356 WHAT THE MOON SAW.

most brilliantly victorious day, when every house was a fortress,
every window a breastwork. The people stormed the Tuileries.
Even women and children were found among the combatants.
They penetrated into the apartments and halls of the palace. A
poor half-grown boy in a ragged blouse fought among the older
insurgents. Mortally wounded with several bayonet thrusts, he
sank down. This happened in the throne-room. They laid the
bleeding youth upon the throne of France, wrapped the velvet
round his wounds, and his blood streamed forth upon the imperial
purple. There was a picture!—-the splendid hall, the fighting
groups! A torn flag lay upon the ground, the tricolor was waving
above the bayonets, and on the throne lay the poor lad with the
pale glorified countenance, his eyes turned towards the sky, his
limbs writhing in the death agony, his breast bare, and his poor
tattered clothing half hidden by the rich velvet embroidered with
silver lilies. At the boy’s cradle a prophecy had been spoken:
‘He will die on the throne of France!’ The mother’s heart had
fondly imagined a second Napoleon.

“ My beams have kissed the wreath of zszmortelles on his grave,
and this night they kissed the forehead of the old grandame,
while in a dream the picture floated before her which thou mayest
draw—the poor boy on the throne of France,”

“SIXTH EVENING,

“T’ve been in Upsala,” said the Moon: “I looked down upon
the great plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren
fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steam-
boat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the
waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin,
Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side,
names have been cut.* There is no monument here, no memo-
rial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky
wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so visitors have the
turf cut away for that purpose. The naked earth peers through
in the form of great letters and names; these form a network
over the whole hill. Here is an immortality, which lasts till the
fresh turf grows!

“Up on the hill stood a man, a poet. He emptied the mead
horn with the broad silver rim, and murmured a name. He
begged the winds not to betray him, but I heard the name. I
knew it. A count’s coronet sparkles above it, and therefore he
did not speak it out. I smiled, for I knew that a poet’s crown
adorned his own name. The nobility of Eleanora d’Este is

* Travellers on the Continent have frequent opportunities of seeing how universally
this custom prevails among travellers. In some places on the Rhine, pots of paint
me brashes are offered by the natives to the traveller desirous of ‘ immortalizing ”

imself.