patiently hour after
hour, ever since in the earlier part of the afternoon a courier has come
over from Fontainebleau with the news that the Emperor is already there
and would be in Paris this night.

It is the same crowd which twenty-four hours ago shed a tear or two in
sympathy for the departing monarch: now it stands here--waiting,
excited, ready to cheer the return of a popular hero--half-forgotten,
wildly acclaimed, madly welcomed, to be cursed again, and again
forgotten so soon. It was a heterogeneous crowd forsooth! made up in
great part of the curious, the idle, the indifferent, and in great part,
too, of the Bonapartist enthusiasts and malcontents who had groaned
under the reactionary tyranny of the Restoration--of malcontents, too,
of no enthusiasm, who were ready to welcome any change which might bring
them to prominence or to fortune. With here and there a sprinkling of
hot-headed revolutionaries, cursing the return of the Emperor as
heartily as they had cursed that of the Bourbon king: and here and there
a few heart-sick royalists, come to watch the final annihilation of
their hopes.

Victor de Marmont, wrapped in a dark cloak, stood among the crowd for a
while. He knew that the Emperor would probably not be in Paris before
night, and he loved to be in the very midst of the wave of enthusiasm
which was surging higher and ever higher in the crowd, and hear the
excited whispers, and to feel all round him, wrapping him closely like a
magic mantle of warmth and delight, the exaltation of this mass of men
and women assembled here to acclaim the hero whom he himself adored.
Closely buttoned inside his coat he had scraps of paper worth the ransom
of any king.

Among the crowd, too, Bobby Clyffurde moved and stood. He was one of
those who watched this enthusiasm with a heart filled with forebodings.
He knew well how short this enthusiasm would be: he knew that within a
few weeks--days perhaps--the bold and reckless adventurer who had so
easily reconquered France would realise that the Imperial crown would
never be allowed to sit firmly upon his head. None in this crowd knew
better that the present pageant and glory would be short-lived, than did
this tall, quiet Englishman who listened with half an ear and a smile of
good-natured contempt to the loud cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" which rose
spontaneously whenever the sound of horses' hoofs or rattles of wheels
from the direction of Fontainebleau suggested the app