te.

Ecstatic delight, joyful enthusiasm, succeeds the frantic cries of a
while ago. Napoleon entering the city of Grenoble was nearly crushed to
death by the frenzy of the crowd. Cheered to the echoes, surrounded by
a delirious populace which hardly allowed him to move, it was hours
before he succeeded in reaching the Hotel des Trois-Dauphins, where he
was resolved to spend the night, since it was kept by an ex-soldier, one
of his own Old Guard of the Italian campaign.

The enthusiasm was kept up all night. The town was illuminated. Until
dawn men and women paraded the streets singing the "Marseillaise" and
shouting "Vive l'Empereur!"

In a small room, simply furnished but cosy and comfortable, the great
adventurer, who had conquered half the world and lost it and had now set
out to conquer it again, sat with half a dozen of his most faithful
friends: Cambronne and Raoul, Victor de Marmont and Emery.

On the table spread out before him was an ordnance map of the province;
his clenched hand rested upon it; his eyes, those eagle-like, piercing
eyes which had so often called his soldiers to victory, gazed out
straight before him, as if through the bare, white-washed walls of this
humble hotel room he saw the vision of the brilliant halls of the
Tuileries, the imperial throne, the Empress beside him, all her
faithlessness and pusillanimity forgiven, his son whom he worshipped,
his marshals grouped around him; and with a gesture of proud defiance he
threw back his head and said loudly:

"Until to-day I was only an adventurer. To-night I am a prince once
more."

IV

It was the next morning in that same sparsely-furnished and uncarpeted
room of the Hotel des Trois-Dauphins that Napoleon spoke to Victor de
Marmont, to Emery and Dumoulin about the money which had been stolen
last year from the Empress and which he understood had been deposited
in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville.

"I am not going," he said, "to levy a war tax on my good city of
Grenoble, but my good and faithful soldiers must be paid, and I must
provision my army in case I encounter stronger resistance at Lyons than
I can cope with, and am forced to make a detour. I want the money--the
Empress' money, which that infamous Talleyrand stole from her. So you,
de Marmont, had best go straight away to the Hotel de Ville and in my
name summon the prefet to appear before me. You can tell him at once
that it is on account of the money."

"I will go at onc