“Dear eagle! May these kisses find an echo in the hearts of every brave man!... My children, farewell.” The voice that had electrified them on a thousand battle-fields ceased to speak; it has stirred those brave hearts to their depths; the veterans sob like women. Napoleon descends the monumental steps of the horse-shoe, and passes through the midst of them in silence. Bertrand is waiting for him at the gate. He gets into his carriage, and drives away. Thus the unrivalled actor took his leave of the world-stage on which he had figured so long and so brilliantly. The colors which he clasped in that last touching embrace were henceforth treasured as a sacred thing; half a century later, they were laid on his tomb at the Invalides.
The gallery of Diana, which had been left unfinished by Napoleon, was completed after the restoration of the Bourbon. Louis XVIII. has commemorated the achievements on a slab bearing in golden letters the date of the completion of the gallery—“in the 20th year of my reign!” And on the table on which Napoleon signed his abdication he caused the following to be engraved: “The 5th of April, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte signed his abdication on this table in the king’s cabinet, the second after the bedroom, at Fontainebleau.” With the singular mixture of obstinacy and simplicity which characterized his Bourbon mind, he systematically ignored in conversation and in all official deeds the reign of Napoleon altogether, and continued to the last to date as if that stormy meteor had never broken in upon the dull horizon of his sovereignty. Those inscriptions are the only two traces of Louis XVIII.’s passage which are to be found at Fontainebleau.
Charles X. never resided there, and seldom even visited the palace. It fell into sad neglect, but was entirely restored by Louis Philippe, not only the edifice, but the pictures and costly works of art with which a long line of sovereigns had so magnificently endowed it.
Under the Empire, Fontainebleau came in for the share of imperial favor which was so impartially divided amongst the still habitable castles of France. Every autumn it was the scene of brilliant hunting-parties and varied hospitalities.
We will close this fragmentary record of the past of Fontainebleau by an incident, which, though not yet within the range of history, may one day take its place there, and be quoted with interest as an indication of the character of one destined, for aught we know, to play his part in the annals of the coming age.
The Prince Imperial, then a mere child, was playing one day in the galerie des cerfs with a little friend of his, the son of an officer of the household. Suddenly, in the midst of their game, the latter rather irrelevantly remarked: “This is where Queen Hortense killed a man.” “Queen Hortense was my grandmother,” retorted the young prince indignantly; “she never killed anybody!” “Oh! but she did, though,” persisted his companion; “she killed one somewhere hereabouts; I’ve read it in a book.”
This was too formidable an argument to be met by mere words; the descendant of the injured Hortense clenched his little fist, and laid on vigorously to the traducer of his grandmother. The noise of the battle soon drew the attention of some ladies who were at the other end of the gallery; they ran to separate the combatants, and inquire the cause of the row; but the young prince, crimson with rage, and with the big tears rolling down his cheeks, broke away from them, and rushed to his mother, who was somewhere in the neighborhood.
“He says that my grandmother killed a man,” cried the child out loud, “and I say it is a lie!” Then, throwing his arms round the empress’ neck, he whispered: “It’s not true, is it, that she ever killed anybody?”