iet
beauty of the town, with its regular streets of houses breaking into
suburban villas of an American sort, and intersected with many canals,
which in the intervals of the rain were eagerly navigated by pleasure
boats, and contributed to the general picturesqueness by their frequent
bridges, even during the drizzle. There seemed to be no churches to do,
and as it was a Sunday, the galleries were so early closed against them
that they were making a virtue as well as a pleasure of the famous scene
of Napoleon's first great defeat.

By a concert between their guide and driver their carriage drew up at
the little inn by the road-side, which is also a museum stocked with
relics from the battle-field, and with objects of interest relating to
it. Old muskets, old swords, old shoes and old coats, trumpets, drums,
gun-carriages, wheels, helmets, cannon balls, grape-shot, and all the
murderous rubbish which battles come to at last, with proclamations,
autographs, caricatures and likenesses of Napoleon, and effigies of
all the other generals engaged, and miniatures and jewels of their
womenkind, filled room after room, through which their owner vaunted his
way, with a loud pounding voice and a bad breath. When he wished them
to enjoy some gross British satire or clumsy German gibe at Bonaparte's
expense, and put his face close to begin the laugh, he was something
so terrible that March left the place with a profound if not a reasoned
regret that the French had not won the battle of Leipsic. He walked
away musing pensively upon the traveller's inadequacy to the ethics of
history when a breath could so sway him against his convictions; but
even after he had cleansed his lungs with some deep respirations he
found himself still a Bonapartist in the presence of that stone on
the rising ground where Napoleon sat to watch the struggle on the vast
plain, and see his empire slipping through his blood-stained fingers.
It was with difficulty that he could keep from revering the hat and coat
which are sculptured on the stone, but it was well that he succeeded,
for he could not make out then or afterwards whether the habiliments
represented were really Napoleon's or not, and they might have turned
out to be Barclay de Tolly's.

While he stood trying to solve this question of clothes he was startled
by the apparition of a man climbing the little slope from the opposite
quarter, and advancing toward them. He wore the imperial crossed by the