No. 10
We are always in forests.—Baron Lejeune, with his artist’s eye, describes his impressions of the Amstetten forest as he travelled through it with Murat the following morning (November 4th). “Those of us who came from the south of Europe had never before realised how beautiful Nature can be in the winter. In this particular instance everything was robed in the most gleaming attire; the silvery rime softening the rich colours of the decaying oak leaves, and the sombre vegetation of the pines. The frozen drapery, combined with the mist, in which everything was more or less enveloped, gave a soft, mysterious charm to the surrounding objects, producing a most beautiful picture. Lit up by the sunshine, thousands of long icicles, such as those which sometimes droop from our fountains and water-wheels, hung like shining lustres from the trees. Never did ball-room shine with so many diamonds; the long branches of the oaks, pines, and other forest trees were weighed down by the masses of hoar-frost, while the snow converted their summits into rounded roofs, forming beneath them grottoes resembling those of the Pyrenean mountains, with their shining stalactites and graceful columns” (vol. i. 24).
My enemies.—Later in the day Napoleon writes from Lambach to the Emperor of Austria a pacific letter, which contains the paragraph, “My ambition is wholly concentrated on the re-establishment of my commerce and of my marine, and England grievously opposes itself to both.”