devoted to the following out of this slender clew--with what surprising
results will, I trust, be seen in subsequent volumes.

We have not had time to attempt the unravelling of our English ancestry
as well--the Crays, and the Desmonds, the Ibbetsons, and Biddulphs,
etc.--which connects us with the past history of England. The farther we
got back into France, the more fascinating it became, and the
easier--and the more difficult to leave.

What an unexampled experience has been ours! To think that we have
seen--actually seen--_de nos propres yeux vu_--Napoleon Bonaparte
himself, the arch-arbiter of the world, on the very pinnacle of his
pride and power; in his little cocked hat and gray double-breasted
overcoat, astride his white charger, with all his staff around him, just
as he has been so often painted! Surely the most impressive,
unforgettable, ineffaceable little figure in all modern history, and
clothed in the most cunningly imagined make-up that ever theatrical
costumier devised to catch the public eye and haunt the public memory
for ages and ages yet to come!

It is a singularly new, piquant, and exciting sensation to stare in
person, and as in the present, at bygone actualities, and be able to
foretell the past and remember the future all in one!

To think that we have even beheld him before he was first consul--slim
and pale, his lank hair dangling down his neck and cheeks, if possible
more impressive still as innocent as a child of all that lay before him!
Europe at his feet--the throne--Waterloo-St. Helena--the Iron English
Duke--the pinnacle turned into a pillory so soon!