A blurring rain fell upon Paris that day; a rain so fine and cold that
it penetrated the soles of men's shoes and their hearts alike, a
dispiriting drizzle through which the pale, acrid smoke of innumerable
wood fires faltered upward from the clustering chimney-pots, only to be
rent into fragments and beaten down upon the glistening tiles of the
mansard roofs. The wide asphalts reflected the horses and carriages
and trains and pedestrians in forms grotesque, zigzagging, flitting,
amusing, like a shadow-play upon a wrinkled, wind-blown curtain. The
sixteenth of June. To Fitzgerald there was something electric in the
date, a tingle of that ecstasy which frequently comes into the blood of
a man to whom the romance of a great battle is more than its history or
its effect upon the destinies of human beings. Many years before, this
date had marked the end to a certain hundred days, the eclipse of a sun
more dazzling than Rome, in the heyday of her august Caesars, had ever
known: Waterloo. A little corporal of artillery; from a cocked hat to
a crown, from Corsica to St. Helena: Napoleon.

Fitzgerald, as he pressed his way along the _Boulevard des Invalides_,
his umbrella swaying and snapping in the wind much like the sail of a
derelict, could see in fancy that celebrated field whereon this eclipse
had been supernally prearranged. He could hear the boom of cannon, the
thunder of cavalry, the patter of musketry, now thick, now scattered,
and again not unlike the subdued rattle of rain on the bulging silk
careening before him. He held the handle of the umbrella under his
arm, for the wind had a temper mawling and destructive, and veered into
the _Place Vauban_. Another man, coming with equal haste from the
opposite direction, from the entrance of the tomb itself, was also two
parts hidden behind an umbrella. The two came together with a jolt as
sounding as that of two old crusaders in a friendly just. Instantly
they retreated, lowering their shields.