WHAT a proud, happy young fellow that Prince Imperial must be!” exclaimed Harry Lance, as he glanced up from the newspaper which he had been reading by the light of a lamp, on the evening of the 4th of August. “Why, here is this young Louis, not a year older than myself, and already there is a telegram about him darting all over Europe, and the world will soon know how calm and brave he was the first time that he ever saw fighting, how he picked up the Prussian ball which had fallen near his feet, and how old soldiers had tears in their eyes to see their boy Prince so firm in the moment of danger. I dare say that he will live to cover himself with glory, and be as famous as was his great-uncle, Napoleon the First. I only wish that I were the son of the Emperor of the French!”
“I should not care to change places with the Prince Imperial,” observed Arthur Lance, who was seated by the open window, to enjoy the fresh evening air, and watch the stars gleaming out one by one in the sky.
“What! not to have his chance of winning glory, and of being talked of—like his great-uncle—years and years after his death?”
Arthur smiled at the question. “I don’t think that would do him much good,” observed he.
“You’ve not a spark of spirit in you Arthur!” cried Harry; “at least not a spark of the spirit of a hero. I do believe that you would rather have been that missionary who went to teach woolly-haired niggers, and died of yellow fever, than the glorious Napoleon Buonaparte himself!”
Arthur was silent; but his mother, who had just joined him by the window, observed, “I believe that the missionary’s was the nobler life, the happier death, and the more lasting glory.”
NAPOLEON AS A BOY DIRECTING A SNOW-BALL FIGHT.
“Oh, not glory, mother!” exclaimed Harry. “There was no glory in the humdrum life which he led, and ten years hence no one will so much as remember his name. Napoleon had glory indeed! From his very boyhood he was a leader of others. If his schoolfellows had a mimic fight, it was Napoleon who directed the battle, and taught future soldiers to pelt each other with snow-balls, as they would one day pelt their foes with something more deadly. What power Napoleon had over his men! How his words could rouse them to rush to battle as if to a feast! How grand and glorious he must have looked on a field of battle, as he glanced down the columns of armed men eager to follow him to victory, and heard their shouts of Vive l’Empereur, as they pressed forward to glory! One such hour of Napoleon’s life must have been worth ten years of the life of a drudging teacher of niggers!” The boy’s eyes sparkled with animation as he spoke.
“There was one hour of Napoleon’s life when he is said to have himself played the teacher, and I think that he appeared greater then than on the battle-field,” said Mrs. Lance. “I will show you a large print which I have representing the scene. It describes an incident which is said to have occurred on the deck of a vessel in which Napoleon, then a young officer, was making his voyage to Egypt. A group of French officers had been conversing together, speaking like the fool of whom we read in the Bible, who says that there is no God. The glittering stars were spangling the sky above them, shining down as they have shone for thousands of years, and bearing witness to the power of their great Creator. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Napoleon approached the unbelievers, lifted up his hand towards the stars, and said, ‘Gentlemen, who made these?’ The officers could not reply; even their blinded souls could see the awful truth taught by the stars—that there is, that there must be, a great and glorious Creator!”
“But was Napoleon himself a religious man?” inquired Arthur.
“I fear that he was far from being so,” was the reply. “No real Christian could for his own wild ambition plunge nations into war, and sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of men. If Napoleon Buonaparte’s name is written in history, it is written in blood, and fire, and tears. I have often wished that the stars, which preached one text to Napoleon, could have preached one other to his heart; then the conqueror would have felt that there is a glory greater and more lasting than that which earthly triumphs can give.”
“I cannot think what text you mean,” said Arthur.
“Nor can I,” added his brother.
Their mother left them to find it out, and continued her observations. “The same stars on which Napoleon had looked from the deck of the ship, must often have met his gaze in the distant lands to which he led his hosts—those lands in which so many gallant soldiers were to find their graves.”
“Ah! how fearfully the French suffered in Russia,” interrupted Harry; “certainly there Napoleon’s history was written in blood, and fire, and tears. I’ve read how the Russians burned their own beautiful city of Moscow, that it might not give shelter to the invaders.”
“The Russians showed themselves to be ready to make any sacrifice in order to drive the French out of their land,” observed Mrs. Lance. “The Russians fought bravely, but it was the rigour of their wintry clime, the icy wind, the falling snow, that proved more deadly to the French than even the swords of their foes. Multitudes of gallant men, who had entered Russia full of hope and courage, perished miserably under the snow. And who can tell the grief in thousands and thousands of homes in France, where widows and orphans wept for fathers, brothers, sons, whom they never should see again?”
“I own that Napoleon bought his glory too dear,” said Harry gravely.
“No doubt he thought so himself,” observed Arthur, “when, as a prisoner in St. Helena, he had plenty of time to remember all these terrible things.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lance; “on that dreary rocky isle bitterly must the mighty conqueror have recalled the past. There, unchanged in their calm brightness, the quiet stars shone over him still, and they may have reminded the exile—”
NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.
“Ha! what’s that?” interrupted Harry, suddenly starting from his seat and rushing to the window, as, with a rushing, whizzing noise, a rocket shot up into the deep blue sky.
“Oh! don’t you remember that we heard that there were to be fireworks to-night in the Earl’s grounds?” said Arthur. “I am so glad that we shall be able to see the rockets over the trees. Look—oh! look—there’s another! it rises higher than the first!”
“How beautiful—how grand—how glorious it is!” exclaimed Harry, clapping his hands with delight. “It darts aloft like a conqueror rising upwards and upwards; and there—see how it bursts into a shower of stars—much brighter than stars—filling the sky with its spangles of light! There is nothing so glorious to look upon as a rocket!”
For nearly an hour the mother and her sons watched the beautiful fireworks over the trees, the rockets bursting on high into showers of many-coloured sparks which entirely hid the stars from view. Then, after the grandest display of all, the sight concluded; all was over, the beauty and the glory. Quiet night reigned around, and the stars which had gemmed the sky since the days of Adam, glimmered again in their silent beauty on high.
“The rockets were very fine, but their glory was soon over,” observed Harry, as he turned from the window. “They have gone, and have left nothing behind.”
“They are types of worldly glory,” said his mother.
“And the stars are like—oh, mother,” exclaimed Arthur, interrupting himself in the midst of his sentence, “I have just remembered the text which you wished that the stars had preached to the heart of Napoleon—it makes me think of the young missionary who died amongst the Africans whom he had led to the Lord: They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever!” (Dan. xii 3.)
