And the forty Academicians came bringing Napoleon the prize of virtue.  And the Abbe Sieyes stood up, and offered Napoleon his choice of seventeen constitutions; and Napoleon chose the worst.  And he came to sit with five hundred other men, mostly advocates.  And when he said “Yea,” they said “Nay”; and when he said “white,” they said “black.”  And they suffered him to do neither good nor evil, and when he went to war they commanded his army for him, until he was smitten with a great slaughter.  And the enemy entered the country, and bread was scarce and wine dear; and the people cursed Napoleon, and Liberty vanished from before him.  But he roamed on, ever looking for her, and at length he found her lying dead in the public way, all gashed and bleeding, and trampled with the feet of men and horses, and the wheel of a tumbril was over her neck.  And Napoleon, under compulsion of the mob, ascended the tumbril; and Abbe Sieyes and Bishop Talleyrand rode at his side, administering spiritual consolation.  Thus they came within sight of the guillotine, whereon stood M. de Robespierre in his sky-blue coat, and his jaw bound up in a bloody cloth, bowing and smiling, nevertheless, and beckoning Napoleon to ascend to him.  Napoleon had never feared the face of man; but when he saw M. de Robespierre great dread fell upon him, and he leapt out of the tumbril, and fled amain, passing amid the people as it were mid withered leaves, until he came where Loyalty stood awaiting him.

She took his hand in hers, and, lo! another great host of people proffering him a crown, save one little old man, who alone of them all wore his hair in a queue with powder.

“See,” said the little old man, “that thou takest not what doth not belong to thee.”

“To whom belongeth it then?” asked Napoleon, “for I am a plain soldier, and have no skill in politics.”

“To Louis the Disesteemed,” said the little old man, “for he is a great-great-nephew of the Princess of Schwoffingen, whose ancestors reigned here at the flood.”

“Where dwells Louis the Disesteemed?” asked Napoleon.

“In England,” said the little old man.

Napoleon therefore repaired to England, and sought for Louis the Disesteemed.  But none could direct him, save that it behoved him to seek in the obscurest places.  And one day, as he was passing through a mean street, he heard a voice of lamentation, and perceived a man whose coat and shirt were rent and dirty; but not so his pantaloons, for he had none.

“Who art thou, thou pantaloonless one?” asked he, “and wherefore makest thou this lamentation?”

“I am Louis the Esteemed, King of France and Navarre,” replied the distrousered personage, “and I lament for my pantaloons, which I have been enforced to pawn, inasmuch as the broker would advance nothing upon my coat or my shirt.”

And Napoleon went upon his knees and divested himself of his own nether garments, and arrayed the king therein, to the great diversion of those who stood about.