"Yes, Bertrand, yes. Not for my departed glory, but because I am a living Frenchman, and not a dead Irishman."
"And why so, Sire?" asked Bertrand.
"Because, my friend, of the carriages. There are fourteen in this funeral. Think, Bertrand," he moaned, in a tone rendered doubly impressive by the fact that it reminded one of Henry Irving in one of his most mannered moments. "Think how I should have enjoyed this moment had I been a dead Irishman!"
CHAPTER XI: ELBA—THE RETURN—WATERLOO—ST. HELENA 1814-1815
Bonaparte's spirits rose as the party proceeded. There were remarkable evidences all along the line of march that his greatness, while dimmed in one sense, had not diminished in others. A series of attacks upon him had been arranged, much to the fallen Emperor's delight.
"If you want to make a fellow popular, Bertrand," he remarked after one of them, "kick him when he's down. I'll wager I am having a better time now than Louis XVIII., and, after all, I regard this merely as a vacation. I'll have a good rest at Elba while Louis is pushing the button of government at Paris. After a while I'll come back and press the buttons and Louis will do the rest. There's some honey in the old Bees yet."
At Valence, however, the Emperor had a bitter cup to drain. Meeting Augereau there, with whom he had fallen out, he addressed him in his old-time imperial style, asking him what right he had to still live, and requesting him to stand out of his light. Augereau, taking advantage of the Emperor's fallen estate, replied in a spirited manner, calling Napoleon an ex-Emperor and a tin soldier, as well as applying several other epithets to his dethroned majesty which might be printed in a French book, but can have no place in this.
"We shall meet again," retorted Bonaparte, with a threatening gesture.
"Not if I see you first," replied Augereau. "If we do, however, it will be under a new system of etiquette."
"I'll bet you a crown you'll be singing a new tune inside of a year," cried the exasperated Bonaparte.