"It's a heavy loss," said the Emperor, "but it took a snow-storm to do it. I'd rather fight bears than blizzards; but the French must not be discouraged. Let them join the army. The Russians have captured three thousand and forty-eight officers whose places must be filled. If that isn't encouragement to join the army I expect to raise next spring I don't know what is. As for the eagles--you can get gold eagles in America for ten dollars apiece, so why repine! On with the dance, let joy be unconfined!"It was too late, however. The Empire had palled. Bonaparte could have started a comic paper and still have failed to rouse Paris from its lethargy, and Paris is the heart of France. Storms gathered, war-clouds multiplied, the nations of the earth united against him, the King of Rome began cutting his teeth and destroyed the Emperor's rest. The foot-ball of fate that chance had kicked so high came down to earth with a sickening thud, and Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica yielded to the inevitable.
"Fouche," he said, sending for the exiled minister in his extremity, "when I lost you I lost my leading man--the star of my enterprise.
During your absence the prompter's box has been empty, and I don't know what to do. The world is against me--even France. I see but one thing left. Do you think I could restore confidence by divorcing Marie-Louise and remarrying Josephine? It strikes me that an annual shaking-up of that nature would sort of liven matters up.
"No!" said Fouche, "it won't do. They've had one divorce. You mustn't repeat yourself now. You forget the thing I've always tried to impress upon you. Be New; not parvenu or ingenue, but plain up and down New is what you need to be. It would have been just the same if you'd thrashed Russia. They'd have forced you to go on and conquer China; then they'd have demanded a war with Japan, after which they'd have dethroned you if you didn't annex the Sandwich Islands to the United States, and then bag the whole thing for France. This is what you get for wanting to rule the French people.
You can't keep quiet--you've got to have a move on you constantly or they won't have you. Furthermore, you mustn't make 'em laugh except at the other man. You've had luck in that respect, but there's no telling how long it will continue now that you have a son. He's beginning to say funny things, and they're generally at your expense, and one or two people hereabouts have snickered at you already.""What do you mean?" said Napoleon, with a frown. "What has the boy said about me?""He told the Minister of Finance the other night that now that you were the father of a real Emperor's grandson, you had a valid claim to respectability, and he'd bite the head off the first person who said you hadn't," said Fouche.
"Well--that certainly was standing up for his daddy," said the Emperor, fondly.
"Ye-e-es," said Fouche, "but it's one of those double back-action remarks that do more harm than good.""Well," said Bonaparte, desperately, "let the boy say what he pleases; he's my son, and he has that right. The thing for us to decide is, what shall we do now?""There are three things left," said Fouche.
"And they?" asked the Emperor.
"Write Trilby, abdicate, or commit suicide. The first is beyond you.
You know enough about Paris, but your style is against you. As for the second, abdication--if you abdicate you may come back, and the trouble will begin all over again. If you commit suicide, you won't have any more rows. The French will be startled, and say that it's a splendid climax, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that some other man will try to please them with the same result.""It shall be abdication," said the Emperor, with a sigh. "I don't mind suicide, but, hang it, Fouche, if I killed myself I could not read what the papers said about it. As for writing Trilby, it would do more for royalty than for me. Therefore I will go to Fontainebleau and abdicate. I will go into exile at Elba. Exiles are most interesting people, and it may be that I'll have another chance."This course was taken, and on the 20th of April, 1814, Bonaparte abdicated. His speech to his faithful guard was one of the most affecting farewells in history, and had much to do with the encore which Napoleon received less than a year after. Escorted by four commissioners, one from each of the great allied powers, Austria, Russia, England, and Prussia, and attended by a few attached friends and servants, Bonaparte set out from Paris. The party occupied fourteen carriages, Bonaparte in the first; and as they left the capital the ex-Emperor, leaning out of the window, looked back at the train of conveyances and sighed.
"What, Sire? You sigh?" cried Bertrand.
"Yes, Bertrand, yes. Not for my departed glory, but because I am a living Frenchman, and not a dead Irishman.""And why so, Sire?" asked Bertrand.
"Because, my friend, of the carriages. There are fourteen in this funeral. Think, Bertrand," he moaned, in a tone rendered doubly impressive by the fact that it reminded one of Henry Irving in one of his most mannered moments. "Think how I should have enjoyed this moment had I been a dead Irishman!"