about this man as
they like," said one of the crew, "but I won't believe the bad they say
of him." His popularity with the sailors of the _Northumberland_ was
not created by merely seeing him sitting for hours day by day on the
gun which was named "The Emperor's." He became their hero now as
passionately as he had previously appeared to them as being the foe of
all that was humane. His little attentions and kindnesses, accompanied
by an irresistible smile, and the act of putting them through some form
of drill, endeared him to them long before they reached his lonely
rock. Then the story of Sir Hudson Lowe's treatment of him in so many
petty ways, such for instance as seizing a small bust of his son, the
King of Rome, which had been sent to the exiled monarch, made friends
for the Emperor in thousands; and not the least of them were the brave
fellows who had traversed the ocean with him, and whose souls were
filled with sympathy and horror at the crime that was being committed.
Their testimony was that no one could live in close contact with him
without instinctively realizing that he was a much maligned person. No
wonder that this impression was spread widely not only through the
whole navy but also throughout the whole mercantile marine. What a
blunder the whole savage, senseless business was!

But while the British sailors claimed the little corporal as their
idol, they did not think that even for political reasons the Emperor
had any right to divorce Josephine, though they thought he might have
reasons other than those commonly understood to have been engineered by
the arch-traitor Fouche, and ultimately agreed to by the Emperor. The
Empress, when she was plain Josephine, had the reputation of carrying
on violent flirtations with other gentlemen while her husband was in
Italy, and subsequently, when he was in Egypt swiftly forging his way
to fame and to his destiny. So that when Napoleon was accused of
cruelty in putting her from him, there were ever some champions ready
to palliate the act by putting her unfaithful conduct before their
opponents. But the Emperor's divorce of the little Creole was never
quite approved by his sailor admirers, more especially as they had a
strong dislike to Marie Louise, the Austrian arch-duchess who took the
place of the poor, wayward Josephine, and who forsook her imperial
husband in the first hour of his adversity to become the mistress of an
ugly Austrian count, named Neipperg, wh