oleon halts:

"Soldiers," he cries loudly. "Here I am! your Emperor, do you know me?"

Again he advances and with a calm gesture throws open his well-worn grey
redingote.

"Fire!" cries St. Genis in mad exasperation.

"Fire!" commands Delessart in a voice rendered shaky with overmastering
emotion.

Silence reigns supreme. Napoleon still advances, step by step, his
redingote thrown open, his broad chest challenging the first bullet
which would dare to end the bold, adventurous, daring life.

"Is there one of you soldiers here who wants to shoot his Emperor? If
there is, here I am! Fire!"

Which of these soldiers who have served under him at Jena and Austerlitz
could resist such a call. His voice has lost nothing yet of its charm,
his personality nothing of its magic. Ambitious, ruthless, selfish he
may be, but to the army, a friend, a comrade as well as a god.

Suddenly the silence is broken. Shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" rend the
air, they echo down the narrow valley, re-echo from hill to hill and
reverberate upon the pine-clad heights of Taillefer. Broken are the
ranks, white cockades fly in every direction, tricolours appear in their
hundreds everywhere. Shakos are waved on the points of the bayonets, and
always, always that cry: "Vive l'Empereur!"

Sapeurs and infantrymen crowd around the little man in the worn grey
redingote, and he with that rough familiarity which bound all soldiers'
hearts to him, seizes an old sergeant by the ends of his long moustache:

"So, you old dog," he says, "you were going to shoot your Emperor, were
you?"

"Not me," replies the man with a growl. "Look at our guns. Not one of
them was loaded."

Delessart, in despair yet shaken to the heart, his eyes swimming in
tears, offers his sword to Napoleon, whereupon the Emperor grasps his
hand in friendship and comforts him with a few inspiring words.

Only St. Genis has looked on all this scene with horror and contempt.
His royalist opinions are well known, his urgent appeal to Delessart a
while ago to "shoot the brigand and his hordes" still rings in every
soldier's ear. He is half-crazy with rage and there is quite an element
of terror in the confused thoughts which crowd in upon his brain.

Already the sapeurs and infantrymen have joined the ranks of the Old
Guard, and Napoleon, with that inimitable verve and inspiring eloquence
of which he was pastmaster, was haranguing his troops. Just then three
horsemen, dressed in the uni