devoted half-brother, son of Louis Napoleon's mother, the chaste Hortense, and the Count de Flahault--De Morny, the brilliant, genial, witty, reckless gambler in politics and finance, the man than whom nobody ever, perhaps, was more faithful to friendship and false to morality, more good-natured and unprincipled. I have seen tears in men's eyes when De Morny died--in the eyes of men who owned all the time, smiling through their tears like Andromache, that the lost patron and friend was the most consummate of _roués_ and blacklegs. Walewski is dead--Walewski of romantic origin, born of the sudden episode of love between the great Napoleon and the Polish lady--Walewski, who, like Prince Napoleon-Jerome, carried his pedigree stamped upon his face--Walewski, the lover of Rachel, and, to do him justice, the steady friend of Poland. Old Mocquard is gone, the faithful scribe and confidant: he is dead, and the dramas he would persist in writing are dead with him, nay, died even before him. I do not know whether the faithful, devoted woman who worked for Louis Napoleon, and believed in him when nobody else did; the woman to whose inspirings, exertions, and ready money he owes, in great measure, the fact that he is now Emperor of the French--I do not know whether this woman is alive or dead. I think she is dead. Anyhow, I suppose the dignity of history, as the phrase is, can hardly take account of her. She helped to make an Emperor, and the Emperor, in return, made her a Countess; but then he had to marry--and so we take leave of the woman who made the Emperor, and do our homage to the woman who married him. All those are gone; and St. Arnaud, of the stormy youth, and Pelissier, the bland, sweet-tempered chevalier, who, getting into a dispute (on his way to be governor of Algeria) with the principal official of a Spanish port, invited that dignitary to salute a portion of the Pelissier person which assuredly the foes of France were never allowed to see--all these are gone, and many more, and only a very few, fast fading, of the old friends and followers remain. Life to Louis Napoleon must now, indeed, be nearly all retrospect. His career, his Imperial reign may be judged even now as fairly and securely as as if his body had just been laid beside that of his uncle, under the dome of the Invalides.