"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.