The Bronze Eagle

sat outside the "Grand Dauphin" all unconscious of the pro

d though both had been silent while they sipped their first mug

ws upon the rough deal table, because he wanted to talk confidentially with

suppose that when England hears the news, she will up and at him again, attacking him,

torted the Englishman drily, "nor has the news of t

lereagh will rave and your Wellington will gather up his arm

aim the hero, the

ill-the peo

hrugged his

e Dauphiné, perhaps-what about the town folk?-your mayors and préfets?-your tradespeople? your shopk

ont, and this time more vehemently than before. "When y

r the genius of Napoleon than I have; his love of France is sublime, his desire for her glory superb. But underlying his love of country, there is the love of self, the mad desire to rule, to conquer, to humiliate. It led him to Moscow and thence to Elba, it has brought him back to Fra

e to give the hero the final push,"

ell me, have we not cause enough to hate him? For fifteen years has he not tried to ruin us, to bring us to our knees? tried to throttle our commerce? b

ness, but now he added more lightly, as i

ld refuse ungrudging admiration to Napoleon himself and to his genius. But as a nation England has her interests to safeguard. She h

the other, "a nation

pose. We are shopkeepers

nse," protested Victor de Marmont with the ready po

buy goods and sell them again. . . . I buy the gloves which our friend M. Dumoulin manufactures at Grenoble and

hich suggested rather than proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest tone of bitterness app

end M. le Comte de Cambray, who must have made a very violent sacrifice to his feelings when he admitted me a

ded the people of France into becoming something worse than man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America teach them

ent on this peroration, the yo

e-after I had met you in his house as an honoured guest and on what appear

r than our mutual friend M. Dumoulin, glovemaker, of Grenoble-a highly worthy man whom M. le Comte

anything that pertains to trade, and an avowed c

out that," assented

ot know of your co

ove

people in Greno

!" replied the En

?" queried

that quiet, good-humoured smile lingering

I never could understand it . . . a

Grand Chamberlain of France, etc., etc., came to sit at the same table as a vendor and buyer of gloves," said Clyffurde gaily. "There's

ug of the shoulders, "people like the de Cambrays

f ordinary gratitude that imposed its dictum even up

red de Marmont, "

brother-in-law and two of their faithful servants, were rescued from the very foot of the

" said de Mar

er's friend. When my business affairs sent me to Grenoble, Sir Percy warmly recommended me to the man whose life he had saved.

in, a tradesman, and avowed Bonapartist-two unpardonable crimes in the eyes of M. le Comte de Cambray," he added with a return to his former bi

sitive lips were pressed tightly together as i

rned away from de Marmont it was in o

never led the Comte to supp

ng. But he has taken my political convi

ent darkened his face, making it appea

ack. But de Marmont gave her over wilfully, scurvily to the allies. But for his abominable act of cowardice the Emperor never would have had to endure the shame of his temporary exile at Elba, and Louis de Bourbon would never have had the chance of wallowing for twelve months upon the throne of France. But that which is a source of irreparable shame to me

that you are just an ardent Bonaparti

these people!" he continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed excitement. "They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I tell you! the terrible reprisals of the revolution which culminated in that appalling Reign of Terror have taught them absolutely nothing! They have not learnt the great lesson of the revolution, that the people will no longer endure their arrogance and their pretensions, that the old regime is dead-dead!

ne with them," said Clyffurde, his quiet voice in st

of Moskowa and next to Napoleon himself the greatest soldier of France, has seen his wife treated little better than a chambermaid by the Duchesse d'Angoulême and the ladies of the old n

spoke: his voice now sounded hoarse and his throat seemed dry. Presently he raised his mug to his lips and d

nging. Love, hatred, prejudices and contempt-all were portrayed on de Marmont's mobile face: they glowed in his dark eyes and breathed through his quivering nostrils. Now he rested his elbow on the tabl

wn behind the wide brow, behind those same overshadowed eyes, a keen observer would of a surety have detected the signs of a latent volcano of passions, all the more strong and virile a

what of Mlle. Cry

the other curtly,

trong in her convictions and her e

joined de Marmont fier

e learns tha

. "We sign our marriage contract to-night: the wedding

me so tightly clenched that the hard knuckles looked as if they would burst through their fetters of sinew

strous. . . . In view, too, of what has occurred in the past few days . .

y proclaim our loyalty. The return of the Emperor will once more put his dukes and his marshals in their rightful place on a level with the highest nobility of France. The Comte de Cambray will realise that all his hopes of regaining his fortune through the favours of the Bourbons have by

de, almost appealingly, for his whole soul h

to his family escutcheon and not a sou in his pockets. She is very young, and very inexperienced. She has seen nothing of the world as

shmen," murmured Clyff

mphasis. "The man hasn't a sou. Even Crystal realised from the first that nothing ever c

would she ever have consented to marry you,

to love me presently when St. Genis has disappeared out of her little world, and she will accept

to change with a few arguments the whole cynical nature of a man? And what right had he even to interfere? The Comte de Cambray and Mademoiselle Crys

to win a wife on such ter

nly woman I have ever cared for. She will love me in time, I doubt not

tes and a certain similarity of political ideals had forged between him and the stranger had been strained to snapping point, and this for a reason which he could not very well understand. He drank another draugh

l personality, the square shoulders, the head well erect, the strong Anglo-Saxon chin firmly set, the slender hands always in repose. In the whole attitude of the man there was an air o

f pity-de Marmont was not sure which, but somehow the look worried him and he would

ughing of the northeast wind as it whistled through the pines, whilst from the tiny chapel which hel

had paused an hour ago in sight of the little hamlet, a man on hor

mont woke fro

Emery,"

table where he had laid it down, tossed it up into the a

l'Empe