st. We are back in France; and in
spite of the bitter weather, it did one's heart good to breathe one's
native air again, it set up many a poor fellow; and as for me, it put
new life into me, I can tell you. But it was a question all at once of
defending France, our fair land of France. All Europe was up in arms
against us; they took it in bad part that we had tried to keep the
Russians in order by driving them back within their own borders, so
that they should not gobble us up, for those Northern folk have a strong
liking for eating up the men of the South, it is a habit they have; I
have heard the same thing of them from several generals.

So the Emperor finds his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made
crowned kings, and the rabble of princes to whom he had given back their
thrones, were all against him. Even Frenchmen and allies in our own
ranks turned against us, by orders from high quarters, as at Leipsic.
Common soldiers would hardly be capable of such abominations; yet these
princes, as they called themselves, broke their words three times a day!
The next thing they do is to invade France. Wherever our Emperor shows
his lion's face, the enemy beats a retreat; he worked more miracles for
the defence of France than he had ever wrought in the conquest of
Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia; he has a mind to bury every
foreigner in French soil, to give them a respect for France, so he lets
them come close up to Paris, so as to do for them at a single blow, and
to rise to the highest height of genius in the biggest battle that ever
was fought, a mother of battles! But the Parisians wanting to save their
trumpery skins, and afraid for their twopenny shops, open their gates
and there is a beginning of the _ragusades_, and an end of all joy and
happiness; they make a fool of the Empress, and fly the white flag out
at the windows. The Emperor's closest friends among his generals forsake
him at last and go over to the Bourbons, of whom no one had ever heard
tell. Then he bids us farewell at Fontainebleau:

"Soldiers!"... I can hear him yet, we were all crying just like
children; the Eagles and the flags had been lowered as if for a funeral.
Ah! and it was a funeral, I can tell you; it was the funeral of the
Empire; those smart armies of his were nothing but skeletons now. So he
stood there on the flight of steps before his chateau, and he said:

"Children, we have been overcome by treachery, but we shall m