said the other sadly.

"And what are they?"

"Such that I could wish it were anyone but myself to announce them to
your Majesty----"

"So the Emperor refuses my services! He forgets the victories of
Aboukir, Eylau, and Moscow?"

"No, sire; but he remembers the treaty of Naples, the taking of Reggio,
and the declaration of war of the viceroy of Italy."

The beggar struck his forehead.

"Yes, yes! I daresay he thinks I deserve his reproaches, and yet it
seems to me that he ought to remember that there are two men in me--the
soldier whom he made his brother, and the brother whom he made a
king.... Yes, as brother I have treated him ill--very ill, but as king,
upon my soul, I could not have acted differently.... I had to choose
between my sword and my crown, and between a regiment and a people.
Listen, Brune: you do not know how it all happened. There was an
English fleet, the guns of which were growling in the port, there was
a Neapolitan population howling in the streets. If I had been alone,
I would have passed through the fleet with one boat, through the crowd
with my sword alone, but I had a wife and children. Yet I hesitated; the
idea of being called traitor and deserter caused me to shed more tears
than the loss of my throne, or perhaps the death of those I love best,
will ever wring from me.... And so he will have nothing more to do with
me? He refuses me as general, captain, private? Then what is left for me
to do?"

"Sire, your Majesty must leave France immediately."

"And if I don't obey?"

"My orders are to arrest you and deliver you up to a court-martial!"

"Old comrade, you will not do that?"

"I shall do it, praying God to strike me dead in the moment I lay hands
on you!"

"That's you all over, Brune. You have been able to remain a good, loyal
fellow. He did not give you a kingdom, he did not encircle your brow
with a band of iron which men call a crown and which drives one mad;
he did not place you between your conscience and your family. So I must
leave France, begin my vagabond life again, and say farewell to Toulon,
which recalls so many memories to me! See, Brune," continued Murat,
leaning on the arm of the marshal, "are not the pines yonder as fine
as any at the Villa Pamfili, the palms as imposing as any at Cairo, the
mountains as grand as any range in the Tyrol? Look to your left, is
not Cape Gien something like Castellamare and Sorrento--leaving out
Vesuvius? And see, Saint-Mandrier a