He met
his fate with great firmness and composure. I leave Paris to-morrow for
London.
[47] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, VI, 20, 7.
[48] Virgil, Aen., VI, 620 (temnere divos). - ED.
[49] Louis Wirion (1764-1810), an officer of gendarmerie,
commander-general of the place de Verdun since 1804, was accused in
1808 of having extorted money from certain English prisoners quartered
in Verdun (Estwick, Morshead, Garland, etc.). Wirion shot himself
before the end of the long proceedings, which do not seem to have
established his guilt, but had reduced him to misery and despair. - ED.
[50] Richard Brinsley Sheridan's (1751-1816) Pizarro, produced at Drury
Lane in 1799. - ED.
[51] Three brothers Zadera, all born in Warsaw, served in the Imperial
army. - ED.
[52] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso III, 2, i. - ED.
[53] These words mean, or are supposed to mean, in French and in Dutch: "I
don't understand" (je n'entends pas). - ED.
[54] Horace, Carm., IV, 2,39. - ED.
[55]John Chetwode Eustace (1762-1815), author of A Tour through Italy
(2 vol., London, 1813), the eighth edition of which appeared in
1841. - ED.
[56] Theodoric was a Goth, not a Lombard. - ED.
[57] Of course, Silva Beleni. - ED.
[58] Perhaps Clement Francois Philippe de Laage Bellefaye, mentioned in the
Souvenirs of Baron de Frenilly, p. 94. His large estates had been
confiscated in the Revolution. - ED.
AFTER
WATERLOO
PART II
CHAPTER VI
MARCH-JUNE,1816
Ball at Cambray, attended by the Duke of Wellington - An Adventure between
Saint Quentin and Compiegne - Paris revisited - Colonel Wardle and Mrs
Wallis - Society in Paris - The Sourds-Muets - The Cemetery of Pere La
Chaise - Apathy of the French people - The priests - Marriage of the Duke de
Berri.
March, 1816.
This time I varied my route to Paris, by passing thro' St Omer, Douay and
Cambray. At Cambray I was present at a ball given by the municipality. The
Duke of Wellington was there. He had in his hand an extraordinary sort of
hat which had something of a shape of a folding cocked hat, with divers red
crosses and figures on it, so that it resembled a conjurer's cap. I
understand it is a hat given to his Grace by magnanimous Alexander; St
Nicholas perhaps commissioned the Emperor to present it to Wellington, for
his Grace is entitled to the eternal gratitude of the different Saints, as
well as of the different sovereigns, for having maintained them
respectively in their celestial and terrestrial dominions; and it is to be
hoped, after his death, that the latter will celebrate for him a brilliant
apotheosis, and the former be as complaisant to him and make room for him
in the Empyreum as Virgil requests the Scorpion to do for Augustus:
...Ipse tibi jam brachia contrahit ardens
Scorpios, et coeli jusia plus parts reliquit.[59]
