am ignorant of the career
of my native land. France is still the queen of the world, is she not?"

"Certainly," said Leon.

"How is the Emperor?"

"Well."

"And the Empress?"

"Very well."

"And the King of Rome?"

"The Prince Imperial? He is a very fine child."

"How? A fine child! And you have the face to say that this is 1859!"

M. Nibor took up the conversation, and explained in a few words that the
reigning sovereign of France was not Napoleon I., but Napoleon III.

"But then," cried Fougas, "my Emperor is dead!"

"Yes."

"Impossible! Tell me anything you will but that! My Emperor is
immortal."

M. Nibor and the Renaults, who were not quite professional historians,
were obliged to give him a summary of the history of our century. Some
one went after a big book, written by M. de Norvins and illustrated with
fine engravings by Raffet. He only believed in the presence of Truth
when he could touch her with his hand, and still cried out almost every
moment, "That's impossible! This is not history that you are reading to
me: it is a romance written to make soldiers weep!"

This young man must indeed have had a strong and well-tempered soul; for
he learned in forty minutes all the woful events which fortune had
scattered through eighteen years, from the first abdication up to the
death of the King of Rome. Less happy than his old companions in arms,
he had no interval of repose between these terrible and repeated shocks,
all beating upon his heart at the same time. One could have feared that
the blow might prove mortal, and poor Fougas die in the first hour of
his recovered life. But the imp of a fellow yielded and recovered
himself in quick succession like a spring. He cried out with admiration
on hearing of the five battles of the campaign in France; he reddened
with grief at the farewells of Fontainebleau. The return from the Isle
of Elba transfigured his handsome and noble countenance; at Waterloo his
heart rushed in with the last army of the Empire, and there shattered
itself. Then he clenched his fists and said between his teeth, "If I had
been there at the head of the Twenty-Third, Bluecher and Wellington would
have seen another fate!" The invasion, the truce, the martyr of St.
Helena, the ghastly terror of Europe, the murder of Murat,--the idol of
the cavalry,--the deaths of Ney, Bruno, Mouton-Duvernet, and so many
other whole-souled men whom he had known, admired, and loved, threw him
into a s