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AFTER VISITING THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON (1769-1821)
A little
while ago I stood by the grave of Napoleon,a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold,fit almost for a dead deity,and gazed upon
the saracophagus of black Egyptian marble where rests at last the ashes of the restless man.I leaned over the balustrade and
thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.I saw him walking along the banks of the Seine contemplating
suicide;I saw him at Toulon;I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris;I saw him at the head of the army of Italy;I
saw him crossing the bridge at Lodi with the tricolor in his hand;I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids;I saw
him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagle of France with the eagles of the crags.I saw him at Marengo,at Ulm and Austerlitz.I
saw him in Russia,where the enfantry on the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scatterd his legions like Winter's withered
leaves.I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster,driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris,clutched like a wild beast,banished
to Elba.I saw him escape and retake an Empire by the force of his genius.I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo,when
chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former King.And I saw him a St.Helena,with his hands crosed behind
him,gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.I thought of the orphans and the widows he had made;of the tears that have been
shed for his glory and of the only woman who had ever loved him pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition.And I said
I would rather have been a French peasent and worn wooden shoes.I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over
the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the Autumn sun.I would rather have been that poor peasant with my
loving wife by my side,knitting as the day died out of the sky,with my children upon my knee and their arms about me.I would
rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation
of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great.And so I would ten thousand times.
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL(1833-1899) |
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