s, surrounded by
memorials of departed greatness, shrunk within a small part of its
former limits, and deserted by the very sea, and it might have been
mercifully chosen on purpose as the scene of his exit, in order to blunt
his regret at leaving France. The latter was Cannes, a place,[52] as I
have fully described it, full of cheerfulness, beauty, and rich distant
prospects, corresponding almost in brilliancy to those which his mind
was forming at the time.

[Footnote 52: Vide Cooke's Views.]

Far different must have been the feelings of Murat during the anxious
interval of forced leisure which he spent at this place; and I will
confess, that while listening to the landlord's simple account of the
manner in which he passed his time, we forgot the massacre of Madrid in
the well-known anecdote of the drowning officer's rescue. During the
first eight days he remained shut up in the bed-room or sitting-room
which we occupied, in expectation of despatches from Buonaparte, to whom
he wrote on his arrival at Cannes. At the end of this time, having
received no answer, he used to beguile his impatience by rambling on the
sea shore, or watching the sports of the peasants, till at length,
evidently heart-sick and desperate, he set out for Toulon on the rash
expedition which closed his career. "Toujours, toujours, il avoit la
mine triste.--Ah! si vous l'aviez connu, vous auriez pleure son sort--il
etoit un si bel homme!--d'une taille superbe!" said our honest host,
whose knowledge of Murat was probably confined to his soldier-like
figure, and his desolate state: he could have been no judge of the small
extent of Buonaparte's obligations to his brother-in-law, whose former
defection was but repaid in kind. He pointed out a green spot under the
walls of an old castle which overlooked the inn, where he had frequently
observed Murat lying with his face concealed in his hands, or in his
more cheerful moments, watching the dances of the country people who
resorted thither, and whose sports seemed to interest him considerably.
It would be a task for the hand of a master poet or painter, to describe
an ambitious and desperate man, softened for a time by disappointment,
overleaping in thought the immeasurable distance between his present and
his former self, and contemplating the sports of his youth with a sort
of melancholy pleasure, yet under the influence of the strong fatality
which hurried him to his end. It is by mixing somewhat of