Napoleon’s Sentimental Journey.—Public Spirit of the Time.—Events of the 10Th of August

3rd.—The weather is somewhat improved; the Emperor attempted to take a walk in the garden. General Bingham and the Colonel of the 53d requested to see the Emperor, who kept them rather long. The appearance of the Governor put us all to flight. General Bingham disappeared, and, for our part, we went to the wood, for the purpose of keeping away from the spot.

The Emperor, during his walk, conversed a great deal about a journey which he took to Burgundy in the beginning of the Revolution. This he calls his Sentimental Journey to Nuitz. He supped there with his comrade Gassendi, at that time captain in the same regiment, and who was advantageously married to the daughter of a physician of the place. The young traveller soon remarked the difference of political opinion between the father and son-in-law; Gassendi, the gentleman, was, of course, an aristocrat, and the physician a flaming patriot. The latter found in the strange guest a powerful auxiliary, and was so delighted with him that the following day at dawn he paid him a visit of acknowledgment and sympathy. The appearance of a young officer of artillery, with good logical reasoning and a ready tongue, was, observed the Emperor, a valuable and rare accession to the place. It was easy for the traveller to perceive that he made a favourable impression. It was Sunday, and hats were taken off to him from one end of the street to the other. His triumph, however, was not without a check. He went to sup at the house of a Madame Maret or Muret, where another of his comrades, V——, seemed to be comfortably established. Here the aristocracy of the canton were accustomed to meet, although the mistress was but the wife of a wine-merchant, but she had great property and the most polished manners; she was, said the Emperor, the duchess of the place. All the gentlefolks of the vicinity were to be found there. The young officer was caught, as he remarked, in a real wasp-nest, and it was necessary for him to fight his way out again. The contest was unequal. In the very heat of the action, the mayor was announced. “I believed him to be an assistant sent to me by Heaven in the critical moment, but he was the worst of all my opponents. I see this villanous fellow now before me in his fine Sunday clothes, fat and bloated, in an ample scarlet coat; he was a miserable animal. I was happily extricated by the generosity of the mistress of the house, perhaps from a secret sympathy of opinion. She unceasingly parried with her wit the blows which were dealt at me; and was a protecting shield on which the enemy’s weapons struck in vain. She guarded me from every kind of wound, and I have always retained a pleasing recollection of the services I received from her in that sort of skirmish.

“The same diversity of opinions,” said the Emperor, “was then to be met with in every part of France. In the saloons, in the streets, on the highways, in the taverns, every one was ready to take part in the contest, and nothing was easier than for a person to form an erroneous estimate of the influence of parties and opinions, according to the local situation in which he was placed. Thus a patriot might easily be deceived, when in the saloons, or among an assembly of officers, where the majority was decidedly against him; but, the instant he was in the street, or among the soldiers, he found himself in the midst of the entire nation. The sentiments of the day succeeded even in making proselytes among the officers themselves, particularly after the celebrated oath to the Nation, the Law, and the King. Until that time,” continued the Emperor, “had I received an order to point my cannon against the people, I have no doubt, that custom, prejudice, education, and the name of the King, would have induced me to obey; but, the national oath once taken, this would have ceased, and I should have acknowledged the nation only. My natural propensities thenceforth harmonized with my duties, and happily accorded with all the metaphysics of the Assembly. The patriotic officers, however, it must be allowed, constituted but the smaller number; but with the soldiers, as a lever, they led the regiment and imposed the law. The comrades of the opposite party, and the officers themselves, had recourse to us in every critical moment. I remember, for instance, having rescued from the fury of the populace a brother officer, whose crime consisted in singing from the windows of our dining-room the celebrated ballad O Richard! O mon Roi! I had little notion then that that air would one day be proscribed in the same manner on my account. Just so, on the 10th of August, when I saw the palace of the Tuileries stormed and the person of the King seized, I was certainly very far from thinking that I should replace him, and that that palace would be my place of residence.”

In dwelling upon the events of the 10th of August, he said: “I was, during that horrible epoch, at Paris, in lodgings in the Rue du Mail, Place des Victoires. On hearing the sound of the tocsin, and the news of the assault upon the Tuileries, I ran to the Carousel, to the house of Fauvelet, the brother of Bourrienne, who kept an upholsterer’s shop. He had been my comrade at the military school of Brienne. It was from that house, which, by the by, I was never afterwards able to find, in consequence of the great alterations made there, that I had a good view of all the circumstances of the attack. Before I reached the Carousel, I had been met by a group of hideous-looking men, carrying a head at the end of a pike. Seeing me decently dressed, with the look of a gentleman, they called upon me to shout Vive la Nation! which, as it may be easily believed, I did without hesitation.

“The palace was attacked by the vilest rabble. The King had unquestionably for his defence as many troops as the Convention afterwards had on the 13th VendémiaireVendémiaire, and the enemies of the latter were much better disciplined and more formidable. The greater part of the national guard shewed themselves favourable to the King; this justice is due to them.”

Here the Grand Marshal observed “that he actually belonged to one of the battalions which manifested the most determined devotion. He was several times on the point of being massacred as he returned alone to his residence.” We remarked, on our part, that in general the national guard of Paris had constantly displayed the virtues of its class; the love of order, attachment to authority, the dread of plunder, and the detestation of anarchy; and that also was the Emperor’s opinion.

“The palace being forced, and the King having repaired to the Assembly,” continued he, “I ventured to penetrate into the garden. Never since has any of my fields of battle given me the idea of so many dead bodies, as I was impressed with by the heaps of the Swiss; whether the smallness of the place seemed to increase the number, or because it was the result of the first impression I ever received of that kind. I saw well dressed women commit the grossest indecencies on the dead bodies of the Swiss. I went through all the coffee-houses in the neighbourhood of the Assembly; the irritation was every where extreme; fury was in every heart and shewed itself in every countenance, although the persons thus enflamed were far from belonging to the class of the populace; and all these places must necessarily have been frequented daily by the same visitors: for, although I had nothing particular in my dress, or perhaps it was because my countenance was more calm, it was easy for me to perceive that I excited many hostile and distrustful looks, as some one who was unknown or suspected.”