ere I left this leg. At Jena; there I dropped this hand.
Then came the peace, made upon the raft at Tilsit; then the war in
Spain--a villanous war, and one I did not like at all. Napoleon was not
there. Where he was not, the sun did not shine. Then we returned to
Paris. The emperor married a grand princess. He had a son--a baby
son--the King of Rome! Then, too, what _fetes!_ A fine child the King of
Rome! I saw him often in his little goat-carriage at the Tuileries. I
do not know what has become of him. They say he is dead; but I do not
believe that, any more than I believe that my emperor is dead. Two
deaths? Bah! old women's stories,--witch stories, good only to frighten
children to sleep. When my emperor and his son come back, we shall be
amazed that we ever believed them dead!"

"But he disappeared--the emperor disappeared--he vanished," persisted
the scholar.

[Illustration: "_Your
Emperor was banished to a rock"--The Exiled Emperor (From the Painting
by W Q Orchardson, entitled "Napoleon on board the Bellerophon_.")]

"Yes; he disappeared," the veteran admitted. "For after that came the
Russian Campaign. Ah, but it was a cold one! Such snow, such ice; so
cold, so cold! It was then I lost my eye. My leg I left at Austerlitz,
my arm at Jena; my eye I dropped somewhere in the Beresina,--so much the
better. I could not see that freeze-out. Then they sent me here. And
since that I do not know what has happened. They tell me--you tell
me--much. But to believe such foolish stories! Bah! I am not a baby.
They tell me that the emperor--my emperor--was exiled to Elba; that he
returned again to France; that he reigned a hundred days; that a battle
was fought at--where was it?"

"Waterloo," suggested the scholar.

"Eh, yes, you say, at Waterloo; and you say we lost it? As if we could
lose a battle, and Napoleon there! Then you will say that the empire was
no longer an empire, but a kingdom; and that he who governed was called
Louis the Eighteenth, and others after him, but not my emperor. Bah!
foolish stories all!"

"But they are true, old Nonesuch," said the youngster sadly.

"Yes; they are true," echoed the other veterans. And the scholar added,
"Yes; and your emperor was banished by those rascal English to a
rock--the rock of St. Helena--a horrid rock, miles and miles out in the
ocean. But he is here among us again." The Soldiers' Home, in the midst
of his veterans, in the heart of his beautiful Paris.

[Illustr