124 THE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION. Paris again some day, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war-paint-I shall carry my tomahawk along. I think we have lost but little time in Paris. RETURN IN WAR-PAINT. We have gone to bed every night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in Paris-and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last visit. To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to spend weeks-yea, even months -in that monstrous establishment, to get an intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving masses of people of all nations we saw there were a still more wonderful show. I discovered that if I were to stay there a month, I should still find myself looking at the people instead of the inanimate objects on exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old tapestries of the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and their dusky faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once. I watched silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements, and a living intelligence in his eyes-watched him swimming about as comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller's shop-watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through all the eustomary and elaborate motions of swallowing it but the moment it disappeared down his throat some tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their attractions FINE MILITARY REVIEW. 125 Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which looked strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the Empress of the French was in another part of the building, and hastened away to see what she might look like. We heard martial music-we saw an unusual number of soldiers walking hurriedly about-there was a general movement among the people. We inquired what it was all about, and learned that the Emperor of the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to review twenty-five thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We immediately departed. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I could have had to see twenty Expositions. We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the American Minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with a board and we hired standing-places on it. Presently there was a sound of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly toward us; a moment more, and then, with colors flying and a grand crash of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust and came down the street on a gentle After them came a long line of artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their Imperial Ma jesties Napoleon III. and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of people swung their hats and shouted-the windows and house-tops in the wide vicinity burst into a snow-storm of waving handkerchiefs, and the wavers of the same mingled their cheers with those of the masses below. It was a stirring spectacle. But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a contrast set up before a multitude till then? Napoleon, in military uniform-a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old, wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming expression about them!--Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud plaudits, and watching every thing and every body with his cat-eyes from under his depressed hat-brim, as if to discover any sign that those cheers were not heartfelt and cordial. 126 NAPOLEON III. Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman Empire, NAPOLEON III. clad in dark green European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red Turkish fez on his head-a short, stout, dark man, blackbearded, blackeyed, stupid, unpre possessing a man whose whole ар pearance somehow suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white apron on, one would not be at all surprised to hear him say: "A mutton roast to-day, or will you have a nice whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under NAPOLEON III. 127 this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century greets the Nineteenth! NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands, by military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by kings and princes—this is the man who was sneered at, and reviled, and called Bastard -yet who was dreaming of a crown and an Empire all the while; who was driven into exile-but carried his dreams with him; who associated with the common herd in America, and ran foot-races for a wager-but still sat upon a throne, in fancy; who braved every danger to go to his dying motherand grieved that she could not be spared to see him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who kept his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of London-but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread the long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully-prepared, sententious burst of eloquence, unto unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world-yet went on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who lay a forgotten. captive in the dungeons of Ham-and still schemed and planned and pondered over future glory and future power; President of France at last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by applauding armies, welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before an astounded world the sceptre of a mighty Empire! Who talks of the marvels of fiction? Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of the tame achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia? ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne-the beck of whose finger moves 128 THE SULTAN OF TURKEY. navies and armies-who holds in his hands the power of life and death over millions-yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eata, idles with his eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government and threaten to be a Sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship-charmed away with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man who sees his people robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to save them; who believes in gnomes, and genii and the wild fables of the Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him; a man who found his great Empire a blot upon the earth—a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality, and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life, and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so! Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France, in ten years, to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt Paris, and has partly rebuilt every city in the State. He condemns a whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them and rebuilds superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated price before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all things, he has taken the sole control of the Empire of France into his hands, and made it a tolerably free landfor people who will not attempt to go too far in medding with government affairs. No country offers greater security to life and property than France, and one has all the freedom he wants, but no license-no license to interfere with any body, or make any one uncomfortable. As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler men in a night. |