ntle, pompous Louis whom my father had once
taken me to visit, and I understood that France, after her convulsions
and her sufferings, did indeed require another and a stronger head.

'Do you not think so, Monsieur de Laval?' asked the Emperor. He had
halted for a moment by the fire, and was grinding his dainty
gold-buckled shoe into one of the burning logs.

'You have come to a very wise decision,' said he when I had answered his
question. 'But you have always been of this way of thinking, have you
not? Is it not true that you once defended me when some young
Englishman was drinking toasts to my downfall at an inn in this village
in which you lived?'

I remembered the incident, although I could not imagine how it had
reached his ears.

'Why should you have done this?'

'I did it on impulse, Sire.'

'On impulse!' he cried, in a tone of contempt. 'I do not know what
people mean when they say that they do things upon impulse.
In Charenton things are doubtless done upon impulse, but not amongst
sane people. Why should you risk your life over there in defending me
when at the time you had nothing to hope for from me?'

'It was because I felt that you stood for France, Sire.'

During this conversation he had still walked up and down the room,
twisting his right arm about, and occasionally looking at one or other
of us with his eyeglass, for his sight was so weak that he always needed
a single glass indoors and binoculars outside. Sometimes he stopped and
helped himself to great pinches of snuff from a tortoise-shell box, but
I observed that none of it ever reached his nose, for he dropped it all
from between his fingers on to his waistcoat and the floor. My answer
seemed to please him, for he suddenly seized my ear and pulled it with
considerable violence.

'You are quite right, my friend,' said he. 'I stand for France just as
Frederic the Second stood for Prussia. I will make her the great Power
of the world, so that every monarch in Europe will find it necessary to
keep a palace in Paris, and they will all come to hold the train at the
coronation of my descendants--' a spasm of pain passed suddenly over his
face. 'My God! for whom am I building? Who will be my descendants?'
I heard him mutter, and he passed his hand over his forehead.

'Do they seem frightened in England about my approaching invasion?' he
asked suddenly. 'Have you heard them express fears lest I get across
the Channel?'

I was for