untries would be the least dreaded result of it. A suspected
conspirator against the life of Napoleon, without a chance for
explanation, I saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched (my minute
notes of the Tuileries confiscated), and trundled off to the
Conciergerie, and hung up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, like
Ravaillac.

I drew back into the shade and rapidly walked to the western gate. It was
closed, of course. On the gate-piers stand the winged steeds of Marly,
never less admired than by me at that moment. They interested me less
than a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who lounged outside, guarding the
entrance from the square, and unsuspicious that any assassin was trying
to get out. I could see the gleam of the lamps on their bayonets and hear
their soft tread. Ask them to let me out? How nimbly they would have
scaled the fence and transfixed me! They like to do such things. No,
no--whatever I do, I must keep away from the clutches of these cats of
Africa.

And enough there was to do, if I had been in a mind to do it. All the
seats to sit in, all the statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell.
The southern terrace overlooking the Seine was closed, or I might have
amused myself with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial that ran nearly
the whole length of it, with its switches and turnouts and houses; or I
might have passed delightful hours there watching the lights along the
river and the blazing illumination on the amusement halls. But I ascended
the familiar northern terrace and wandered amid its bowers, in company
with Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I knew only by sight,
smelling the orange-blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the old
riding-school where the National Assembly sat in 1789.

It must have been eleven o'clock when I found myself down by the private
garden next the palace. Many of the lights in the offices of the
household had been extinguished, but the private apartments of the
Emperor in the wing south of the central pavilion were still illuminated.
The Emperor evidently had not so much desire to go to bed as I had. I
knew the windows of his petits appartements--as what good American did
not?--and I wondered if he was just then taking a little supper, if he
had bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was alone in his room, reflecting
upon his grandeur and thinking what suit he should wear on the morrow in
his ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was dictating an editorial for the
off