t have been a face of marble.
Even when at moments the words were drowned in applause and the Empress,
striving at equal composure, still allowed us to see a movement of
her eye lids, a tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, heir to his
dynasty, had his looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly swallowing
each word in the address, save once or twice, when he looked around the
hall curiously, and with a smile as a mere child might look. He struck
me as a mere child. Next to the Prince was one of those countenances
which once seen are never to be forgotten--the true Napoleonic type,
brooding, thoughtful, ominous, beautiful. But not with the serene energy
that characterises the head of the first Napoleon when Emperor, and
wholly without the restless eagerness for action which is stamped in the
lean outline of Napoleon when First Consul: no--in Prince Napoleon there
is a beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my heart--were I a
man, the intellect that would not command my trust. But, nevertheless,
in beauty, it is signal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect
is predominant.

"Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing! The Emperor spoke--and believe
me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your compatriots may insinuate,
there is in that man no sign of declining intellect or failing health. I
care not what may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health as
young as Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon.

"The old cling to the past--they do not go forward to the future. There
was no going back in that speech of the Emperor. There was something
grand and something young in the modesty with which he put aside all
references to that which his Empire had done in the past, and said with
a simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately describe--

"'We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future. Who
can be opposed to the progressive march of a regime founded by a great
people in the midst of political disturbance, and which now is fortified
by liberty?'

"As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock with an
applause that must have been heard on the other side of the Seine.

"'Vive l'Empereur!'" "'Vive l'Imperatrice!'" "'Vive le Prince
Imperial!'"--and the last cry was yet more prolonged than the others, as
if to affirm the dynasty.

"Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chivalry more
splendid than the audience in that grand hall of the Louvre. To the
righ