"You have the right to, if you wish it, of course.... But if you fight for him you must enlist in some other troop than this."
"Oh! that will suit me all right," said the man: "there are plenty of engagements going on nowadays!"
He therefore left Charras's ranks and went to seek service in a troop led by a chief who was of less decided opinions.
At this very moment, by some strange coincidence, a man called Chopin, who owned the stables of the Luxembourg, arrived at a gallop at the place de l'Odéon; he was clad in a buttoned-up frock-coat, wore a three-cornered hat and rode a white horse. He pulled up in the very centre of the square, with one hand held behind his back. The resemblance to Napoleon was so striking and extraordinary that the whole crowd, not a single member of which had taken sides with the expelled Bonapartist, began to shout with one accord and simultaneously, "Vive l'Émpereur!" One good woman of seventy took the joke quite seriously and fell on her knees, making the sign of the cross, and exclaiming—
"Oh! Jesus! I shall not die, then, before I have seen him once more!..."
If Chopin had desired to put himself at the head of the six to eight hundred men there present, it is probable that he could have marched straight off to Vienna.
Charras was furious, whilst I completely forgot the political situation of the moment and became solely a philosophic student of humanity. I only needed a tub and Laïs and I could have established myself there for ever in the place de l'Odéon, as Diogenes established himself in the gymnasium of Corinth.
But a serious discussion drew me from my dreams. They wanted to make Charras general-in-chief and he would not take the position. He offered the citizens Lothon, a tall, fine young fellow, a combination of Hercules and Antinous, as a suitable candidate, instead; his principal reason being that he was on foot while Lothon rode on horseback; therefore, he considered Lothon had far more claim to the generalship. And, in truth, no general-in-chief was ever seen afoot. But Lothon excused himself fiercely from being appointed to this high post. For all this, he was on the point of being obliged to yield, when a gentleman came up to him and whispered—
"Oh! monsieur, if you will not be general-in-chief, let me take your place.... I am an ex-captain and I think I have a right to this honour."