"Long live the Emperor!"

In this vicinity the enthusiasm for the Wonder of the Ages was most
hearty. Dauphiny behaved well; and it pleased me particularly to know
that our own people here wept for joy when they saw again his gray coat.

On the 1st of March Napoleon landed, with two hundred men, to conquer
the kingdom of France and Navarre; and on the 20th of the same month
that kingdom became the French Empire. On that day THE MAN was in Paris.
He had made a clean sweep--had reconquered his dear France, and had
brought all his old soldiers together again by saying only three words:
"Here I am." 'Twas the greatest miracle God had ever worked. Did ever a
man, before him, take an empire by merely showing his hat? They thought
that France was crushed, did they? Not a bit of it! At sight of the
Eagle a national army sprang up, and we all marched to Waterloo. There
the Guard perished, as if stricken down at a single blow. Napoleon, in
despair, threw himself three times, at the head of his troops, on the
enemy's cannon, without being able to find death. The battle was lost.

That evening the Emperor called his old soldiers together, and, on the
field wet with our blood, burned his eagles and his flags. The poor
eagles, who had always been victorious, who had cried "Forward!" in all
our battles, and who had flown over all Europe, were saved from the
disgrace of falling into the hands of their enemies. All the treasure of
England couldn't buy the tail of one of them. They were no more!

The rest of the story is well known to everybody. The Red Man went over
to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is; France was crushed; and
the old soldiers, who were no longer of any account, were deprived of
their dues and sent back to their homes, in order that their places
might be given to a lot of nobles who couldn't even march--it was
pitiful to see them try! Then Napoleon was seized, through treachery,
and the English nailed him to a rock, ten thousand feet above the earth,
on a desert island in the great ocean. There he must stay until the Red
Man, for the good of France, gives him back his power. It is said by
some that he is dead. Oh, yes! Dead! That shows how little they know
him! They only tell that lie to cheat the people and keep peace in their
shanty of a government. The truth of the matter is that his friends have
left him there in the desert to fulfil a prophecy that was made about
him--for I have forgotten to tell you t