n instead of a sword.

In the "sullen interval" of the crisis the two talk; and Renaud is led
into telling the chief experiences of his life. He had known little of
his father--a soldier before him--but had been taken by that father on
Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition till, at Malta, he was stopped by
Bonaparte himself, who would have no boy on it save Casabianca's (pity
he did not stop him too!). But he only sends Renaud back to the Military
Academy, and afterwards makes him his page. The father is blown up in
the _Orient_, but saved, and, though made prisoner by us, is well
treated, and, as being of great age and broken health, allowed, by
Collingwood's interest, to go to Sicily. He dies on the way; but is able
to send a letter to his son, which is one of the finest examples of
Vigny's peculiar melancholy irony. In this he recants his worship of the
(now) Emperor. It has, however, no immediate effect on the son. But
before long, by an accident, he is an unwilling and at first unperceived
witness of the famous historical or half-historical interview at
Fontainebleau between Napoleon and the Pope, where the bullied Holy
Father enrages, but vanquishes, the conqueror by successively
ejaculating the two words _Commediante!_ and _Tragediante!_ (This scene
is again admirable.) The page's absence from his ordinary duty excites
suspicion, and the Emperor, _more_ _suo_, exiles him to the
farce-tragedy of the Boulogne flotilla, where the clumsy flat-bottoms
are sunk at pleasure as they exercise[260] by English frigates. The
father's experience is repeated with the son, for he also is captured
and also falls into the beneficent power of Collingwood, whom Vigny
almost literally beatifies.[261] The Admiral keeps the young man on
parole with him four years at sea, and when he has--"so as by water" if
not fire--overcome the temptation of breaking his word, effects exchange
for him. But, as is well known (the very words occur here, though I do
not know whether for the first time or not), Napoleon's motto in such
cases was: "Je n'aime pas les prisonniers. On se fait tuer." He goes
back to his duty, but avoids recognition as much as possible, and
receives no, or hardly any, promotion. Once, just after Montmirail, he
and the Emperor meet, whether with full knowledge on the latter's part
is skilfully veiled. But they touch hands. Still Captain Renaud's
_guignon_ pursues him in strange fashion; and during a night attack on a
Russian post ne