two poached eggs with a zest that made him fear he was developing
epicurean tastes. When he turned to the left and looked out through
the entrance of the leafy arbor he had before him the spacious plain,
covered with long rows of tents: a busy, populous city that had risen
like an exhalation from the stubble-fields between Rheims city and the
canal. A few clumps of stunted trees, three wind-mills lifting their
skeleton arms in the air, were all there was to relieve the monotony
of the gray waste, but above the huddled roofs of Rheims, lost in the
sea of foliage of the tall chestnut-trees, the huge bulk of the
cathedral with its slender spires was profiled against the blue sky,
looming colossal, notwithstanding the distance, beside the modest
houses. Memories of school and boyhood's days came over him, the tasks
he had learned and recited: all about the _sacre_ of our kings, the
_sainte ampoule_, Clovis, Jeanne d'Arc, all the long list of glories
of old France.

Then Maurice's thoughts reverted again to that unassuming bourgeoise
house, so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial occupant; and
directing his eyes upon the high, yellow wall he was surprised to
read, scrawled there in great, awkward letters, the legend: _Vive
Napoleon!_ among the meaningless obscenities traced by schoolboys.
Winter's storms and summer's sun had half effaced the lettering;
evidently the inscription was very ancient. How strange, to see upon
that wall that old heroic battle-cry, which probably had been placed
there in honor of the uncle, not of the nephew! It brought all his
childhood back to him, and Maurice was again a boy, scarcely out of
his mother's arms, down there in distant Chene-Populeux, listening to
the stories of his grandfather, a veteran of the Grand Army. His
mother was dead, his father, in the inglorious days that followed the
collapse of the empire, had been compelled to accept a humble position