red,
though the day was warm. There were pleasanter prints inside. In one,
Napoleon with sternly folded arms gazed down at a sleeping sentry. In
another he reviewed troops at Fontainebleau, and again, from an
eminence, he overlooked a spirited battle, directing it with a masterly
wave of his sabre. These things were a little disconcerting to one in
whom the blood-lust had diminished. He was better pleased with a steel
engraving of the coronation, and this he secured for a trifle. It was a
thing to nourish an ailing ego, a scene to draw sustenance from when
people overwhelmed you in street cars and took your gold watch.

Then there were books about Napoleon, a whole shelf of them. A lot of
authors had thought him worth writing about. He examined several
volumes. One was full of dreadful caricatures that the English had
delighted in. He found this most offensive and closed it quickly.
Probably that explained why he had always felt an instinctive antipathy
for the English.

"If you're interested in Napoleon things--" said the officious clerk,
and Bean went cold. He wondered if the fellow suspected something.

"Not at all, not at all!" he protested, and refused to look at any more
books.

He took his print of the coronation, securely wrapped, and went to
another store several blocks away. He could get a Napoleon book there,
where they wouldn't be suspicious. He found one that looked promising,
"Napoleon, Man and Lover," and still another entitled "The Hundred
Days." The latter had illustrations of the tomb, which he noted was in
Paris. Its architecture impressed him, and his hands trembled as he held
the book open. He had been buried with pomp, even with flamboyance.
Robber and killer he might have been, but the picture showed a throng of
admiring spectators looking down to where the dead colossus was chested,
and on the summit of the dome that rounded above that kingly
sarcophagus, a discriminating nation had put the cross of Christ in
gold.

Let people say what they would! With all this glory of sepulchre there
must be something in the man not to be wholly ashamed of.

And yet "Napoleon, Man and Lover," which he read that night, confirmed
his first impression that this strangely uncovered incident in his
Karmic past was, on the whole, scandalous; not a thing he would like to
have "get about." He sympathized with the poor boy driven from his
Corsican home, with the charity student of Brienne, with the young
artille