ages was, I may say,
solid. Dauphine behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that
her people wept when they saw, once more, the gray top-coat. March first
it was, when Napoleon landed with two hundred men to conquer that
kingdom of France and of Navarre, which, on the twentieth of the same
month was again the French Empire. On that day our MAN was in Paris; he
had made a clean sweep, recovered his dear France, and gathered his
veterans together by saying no more than three words, 'I am here.'

"'Twas the greatest miracle God had yet done! Before _him_, did ever man
recover an empire by showing his hat? And these others, who thought
they had subdued France! Not they! At sight of the eagles, a national
army sprang up, and we marched to Waterloo. There, the Guard died at one
blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times before the cannon
of the enemy without obtaining death. We saw that. The battle was lost.
That night the Emperor called his old soldiers to him; on the field
soaked with our blood he burned his banners and his eagles--his poor
eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had
flown the length and breadth of Europe, _they_ were saved the infamy of
belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a
tail-feather of them. No more eagles--the rest is well known. The Red
Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is
crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they
discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles--ah, 'tis pitiable!
They seized Napoleon by treachery; the English nailed him on a desert
island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth;
and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power
for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis
easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people,
and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the
bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert
isle to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name, Napoleon,
means 'lion of the desert.' Now this that I tell you is true as the
Gospel. All other tales that you hear about the Emperor are follies
without common-sense; because, d'ye see, God never gave to child of
woman born the right to stamp his name in red as _he_ did, on the earth,
which forever shall remember him! Long live N