ers are growing very ticklish now. That
old bat of a Stubbard has got scent of a rat, and is hunting about the
farm-houses. It would be bad for him if he came prowling here; that step
for inspectors is well contrived. Twenty feet fall on his head for my
friend; even his bull-neck would get the worst of that. And then, again,
there is that wretch of a Cheeseman, who could not even hang himself
effectually. If it were not for Polly, we would pretty soon enable
him, as the Emperor enabled poor Pichegru. And after his own bona fide
effort, who would be surprised to find him sus. per coll.? But Polly is
a nice girl, though becoming too affectionate. And jealous--good lack!
a grocer's daughter jealous, and a Carne compelled to humour her! What
idiots women are in the hands of a strong man! Only my mother--my mother
was not; or else my father was a weak one; which I can well believe from
my own remembrance of him. Well, one point at least shall be settled
to-morrow."

It was early in May, 1804, and Napoleon having made away to the best of
his ability--which in that way was pre-eminent--with all possible rivals
and probable foes, was receiving addresses, and appointing dummies, and
establishing foolscap guarantees against his poor fallible and flexible
self--as he had the effrontery to call it--with all the gravity, grand
benevolence, confidence in mankind (as fools), immensity of yearning
for universal good, and intensity of planning for his own, which have
hoodwinked the zanies in every age, and never more than in the present
age and country. And if France licked the dust, she could plead more
than we can--it had not been cast off from her enemy's shoes.

Carne's love of liberty, like that of most people who talk very largely
about it, was about as deep as beauty is declared to be; or even less
than that, for he would not have imperilled the gloss of his epiderm for
the fair goddess. So that it irked him very little that his Chief had
smashed up the Republic, but very greatly that his own hand should
be out in the cold, and have nothing put inside it to restore its
circulation. "If I had stuck to my proper line of work, in the
Artillery, which has made his fortune"--he could not help saying to
himself sometimes--"instead of losing more than a year over here, and
perhaps another year to follow, and all for the sake of these dirty old
ruins, and my mother's revenge upon this country, I might have been a
General by this time al