our lives. He left the command to Kléber--a great lout of a fellow who
soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated
him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet;
that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so
much that one of our soldiers felt sorry for him and offered him his
water-gourd. The criminal took a drink, and then gave up the ghost with
the greatest pleasure.

But we didn't waste much time over trifles like that.

Napoleon sailed from Egypt in a cockle-shell of a boat called _Fortune_.
He passed right under the noses of the English, who were blockading the
coast with ships of the line, frigates, and every sort of craft that
could carry sail, and in the twinkling of an eye he was in France;
because he had the ability to cross the sea as if with a single stride.
Was that natural? Bah! The very minute he reached Fréjus, he had his
foot, so to speak, in Paris. There, of course, everybody worships him.
But the first thing he does is to summon the government. "What have you
been doing with my children the soldiers?" he said to the lawyers. "You
are nothing but a lot of poll-parrots, who fool the people with your
gabble, and feather your own nests at the expense of France. It is not
right; and I speak in the name of all who are dissatisfied."

They thought, at first, that they could get rid of him by talking him
to death; but it didn't work. He shut 'em up in the very barrack where
they did their talking, and those who didn't jump out of the windows he
enrolled in his suite, where they soon became mute as fish and pliable
as a tobacco-pouch. This coup made him consul; and as he wasn't one to
doubt the Supreme Being who had kept good faith with him, he hastened to
fulfil his own promise by restoring the churches and reestablishing