Page 597 - les-miserables

Hartwell’s pine table took its place in front of the fleur-de-
lys-strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy were
mentioned as though they had taken place on the preceding
day, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the
throne fraternized majestically. One of the most undisput-
ed forms of the health of society in the nineteenth century
was established over France, and over the continent. Europe
adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon was celebrated. The
device non pluribus impar re-appeared on the stone rays
representing a sun upon the front of the barracks on the
Quai d’Orsay. Where there had been an Imperial Guard,
there was now a red house. The Arc du Carrousel, all laden
with badly borne victories, thrown out of its element among
these novelties, a little ashamed, it may be, of Marengo and
Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament with the stat-
ue of the Duc d’Angouleme. The cemetery of the Madeleine,
a terrible pauper’s grave in 1793, was covered with jasper
and marble, since the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie An-
toinette lay in that dust.
In the moat of Vincennes a sepulchral shaft sprang from
the earth, recalling the fact that the Duc d’Enghien had per-
ished in the very month when Napoleon was crowned. Pope
Pius VII., who had performed the coronation very near this
death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the fall as he had
bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was a
little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the
King of Rome. And these things took place, and the kings
resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put
in a cage, and the old regime became the new regime, and

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