"Ha! do I see my soldier?" said Canalis, perceiving Dumay, after
addressing a compliment to Madame Mignon, and bowing to the other
women. "Your anxieties are relieved, are they not?" he said, offering
his hand effusively; "I comprehend them to their fullest extent after
seeing mademoiselle. I spoke to you of terrestrial creatures, not of
angels."
All present seemed by their attitudes to ask the meaning of this
speech.
"I shall always consider it a triumph," resumed the poet, observing
that everybody wished for an explanation, "to have stirred to mention
on of those men of iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find and make the
supporting piles on which he tried to build an empire, too colossal to
be lasting: for such structures time alone is the cement. But this
triumph--why should I be proud of it?--I count for nothing. It was the
triumph of ideas over facts. Your battles, my dear Monsieur Dumay,
your heroic charges, Monsieur le comte, nay, war itself was the form
in which Napoleon's idea clothed itself. Of all of these things, what
remains? The sod that covers them knows nothing; harvests come and go
without revealing their resting-place; were it not for the historian,
the writer, futurity would have no knowledge of those heroic days.
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