangers.”
At Thebes, the coffins of mummies are burnt for fire-wood, and the ruins of limestone are burned for lime.
The stranger carrying off Katrina.