ed.

And now for a moonlight stroll through Paris! Already the din and tumult
is subsiding--the many-voiced multitude that throngs the streets long
after the roll of equipage and the clattering hoofs of horses have
ceased. How peacefully the long shadows are sleeping in the garden of
the Tuileries! and how clearly sounds the measured tread of the sentinel
beneath the deep arch of the palace!

Not a light twinkles along that vast facade, save in that distant
pavilion, where a single star seems glistening--it is the apartment of
the King, "The cares of Agamemnon never sleep;" and royalty is scarce
more fortunate now than in the days of Homer.

Louis Philippe has a task not less arduous than had Napoleon to found a
dynasty. There is little prestige any longer in the name of Bourbon; and
the members of his family, brave and high-spirited though they be, are
scarcely of the stuff to stand the storm that is brewing for them.

As for the Emperor, the incapacity of his brothers was a weight upon his
shoulders all through life. His family contributed more to his fall than
is generally believed: it was a never-ending struggle he had to
maintain against the childish vanity and extravagance of Josephine,
the wrongheadedness of Joseph, the simple credulity of Louis, and
the fatuous insufficiency of Jerome and Lucien. All, more good than
otherwise, were manifestly unsuited to the places they occupied in life,
and were continually mingling up the associations and habits of their
small identities with the great requirements of newly acquired station.

Napoleon created the Empire--the vast drama was his own. However he
might please to represent royalty, however he might like to ally the
splendours of a throne with the glories of a great captain, it was
all his own doing. But how miserably deficient were the others in that
faculty of adaptation that made him "de pair" with every dynasty of
Europe!

Into these thoughts I was led by finding myself standing in the Rue
Taibout, opposite the house which was once celebrated as the _Cafe du
Roi_--a name which it bore for many years under the Empire, and, in
consequence, was held in high esteem by certain worthy _Legitimistes_,
who little knew that the "King" was only a pretender, and, so far from
being his sainted majesty Louis Dix-huit, was merely Jerome Buonaparte,
king of Westphalia.

The name originated thus:--One warm evening in autumn, a young man,
somewhat over-dressed in the the