I found this fragment, and felt that it must have been something left out of Innocents Abroad. Parts of it were badly faded, and I may have gotten some of it wrong.
The Art of Paris
We were to depart on the morrow, and naturally feeling sad to leave that eternal city (just how many of the old continent’s cities are eternal?), Dan and I decided to enjoy a last stroll. We walked by the Isle de Citie, and I managed to refrain from making another visit to The Notre Dame, much to Dan’s dismay.
We strolled along the Seine, which is split by the island containing the old church. Much is made of that stream by the poets, but having piloted the grandfather of waters in my youth, I found it lacking. I told Dan that I could probably spit across the water, and let fly with one by way of demonstration. Nearly made it across too, and was rightly proud of myself - that is, until he pointed out a fellow a little down the bank, who was managing to do the same thing with his urine.
Dan then inquired what I wished to do on our last day in that great city, and I told him that I craved to peer at Napoleon’s tomb, for never had there been a more murderous man in all of European history, and that is going some. “It must be covered in sulfurous brimstone,” I opined.
“Why,’ I continued, “he left a million frenchmen dead on the plains of Russia, and on other fields, a few million more. Do you know, French men are shorter than their continental counterparts? You can look it up. He drafted all of the males of France into service, starting with the tallest.” When all of the seven footers were killed off, he drafted the six footers. When they were all used up, he moved on to the five footers. Eventually, there none left but dwarves. Since then, France has been trying to catch up to the rest of the world, size-wise. Until now, they’ve come up a bit short, if you’ll forgive me. The Emperor, Napoleon’s nephew, figures that he has to wait another hundred years before he’ll be ready to take on an opponent, due to the stature of the raw material that he has got to work with.
“Such an evil person has got to have an impressive, evil-looking tomb,” I reasoned. It would be a hundred feet tall, and guarded by trolls. Napoleon the younger had had the corpse carted back to Paris Years before, from his neglected grave on St. Helena.
Dan was convinced, and we hired a hack to take us to Les Invalides, which served as the great dictator’s latest address.
En route, our driver, through the means of Dan’s truly horrific French, deduced our mission. This was miraculous, because Dan’s abilities in the language were dire. He didn’t merely wound the thing. He killed it as dead as Napoleon himself, and into the eleventh generation. I suspected the driver of some mind-reading trick, and suggested to him that it were so. This seemed to upset him, so I let it go.
We arrived at the tumble of bricks and mortar that are Les Invalides, part museum and part old soldiers home. The last part is no longer true, but I wanted to say a good word for the place.
I was content to look over the martial artifacts which were there in abundance. One item struck with particular poignancy. It was a cuirass, or metal breastplate, worn by a dragoon at Waterloo. Over where the heart would have been, a jagged hole pushed outward, some four inches across. It must have been made by a piece of artillery shell, or perhaps by grapeshot. He would have been shot in the back, as he rode away from one of Wellington’s squares on the battlefield. And so a young man, full of ardor and pride, died before he realized his life’s ambitions, and before he knew what had struck him. This mangled bit of shining metal now resides in Les Invalides, mounted on a post. Its owner would have been an aged grandfather now, heavy with years and respect, telling his rapt audience of how he has once served under the immortal Napoleon.
As I was saying, I was quite content to wander amid these reminders of folly, but Dan was hot to get on with it, so we sought a docent to direct us to the object of our search.
TO BE continued...
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