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each other, at short pistol-shot, in absolute silence. Napoleon advanced alone towards the royal troops. “Present arms!" he commanded.

They obeyed, levelling their guns at their old commander. He advanced slowly, with impassive face. Reaching their front, he touched his cap and saluted.

"Soldiers of the Fifth," he cried, loudly, "do you recognize me?"

"Yes, yes," came from some voices, filled with barely-repressed enthusiasm.

"Soldiers, behold your general; behold your emperor," he continued. "Let any of you who wishes to kill him, fire."

Fire? Their guns went to the earth; they flung themselves on their knees before him, called him father, shed tears, shouted as if in frenzy, waved their shakos on their bayonets and sabres.

"All is over," said Napoleon to Bertrand and Drouet. "In ten days we shall be in the Tuileries."

In a brief time the Emperor moved on, the king's regiment, now wearing the tricolor cockade, following with his former troop. As they drew near Grenoble throngs of peasantry gathered, with enthusiastic cheers. Another regiment approached, the seventh of the line, commanded by Colonel de Labédoyère. He had taken the eagle of the regiment from a chest, brandished his sword, and crying, "Long live the Emperor ! Those who love me follow me!" led the way from Grenoble. The whole regiment followed. Meeting Napoleon, the colonel and the Emperor sprang from their horses and warmly embraced.

"Colonel," said Napoleon, "it is you who will replace me on the throne."

It was night when they reached Grenoble. The royalist authorities had closed the gates, but the ramparts were thronged with men. The darkness was profound, but Labédoyère called out loudly,—

"Soldiers, it is I, Labédoyère, colonel of the Seventh. We bring you Napoleon. He is yonder. It is for you to receive him and to repeat with us the rallying-cry of the former conquerors of Europe: Live the Emperor!"

His words were followed by a ringing shout from the ramparts. Many ran to the gates. Finding them closed and barred they furiously attacked them with axes, while the peasants outside hammered on them as fiercely. Thus doubly assailed they soon. gave way, and the stream of new-comers rushed in, torches and flambeaux illuminating the scene. Napoleon had no little difficulty in making his way through the crowd, which was delirious with joy, and reaching an inn, the Three Dauphins, where he designed to pass the night.

On the 9th he left Grenoble, followed by six thousand of his old soldiers. His march was an ovation. He reached Lyons on the 10th. Several regiments had been collected here to oppose him, but they all trampled the white cockade of the king underfoot, assumed the tricolor, and fraternized with the Emperor's troops.

Marshal Ney was the only hope left to the royalists. He had, they said, promised Louis XVIII. to bring back Napoleon in an iron cage. This hope

vanished when Ney issued a proclamation beginning, "The cause of the Bourbons is lost forever;" which was followed, on March 18, by his embracing the Emperor openly at Auxerre.

All was over for Louis XVIII. Near midnight of March 19 some travelling carriages rolled away from the court-yard of the Tuileries in a torrent of rain, and amid a furious wind-storm that extinguished the carriage lights. It was Louis XVIII. going into exile. On the 20th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the Emperor Napoleon drove through the streets of Paris towards the abandoned palace through hosts of shouting soldiers and a population that was wild with joy. The officers tore him from his carriage and carried him on their arms, kissing his hands, embracing his old gray overcoat, not letting his feet touch ground till they had borne him to the foot of the grand stairway of the Tuileries.

It was twenty days since he had landed, and France was his, the people, the soldiers, alike mad with delight, none, to all appearance, dreaming of what renewed miseries this ill-omened return of their worshipped emperor meant.

It meant, as we now know, bloodshed, slaughter, and ruin; it meant Waterloo and St. Helena; it meant a hundred days of renewed empire, and then the final end of the power of the great conqueror. On August 7, less than five months from the date of the triumphant entry to the Tuileries, Napoleon stepped on board the British frigate Northumberland, to be borne to the far-off isle of St. Helena, his future home.

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