live the Emperor!"

Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
emotion into all faces.

The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"

There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
image of a reign itself so fugitive.

And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
feature of his face appeared to alter.

"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!" said
the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.

If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers.
His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
will-o'-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or