II.--"Vive l'Empereur!"
For some days, though all knew Napoleon had set foot in France, no one dared talk of it aloud. Only the looks of the half-pay officers betrayed their anxiety. If they had possessed horses and arms I am sure they would have set out to meet their emperor.
On March 8, Zébédé entered our house and said abruptly, "The two first batallions are starting."
"They are going to stop him?" said M. Goulden.
"Yes, they'll stop him, that is very likely," Zébédé answered, winking. At the foot of the stairs he drew me aside and whispered, "Look inside my cap, Joseph; all the soldiers have got it, too."
Sure enough it was the old tricolour cockade, which had been removed on the return of Louis XVIII.
At last the papers had to admit that Buonaparte had escaped from Elba. What a scene it was in the café the night the papers arrived! M. Goulden and I were hardly seated before the place was filled with people, and it was so close the windows had to be opened.
Commandant Margarot mounted on a table with other officers all around him, and began to read the "Gazette" aloud. It took a long time, the reading, and the people laughed and jeered at the passages that said the troops were faithful to the king, that Buonaparte was surrounded and would soon be taken, and that the illustrious Ney and the other marshals had hastened to place their swords at the service of the king. The commandant read on firmly in that distinct voice of his until he came to the order calling upon the French to seize Buonaparte and give him up dead or alive.
Then his whole face changed and his eyes glittered. He took the "Gazette" up and tore it into little pieces, and, drawing himself up, his long arms stretched out, cried, "Vive l'Empereur!" with all his might. Immediately all the half-pay officers took up the cry, and "Vive l'Empereur!" was repeated again by the very soldiers posted outside the town hall when they heard the shout.
The commandant was carried shoulder high round the café, and everyone was now calling out, "Vive l'Empereur!" I saw the tears in the eyes of the commandant, tears at hearing the name he loved best acclaimed once more.