“Yes, yes!  I daresay he thinks I deserve his reproaches, and yet it seems to me that he ought to remember that there are two men in me—­the soldier whom he made his brother, and the brother whom he made a king....  Yes, as brother I have treated him ill—­very ill, but as king, upon my soul, I could not have acted differently....  I had to choose between my sword and my crown, and between a regiment and a people.  Listen, Brune:  you do not know how it all happened.  There was an English fleet, the guns of which were growling in the port, there was a Neapolitan population howling in the streets.  If I had been alone, I would have passed through the fleet with one boat, through the crowd with my sword alone, but I had a wife and children.  Yet I hesitated; the idea of being called traitor and deserter caused me to shed more tears than the loss of my throne, or perhaps the death of those I love best, will ever wring from me....  And so he will have nothing more to do with me?  He refuses me as general, captain, private?  Then what is left for me to do?”

“Sire, your Majesty must leave France immediately.”

“And if I don’t obey?”

“My orders are to arrest you and deliver you up to a court-martial!”

“Old comrade, you will not do that?”

“I shall do it, praying God to strike me dead in the moment I lay hands on you!”

“That’s you all over, Brune.  You have been able to remain a good, loyal fellow.  He did not give you a kingdom, he did not encircle your brow with a band of iron which men call a crown and which drives one mad; he did not place you between your conscience and your family.  So I must leave France, begin my vagabond life again, and say farewell to Toulon, which recalls so many memories to me!  See, Brune,” continued Murat, leaning on the arm of the marshal, “are not the pines yonder as fine as any at the Villa Pamfili, the palms as imposing as any at Cairo, the mountains as grand as any range in the Tyrol?  Look to your left, is not Cape Gien something like Castellamare and Sorrento—­leaving out Vesuvius?  And see, Saint-Mandrier at the farthest point of the gulf, is it not like my rock of Capri, which Lamarque juggled away so cleverly from that idiot of a Sir Hudson Lowe?  My God! and I must leave all this!  Is there no way of remaining on this little corner of French ground—­tell me, Brune!”

“You’ll break my heart, sire!” answered the marshal.

“Well, we’ll say no more about it.  What news?”

“The Emperor has left Paris to join the army.  They must be fighting now.”

“Fighting now and I not there!  Oh, I feel I could have been of use to him on this battlefield.  How I would have gloried in charging those miserable Prussians and dastardly English!  Brune, give me a passport, I’ll go at full speed, I’ll reach the army, I will make myself known to some colonel, I shall say, ‘Give me your regiment.’  I’ll charge at its head, and if the Emperor does not clasp my hand to-night, I’ll blow my brains out, I swear I will.  Do what I ask, Brune, and however it may end, my eternal gratitude will be yours!”