“But he still had the Enemy to wipe out; and he wasn’t the man to go to sleep at a mess-table, because, d’ye see, his eye looked over the whole earth as if it were no bigger than a man’s head.  So then he appeared in Italy, like as though he had stuck his head through the window.  One glance was enough.  The Austrians were swallowed up at Marengo like so many gudgeons by a whale!  Ouf!  The French eagles sang their paeans so loud that all the world heard them—­and it sufficed!  ’We won’t play that game any more,’ said the German.  ‘Enough, enough!’ said all the rest.  To sum up:  Europe backed down, England knocked under.  General peace; and the kings and the peoples made believe kiss each other.  That’s the time when the Emperor invented the Legion of Honour—­and a fine thing, too.  ’In France’—­this is what he said at Boulogne before the whole army—­’every man is brave.  So the citizen who does a fine action shall be sister to the soldier, and the soldier shall be his brother, and the two shall be one under the flag of honour.’

“We, who were down in Egypt, now came home.  All was changed!  He left us general, and hey! in a twinkling we found him EMPEROR.  France gave herself to him, like a fine girl to a lancer.  When it was done—­to the satisfaction of all, as you may say—­a sacred ceremony took place, the like of which was never seen under the canopy of the skies.  The Pope and the cardinals, in their red and gold vestments, crossed the Alps expressly to crown him before the army and the people, who clapped their hands.  There is one thing that I should do very wrong not to tell you.  In Egypt, in the desert close to Syria, the RED MAN came to him on the Mount of Moses, and said, ‘All is well.’  Then, at Marengo, the night before the victory, the same Red Man appeared before him for the second time, standing erect and saying:  ’Thou shalt see the world at thy feet; thou shalt be Emperor of France, King of Italy, master of Holland, sovereign of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian provinces, protector of Germany, saviour of Poland, first eagle of the Legion of Honour—­all.’  This Red Man, you understand, was his genius, his spirit—­a sort of satellite who served him, as some say, to communicate with his star.  I never really believed that.  But the Red Man himself is a true fact.  Napoleon spoke of him, and said he came to him in troubled moments, and lived in the palace of the Tuileries under the roof.  So, on the day of the coronation, Napoleon saw him for the third time; and they were in consultation over many things.

“After that, Napoleon went to Milan to be crowned king of Italy, and there the grand triumph of the soldier began.  Every man who could write was made an officer.  Down came pensions; it rained duchies; treasures poured in for the staff which didn’t cost France a penny; and the Legion of Honour provided incomes for the private soldiers—­of which I receive mine to this day.  So here were the armies maintained as never before on this earth.