During the Hundred Days, and shortly before the battle of Waterloo, I was, one Sunday afternoon, in the Luxembourg Garden, where the fine weather had brought out many of the inhabitants of that quarter.  The lady I was accompanying remarked, as we walked among the crowd, “There is Marshal Ney.”  He had joined the promenaders, and his object seemed to be, like that of the others, to enjoy an hour of recreation.  Probably the next time he crossed those walks was on the way to the place of his execution, which was between the Garden and the Boulevard.  At the time of his confinement and trial at the Luxembourg Palace, the gardens were closed.  I usually passed through them twice a week, but was now obliged to go round them.  Early one morning, I stopped at the room of a medical student, in the vicinity, and, while there, heard a discharge of musketry.  We wondered at it, but could not conjecture its cause; and although we spoke of the trial of Marshal Ney, we had so little reason to suppose that his life was in jeopardy, that neither of us imagined that volley was his death-knell.  As I continued on my way, I passed round the Boulevard, and reaching the spot I have named, I saw a few men and women, of the lowest class, standing together, while a sentinel paced to and fro before a wall, which was covered with mortar, and which formed one side of the place.  I turned in to the spot and inquired what was the matter.  A man replied,—­“Marshal Ney has been shot here, and his body has just been removed.”  I looked at the soldier, but he was gravely going through his monotonous duty, and I knew that military rule forbade my addressing him.  I looked down; the ground was wet with blood.  I turned to the wall, and seeing it marked by balls, I attempted, with my knife, to dig out a memorial of that day’s sad work, but the soldier motioned me away.  I afterwards revisited the place, but the wall had been plastered over, and no indications remained where the death-shot had penetrated.

The sensation produced by this event was profound and permanent.  Many a heart, inclined towards the Bourbons, was alienated by it forever.  Families which had rejoiced at the Restoration now cursed it in their bitterness, and from that day dated a hostility which knew no reconciliation.  The army and the youth of France demanded, why a soldier, whose whole life had been passed in her service, should be sacrificed to appease a race that was a stranger to the country, and for which it had no sympathy.  A gloom spread like a funeral pall over society, and even those who had blamed the Marshal for joining the Emperor were now among his warmest defenders.  The print-shops were thronged with purchasers eager to possess his portrait and to hang it in their homes, with a reverence like that attaching to the image of a martyred saint.  Had he died at Waterloo, as he led on the Imperial Guard to their last charge, when five horses were shot under him, and his uniform, riddled by balls, hung about him in tatters, he would not have had such an apotheosis as was now given him, with one simultaneous movement, by all classes of his countrymen.