"حياة ومراسلات اللواء السير جون مالكوم، قائد فرسان وسام الطُهر، المبعوث السابق إلى بلاد فارس وحاكم بومباي؛ من رسائل ومذكرات غير منشورة. في مجلّدين. المجلد II." [‎٤‎٣‎٩] (٦٥٤/٤٥٦)

CORONATION OF CHARLES X.
439
rials a building not unlike in all its essential parts that which had
been destroyed. When the master-workman, Buonaparte, had
succeeded with such aids in completing this edifice, and had be
come drunken with success, I saw, in the withered and decrepid
man before me, the calm, calculating priest and statesman who tried
in vain to prevent his fatal errors in Spain, and who raised his
warning voice against the disastrous expedition to Russia. Dis
trusted, if not degraded for his wisdom by their enemy, his feelings
and his interests led him to contribute to the restoration of the
Bourbons, by whom, though no longer employed beyond the ho
norary duties of his high office, he is treated with respect and atten
tion. There are few men who have passed so unhurt through such,
extraordinary vicissitudes, and fewer to whom remarkable worldly
wisdom has so well supplied the absence of good and great
qualities.
" In one line there were standing before me eight marshals of
France—Jourdan, Soult, Mortier, Marmont, Oudinot, Macdonald,
Lauriston, and Molitor. The first and oldest of these carried me
back to the days of Robespierre, and all the rest, except Mortier
(who was promoted last year for his conduct in Spain), had re
ceived their batons from Buonaparte, with whose greatest suc
cesses their names are associated. Their look and their manner is
decidedly different from that of the more ancient nobility of
France; but the chivalric and finished courtier and soldier of tire
time of Henry IV. had degenerated into a count or marquis,
who, polite and brave, but trifling and proud, and who, from
having all his pretensions from external causes, looked down on
the other classes, and was little known to those he occasionally
commanded. The cross (as sportsmen would call it) of rough,
strong soldiers, will do great good to the nobility of 1 ranee; and
while the difference between them daily ceases, both parties will
be improved. It is impossible to describe all the remarkable cha
racters I saw, but when I looked at them, all in one group as it
were, assembled at the coronation of a Bourbon, after a lapse^ of
nearly fifty years, since the occurrence of that ceremony, my mind
was filled with recollections of the past, contemplation on the pre
sent, and speculation as to the future. I hardly heeded the cere
monies, though these were very imposing, ihe cathedial was,
inside, much larger and grander, both in the building and decora-
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