all the invaders in France, and thus teach
them to respect the country; so he let them come close to Paris, in
order to swallow 'em all at a gulp and rise to the height of his genius
in a battle greater than all the others--a regular mother of battles!
But those cowardly Parisians were so afraid for their wretched skins and
their miserable shops that they opened the gates of the city. Then the
good times ended and the "ragusades" began. They fooled the Empress and
hung white flags out of the palace windows. Finally the very generals
whom Napoleon had taken for his best friends deserted him and went over
to the Bourbons--of whom nobody had ever before heard. Then he bade us
good-by at Fontainebleau. "Soldiers!"

I can hear him, even now. We were all crying like regular babies, and
the eagles and flags were lowered as if at a funeral. And it was a
funeral--the funeral of the Empire. His old soldiers, once so hale and
spruce, were little more than skeletons. Standing on the portico of his
palace, he said to us:

"Comrades! We have been beaten through treachery; but we shall all see
one another again in heaven, the country of the brave. Protect my child,
whom I intrust to you. Long live Napoleon II!"

Like Jesus Christ before his last agony, he believed himself deserted by
God and his star; and in order that no one should see him conquered, it
was his intention to die; but, although he took poison enough to kill a
whole regiment, it never hurt him at all--another proof, you see, that
he was more than man: he found himself immortal. As he felt sure of his
business after that, and knew that he was to be Emperor always, he went
to a certain island for a while, to study the natures of those people in
Paris, who did not fail, of course, to do stupid things without end.

While he was standing guard down there, the Chinese and those animals on
the coast of Africa--Moors and others, who are not at all easy to get
along with--were so sure that he was something more than man that they
respected his tent, and said that to touch it would be to offend God. So
he reigned over the whole world, although those other fellows had sent
him out of France.

Well, then, after a while he embarked again in the very same nut-shell
of a boat that he had left Egypt in, passed right under the bows of the
English vessels, and set foot once more in France. France acknowledged
him; the sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; and all the people
cried,