akfast in not a very cheerful mood, a
woman, of not very prepossessing appearance, entered. She came, she said,
to make a complaint against three wicked mids. They had taken the figure
of Bonaparte from the mantelpiece and knocked his head off; for so doing
she threatened to complain to the commandant if they did not pay her a
five-franc piece. I told her I would send for the decapitating youngsters,
and, if I found her complaint to be well-grounded, they should remunerate
her by giving her another Emperor, or paying her for the old one. She
departed, but not in peace, as I could hear her grumbling as she went
along the vestibule. At noon next day these Emperor-destroying lads came
to my lodgings to answer the complaint.

"We lodge in this woman's house," said one of them, "and one morning we
thought we would amuse ourselves by bringing Bonaparte fairly to a court
martial. Our charges against him were tyranny and oppression, imprisonment
against our consent, and not granting an exchange of prisoners. We found
him guilty on all the charges, and as he could make no defence, we
sentenced him first to be shot, but we thought that too honourable for
him; then to be hanged, and lastly, to have his mischief-making head
chopped off by a case-knife, which sentence was carried into execution;
but as we do not wish the woman to quarrel with us, we have no objection
to pay her two francs, which we think is too much by thirty-nine sous."

"You value Emperors, gentlemen," said I, "at a very cheap rate." "Yes,"
replied they, "such an Emperor as Bonaparte, who we think is a most
unrelenting tyrant." "Hush!" cried I, "walls sometimes have ears. Go and
make your peace with your landlady, offer her the two francs, and if she
will not accept it send her to me, for, to tell you the truth, were she to
go with her complaint to the commandant, you most likely would be shut up
in the old convent and kept there for a month." I gave them a glass of
wine, in which they drank the downfall of Bonaparte and departed. I
understood afterwards this knotty point was settled amicably; the woman,
not wishing to lose her lodgers, accepted the money. As the lying
"Moniteur" was the only paper we could read, we of course were always
deceived, and supposed from its contents that France was carrying
everything before her. More than eighteen months had now passed away, like
a disturbed dream, since I became a prisoner, when the order came, like a
flash of lightn