entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops.  Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to his imperial master had often puzzled the army.  Others again declared, and called upon their honor to substantiate their story, that they had seen the army wagons containing the imperial treasure, one hundred millions, all in brand-new twenty-franc pieces, drive into the courtyard of the Prefecture.  This convoy was, in fact, neither more nor less than the vehicles for the personal use of the Emperor and his suite, the char a banc, the two caleches, the twelve baggage and supply wagons, which had almost excited a riot in the villages through which they had passed—­Courcelles, le Chene, Raucourt; assuming in men’s imagination the dimensions of a huge train that had blocked the road and arrested the march of armies, and which now, shorn of their glory, execrated by all, had come in shame and disgrace to hide themselves among the sous-prefect’s lilac bushes.

While Delaherche was raising himself on tiptoe and trying to peer through the windows of the rez-de-chaussee, an old woman at his side, some poor day-worker of the neighborhood, with shapeless form and hands calloused and distorted by many years of toil, was mumbling between her teeth: 

“An emperor—­I should like to see one once—­just once—­so I could say I had seen him.”

Suddenly Delaherche exclaimed, seizing Maurice by the arm: 

“See, there he is! at the window, to the left.  I had a good view of him yesterday; I can’t be mistaken.  There, he has just raised the curtain; see, that pale face, close to the glass.”

The old woman had overheard him and stood staring with wide-open mouth and eyes, for there, full in the window, was an apparition that resembled a corpse more than a living being; its eyes were lifeless, its features distorted; even the mustache had assumed a ghastly whiteness in that final agony.  The old woman was dumfounded; forthwith she turned her back and marched off with a look of supreme contempt.

“That thing an emperor! a likely story.”

A zouave was standing near, one of those fugitive soldiers who were in no haste to rejoin their commands.  Brandishing his chassepot and expectorating threats and maledictions, he said to his companion: 

“Wait! see me put a bullet in his head!”