might be absolutely ferocious, with an insulting
observation for everyone with whom he came in contact. As a rule he was
between these two extremes, silent, morose, ill at ease, shooting out
curt little remarks which made everyone uncomfortable. There was always
a sigh of relief when he would pass from one room into the next.

On this occasion he seemed to have not wholly recovered from the storm
of the afternoon, and he looked about him with a brooding eye and a
lowering brow. It chanced that I was not very far from the door, and
that his glance fell upon me.

'Come here, Monsieur de Laval,' said he. He laid his hand upon my
shoulder and turned to a big, gaunt man who had accompanied him into the
room. 'Look here, Cambaceres, you simpleton,' said he. 'You always
said that the old families would never come back, and that they would
settle in England as the Huguenots have done. You see that, as usual,
you have miscalculated, for here is the heir of the de Lavals come to
offer his services. Monsieur de Laval, you are now my aide-de-camp, and
I beg you to keep with me wherever I go.'

This was promotion indeed, and yet I had sense enough to know that it
was not for my own sweet sake that the Emperor had done it, but in order
to encourage others to follow me. My conscience approved what I had
done, for no sordid motive and nothing but the love of my country had
prompted me; but now, as I walked round behind Napoleon, I felt
humiliated and ashamed, like a prisoner led behind the car of his
captor.

And soon there was something else to make me ashamed, and that was the
conduct of him whose servant I had become. His manners were outrageous.
As he had himself said, it was his nature to be always first, and this
being so he resented those courtesies and gallantries by which men are
accustomed to disguise from women the fact that they are the weaker sex.
The Emperor, unlike Louis XIV., felt that even a temporary and
conventional attitude of humility towards a woman was too great a
condescension from his own absolute supremacy. Chivalry was among those
conditions of society which he refused to accept.

To the soldiers he was amiable enough, with a nod and a joke for each of
them. To his sisters also he said a few words, though rather in the
tone of a drill sergeant to a pair of recruits. It was only when the
Empress had joined him that his ill-humour came to a head.

'I wish you would not wear those wisps of pi