SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading sot notice Such Books of the week as haw not bun r usrud for soviets in other forms.] Napoleon, Roi de Me d'Elbe. Par Paul Gruyer. (Hachette et Cie. 20 fr.)—M. Gruyer is manifestly not dominated by the Napoleonic legend. Had he been so, he would hardly have taken for his subject the Elba story, for indeed this is something like a farce. The exile of St. Helena is a tragical figure, though it is as well not to look at it too closely ; but the stage-king of Elba is ridiculous. And so, doubtless, the contrivers of the scheme wished him to be. It was an expensive jest, for it cost the blood- shed at Ligny, Quatro Bras, and Waterloo, but not ill-designed. This is M. Gruyer's cue. He contrasts what the sightseers at Elba expected with what they actually beheld. " Ce demai-dieu tombe, en un aureole ehlouissante, le poing sous le menton, les yeux dardant des eclairs, et prononcaait de temps a autre quelque fatidique parole." " Un petit homme courtaud at ventru, profil de polichinelle italien, le nez barbouillo de tabac, en train de manger sur la grave, avec dos pecheurs de thou, une bouillabaisse cuito dime leur marmite." This is a little caricatured, and certainly does not suit our author's own illustration, Paul Delaroche's picture of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. But undoubtedly the whole story lends itself to ridicule, and M. Gruyer is never at a loss. The fallen Emperor's disgust at the frankness with which he was now addressed, his compulsory economies, his farcical army, where "chacun voulait commander a son voisin, n'obeir a personale "- the four hundred men had forty sergeants, twenty sub- Lieutenants, thirteen Lieutenants, ten Captains, and a Colonel—such were some of the ludicrous circumstances of the situation. Then there were the serio-comic dangers of the situation, the Algerine corsairs whom the Allied Powers had bribed, it was said, to carry off the enemy, and the assassins bent on private vengeance, a more genuine peril, since the man who had deluged Europe with blood for fourteen years or so must have left many scores to settle. The volume is amply illustrated. We cannot say that it is wholly to our taste, but it is certainly worth reading.
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