was informed of it, for on the 24th, having met Augereau at a little distance from Valence, he stopped his carriage and immediately alighted.  Augereau did the same, and they cordially embraced in the presence of the Commissioners.  It was remarked that in saluting Napoleon took off his hat and Augereau kept on his.  “Where are you going?”, said the Emperor; “to Court?”—­“No, I am going to Lyons.”—­“You have behaved very badly to me.”  Augereau, finding that the Emperor addressed him in the second person singular, adopted the same familiarity; so they conversed as they were accustomed to do when they were both generals in Italy.  “Of what do you complain?” said he.  “Has not your insatiable ambition brought us to this?  Have you not sacrificed everything to that ambition, even the happiness of France?  I care no more for the Bourbons than for you.  All I care for is the country.”  Upon this Napoleon turned sharply away from the Marshal, lifted his hat to him, and then stepped into his carriage.  The Commissioners, and all the persons in Napoleon’s suite, were indignant at seeing Augereau stand in the road still covered, with his hands behind his back, and instead of bowing, merely making a contemptuous salutation to Napoleon with his hand.  It was at the Tuileries that these haughty Republicans should have shown their airs.  To have done so on the road to Elba was a mean insult which recoiled upon themselves.

—­[The following letter, taken from Captain Bingham’s recently published selections from the Correspondence of the first Napoleon, indicates in emphatic language the Emperor’s recent dissatisfaction with Marshal Augereau when in command at Lyons daring the “death straggle” of 1814: 

   To Marshal Augereau.

Nogent, 21st February, 1814,

....What! six hours after having received the first troops coming from Spain you were not in the field!  Six hours repose was sufficient.  I won the action of Naugis with a brigade of dragoons coming from Spain which, since it had left Bayonne, had not unbridled its horses.  The six battalions of the division of Nimes want clothes, equipment, and drilling, say you?  What poor reasons you give me there, Augereau!  I have destroyed 80,000 enemies with conscripts having nothing but knapsacks!  The National Guards, say you, are pitiable; I have 4000 here in round hats, without knapsacks, in wooden shoes, but with good muskets, and I get a great deal out of them.  There is no money, you continue; and where do you hope to draw money from!  You want waggons; take them wherever you can.  You have no magazines; this is too ridiculous.  I order you twelve hours after the reception of this letter to take the field.  If you are still Augereau of Castiglione, keep the command, but if your sixty years weigh upon you hand over the command to your senior general.  The country is in danger; and can be saved by boldness and alacrity alone.... 
               (Signed) Napoleon]—­

At Valence Napoleon, for the first time, saw French soldiers with the white cockade in their caps.  They belonged to Augereau’s corps.  At Orange the air resounded with tines of “Vive le Roi!” Here the gaiety, real or feigned, which Napoleon had hitherto evinced, began to forsake him.