help; but, alas! he had only a very small room himself, and that was
shared by his wife.

"If monsieur don't mind," said Baptiste, "I will make him up a good bed
in one of the fourgons"--one of the luggage-vans.

So said, so done. The Englishman slept like a top, being very
tired,--too much like a top, for he never stirred until he found himself
rudely awakened by a heavy bundle of rugs and other paraphernalia being
flung on his chest. He was at the station. Baptiste had simply forgotten
to mention the fact of his having transformed the fourgon into a
bedroom; the doors that stood ajar during the night had been closed
without the servant looking inside; and when the occupant was discovered
he was, as Racine says--

"Dans le simple appareil
D'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil."

When he told the Emperor, the latter laughed, "as he had never seen him
laugh before," said the aide-de-camp, who had been the innocent cause of
the mischief by appealing to Baptiste.

The victim of the misadventure did not mind it much. For many years
afterwards, he averred that the sight of Compiegne in those days would
have compensated for the inconvenience of sleeping on a garden seat.
What was more, he and his firm were never troubled any more with
inexorable demands for baksheesh.

He was right; the sight of Compiegne in those days was very beautiful.
There was a good deal of the histrionic mixed up with it, but it was
very beautiful. In addition to the bands of the garrison, a regimental
band of the infantry of the Garde played in the courtyard of the
Chateau; the streets were alive with crowds dressed in their best;
almost every house was gay with bunting, the only exceptions being those
of the Legitimists, who, unlike Achilles, did not even skulk in their
tents, but shut up their establishments and flitted on the eve of the
arrival of the Court, after having despatched an address of unswerving
loyalty to the Comte de Chambord. After a little while, Napoleon did not
trouble about these expressions of hostility to his dynasty, though he
could not forbear to ask bitterly, now and then, whether the Comte de
Chambord or the Comte de Paris under a regency could have made the
country more prosperous than he had attempted to do, than he succeeded
in doing. And truth compels one to admit that France's material
prosperity was not a sham in those days, whatever else may have been;
for in those days, as I have already remarke