A thing
totally impossible in our days and much to be deprecated were it possible.
Consigned to St Helena, Napoleon will furnish to posterity a proverb like
that of Dionysius at Corinth. This banishment to St Helena will be very
ungenerous and unjust on the part of the English Government, but I suppose
their satellites and adherents will term it an act of clemency, and some
Church and Kingmen would no doubt recommend hewing him in pieces, as
Samuel did to Agag.
I stopped three days at Aix-la-Chapelle to drink the waters and then came
straight to this place stopping half a day in Liege. I shall start for
Paris in a couple of days, as the communication is now open and the public
conveyances re-established. My passport is vise in the following terms:
"Bon pour aller a Paris en suivant la route des armees alliees." I am quite
impatient to visit that celebrated city.
[18] Philipp Klingmann (1762-1824) was better known as an actor than as an
author. - ED.
[19] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, VII, 12, 1. - ED.
[20] "What business have you? None, I travel for amusement. Strange! What
is there strange in travelling to see a fine country?"
[21] Le Compere Mathieu, a satirical novel by the Abbe Henri Joseph
Dulaurens, published 1765 and sometimes (though wrongly) attributed to
Voltaire. One of the prominent talkers in the dialogues is Pere Jean
de Domfront. - ED.
[22] Horace, Epist., I, i, 15. - ED.
[23] This altar, inscribed Deae Victoriae Sacrum (Corpus inscr. lat.
XIII, 8252), was erected by the Roman fleet on the Rhine at the place
now called Altsburg near Cologne and, after its discovery, taken to
Bonn, where it was set up on the Remigius-Platz (now called
Roemer-Platz) on Dec, 3, 1809. It is now in the Provincial
Museum. - ED.
[24] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, vi, 20, 3. - ED.
[25] August Lafontaine (1758-1831), born in Brunswick of a family of French
protestants, was the very prolific and now quite forgotten author of
many novels and novelettes. - ED.
[26] From Ernst Moritz Arndt's (1779-1860) celebrated poem, Des Deutschen
Vaterland. - ED.
[27] There seems to be much truth in this opinion, though the question of
the intrigues of Louis XVIII with Robespierre is still shrouded in
obscurity. Some pages of General Thiebault's memoirs might have
cleared it up, but they have been torn out from the manuscript
(Memoires du General Baron Thiebault, vol. I, p. 273). Louis XVIII
paid a pension to Robespierre's sister, Charlotte. - ED.
[28] Sir Charles Stewart, created Lord Stewart In 1814; he was a
half-brother of Lord Castlereagh. - ED.
[29] The same story is given, with slight differences, by Lafayette himself
(Memoires, vol. V, p. 472-3; Paris and Leipzig, 1838). See also
Souvenirs historiques et parlementaires du Comte de Pontecoulant,
vol.
