See the horse-soldiers on their
scraggy steeds; watch their evolutions, and you will own, with a young
guardsman who stood gazing, fifty years afterward, on the troops which
followed Napoleon III into Paris, that "they are worth looking at."
The long hour is past; the pages in black are evidently on the watch;
the double door which leads into the _Salle des Marechaux_ is opened
from within; a stricter line is instantly kept by the officers in the
gallery. Fair faces, many an English one among them, are flushed. Anon
he appears, whilst an officer at the door, with one hand raised above
his head and the other extended, exclaims, "_Le Premier Consul_."
Forth he walks, a firm, short, stolid form, with falling shoulders
beneath his tight, deep-blue frock. His tread is heavy rather than
majestic,--that of a man who has a purpose in walking, not merely to
show himself as a parade. His head is large, and formed with a
perfection which we call classic; his features are noble, modelled by
that hand of Nature which framed this man "fearfully," indeed, and
"wonderfully." Nothing was ever finer than his mouth--nothing more
disappointing than his eye; it is heavy, almost mournful. His face is
pale, almost sallow, while--let one speak who beheld him--"not only in
the eye, but in every feature, care, thought, melancholy, and meditation
are strongly marked, with so much of character, nay, genius, and so
penetrating a seriousness, or rather sadness, as powerfully to sink into
an observer's mind.
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