It would be hard to say why; for Italians have
little cause to sympathise with Napoleon, Heaven knows.
There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, disguised
as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape; and being
discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to
steal his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged.
In two very long speeches, which Low made memorable, by winding up
with 'Yas!'--to show that he was English--which brought down
thunders of applause. Napoleon was so affected by this
catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out
by two other puppets. Judging from what followed, it would appear
that he never recovered the shock; for the next act showed him, in
a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a
lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children,
who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent end; the
last word on his lips being 'Vatterlo.'
It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots were so
wonderfully beyond control, and did such marvellous things of their
own accord: doubling themselves up, and getting under tables, and
dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of
all human knowledge, when he was in full speech--mischances which
were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled melancholy depicted
in his face.
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