ything, however, but this system of forced marriages;
it smacks too much of old Frederick for my taste. And one cannot always
have the luck of your friend General d'Auvergne."

I felt my cheek grow burning hot at the words. Duchesne did not notice
my confusion, but continued,--

"And yet, of all the ill-assorted unions for which his sainted Majesty
will have to account hereafter, that was unquestionably the most
extraordinary."

"But I have heard, and I believe too, that the marriage was not of the
Emperor's making; it was purely a matter of liking."

"Come, come, Burke," said he, laughing, "you will not tell me that the
handsomest girl at the Court, with a large dowry, an ancient name, and
every advantage of position, marries an old weather-beaten soldier--the
senior officer of her own father once--of her own free will and choice.
The thing is absurd. No, no; these are the Imperial recompenses, when
grand duchies are scarce and confiscations few. The Emperor does not
travel for nothing. He brought back with him from Egypt something
besides his Mameluke Guard: that clever trick the pachas have of
providing a favorite with an ex-sultana. There, there! don't look so
angrily. We shall both be marshals of France one of these days, and that
may reconcile one to a great deal."

"You are determined to owe nothing of your promotion to a blind devotion
to Napoleon,--that's certain," said I, annoyed at the tone of insolent
disparagement in which he spoke.

"You are right,--perfectly right there," replied he, in a quiet tone of
voice. "No man would rather hug himself up in an illusion, if he could
but make it minister to his pleasure or his enjoyment; but when it does
neither,--when the material is so flimsy as to be seen through at every
minute,--I throw it from me as a worthless garment, unfit to wear."

"Can you, then, deem Napoleon's glory such?"

"Of course, to me it is. How am I a sharer in his triumphs, save as the
charger that marches in the cavalcade? You don't perceive that I, as the
descendant of an old Loyalist family, would have fared far better with
the Bourbons, from reasons of blood and kindred; and a hundred times
better with the Jacobins, from very recklessness."

"How then came it--"

"I will spare you the question. I liked neither emigration nor the
guillotine, and preferred the slow suffering of ennui to the quick death
of the scaffold. There has been but one career in France for many a day
past. I