"Well, what say thou, Nonesuch,—you and your histories?" persisted the young admirer of the "Arabian Nights."
"As for me,—my faith! I like only marvellous."
[Illustration: "Beneath the great dome he rests"—The Hotel des Invalides
(The 'Soldiers' Home' in Paris, containing the Tomb of Napoleon)]
"And I tell you this, youngster," the old veteran cried, while his voice cracked into a tremble in his excitement, "there is more of the marvellous in the one little finger of my history than in all the characters you can crowd together in your 'Thousand and One Nights.' Bah!—Stephen, boy; light my pipe."
"And what is your history, Father Nonesuch?" demanded "the youngster," while two-armed Stephen, a gray old "boy" of seventy, filled and lighted the old veteran's pipe.
"My history?" cried old Nonesuch, struggling to his feet,—or rather to his foot,—and removing his hat, "it is, my son, that of the Emperor Napoleon!"
And at the word, each old soldier sprang also to his feet, and removed his hat silently and in reverence.
"Why, youngster!" old Father Nonesuch continued, dropping again to the bench, "if one wished to relate about my emperor a thousand and one stories a thousand and one nights; to see even a thousand and one days increased by a thousand and one battles, adding to that a thousand and one victories, one would have a thousand and a million million things—fine, glorious, delightful, to hear. For, remember, comrades," and the old man well-nigh exploded with his mathematical calculation, and the grandeur of his own recollections, "remember you this: I never left the great Napoleon!"