s Eugenie, traversing her apartments,
accompanied by Colonel Verly, stopped before one of these sentries,
whose rigid immobility in the correct military attitude made her smile.
"Admit, colonel," she said, "that this perfect motionlessness is only an
appearance, and that the slightest thing would cause it to disappear."
"Your Majesty may assure yourself to the contrary," replied the colonel.
"And if I were to offer him an insult?" "I have nothing to reply to your
Majesty. You might ascertain yourself!" The Empress, knitting her brows
in an attempt to frown, approached the sentry and reproached him
severely for some imaginary infraction of discipline; stiff as a statue
in his position of salute, he made no sign whatever. Whereupon,
pretending to take offence at his silence, she dealt him a vigorous blow
on the cheek. She might as well have struck a statue! So she returned to
her apartments.

But, not willing that the affair should rest there, she ascertained his
name, and the next day, through his superiors, sent the soldier a note
of five hundred francs as some recompense for the gratuitous insult
offered him. And he immediately returned it, through the same channel,
answering that he esteemed himself as "too happy in having received on
his face the hand of his well-beloved sovereign." M. Verly considers
this response as very fine, and as justifying all that has been said
concerning the correctness of appearance and attitude, and the
intelligent and affectionate devotion which all the men of the squadron
of the Cent-Gardes maintained toward their Imperial Majesties.

[Illustration: COMPAGNIE CYCLISTE: ECOLE MILITAIRE DE GYMNASTIQUE AT
JOINVILLE-LE-PONT.]

One of the first acts of the military administration after the Coup
d'Etat was the disbanding of the National Guard throughout France. By a
decree dated from the Tuileries, January 11, 1852, the superior general
commanding was charged with its reorganization. On the 2d of December of
the same year, the new Emperor signed at Saint-Cloud the decree
promulgating the _senatus-consulte_ ratified by the plebiscite of the
21st and 22d of November, endorsing the Empire, and made his solemn
entry into Paris. At one o'clock in the afternoon the cannon thundered,
the drums beat, the trumpets and bugles sounded: "then might be seen,"
says the official _Moniteur_, "an inspiring spectacle, the new Emperor
passing under that Arch of Triumph erected by his uncle to the glory of
the