Chapters From Some Unwritten Memoirs

nd the textit{concierge had a clock with a laurel wreath which from some reason kindled all our enthusiasm. As a baby holding my father's finger I had stared at the second funeral of Napoleon sweeping up the great roadway of the Champs Elys6es. The ground was white with new-fallen snow, and I had never seen snow before ; it seemed to me to be a part of the funeral, a mighty pall indeed spread for the obsequies of so great a warrior. It was the snow I thought about, though I looked with awe at the black and glittering carriages which came up like ships sailing past us, noiselessly one by one. They frightened me, for I thought there was a dead emperor in each. This weird procession gave a strange importance to the memory of the great emperor, and also to the little marble statuette of him on the nursery chimney- piece. It stood with folded arms contemplating the decadence of France, black and silent and reproachful. France was no longer an empire, only a kingdom just like any other country; this fact I and the cook bitterly resented. Besides the statuette there was a snuff-box, belonging I know not to whom, that was a treasure of emotional awe. It came out on Sundays, and sometimes of an evening just before bed-time. At first as you looked you saw nothing but the cover of a wooden box ornamented by a drawing in brown sepia, the sketch of a tombstone and a weeping willow-treeâ?? nothing more. Then if you looked again, indicated by ingenious twigs and lines there gradua...