martial ardor
of my schoolmates. Their opinion of the transaction was expressed in
language by no means complimentary to their temporary rulers. To lose
such an opportunity for a fight was a height of absurdity for which
treason and cowardice were inadequate terms. Their military visions
melted away, the field-pieces were wheeled off, the army officers bade
them farewell, they were required to deliver up their arms, and they
found themselves back again to their old bondage, reduced to the
inglorious necessity of attending prayers and learning lessons.

The Hundred Days were over. The Allies once more poured into France,
and in their train came back the poor, despised, antiquated Bourbons,
identifying themselves with the common enemy, and becoming a byword and
a reproach, which were to cling to them until they should be driven into
hopeless banishment. The King reentered Paris, accompanied by foreign
soldiers. I saw him pass the Boulevard, and I then hastened across the
Garden to await his arrival at the Tuileries, standing near the spot
where, three months before, I had seen Napoleon. The tricolor was no
longer there, but the white flag again floated over the place so full of
historical recollections. Louis XVIII soon reached this ancestral abode
of his family, and having mounted, with some difficulty and expenditure
of breath, to the second story, he waddled into the balcony which
overlooked the crowd silently waiting for the expected speech, and,
leaning ponderously on the railing, he kissed his hand, and said, in a
loud voice, "Good day, my children." This was the exordiam, body, and
peroration of his address, and it struck his audience so ludicrously,
that a laugh spread among them, until it became general, and all seemed
in the best possible humor. The King laughed, too, evidently regarding
his reception as highly flattering. The affair turned out well, for the
multitude parted in a merry mood, considering his Majesty rather a jolly
old gentleman, and making sundry comparisons between him and the late
tenant, illustrative of the difference between King Stork and King Log.

Paris was crowded with foreign soldiers. The streets swarmed with them;
their encampments filled the public gardens; they drilled in the open
squares and on the Boulevards; their sentinels stood everywhere. Their
presence was a perpetual commentary on the vanity of that glory which
is dependent on the sword. They gazed at triumphal monuments ere