talked to the villagers as if they, like himself, were learned
and wise. He thought of his old life in France, of two Napoleons that he
had seen, and of the time when, at Neuilly, a famous general burst into
his father's house, and, with streaming tears, cried:

"He is dead--he is dead--at St. Helena--Napoleon! Oh, Napoleon!"

A chapter from Isaiah came to the Cure's mind. He brought out his Bible
from the house, and, walking up and down, read aloud certain passages.
They kept singing in his ears all day

He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large
country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory
shall be the shame of thy lord's house....

And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant
Eliakim the son of Hilkiah

And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy
girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand....
And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for
a glorious throne to his father's house.

And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house,
the offspring and the issue....

He looked very benign as he quoted these verses in the pulpit on Sunday
morning, with a half smile, as of pleased meditation. He was lost to the
people before him, and when he began to speak, it was as in soliloquy.
He was talking to a vague audience, into that space where a man's eyes
look when he is searching his own mind, discovering it to himself. The
instability of earthly power, the putting down of the great, their exile
and chastening, and their restoration in their own persons, or in the
persons of their descendants--this was his subject. He brought the
application down to their own rude, simple life, then returned with it
to a higher plane.

At last, as if the memories of France, "beloved and incomparable,"
overcame him, he dwelt upon the bitter glory of the Revolution. Then,
with a sudden flush, he spoke of Napoleon. At that name the church
became still, and the dullest habitant listened intently. Napoleon was
in the air--a curious sequence to the song that was sung on the night
of Valmond's arrival, when a phrase was put in the mouths of the parish,
which gave birth to a personal reality. "Vive Napoleon!" had been on
every lip this week, and it was an easy step from a phrase to a man.

The Cure spoke with pensive dignity of Napoleon's past career, his work
for France,