Although I was on shore, I was still devoted to my profession.  I used to see almost all the naval officers who passed through Paris, and tried to push forward those whom the general body of the profession singled out as being likely commanding officers.  These matters of promotion, as well as any others that affected naval interests, brought me into daily touch with the ministers, and my relations with M Theirs date from that time.  Yet, oddly enough, it was riding on horseback that brought us together!  During the King’s stays at Camping and Fontainebleau, and his country trips to Versailles, St. Cloud, and Raunchy, when he used to invite foreign visitors and his ministers, and great personages in general, to join in his excursions, M. Thiers was as much bored as I was at having to go in the carriages and chars a bancs which drove in a long line one behind the other.  We much preferred accompanying them on horseback, and nothing delighted the little minister more than to let his mount tear along full gallop with a loose rein.  He had a very firm seat, and was very plucky, especially on a horse of ours called “Le Vendome,” which in his southern accent he pronounced “Le Vanndomme.”  I remember one day, at Fontaineblean, as he was galloping along beside me on that same “Vanndomme,” we passed by a young fagot-gatherer, bending under her load.  She straightened herself at the noise; it was very hot, her jacket had come unbuttoned, and showed a bare white very well furnished bust.  She smiled to M. Thiers, who pulled his horse up short, turned back to thrust a handful of small change into the young woman’s palm, and started off again full tear, as if he had had an electric shock, jumping the fallen trees with a resolution and energy which I had never known him show before.

On another occasion he proved himself a less brilliant horseman.  The statue of Napoleon, that statue which is put up and taken down in every Revolution, was to be ceremoniously replaced on the top of its column.  The troops and the National Guard were under arms, with their bands and drums, headed by a splendid drum-major, massed at the foot of the column.  We arrived in state by the Rue Castiglione, so that the column surmounted by the statue, covered by a veil that was to drop at a given signal, faced us just as we came out upon the square M. Thiers, in full uniform, with his minister’s hat and feathers, and again riding “Vanndomme,” struck in his spurs, left the procession at full gallop, and passed before my father, shouting at the very top of his falsetto voice, “I take your Majesty’s pleasure” the words being accompanied by a wave of his hat which ill-natured people might have said was copied from General Rapp’s gesture in Gerard’s picture of the Battle of Austerlitz at the Louvre.  On this signal the drums beat, the bands played, the statue was unveiled—­but M. Thiers had lost control of “Vanndomme,” who, wild with enthusiasm, bolted head down, overthrowing drums and