seeing the Emperor do this with the geographies. [Here
the old soldier nimbly drew a circle with his foot on the floor of the
barn.]

"There!" he would say, "that shall be a kingdom!" And it was a kingdom.
Ah, that was a great time! Colonels became generals while you were
looking at them; generals became marshals, and marshals became kings.
There's one of those kings still left, to remind Europe of that time;
but he is a Gascon, and has betrayed France in order to keep his crown.
He doesn't blush for the shame of it, either; because crowns, you
understand, are made of gold! Finally, even sappers, if they knew how to
read, became nobles all the same. I myself have seen in Paris eleven
kings and a crowd of princes, surrounding Napoleon like rays of the sun.
Every soldier had a chance to see how a throne fitted him, if he was
worthy of it, and when a corporal of the Guard passed by he was an
object of curiosity; because all had a share in the glory of the
victories, which were perfectly well known to everybody through the
bulletins.

And what a lot of battles there were! Austerlitz, where the army
maneuvered as if on parade; Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a
lake as if Napoleon had blown them in with a single puff; Wagram, where
we fought three days without flinching. In short, there were as many
battles as there are saints in the calendar. And it was proved then that
Napoleon had in his scabbard the real sword of God. He felt regard for
his soldiers, too, and treated them just as if they were his children,
always taking pains to find out if they were well supplied with shoes,
linen, overcoats, bread, and cartridges. But he kept up his dignity as
sovereign all the same; because to reign was his business. However,
that didn't make any difference. A sergeant, or even a common soldier,
could say to him "Emperor," just as you sometimes say "my dear fellow"
to me. He was one that you could argue with, if necessary; he slept on
the snow with the rest of us; and, in short, he appeared almost like any
other man. But when the grape-shot were kicking up the dust at his very
feet, I have seen him going about coolly,--no more disturbed by them
than you are at this minute,--looking through his field-glass now and
then, and attending all the time to his business. Of course that made
the rest of us as calm and serene as John the Baptist. I don't know how
he managed it, but when he spoke to us, his words put fire into our
hear