ssor on his return. Cockades and flags
were altered to suit the occasion, by inserting a stripe of red here
and another of blue there. One national guard, but only one, remained
faithful to the Bourbons; he would neither alter his cockade nor his
colors, and remained true to his patrons in the hour of disaster.
Everybody asked, what would the Emperor do with him? Would he be
imprisoned or banished? Neither; the Emperor sent him a cross of the
order of merit! It is, no doubt, grand to have overthrown the
brilliant army of Murad Bey in Egypt; to have vanquished Melas,
Wurmser, and Davidowich in Italy; Bragation, Kutusoff, and Barclay de
Tolly in Russia; Mack in Germany; and thus to have reduced the entire
continent of Europe to subjection. But it appears to us that a still
greater feat was the victory he gained over himself, when, in the
midst of the fever excited by his return, and the animosity of
parties, he gave this cross to the solitary adherent of misfortune.
Having made these slight digressions into the future, it is proper
that we should return to our story.

The mysterious roads of Providence do not always lead to the places
they seem to go; it often happens that, when we expect to be swallowed
up by the breakers that surround us, we are wafted into a harbor, and
that we encounter success where we only anticipated disappointment.
The rigorous enactments of the continental system, that the other day
had ruined the two brothers, became all at once the source of
unlooked-for wealth; for, on account of the scarcity of colonial
produce, a scarcity dating from the prohibitory laws promulgated in
1807, the merchandise of the young men had more than quadrupled in
value.

From the grade of hard-working mechanics they were suddenly promoted
to the rank of wealthy merchants. They consequently abandoned the
laborious employments that for a month had enabled them to live, and
to keep despair and misery at bay. Willis, greatly to his
inconvenience, found himself transformed into a gentleman at large,
which caused him to make some material alterations in the manipulation
and quality of his pipes.

Fritz busied himself in collecting in, the by no means inconsiderable
sums, which their property realised. He did not value the gold for its
glitter or its sound, he valued it only as a means of enabling himself
and his brother to return promptly to their ocean home. Jack undertook
the task of finding a scalpel to save his mother