was chanted, the words of which were written by M. de
Fontanes and the music composed by Mehul. But what was most remarkable
in this fete was neither the poetry, music, nor even the panegyrical
eloquence of Lucien,--it was the arrival at the Champ-de-Mars, after
the ceremony at the Invalides, of the Consular Guard returning from
Marengo. I was at a window of the Ecole-Militaire, and I can never
forget the commotion, almost electrical, which made the air resound with
cries of enthusiasm at their appearance. These soldiers did not defile
before the First Consul in fine uniforms as at a review. Leaving the
field of battle when the firing ceased, they had crossed Lombardy,
Piedmont, Mont Cenis, Savoy, and France in the space of twenty-nine days.
They appeared worn by the fatigue of a long journey, with faces browned
by the summer sun of Italy, and with their arms and clothing showing the
effects of desperate struggles. Do you wish to have an idea of their
appearance? You will find a perfect type in the first grenadier put by
Gerard at one side of his picture of the battle of Austerlitz.

At the time of this fete, that is to say, in the middle of the month of
July, the First Consul could not have imagined that the moderate
conditions he had proposed after the victory would not be accepted by
Austria. In the hope, therefore, of a peace which could not but be
considered probable, he, for the first time since the establishment of
the Consular Government, convoked the deputies of the departments, and
appointed their time of assembling in Paris for the 1st Vendemiaire, a
day which formed the close of one remarkable century and marked the
commencement of another.

The remains of Marshal Turenne; to which Louis XIV. had awarded the
honours of annihilation by giving them a place among the royal tombs in
the vaults of St. Denis, had been torn from their grave at the time of
the sacrilegious violation of the tombs. His bones, mingled
indiscriminately with others, had long lain in obscurity in a garret of
the College of Medicine when M. Lenoir collected and restored them to the
ancient tomb of Turenne in the Mussee des Petits Augustins. Bonaparte
resolved to enshrine these relics in that sculptured marble with which
the glory of Turenne could so well dispense. This was however, intended
as a connecting link between the past days of France and the future to
which he looked forward. He thought that the sentiments inspired by the
solemn