nd handed his flask to him;
and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure
in life. But there is not much fun for us about this little affair.
Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a
skiff, called the _Fortune_, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the
teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the
line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France
for he always had the faculty of taking the sea at a stride. Was that
natural? Bah! as soon as he landed at Frejus, it is as good as saying
that he has set foot in Paris. Everybody there worships him; but he
calls the Government together.

"What have you done to my children, the soldiers?" he says to the
lawyers. "You are a set of good-for-nothings who make fools of other
people, and feather your own nests at the expense of France. It will not
do. I speak in the name of every one who is discontented."

Thereupon they want to put him off and to get rid of him; but not a bit
of it! He locks them up in the barracks where they used to argufy and
makes them jump out of the windows. Then he makes them follow in his
train, and they all become as mute as fishes and supple as tobacco
pouches. So he becomes Consul at a blow. He was not the man to doubt the
existence of the Supreme Being; he kept his word with Providence, who
had kept His promise in earnest; he sets up religion again, and gives
back the churches, and they ring the bells for God and Napoleon. So
every one is satisfied: _primo_ the priests with whom he allows no
one to meddle; _segondo_, the merchant folk who carry on their trades
without fear of the _rapiamus_ of the law that had pressed too heavily
on them; _tertio_, the nobles; for people had fallen into an unfortunate
habit of putting them to death, and he puts a stop to this.

But there were enemies to be cleared out of the way, and he was not the
one to go to sleep after mess; and his eyes, look you, traveled all over
the world as if it had been a man's face. The next thing he did was
to turn up in Italy; it was just as if he had put his head out of the
window and the sight of him was enough; they gulp down the Austrians at
Marengo like a whale swallowing gudgeons! _Haouf_! The French Victories
blew their trumpets so loud that the whole world could hear the noise,
and there was an end of it.

"We will not keep on at this game any longer!" say the Germans.

"Tha