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While Napoleon is hurrying eastwards to Vitry, the Prussian leader drives back Marmont's weak corps, his vanguard crosses the Marne near Epernay on the 23rd, his Cossacks capture a courier bearing a letter written on that day by Napoleon to Marie Louise.
From Rheims we directed our course to Epernay, the garrison and inhabitants of which had just repulsed the enemy, who the evening before had attempted to capture it. There the Emperor learned of the arrival at Troyes of the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia.
From the chateau we drove to Meaux, and there spent the night; resuming our journey next morning, we passed through Epernay, Rheims, and Rethel to Sedan, where we tarried a day, and finally, on October 18, reached Brussels. On reaching Brussels, one of the first things to do was to pay my respects to the King of Belgium, which I did, accompanied by our Minister, Mr. Russell Jones.
The two young ladies who sat in the dormouse, Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Lavallette, were rival candidates for a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and every now and then the amiable M. Rapp made the carriage stop for the comfort of his poor little sick heart, which overflowed with bile: in fine, he was obliged to take to bed on arriving at Epernay, while the rest of the amiable party tried to drown their sorrows in champagne.
The two young ladies who sat in the dormouse, Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Lavallette, were rival candidates for a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and every now and then the amiable M. Rapp made the carriage stop for the comfort of his poor little sick heart, which overflowed with bile: in fine, he was obliged to take to bed on arriving at Epernay, while the rest of the amiable party tried to drown their sorrows in champagne.
The various divisions of the French army and the masses of the enemy were then so closely pressed against each other, that the enemy occupied each point the moment we were compelled to abandon it; thus, on the 22d the allies seized Epernay, and, in order to punish this faithful town for the heroic defense it had previously made, orders were given that it should be pillaged. Pillage?
Fortnoye, educated at the Polytechnic School in Paris, is a man of grave character and profound learning. Second. Fortnoye is a roysterer, latterly occupied in extending the connection of a champagne-house at Épernay. He is a Bohemian, even a poet: he can rhyme, but strictly in the interests of commerce he composes only drinking-songs. Third.
At Épernay and Châlons those French officers who were bound for the fighting line in Champagne, east and west of Reims, left the train; and somewhere beyond Épernay I followed in thought the flight of an aeroplane which seemed to be heading northwards across the ridges which bound the river valley northwards for Reims, and that tragic ghost which the crime of Germany has set moving through history for ever, never to be laid or silenced Joan of Arc's Cathedral.
The three commissioners sent by the Assembly to meet the King, MM. de Latour-Maubourg, Barnave, and Potion, joined them in the environs of Epernay. The two last mentioned got into the King's carriage. The Queen astonished me by the favourable opinion she had formed of Barnave. When I quitted Paris a great many persons spoke of him only with horror.
Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French. I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot, cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him five francs. We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay, its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight.