And yet he could not read the book without a certain evil quickening. Brutal though his method of approach had been, the man had conquered more than mere force may ever conquer. The Polish woman had come to love him; the little actress would have followed him to his lonely island. Others, too many others, had confessed his power.
He was ashamed of such a past, yet read it with a guilty relish. He recalled the flapper who had so boldly met his glance. He thought she would have been less bold if she could have known the man she looked at. He placed "Napoleon, Man and Lover" at the bottom of his trunk beside the scarlet cravat he had feared to wear. It was not a book to "leave around."
"The Hundred Days," which he read the following night, was a much less discouraging work. It told of defeat, but of how glorious a defeat! The escape from Elba, the landing in France and the march to Paris, conquering, where he passed, by the sheer magnetism of his personality! His spirit bounded as he read of this and of the frightened exit of that puny usurper before the mere rumour of his approach. Then that audacious staking of all on a throw of the dice—Waterloo and a deathless ignominy. He heard the sob-choked voices of the Old Guard as they bade their leader farewell—felt the despairing clasp of their hands!
Alone in his little room, high above the flaring night streets, the timid boy read of the Hundred Days, and thrilled to a fancied memory of them. The breath that checked on his lips, the blood that ran faster in his veins at the recital, went to nourish a body that contained the essential part of that hero—he was reading about himself! He forgot his mean surroundings—and the timidities of spirit that had brought him thus far through life almost with the feelings of a fugitive.
The Lords of Destiny had found him indeed untractable as the great Emperor, the world-figure, and, for his proudness of spirit, had decreed that he should affrightedly tread the earth again as Bunker Bean. Everything pointed to it. Even the golden bees of Napoleon! Were there not three B's in his own name? The shameful truth is that he had been christened "Bunker Bunker Bean." His fond and foolish mother had thus ingenuously sought to placate the two old Uncle Bunkers; unsuccessfully, be it added, for each had affected to believe that he took second place in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist in Chicago had once told him, for a paltry half-dollar, that those B's in his name were of a profoundly mystic significance.
Again, he was of distinguished French origin. Over and over had his worried mother sought to impress this upon him. The family was an old and noble one, fleeing from France, during a Huguenot persecution, to Protestant England where the true name "de Boncoeur" had been corrupted to "Bunker." At the time of his earliest dissatisfaction with the name he had even essayed writing it in the French manner—"B. de Boncoeur Bien"—supposing "Bien" to be approximate French for "Bean."
What more natural than that the freed soul, striving for another body, should have selected one of distinguished French ancestry? The commoner would inevitably seek to become a patrician.
It was a big thing; a thing to dream and wonder and calculate about. When he was puzzled or disturbed he would resort to the shell—a thing he had clung tenaciously to through all the years—sitting before it a long time, his eyes fixed upon it with hypnotic tensity.
What should it mean to him? How was his life to be modified by it? He did not doubt that changes would now ensue. He was already bolder in the public eye. If people stared superciliously at him, he sometimes stared back. That aggressive stout man could not now have bullied him out of his seat in the car with any mere looks.
The phrase "Napoleon of Finance" had stayed in his mind. Modernly the name seemed briefly to suggest some one who made a lot of money out of nothing but audacity. Certainly it was not being applied to soldiers or statesmen. This was interesting. If he made a lot of money he could move to the country and have plenty of room for the dog. And it seemed about the only field of adventure left for this peculiar genius. He began to think about making money. He knew vaguely how this was done: you bought stocks and then waited for the melon to be cut. You got on the inside of things. You were found to have bought up securities that trebled in value over night. Those that decreased in value had been bought by people who were not Napoleons. That was the gist of it. A Napoleonic mind would divine the way. "Napoleon knew human nature like a book," said one of the inspired historians. That was all you needed to know. He resolved to study human nature.