enemies, it will hold him there, firm. His time has not yet come. Before
he bids adieu to life he will secure an able leader for France.

I give him my hand. I embrace him in spirit. The shadow of Napoleon
attends him by day and by night.

Adieu,
NAPOLEON.




W. M. THACKERAY.

_HIS POST MORTEM EXPERIENCE_.


Poor Will Thackeray, when a stripling, was fit to kneel in the street
before his mistress, that bright luminary who shone to his boyish eyes
like a star of the first magnitude! Alas, he discovered her to be one of
the sixteenth, and by the time he had ceased to care for polished boots
and stiff, broad collars, she had dwindled down to an ordinary piece of
humanity!

He found his boon companions, like himself, liable to mistake an ant for
a whale and think the King of England next in royalty to a god!

What a fool he made of himself in the eyes of those who were wiser than
he, when he swore the crown of England was made of unalloyed gold! The
water he drank was filled with animalculae, yet he swore it was pure as