where or how. Will you not, then, my sweet
love, make all the gentlemen here your chamberlains, and permit me to
accept all the ladies of the company for my Maids of Honour or
ladies-in-waiting?"

"Softly, softly," cried Frial, who now began to be as intoxicated and as
ambitious as the general; "whenever Napoleon dies, I have more hope,
more: claim, and more right than you to the throne. I am in actual
service; and had not Bonaparte been the same, he might have still
remained upon the half-pay, obscure and despised. Were not most of the
Field-marshals and generals under him now, above him ten years ago? May
I not, ten years hence, if I am satisfied with you, General Liebeau, make
you also a Field-marshal, or my Minister of War; and you, Madame Liebeau,
a lady of my wife's wardrobe, as soon as I am married? I, too, have my
plans and my views, and perhaps one day you will recollect this
conversation, and not be sorry for my acquaintance."

"What! you a colonel, an Emperor, before me, who have so long been a
general?" howled Liebeau, who was no longer able to speak. "I would
sooner knock your brains out with this bottle than suffer such a
precedence; and my wife a lady of your wardrobe! she who has possessed
from her birth the soul of an Empress! No, sir! never will I take the
oath to you, nor suffer anybody else to take it."

"Then I will punish you as a rebel," retorted Frial; "and as sure as you
stand here you shall be shot."

Liebeau then rose up to fetch his sword, but the company interfered, and
the dispute about the priority of claim to the throne of France between
the ci-devant drummer and ci-devant jockey was left undecided. From the
words and looks of several of the captains present, I think that they
seemed, in their own opinions, to have as much prospect and expectation
to reign over the French Empire as either General Liebeau or Colonel
Frial.

As soon as I returned home I wrote down this curious conversation and
this debate about supremacy. To what a degradation is the highest rank
in my unfortunate country reduced when two such personages seriously
contend about it! I collected more subjects for meditation and
melancholy in this low company (where, by the bye, I witnessed more
vulgarity and more indecencies than I had before seen during my life)
than from all former scenes of humiliation and disgust since my return
here. When I the next day mentioned it to General de M------, whom you
have known as an