“He had thought of killing himself, so that no one should behold Napoleon after his defeat; like Jesus Christ before the Crucifixion, he thought himself forsaken by God and by his talisman, and so he took enough poison to kill a regiment, but it had no effect whatever upon him.  Another marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder.  Whilst he was biding his time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not, awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something more than mortal, that they respected his flag, saying that God would be displeased if any one meddled with it.  So he reigned over all the rest of the world, although the doors of his own France had been closed upon him.

“Then he goes on board the same nutshell of a skiff that he sailed in from Egypt, passes under the noses of the English vessels, and sets foot in France.  France recognizes her Emperor, the cuckoo flits from steeple to steeple; France cries with one voice, ’Long live the Emperor!’ The enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly genuine in these parts.  Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was uncommonly pleased to learn that people here shed tears of joy on seeing his gray overcoat once more.

“It was on March 1st that Napoleon set out with two hundred men to conquer the kingdom of France and Navarre, which by March 20th had become the French Empire again.  On that day he found himself in Paris, and a clean sweep had been made of everything; he had won back his beloved France, and had called all his soldiers about him again, and three words of his had done it all—­’Here am I!’ ’Twas the greatest miracle God ever worked!  Was it ever known in the world before that a man should do nothing but show his hat, and a whole Empire became his?  They fancied that France was crushed, did they?  Never a bit of it.  A National Army springs up again at the sight of the Eagle, and we all march to Waterloo.  There the Guard fall all as one man.  Napoleon in his despair heads the rest, and flings himself three times on the enemy’s guns without finding the death he sought; we all saw him do it, we soldiers, and the day was lost!  That night the Emperor calls all his old soldiers about him, and there on the battlefield, which was soaked with our blood, he burns his flags and his Eagles—­the poor Eagles that had never been defeated, that had cried, ‘Forward!’ in battle after battle, and had flown above us all over Europe.  That was the end of the Eagles—­all the wealth of England could not purchase for her one tail-feather.  The rest is sufficiently known.