e came by his share after a victory, it
was made perfectly clear in the bulletin. And what battles they were!
Austerlitz, where the army was manoeuvred as if it had been a review;
Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a lake, just as if Napoleon
had breathed on them and blown them in; Wagram, where the fighting was
kept up for three whole days without flinching. In short, there were as
many battles as there are saints in the calendar.

"Then it was made clear beyond a doubt that Napoleon bore the Sword
of God in his scabbard. He had a regard for the soldier. He took the
soldier for his child. He was anxious that you should have shoes,
shirts, greatcoats, bread, and cartridges; but he kept up his majesty,
too, for reigning was his own particular occupation. But, all the same,
a sergeant, or even a common soldier, could go up to him and call him
'Emperor,' just as you might say 'My good friend' to me at times. And he
would give an answer to anything you put before him. He used to sleep
on the snow just like the rest of us--in short, he looked almost like
an ordinary man; but I who am telling you all these things have seen him
myself with the grape-shot whizzing about his ears, no more put out by
it than you are at this moment; never moving a limb, watching through
his field-glass, always looking after his business; so we stood our
ground likewise, as cool and calm as John the Baptist. I do not know
how he did it; but whenever he spoke, a something in his words made
our hearts burn within us; and just to let him see that we were his
children, and that it was not in us to shirk or flinch, we used to walk
just as usual right up to the sluts of cannon that were belching smoke
and vomiting battalions of balls, and never a man would so much as say,
'Look out!' It was a something that made dying men raise their heads to
salute him and cry, 'Long live the Emperor!'

"Was that natural? Would you have done this for a mere man?

"Thereupon, having fitted up all his family, and things having so
turned out that the Empress Josephine (a good woman for all that) had no
children, he was obliged to part company with her, although he loved her
not a little. But he must have children, for reasons of State. All the
crowned heads of Europe, when they heard of his difficulty, squabbled
among themselves as to who should find him a wife. He married an
Austrian princess, so they say, who was the daughter of the Caesars, a
man of antiquity w