“I saw the Emperor,” he resumed, “standing by the bridge, motionless, not feeling the cold—­was that human?  He looked at the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptians.  Bah! all that passed him, women, army-waggons, artillery, all were shattered, destroyed, ruined.  The bravest carried the eagles; for the eagles, d’ye see, were France, the nation, all of you! they were the civil and the military honour that must be kept pure; could their heads be lowered because of the cold?  It was only near the Emperor that we warmed ourselves, because when he was in danger we ran, frozen as we were—­we, who wouldn’t have stretched a hand to save a friend.  They told us he wept at night over his poor family of soldiers.  Ah! none but he and Frenchmen could have got themselves out of that business.  We did get out, but with losses, great losses, as I tell you.  The Allies captured our provisions.  Men began to betray him, as the Red Man predicted.  Those chatterers in Paris, who had held their tongues after the Imperial Guard was formed, now thought he was dead; so they hoodwinked the prefect of police, and hatched a conspiracy to overthrow the empire.  He heard of it; it worried him.  He left us, saying:  ’Adieu, my children; guard the outposts; I shall return to you,’ Bah! without him nothing went right; the generals lost their heads, the marshals talked nonsense and committed follies; but that was not surprising, for Napoleon, who was kind, had fed ’em on gold; they had got as fat as lard, and wouldn’t stir; some stayed in camp when they ought to have been warming the backs of the enemy who was between us and France.

“But the Emperor came back, and he brought recruits, famous recruits; he changed their backbone and made ’em dogs of war, fit to set their teeth into anything; and he brought a guard of honour, a fine body indeed!—­all bourgeois, who melted away like butter on a gridiron.

“Well, spite of our stern bearing, here’s everything going against us; and yet the army did prodigies of valour.  Then came battles on the mountains, nations against nations—­Dresden, Luetzen, Bautzen.  Remember these days, all of you, for ’twas then that Frenchmen were so particularly heroic that a good grenadier only lasted six months.  We triumphed always; yet there were those English, in our rear, rousing revolts against us with their lies!  No matter, we cut our way home through the whole pack of the nations.  Wherever the Emperor showed himself we followed him; for if, by sea or land, he gave us the word ‘Go!’ we went.  At last, we were in France; and many a poor foot-soldier felt the air of his own country restore his soul to satisfaction, spite of the wintry weather.  I can say for myself that it refreshed my life.  Well, next, our business was to defend France, our country, our beautiful France, against, all Europe, which resented our having laid down the law to the Russians, and pushed them back into their dens so that they couldn’t eat us up alive, as northern