“Well, spite of our stern bearing, here’s everything going against us; and yet the army did prodigies of valor.  Then came battles on the mountains, nations against nations,—­Dresden, Lutzen, Bautzen.  Remember these days, all of you, for ’twas then that Frenchmen were so particularly heroic that a good grenadier only lasted six months.  We triumphed always; yet there were those English, in our rear, rousing revolts against us with their lies!  No matter, we cut our way home through the whole pack of the nations.  Wherever the Emperor showed himself we followed him; for if, by sea or land, he gave us the word ‘Go!’ we went.  At last, we were in France; and many a poor foot-soldier felt the air of his own country restore his soul to satisfaction, spite of the wintry weather.  I can say for myself that it refreshed my life.  Well, next, our business was to defend France, our country, our beautiful France, against all Europe, which resented our having laid down the law to the Russians, and pushed them back into their dens, so that they couldn’t eat us up alive, as northern nations, who are dainty and like southern flesh, have a habit of doing,—­at least, so I’ve heard some generals say.  Then the Emperor saw his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made kings, and the scoundrels to whom he had given back their thrones, all against him.  Even Frenchmen, and allies in our own ranks, turned against us under secret orders, as at the battle of Leipsic.  Would common soldiers have been capable of such wickedness?  Three times a day men were false to their word,—­and they called themselves princes!

“So, then, France was invaded.  Wherever the Emperor showed his lion face, the enemy retreated; and he did more prodigies in defending France than ever he had done in conquering Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia.  He meant to bury every invader under the sod, and teach ’em to respect the soil of France.  So he let them get to Paris, that he might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest,—­a mother-battle, as ’twere.  But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates.  Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended.  The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows.  The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,—­a set of people no one had heard tell of.  The Emperor bade us farewell at Fontainebleau:—­’Soldiers!’—­I can hear him now; we wept like children; the flags and the eagles were lowered as if for a funeral:  it was, I may well say it to you, it was the funeral of the Empire; her dapper armies were nothing now but skeletons.  So he said to us, standing there on the portico of his palace:—­’My soldiers! we are vanquished by treachery; but we shall meet in heaven, the country of the brave.  Defend my child, whom I commit to you.  Long live Napoleon II!’ He meant to die, that no man should look upon Napoleon vanquished; he took poison, enough to have killed a regiment, because, like Jesus Christ before his Passion, he thought himself abandoned of God and his talisman.  But the poison did not hurt him.