“Thereupon they want to put him off and to get rid of him; but not a bit of it!  He locks them up in the barracks where they used to argufy and makes them jump out of the windows.  Then he makes them follow in his train, and they all become as mute as fishes and supple as tobacco pouches.  So he becomes Consul at a blow.  He was not the man to doubt the existence of the Supreme Being; he kept his word with Providence, who had kept His promise in earnest; he sets up religion again, and gives back the churches, and they ring the bells for God and Napoleon.  So every one is satisfied:  primo, the priests with whom he allows no one to meddle; segondo, the merchant folk who carry on their trades without fear of the rapiamus of the law that had pressed too heavily on them; tertio, the nobles; for people had fallen into an unfortunate habit of putting them to death, and he puts a stop to this.

“But there were enemies to be cleared out of the way, and he was not the one to go to sleep after mess; and his eyes, look you, traveled all over the world as if it had been a man’s face.  The next thing he did was to turn up in Italy; it was just as if he had put his head out of the window and the sight of him was enough; they gulp down the Austrians at Marengo like a whale swallowing gudgeons! Haouf! The French Victories blew their trumpets so loud that the whole world could hear the noise, and there was an end of it.

“‘We will not keep on at this game any longer!’ say the Germans.

“‘That is enough of this sort of thing,’ say the others.

“Here is the upshot.  Europe shows the white feather, England knuckles under, general peace all round, and kings and peoples pretending to embrace each other.  While then and there the Emperor hits on the idea of the Legion of Honor.  There’s a fine thing if you like!

“He spoke to the whole army at Boulogne.  ‘In France,’ so he said, ’every man is brave.  So the civilian who does gloriously shall be the soldier’s sister, the soldier shall be his brother, and both shall stand together beneath the flag of honor.’

“By the time that the rest of us who were away down there in Egypt had come back again, everything was changed.  We had seen him last as a general, and in no time we find that he is Emperor!  And when this was settled (and it may safely be said that every one was satisfied) there was a holy ceremony such as was never seen under the canopy of heaven.  Faith, France gave herself to him, like a handsome girl to a lancer, and the Pope and all his cardinals in robes of red and gold come across the Alps on purpose to anoint him before the army and the people, who clap their hands.

“There is one thing that it would be very wrong to keep back from you.  While he was in Egypt, in the desert not far away from Syria, the Red Man had appeared to him on the mountain of Moses, in order to say, ‘Everything is going on well.’  Then again, on the eve of victory at Marengo, the Red Man springs to his feet in front of the Emperor for the second time, and says to him: