nd did the Emperor return to the farmhouse?" asked Captain Beaudoin.

"That's more than I can say, my dear sir: I left him sitting on his
stool. It was midday, the battle was drawing nearer, and it occurred
to me that it was time to be thinking of my own return. All that I can
tell you besides is that a general to whom I pointed out the position
of Carignan in the distance, in the plain to our rear, appeared
greatly surprized to learn that the Belgian frontier lay in that
direction, and was only a few miles away. Ah, that the poor Emperor
should have to rely on such servants!"...

While Delaherche was raising himself on tiptoe, and trying to peer
through the windows of the _rez-de-chaussee_, an old woman at his
side, some poor day-worker of the neighborhood, with shapeless form,
and hands calloused and distorted by many years of toil, was mumbling
between her teeth:

"An emperor--I should like to see one once--just once--so I could say
I had seen him."

Suddenly Delaherche exclaimed, seizing Maurice by the arm:

"See, there he is! at the window to the left. I had a good view of him
yesterday; I can't be mistaken. There, he has just raised the curtain;
see, that pale face, close to the glass."

The old woman had overheard him, and stood staring with wide-open
mouth and eyes; for there, full in the window, was an apparition that
resembled a corpse more than a living being: its eyes were lifeless,
its features distorted; even the mustache had assumed a ghastly
whiteness in the final agony. The old woman was dumbfounded; forthwith
she turned her back and marched off with a look of supreme contempt.

"That thing an emperor! a likely story!"

A zouave was standing near--one of those fugitive soldiers who were in
no haste to rejoin their commands. Brandishing his chassepot and
expectorating threats and maledictions, he said to his companion:

"Wait! see me put a bullet in his head!"

Delaherche remonstrated angrily; but by that time the Emperor had
disappeared. The hoarse murmur of the Meuse continued uninterruptedly;
a wailing lament, inexpressibly mournful, seemed to pass above them
through the air, where the darkness was gathering intensity. Other
sounds rose in the distance, like the hollow muttering of the rising
storm: were they the "March! march!"--that terrible order from Paris
which had driven that ill-starred man onward day by day, dragging
behind him along the roads of his defeat the irony of his imperial