ion into the teeth of the English--perished with the
wild cry of "_Vive l'Empereur!_"

Hugo says that the panic of the French admits of an explanation; that
the disappearance of the great man was necessary for the advent of a
great age; that in the battle of Waterloo there was more than a storm,
that is, the bursting of a meteor. "At nightfall," he continues,
"Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat in a field near
Genappe a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, carried so far by the
current of the rout, had just dismounted, passed the bridle over his
arm, and was now with wandering eye returning alone to Waterloo. It
was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of a shattered dream!"

On the spot where French patriotism afterward planted the bronze lion
to commemorate forever the extinction of the Old Guard of the French
Empire, and of Napoleon the Great, the traveler from strange lands
pauses, at the distance of eighty years from the horrible cataclysm,
and reflects with wonder how within the memory of living men human
nature could have been raised by the passion of battle to such sublime
heroism as that displayed in these wheatfields and orchards where the
Old Guard of France sank into oblivion, but rose to immortal fame.

SEBASTOPOL.

In the fall of 1852 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince President of the
French Republic, about to become the French Empire, was invited to a
banquet by the Chamber of Commerce in Bordeaux. He was on his
triumphal tour through the South of France. At the banquet he spoke,
saying: "I accept with eagerness the opportunity afforded me by the
Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce for thanking your great city for its
cordial reception.... At present the nation surrounds me with its
sympathies.... To promote the welfare of the country, it is not
necessary to apply new systems, but the chief point above all is to
produce confidence in the present and security for the future. For
these reasons it seems France desires a return to the Empire. There is
one objection to which I must reply. Certain minds seem to entertain a
dread of war; certain persons say the Empire is only war. But I say
_the Empire is peace_."

The last four words of this extract became the motto of the Second
Empire. Everywhere the Prince President's saying was blown to the
world. "The Empire is peace" was published in the newspapers, echoed
on the stage, and preached from the pulpits.

But the Empire was _not_ peace. Just