connected.  In answer to this, one of them said, ’True nobility, gentlemen, consists in giving proofs of it.  The field of honour has witnessed ours; but where are we to look for yours?  Your swords have rusted in their scabbards.  Our laurels may well excite envy; we have earned them nobly, and we owe them solely to our valour.  You have merely inherited a name.  This is the distinction between us.”

[When one of the princes of the smaller German States was showing Marechal Lannes, with a contemptuous superiority of manner but ill concealed, the portraits of his ancestors, and covertly alluding to the absence of Lannes’s, that general turned the tables on him by haughtily remarking, “But I am an ancestor.”]

Napoleon used to observe that if he had had two such field-marshals as Suchet in Spain he would have not only conquered but kept the Peninsula.  Suchet’s sound judgment, his governing yet conciliating spirit, his military tact, and his bravery, had procured him astonishing success.  “It is to be regretted,” added he, “that a sovereign cannot improvise men of his stamp.”

On the 19th of March, 1815, a number of papers were left in the King’s closet.  Napoleon ordered them to be examined, and among them was found the letter written by Madame Campan to Louis XVIII., immediately after the first restoration.  In this letter she enumerated the contents of the portfolio which Louis XVI. had placed under her care.  When Napoleon read this letter, he said, “Let it be sent to the office of Foreign Affairs; it is an historical document.”

Madame Campan thus described a visit from the Czar of Russia:  “A few days after the battle of Paris the Emperor Alexander came to Ecouen, and he did me the honour to breakfast with me.  After showing him over the establishment I conducted him to the park, the most elevated point of which overlooked the plain of St. Denis.  ‘Sire,’ said I, ’from this point I saw the battle of Paris’—­’If,’ replied the Emperor, ’that battle had lasted two hours longer we should not have had a single cartridge at our disposal.  We feared that we had been betrayed; for on arriving so precipitately before Paris all our plans were laid, and we did not expect the firm resistance we experienced.’  I next conducted the Emperor to the chapel, and showed him the seats occupied by ‘le connetable’ (the constable) of Montmorency, and ‘la connetable’ (the constable’s lady), when they went to hear mass.  ‘Barbarians like us,’ observed the Emperor, ‘would say la connetable and le connetable.’

“The Czar inquired into the most minute particulars respecting the establishment of Ecouen, and I felt great pleasure in answering his questions.  I recollect having dwelt on several points which appeared to me to be very important, and which were in their spirit hostile to aristocratic principles.  For example, I informed his Majesty that the daughters of distinguished and wealthy individuals and those