ostillions
and ostlers with relays of horses are waiting by the roadside,
gazing northward and listening for sounds. A few loungers
have assembled.]

FIRST POSTILLION

He ought to be nigh by this time. I should say he'd be very glad
to get this here Isle of Elba, wherever it may be, if words be true
that he's treated to such ghastly compliments on's way!

SECOND POSTILLION

Blast-me-blue, I don't care what happens to him! Look at Joachim
Murat, him that's made King of Naples; a man who was only in the
same line of life as ourselves, born and bred in Cahors, out in
Perigord, a poor little whindling place not half as good as our
own. Why should he have been lifted up to king's anointment, and
we not even have had a rise in wages? That's what I say.

FIRST POSTILLION

But now, I don't find fault with that dispensation in particular.
It was one of our calling that the Emperor so honoured, after all,
when he might have anointed a tinker, or a ragman, or a street
woman's pensioner even. Who knows but that we should have been
king's too, but for my crooked legs and your running pole-wound?

SECOND POSTILLION

We kings? Kings of the underground country, then, by this time, if
we hadn't been too rotten-fleshed to follow the drum. However, I'll
think over your defence, and I don't mind riding a stage with him,
for that matter, to save him from them that mean mischief here.
I've lost no sons by his battles, like some others we know.

[Enter a TRAVELLER on horseback.]

Any tidings along the road, sir of the Emperor Napoleon that was?

TRAVELLER

Tidings verily! He and his escort are threatened by the mob at
every place they come to. A returning courier I have met tells me
that at an inn a little way beyond here they have strung up his
effigy to the sign-post, smeared it with blood, and placarded it
"The Doom that awaits Thee!" He is much delayed by such humorous
insults. I have hastened ahead to escape the uproar.

SECOND POSTILLION

I don't know that you have escaped it. The mob has been waiting
up all night for him here.

MARKET-WOMAN [coming up]

I hope by the Virgin, as 'a called herself, that there'll be no
riots here! Though I have not much pity for a man who could treat
his wife as he did, and that's my real feeling. He might at least
have kept them both on, for half a husband is be