The time came when Napoleon mounted to the topmost rung, lived in castles and palaces, was guest and host of kings; but our friends were satisfied--indeed, were more pleased with visiting his humble habitations--the cell of the student, the airy garrets of the adventurous soldier. The struggles of greatness to the light awaken emotions more touching than all the magnificence of assured success. They trended by the Rue St. Honoré to the church of St. Roch. There it was the tide turned--there the hero had his first chance. It was the twelfth Vendémiaire of the year IV., that is to say, the 22nd October, 1795. Thirty-three sections of the population rose in discontent at a decree reserving to the Convention two-thirds of the places in the Council of the Five Hundred. They were thirty thousand strong, and marched on the Tuileries. The Convention had but twelve thousand men to oppose them, and gave the command to Barras, who called in Bonaparte. The captain, obscure till then, notwithstanding his services at Toulon, put forty-two pieces of cannon round the palace, and mowed down the insurgents. Their headquarters was the church of St. Roch. Bonaparte, with correct, remorseless aim, pointed two guns with his own hand on the crowd collected on the steps of the edifice and fired. The sections were defeated; the corner-stone was laid of the reputation that was to mount so high. 'I vote we wind up by paying a visit to the column in the Place Vendôme,' said the O'Hoolohan, who was an admirer of Napoleon, but who was getting hungry and who began to think he had enough of hero-worship for his marriage-day. 'No, my son,' said Captain Chauvin, 'I always make it a point of hanging a wreath of immortelles on the rails at the base of the column on the 5th of May, the anniversary of his death; but I never like to go there but that one day of the twelve months. No, we shall first try a visit to the Louvre--it is not yet closed--and I love to show, to those who can value relics of the kind, the statue of the one man I reverenced, when he was in the beauty of his manhood.' They went and saw the statue. It represents Napoleon as he might have been at the epoch of Lodi, before he had trained his features to the impassiveness of stone, before he had waxed dumpish, and wore a stiff curl on his broad, bald forehead. An idealized Napoleon this, impetuous energy in his gaze, expression, attitude; mastery in the eagle eyes; vigour in the gaunt limbs; resolution in the big lean jaws; dogged obstinacy in the close-shut lips and close-cut chin. What an irresistible forcefulness in the balance of the eager pose! what a cloudy-and-lightning poetry in the long wild hair sweeping like a mane over his shoulders!