THE DUKE D'ABRANTES.

While the faithful were rallying around Napoleon to render assistance to
the hero in his hour of peril--while even his brother Louis, forgetting
the mortifications and injuries he had sustained at the emperor's hands,
hastened to his side, there was one of the most devoted kept away from
him by fate--one upon whom the emperor could otherwise have depended in
life and death.

This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who, descended from
an humble family, had by his merit and heroism elevated himself to the
rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed to respond when the ominous
roll of the war-drum recalled all Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it
was not his will, but fate, that kept him away.

Junot--the hero of so many battles, the chevalier without fear and
without reproach, the former governor of Madrid, the present governor of
Istria and Illyria--Junot was suffering from a visitation of the most
fearful of all diseases--his brain was affected! The scars that covered
his head and forehead, and testified so eloquently to his gallantry,
announced at the same time the source of his disease. His head, furrowed
by sabre-strokes, was outwardly healed, but the wounds had affected
his brain.

The hero of so many battles was transported into a madman. And yet,
this madman was still the all-powerful, despotic ruler of Istria and
Illyria. Napoleon, in appointing him governor of these provinces, had
invested him with truly royal authority. Knowing the noble disposition,
fidelity, and devotion of his brother-in-arms, he had conferred upon him
sovereign power to rule in his stead. There was, therefore, no one who
could take the sceptre from his hand, and depose him from his high
position. Napoleon had placed this sceptre in his hand, and he alone
could demand it of him. Even the Viceroy of Italy--to whom the Chambers
of Istria appealed for help in their anxiety--even Eugene, could afford
them no relief. He could only say to them: "Send a courier to the
emperor, and await his reply."

But at that time it was not so easy a matter to send couriers a distance
of a thousand miles; then there were no railroads, no telegraphs. The
Illyrians immediately sent a courier to the emperor, with an entreaty
for their relief, but the Russian proverb, "Heaven is high, and the
emperor distant," applied to them also! Weeks must elapse before the
courier could return with the emperor's reply; until then, there was