"Passing on with a groan, I entered a small chamber, with two windows
looking towards the north. Between these windows are the marks of a
fixed sofa: on that couch Napoleon died. The apartment is now occupied
by a threshing machine; 'No bad emblem of its former tenant!' said
a sacrilegious wag. Hence we were conducted onwards to a large room,
which formerly contained a billiard-table, and whose front looks out
upon a little latticed veranda, where the imperial peripatetic--I
cannot style him philosopher--enjoyed the luxury of six paces to and
fro,--his favourite promenade. The white-washed walls are scored with
names of every nation; and the paper of the ceiling has been torn off
in strips as holy relics. Many couplets, chiefly French, extolling and
lamenting the departed hero, adorn or disfigure (according to their
qualities) the plaster walls. The only lines that I can recall to
mind--few are worth it--are the following, written ever the door, and
signed '---- ----, Officier de la Garde Impériale.'

"'Du grand Napoléon le nom toujours cité
Ira de bouche en bouche à la postérité!'"

The writer doubtless possessed more spirit as a sabreur than as a
poet.

"The emperor's once well-kept garden,

"'And still where many a garden-flower grows wild,'

"is now overgrown and choked with weeds. At the end of a walk still
exists a small mound, on which it is said the hero of Lodi, Marengo,
and Austerlitz, amused himself by erecting a mock battery. The little
chunamed tank, in which he fed some fresh-water fish, is quite