The too-famous General Rossignol[401], their companion in misfortune, a quarter of an hour before uttering his last breath, exclaimed: "I die harassed by the most horrible pains; but I should die content if I could hear that the tyrant of my country was enduring the same sufferings[402]!" Thus did freedom's imprecations await him who betrayed her, even in the other hemisphere. Italy, roused from her long sleep by Napoleon, turned her eyes towards the illustrious offspring who wished to restore her to her glory, and with whom she had re-fallen beneath the yoke. The sons of the Muses, the noblest and most grateful of men, when they are not the vilest and most unthankful, looked on St. Helena. The last poet of the land of Virgil sang the last warrior of the land of Cæsar: Tutto ei provò, la gloria Maggior dopo il periglio, La fuga e la vittoria, La reggia e il triste esiglio: Due volte nella polvere, Due volte sull'altar. Ei si nomo: due secoli, L'un contro l'altro armato, Sommessi a lui si volsero, Come aspettando il fato; Ei fè silenzio, ed arbitro S'assise in mezzo a lor. "He felt all," says Manzoni[403], "the greatest glory after peril, flight and victory, royalty and sad banishment: twice in the dust, twice on the altar. "He stated his name: two centuries, one against the other armed, turned towards him, as though awaiting their fate; he was silent and seated himself as arbiter between them." * Bonaparte was approaching his end; devoured by an internal wound envenomed by sorrow, he had borne that wound in the thick of prosperity: it was the only legacy which he had received from his father; the rest came to him from God's munificence. Already he reckoned six years of exile; he had needed less time to conquer Europe. He remained almost always indoors, and read Ossian in Cesarotti's[404] Italian translation. Everything saddened him under a sky beneath which life seemed shorter, the sun remaining three days less in that hemisphere than in ours. When Bonaparte went out, he passed along rugged paths lined with aloes and sweet-scented broom. He walked among gum-trees with sparse flowers, which the generous winds made lean to the same side, or hid himself in the thick mists which rolled low. He was seen seated at the feet of Diana's Peak, Flag Staff, or Leader Hill, gazing on the sea through the gaps in the mountains. Before him, the Ocean unfolded itself, which on the one side bathes the coasts of Africa, on the other the American shores, and which goes, like a marginless stream, to lose itself in the southern seas. No civilized land nearer than the Cape of Storms. Who shall tell the thoughts of that Prometheus torn alive by death, when, his hand pressed to his smarting breast, he turned his gaze over the billows! Christ was led into a high mountain whence he saw the kingdoms of the world; but for Christ it was written to the tempter of mankind: