"You owe me a story," said La Fosseuse at last, in coaxing tones.

"I will tell it at once," answered Genestas. "On the evening before the
battle of Friedland," he went on, after a moment, "I had been sent with
a despatch to General Davoust's quarters, and I was on the way back to
my own, when at a turn in the road I found myself face to face with the
Emperor. Napoleon gave me a look.

"'You are Captain Genestas, are you not?' he said.

"'Yes, your Majesty.'

"'You were out in Egypt?'

"'Yes, your Majesty.'

"'You had better not keep to the road you are on,' he said; 'turn to the
left, you will reach your division sooner that way.'

"That was what the Emperor said, but you would never imagine how kindly
he said it; and he had so many irons in the fire just then, for he was
riding about surveying the position of the field. I am telling you this
story to show you what a memory he had, and so that you may know that he
knew my face. I took the oath in 1815. But for that mistake, perhaps I
might have been a colonel to-day; I never meant to betray the Bourbons,
France must be defended, and that was all I thought about. I was a Major
in the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard; and although my wound still
gave me trouble, I swung a sabre in the battle of Waterloo. When it
was all over, and Napoleon returned to Paris, I went too; then when he
reached Rochefort, I followed him against his orders; it was some sort
of comfort to watch over him and to see that no mishap befell him on the
way. So when he was walking along the beach he turned and saw me on duty
ten paces from him.

"'Well, Genestas,' he said, as he came towards me, 'so we are not yet
dead, either of us?'

"It cut me to the heart to hear him say that. If you had heard him,
you would have shuddered from head to foot, as I did. He pointed to the
villainous English vessel that was keeping the entrance to the Harbor.
'When I see _that_,' he said, 'and think of my Guard, I wish that I had
perished in that torrent of blood.'

"Yes," said Genestas, looking at the doctor and at La Fosseuse, "those
were his very words.

"'The generals who counseled you not to charge with the Guard, and
who hurried you into your traveling carriage, were not true friends of
yours,' I said.

"'Come with me,' he cried eagerly, 'the game is not ended yet.'

"'I would gladly go with your Majesty, but I am not free; I have a
motherless child on my hands just now.'

"And so it happene