Then Napoleonder began to weep and sob, and cried out, “You have ruined me, you wretched, miserable soldier!”

But the soldier (who was Ivan-angel, and not a soldier at all) replied:  “I have not ruined you, Napoleonder; I have saved you.  If you had gone on in your merciless, pitiless course, there would have been no forgiveness for you, either in this life or in the life to come.  Now God has given you time for repentance.  In this world you shall be punished; but there, beyond, if you repent of your sins, you shall be forgiven.”

And the angel vanished.

Then our Don Cossacks fell on Napoleonder, dragged him from his horse, and took him to Alexander the Blessed.  Some said, “Napoleonder ought to be shot!” Others cried, “Send him to Siberia to!” But the Lord God softened the heart of Alexander the Blessed, and the merciful Tsar would not allow Napoleonder to be shot or sent to Siberia.  He ordered that the great conqueror be put into an iron cage, and be carried around and exhibited to the people at country fairs.  So Napoleonder was carried from one fair to another for a period of thirty summers and three years—­until he had grown quite old.  Then, when he was an old man, they sent him to the island of Buan to watch geese.

* * * * *

THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE[1]

[Footnote 1:  A story told to a group of French peasants one evening, in a barn, by Goguelat, the village postman, who had served under Napoleon in a regiment of infantry.]

Napoleon, my friends, was born, you know, in Corsica.  That’s a French island, but it’s warmed by the sun of Italy, and everything’s as hot there as if it were a furnace.  It’s a place, too, where the people kill one another, from father to son, generation after generation, for nothing at all; that is, for no reason in particular except that it’s their way.

Well, to begin with the most wonderful part of the story, it so happened that on the very day when Napoleon was born, his mother dreamed that the world was on fire.  She was a shrewd, clever woman, as well as the prettiest woman of her time; and when she had this dream, she thought she’d save her son from the dangers of life by dedicating him to God.  And, indeed, that was a prophetic dream of hers!  So she asked God to protect the boy, and promised that when he grew up he should reestablish God’s holy religion, which had then been overthrown.  That was the agreement they made; and although it seems strange, such things have happened.  It’s sure and certain, anyhow, that only a man who had an agreement with God could pass through the enemy’s lines, and move about in showers of bullets and grape-shot, as Napoleon did.  They swept us away like flies, but his head they never touched at all.  I had a proof of that—­I myself, in particular—­at Eylau, where the Emperor went up on a little hill to see how things were going.  I can remember,