One other little bed invites us. It is very
small, very delicate, very daintily festooned
with lace, and glows with gilding and shines
with green satin. It is the first bed of a
very little child, born to greatness—the
cradle of the King of Rome. The poor baby
did not need it long. He did not die, but
lived his evanescent kingdom out, and sank
into that little white cloth jacket and pantaloons
with sugar-loaf buttons (painfully like
the uniform of my friend Mrs. Biffins's foot-
page, Chawks), of the Austrian Duke de
Reichstadt. Done up in that mournful
flannel-like little skeleton suit, he played
about the dreary rooms of Schönbrunn, to be
taught to be called Herzog von Reichstadt,
and to forget that his name was Napoleon;
to think of his father as something very like
an ogre; and to believe perforce that Grandpapa Francis, the little weazen old man in
the white coat and pigtail, was the
incarnation of all that was good and wise and
powerful in the world. It must have been
cruelly hard upon the little Herzog. I don't
think he could have succeeded in forgetting
or believing it all. He must have looked
now and then upon the House of Hapsburg
as a mouldy, tumble-down old mansion,
haunted by ghosts in white flannel. Ah!
how shudderingly his thoughts must have
reverted sometimes from the solemn ladies
of honour, and pudding-headed chamberlains
of Schönbrunn, with their guttural talk, to
that gay palace far away, where there were
so many mirrors and golden eagles—to
mamma, who had such fair hair, such blue
eyes, so many diamonds—to papa, who
walked about the room so much, with hands
behind his back, and talked in such a loud
voice to the gentleman who sat at the table
writing; who would take the little boy up
and dandle him, and gaze at him with so
much pride and joy from those wondrous
eyes. Ah! A dreary little second-hand
sovereign was the king-duke, done up in
white flannel to forget that he was himself.
The very cradle in which the child slept was
destined to have a second-hand fate. It was
used in eighteen hundred and twenty-two
for the posthumous son of the Duke de
Berri, the Duke de Bordeaux, Comte de
Chambord, Henry the Fifth—what you will:
a lamentable instance of second-hand
sovereignty again.

Going round and round about this room of
relics, as I do, speculating—"mooning" would
perhaps be the proper word—upon all the
precious relics exposed in the glass cases, I
become so imbued with the idées
Napoleoniennes—so saturated with notions of the
Empire that I have a difficulty in persuading
myself that I live in the year 'fifty-five, and
not in the year 'ten. I fancy myself in the
lumber-room of the palace; and when I hear
a pair of boots creaking in an adjoining
apartment, can hardly help expecting the
advent of Duroc, or Bertrand, or Rapp,
asking me que diable I am doing there? And
when from the lofty windows I look into the
courtyard below, the delusion of the Empire
still clings to me; for, there I see on parade
the Imperial Guard—yes, bearskins, gaiters,
eagles on the cartouch-boxes, crossbelts, long
moustaches, and all. They are on guard;
they are alive; they walk and talk and smoke
in the guard-room; I see them with my
corporeal eyes. With these below, with those
around, with the Tuileries dome surmounted
by the tricolor in the distance, there wants
to complete the picture but this—a roll of
the drums, a sharp rattle as arms are
presented, and then, cantering into the square
upon a white horse, a little man with a cocked
hat and a grey great coat.

There are many more chambers in this
Museum, devoted to other second-hand
sovereigns—the legitimate sovereigns, indeed, of
France. Here, in a room, decorated, in
contradistinction to the Napoleon Museum—all
in blue, sewn with golden lilies—are the
paraphernalia used at the coronations of Louis the
Sixteenth, and Charles the Tenth; the crown of
the Duke d'Angoulême, as Dauphin (wonderfully
like the tinselled diadem with which, in
our school-days, we were wont to decorate
the effigy, penny plain and two-pence coloured,
of Mr. Denvil as the Fire King); the sword,
sceptre, and hand of justice of Charlemagne;
the sedan chair of King Artaxomenes—I beg
pardon, of King Louis the Fifteenth, otherwise
called the Well-beloved, otherwise known
as the proprietor of the Parc aux Cerfs: that
admirable educational institution, supported
by the involuntary contributions of the French
people; a little black kid shoe worn by Marie
Antoinette (poor thing!), so tiny, so frêle, so
delicate; a little cannon, with ivory horses,
presented to Louis the Sixteenth as a child;
an arbaleste,or cross-bow, of Marie de Medicis;
and an exquisitely-beautiful mirror of Venice
glass, with a framework of mosaic in precious
stones, presented to the same royal lady by
the Venetian Republic; Bibles, missals, and
books of hours, belonging to various
sovereigns; swords, cross-bows, maces,
habergeons, and pistols; and numerous suits of
splendidly-wrought armour, among which is
one suit of immense size and height, reputed
to have belonged to, and to have been worn
by, that king whose portrait by Titian is in
the Grand Gallery of this same Louvre,—the
king who loved so well to "amuse" himself,
and was so delighted at having saved his
"honour" at the battle of Pavia, but who was
not quite so careful of the honour of the female
subjects whom he betrayed,—the king who,
first the rival, was afterwards so great a
friend (until he fell out with him again) of our
Henry the Eighth, and had that famous
junketting with him upon the Field of the Cloth
of Gold—King Francis the First. He might
have been able to wear this suit of armour
(which would about fit Mr. Hales, the Norfolk
giant), but he was assuredly a consummate