and the rest
of them dividing the spoils! No! There were some left, and in their
hands lay the splendid enterprise.

Quietly they had pieced together this sum and that, till there was now
stored away two-million francs. Two or three frigates and a corvette
or two; then the work would go forward. Only a little while to wait,
and then they would bring their beloved chief back to France and to his
own again. Had he not written: "Come for me, _mon brave_. They say
they have orders to shoot me. Come; better carry my corpse away than
that I should rot here for years to come." They would come. But this
year went by and another; one by one the Old Guard died off, smaller
and smaller had drawn the circle. The vile rock called St. Helena
still remained impregnable. On a certain day they came to tell him
that the emperor was no more. Soon he was all alone but one; these
brave soldiers who had planned with him were no more. An alien, an
outcast, he too longed for night. And what should he do with it, this
vast treasure, every franc of which meant sacrifice and unselfishness,
bravery and loyalty? Let the gold rot. He would bury all knowledge of
it in yonder chimney, confident that no one would ever find the
treasure, since he alone possessed the key to it, having buried it
himself. So passed the greatest Caesar of them all, the most brilliant
empire, the bravest army. Ah! had the king of Rome lived! Had there
been some direct Napoleonic blood to take up the work! Vain dreams!
The Great Man's brothers had been knaves and fools.

"And so to-night," the narrator ended, "I bury the casket in the
chimney; within it, my hopes and few trinkets of the past of which I am
an integral part. Good-by, little glove; good-by, brave old medal! I
am sending a drawing of the chimney to the good Abbe le Fanu. He will
outlive me. He lives on forty-centime the day; treasures mean nothing
to him; his cry, his eternal cry, is always of the People. He will
probably tear it up. The brig will never come again. So best. Death
will come soon. And I shall die unknown, unloved, forgotten. _Bonne
nuit_!"

Mr. Donovan alone remained in normal state of mind. 'Twas all
faradiddle, this talk of finding treasures. The old Frenchman had been
only half-baked. He dumped his tools into his bag, and, with the
wisdom of his kind, departed. There would be another job to-morrow,
putting the bricks back.

The others, however, were for t