in 1814 he did his best to upset
the organisation and fled on the approach of the Allies. The following
year he returned to his post, and after Waterloo he was arrested on
a treason charge and sentenced to the guillotine. The Countess made
desperate efforts to gain the clemency of Louis XVIII., but without
avail. In the end she gained permission to go to her husband in
his prison. She went in a sedan chair with her daughter, and an
old servant of the family. The gaoler left the couple to their last
farewell, and on his return saw the broken-hearted wife assisted out
by her two companions. A little later he approached the Count, who lay
collapsed upon his bed covered in a large cloak, and his face buried
in his hands. It was some time after ere the gaoler discovered that
his prisoner was the lady, and that the Count had got clear away.

French stamps provide a very interesting record of the political
changes in the country, and provide one of the best illustrations of
how stamps demarcate the periods of a nation's history. We have dealt
at some length with this aspect of French stamps elsewhere,[5] and
limit our account here to a short pictorial one. The first French
stamps (_Fig._ 137) are inscribed REPUB. FRANC., and followed in the
wake of the revolution of 1848 when M. Etienne Arago was in charge
of the post office. They were first issued January 1, 1849, after the
election of Prince Louis Napoleon to the Presidency. The head on the
stamp engraved by the elder Barre is not the head of Liberty, as is
commonly supposed, but that of Ceres, the Italian goddess of Agriculture,
who was the same as the Greek Demeter or "Mother Earth," appropriate for
the design of the stamps of a country which is "one of Ceres' chiefest
barns for corn." Napoleon's _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851, was
followed by the issue in 1852 of stamps in which his portrait takes
the place of Ceres (_Fig._ 138). Late in the same year the Empire was
proclaimed, so in 1853 the abbreviated inscription REPUB. FRANC. was
altered to EMPIRE FRANC. (_Fig._ 139). Napoleon's successes in Italy
and elsewhere were acclaimed by adding the victor's crown of laurel
to the portrait on the stamps in 1863 (_Fig._ 140). His various
expeditions are marked for the collectors in a most interesting range
of Army postmarks, used in the Crimea, China, Mexico, etc., and of
French stamps used in the French post offices in the Levant, similar
to the British ones described in chapt