Here were two young men--Moseses, as it were, saved from the bulrushes.

Lost in the desert from the period of their birth, and ignorant of the dissensions then raging in Europe, they were unquestionably beyond the ordinary operation of the law.

This will never do, he probably said to himself; the civilization which these two young men have come through so many perils to seek ought not to appear to them, the moment they arrived in Europe, in the form of spoliation and barbarism.
The name of this _extraordinary_ director of Domaine Extraordinaire was M.de la Boullerie, and, when we fall in with the name of a really good-hearted man, we delight to record it.

He felt that the two young men had been hardly dealt with, but he had not the power to order a restitution of the property, now that the seizure had been made, and sundry perquisities, of course, deducted by the excise officials.
Accordingly, he referred the matter to the Emperor, who commanded the goods to be immediately restored intact.

Napoleon, at the same time, praised the functionary we have named for calling his attention to the merits of the case, and thanked him for such an opportunity of repairing an injustice.[I] There are many such instances of generosity as the foregoing in the career of the great Emperor--mild rays of the sun in the midst of thunderstorms; sweet flowers blowing here and there, in the bosom of the gigantic projects of his life--which many will esteem more highly than his miracles of strategy and the renown of his battles.