The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 20

forsooth, throws his tables and chairs overboard, runs guns into the
portholes, and calls le quartier du bord ou existaient ces chambres,
Lacedaemon. Lacedaemon! There is a province, O Prince, in your
royal father's dominions, a fruitful parent of heroes in its time,
which would have given a much better nickname to your quartier du
bord: you should have called it Gascony.


"Sooner than strike we'll all ex-pi-er
On board of the Bell-e Pou-le."


Such fanfaronading is very well on the part of Tom Dibdin, but a
person of your Royal Highness's "pious and severe dignity" should
have been above it. If you entertained an idea that war was
imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your
preparations in quiet, and when you found the war rumor blown over,
to have said nothing about what you intended to do? Fie upon such
cheap Lacedaemonianism! There is no poltroon in the world but can
brag about what he WOULD have done: however, to do your Royal
Highness's nation justice, they brag and fight too.

This narrative, my dear Miss Smith, as you will have remarked, is
not a simple tale merely, but is accompanied by many moral and pithy
remarks which form its chief value, in the writer's eyes at least,
and the above account of the sham Lacedaemon on board the "Belle
Poule" has a double-barrelled morality, as I conceive. Besides
justly reprehending the French propensity towards braggadocio, it
proves very strongly a point on which I am the only statesman in
Europe who has strongly insisted. In the "Paris Sketch Book" it was
stated that THE FRENCH HATE US. They hate us, my dear, profoundly
and desperately, and there never was such a hollow humbug in the
world as the French alliance. Men get a character for patriotism in
France merely by hating England. Directly they go into strong
opposition (where, you know, people are always more patriotic than
on the ministerial side), they appeal to the people, and have their
hold on the people by hating England in common with them. Why? It
is a long story, and the hatred may be accounted for by many reasons
both political and social. Any time these eight hundred years this