Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
It was in the time of the Second Empire. To be exact, it was the night ofthe 18th of June, 1868; I remember the date, because, contrary to theastronomical theory of short nights at this season, this was the longestnight I ever saw. It was the loveliest time of the year in Paris, whenone was tempted to lounge all day in the gardens and to give to sleepnone of the balmy nights in this gay capital, where the night wasilluminated like the day, and some new pleasure or delight always ledalong the sparkling hours. Any day the Garden of the Tuileries was amicrocosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned itself; through it thepromenaders flowed from the Rue de Rivoli gate by the palace to theentrance on the Place de la Concorde, out to the Champs-Elysees and backagain; here in the north grove gathered thousands to hear the regimentalband in the afternoon; children chased butterflies about the flower-bedsand amid the tubs of orange-trees; travelers, guide-book in hand, stoodresolutely and incredulously before the groups of statuary, wonderingwhat that Infant was doing with, the snakes and why the recumbent figureof the Nile should have so many children climbing over him; or watchedthe long facade of the palace hour after hour, in the hope of catching atsome window the flutter of a royal robe; and swarthy, turbaned Zouaves,erect, lithe, insouciant, with the firm, springy step of the tiger,lounged along the allees.
Napoleon was at home—a fact attested by a reversal of the hospitablerule of democracy, no visitors being admitted to the palace when he wasat home. The private garden, close to the imperial residence, was alsoclosed to the public, who in vain looked across the sunken fence to theparterres, fountains, and statues, in the hope that the mysterious manwould come out there and publicly enjoy himself. But he never came,though I have no doubt that he looked out of the windows upon thebeautiful garden and his happy Parisians, upon the groves ofhorse-chestnuts, the needle-like fountain beyond, the Column of Luxor, upthe famous and shining vista terminated by the Arch of the Star, andreflected with Christian complacency upon the greatness of a monarch whowas the lord of such splendors and the goodness of a ruler who openedthem all to his children. Especially when the western sunshine streameddown over it all, turning even the dust of the atmosphere into gold andemblazoning the windows of the Tuileries with a sort of historic glory,his heart must have swelled within him in throbs of imperial exaltation.It is the fashion nowadays not to consider him a great man, but no onepretends to measure his goodness.
The public garden of the Tuileries was closed at dusk, no one beingpermitted to remain in it after dark. I suppose it was not safe to trustthe Parisians in the covert of its shades after nightfall, and no onecould tell what foreign fanatics and assassins might do if they werepermitted to pass the night so near the imperial residence. At any rate,everybody was drummed out before the twilight fairly began, and at themost fascinating hour for dreaming in the ancient garden. After sundownthe great door of the Pavilion de l'Horloge swung open and there issuedfrom it a drum-corps, which marched across the private garde