And what a lot of battles there were!  Austerlitz, where the army maneuvered as if on parade; Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a lake as if Napoleon had blown them in with a single puff; Wagram, where we fought three days without flinching.  In short, there were as many battles as there are saints in the calendar.  And it was proved then that Napoleon had in his scabbard the real sword of God.  He felt regard for his soldiers, too, and treated them just as if they were his children, always taking pains to find out if they were well supplied with shoes, linen, overcoats, bread, and cartridges.  But he kept up his dignity as sovereign all the same; because to reign was his business.  However, that didn’t make any difference.  A sergeant, or even a common soldier, could say to him “Emperor,” just as you sometimes say “my dear fellow” to me.  He was one that you could argue with, if necessary; he slept on the snow with the rest of us; and, in short, he appeared almost like any other man.  But when the grape-shot were kicking up the dust at his very feet, I have seen him going about coolly,—­no more disturbed by them than you are at this minute,—­looking through his field-glass now and then, and attending all the time to his business.  Of course that made the rest of us as calm and serene as John the Baptist.  I don’t know how he managed it, but when he spoke to us, his words put fire into our hearts; and in order to show him that we really were his children, and not the kind of men to shrink from danger, we used to march right up to great blackguards of cannon which bellowed and vomited balls without so much as saying “Look out!” Even dying men had the nerve to raise their heads and salute him with the cry of “Long live the Emperor!” Was that natural?  Would they have done that for a mere man?

Well, when he had settled all his folks comfortably, the Empress Josephine—­who was a good woman all the same—­was so fixed that she couldn’t give him any family, and he had to leave her.  He loved her quite a little, too; but for reasons of state he had to have children.  When the kings of Europe heard of this trouble, they came to blows over the question who should give him a wife.  He finally married, they told us, an Austrian woman.  She was a daughter of Caesar’s—­a man of ancient times who is much talked about, not only in our country, where they say he made everything, but in Europe.  It’s true, anyhow, that I have myself been on the Danube, and have seen there the remains of a bridge that this man Caesar built.  It appears that he was a relative of Napoleon’s in Rome, and that’s why the Emperor had a right to take the inheritance there for his son.

Well, after his marriage, when there was a holiday for the whole world, and when he let the people off ten years’ taxes (which were collected all the same, because the tax-gatherers didn’t pay any attention to what he said), his wife had a little boy who was King of Rome.  That was a thing which had never been seen on earth before—­a child born king while his father was still living.  A balloon was sent up in Paris to carry the news to Rome, and it made the whole distance in a single day.  Now will any of you tell me that that was natural?  Never!  It had been so written on high.