"But Napoleon," said I, "with an army of a million recruited from thirty
millions, opposed to the worn-down force and exhausted treasures of the
Continent! What an iron wedge driven in among their dilapidated
combinations! What a mountain of granite, with the cloud and the thunder
for its crown, domineering over the plain!"

"True--perfectly true," he replied, throwing back the long locks from a
broad forehead which reminded me of a bust of Plato. "True. Man may be
as little able to decide on the means by which the power of France will
fall, as on the purposes for which that tremendous fabric of splendid
iniquity first rose. But, look into that street."

It happened that a French regiment of cuirassiers, with the fine
clangour of its drums and trumpets, was passing under the window at the
moment.

"You see there," said he, "the kind of feeling which that really
striking show produces; not a window is open but our own. The blinds of
every window have been let down, not an eye looks at these troops. Yet
the public of Vienna are extravagantly fond of display in all its
shapes; and punchinello, or a dance of dogs, would bring a head to every
pane of glass, from the roof to the ground. The French are individually
shrunk from, hated, abhorred.

"Naturally enough, as conquerors," I observed; chiefly from a desire to
hear more of the sentiments of the celebrated German.

"No--no!" said he, almost in a tone of vexation. "The Germans are as
much alive to the merits of their enemies in the field, as any other
nation in the world. They acknowledge the soldiership of the French. I