Napoleon might sleep in peace under this audacious trophy.
But, would his ashes find a shelter sufficiently vast beneath this
pedestal? And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with
sufficient grandeur on this place: whereas the wheels of carriages and
the feet of passengers would profane the funereal sanctity of the spot
in trampling on the soil so near his head."
You must not take this description, dearest Amelia, "at the foot of
the letter," as the French phrase it, but you will here have a masterly
exposition of the arguments for and against the burial of the Emperor
under the Column of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine one, granted;
but, like all other ideas, it was open to objections. You must not
fancy that the cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit
of furrowing the bosoms of French braves, or any other braves, with
cicatrices: on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls
make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially
healed); nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such
projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by
a score of them.
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