They were sitting together at supper, some of them, a few evenings before their turn came to leave, when the remark was made that “the little corporal” would never have another chance, but was driven into a hole at last.
“Think you so?” replied Poivre; “I am not so sure of that. It must be a curious hole that man cannot get out of sooner or later. He has the cleverness of the devil, if there be one.”
“Would you fight again for him, Poivre, if he did come out of his hole?”
“Not I,” said he, “if I could help it. Some of us have had enough of him. We begin to think we have not been fighting for “France and glory,” but for him, and he does not care two pins for us. But there are thousands of fellows who are such fools that, if the emperor were only able to shew himself again, they would flock to him, and be ready to become food for powder the next moment. I am going to prophecy, my friends. Mark what I say. When all our countrymen have been set free, Napoleon will have an army, a grand army, ready to hand. Depend on it, he has his eye on this, and will make use of the opportunity; but he will not find Marc Poivre in the ranks!”
Human prophecies are acute guesses, and when they come true, correct guesses. Such was Poivre’s prophecy. But was it not a fatal mistake, though, perhaps, one that could not be avoided, to place an army within Napoleon’s
grasp, even as we had given him back the sailors that manned his navy by the bogus peace of Amiens?
This at least is certain, that the volcano which had desolated Europe for so many years but had become quiescent when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau, burst forth again with an awful blaze in 1815, and was only extinguished for ever at Waterloo. So, some at least of the prisoners at Norman Cross may again have fought gallantly against us.
Captain Tournier, like the rest, was longing to see once more his old home, but had first to pay a farewell visit to his friends at the Manor House. He was with them only a couple of nights, and Villemet was invited to stay also. The meeting could not be otherwise than mingled with sadness to each of them. They had known each other now for nearly six years, and those years had been made interesting by intercourse of no ordinary kind.
At dinner, Cosin was the most cheerful of
them all. He was really very sorry to part with his friends, especially with Tournier, whom he loved as a brother; but he could not for the life of him make out why two men who had just obtained the freedom they had so long pined for, and were on the point of starting for the homes they had dreamt of every night for years, should be so awfully down. And least of all, like a stupid fellow that he was, and as most men are in such matters, could he imagine why Alice should take upon herself to look so supremely wretched, and hardly open her mouth all dinner time.