n you first meet him;
he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant
who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though
kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a
soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He
may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply
intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,--the love which those
clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros,
son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions
provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and
the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social
nomenclature,--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world
turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents,
Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up
in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.

[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the
first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest
must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that
descriptions of battles should be something more than the
dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three
thousand years have told us about left and right wings and
centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about
the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The
conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the
"Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-field
once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the
Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is
covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of
the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,
thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:
"There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard," said the
peasant who served us as a guide; "those are their graves
you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic
Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had
himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By
one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a
breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of
Wagram. Though poo