ould we do save
gather together and gossip and grumble, while those who had a little
paid the score and those who had nothing shared the bottle? Now and
then, if we were lucky, we managed to pick a quarrel with one of the
Garde du Corps, and if we left him on his hack in the Bois we felt that
we had struck a blow for Napoleon once again. They came to know our
haunts in time, and they avoided them as if they had been hornets'
nests.

There was one of these--the Sign of the Great Man--in the Rue Varennes,
which was frequented by several of the more distinguished and
younger Napoleonic officers. Nearly all of us had been colonels or
aides-de-camp, and when any man of less distinction came among us we
generally made him feel that he had taken a liberty. There were Captain
Lepine, who had won the medal of honour at Leipzig; Colonel Bonnet,
aide-de-camp to Macdonald; Colonel Jourdan, whose fame in the army was
hardly second to my own; Sabbatier of my own Hussars, Meunier of the Red
Lancers, Le Breton of the Guards, and a dozen others.

Every night we met and talked, played dominoes, drank a glass or two,
and wondered how long it would be before the Emperor would be back and
we at the head of our regiments once more. The Bourbons had already
lost any hold they ever had upon the country, as was shown a few years
afterward, when Paris rose against them and they were hunted for the
third time out of France. Napoleon had but to show himself on the
coast, and he would have marched without firing a musket to the capital,
exactly as he had done when he came back from Elba.

Well, when affairs were in this state there arrived one night in
February, in our cafe, a most singular little man. He was short
but exceedingly broad, with huge shoulders, and a head which was a
deformity, so large was it. His heavy brown face was scarred with white
streaks in a most extraordinary manner, and he had grizzled whiskers
such as seamen wear. Two gold earrings in his ears, and plentiful
tattooing upon his hands and arms, told us also that he was of the sea
before he introduced himself to us as Captain Fourneau, of the Emperor's
navy. He had letters of introduction to two of our number, and there
could be no doubt that he was devoted to the cause. He won our respect,
too, for he had seen as much fighting as any of us, and the burns upon
his face were caused by his standing to his post upon the Orient, at
the Battle of the Nile, until the vessel blew