I think it was on the 10th of July that I went to St. Cloud to pay a
visit of thanks to Blucher. I had been informed that as soon as he
learned I had a house at St. Cloud he sent a guard to protect it. This
spontaneous mark of attention was well deserving of grateful
acknowledgment, especially at a time when there was so much reason to
complain of the plunder practised by the Prussians. My visit to Blucher
presented to observation a striking instance of the instability of human
greatness. I found Blucher residing like a sovereign in the Palace of
St. Cloud, where I had lived so long in the intimacy of Napoleon, at a
period when he dictated laws to the Kings of Europe before he was a
monarch himself.

--[The English occupied St. Cloud after the Prussians. My large
house, in which the children of the Comte d'Artois were inoculated,
was respected by them, but they occupied a small home forming part
of the estate. The English officer who commanded the troops
stationed a guard at the large house. One morning we were informed
that the door had been broken open and a valuable looking-glass
stolen. We complained to the commanding officer, and on the affair
being inquired into it was discovered that the sentinel himself had
committed the theft. The man was tried by a court-martial, and
condemned to death, a circumstance which, as may naturally be
supposed, was very distressing to us. Madame de Bourrienne applied
to the commanding officer for the man's pardon, but could only
obtain his reprieve. The regiment departed some weeks after, and we
could never learn what was the fate of the criminal.--Bourrienne.]--

In that cabinet in which Napoleon and I had passed so many busy hours,
and where so many great plans had their birth, I was received by the man