"See again! he found he was immortal.
"Sure of himself, knowing he must ever be THE EMPEROR, he went for a
while to an island to study out the nature of these others, who, you may
be sure, committed follies without end. Whilst he bided his time down
there, the Chinese, and the wild men on the coast of Africa, and the
Barbary States, and others who are not at all accommodating, know so
well he was more than man that they respected his tent, saying to touch
it would be to offend God. Thus, d'ye see, when these others turned him
from the doors of his own France, he still reigned over the whole world.
Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had
had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France,
and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire;
all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this
region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say,
solid. Dauphine behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that
her people wept when they saw, once more, the gray top-coat. March first
it was, when Napoleon landed with two hundred men to conquer that
kingdom of France and of Navarre, which, on the twentieth of the same
month was again the French Empire. On that day our MAN was in Paris; he
had made a clean sweep, recovered his dear France, and gathered his
veterans together by saying no more than three words, 'I am here.
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