"Surely!"

"Thanks, mademoiselle, thanks! I saw _him_ when they brought him back
from St. Helena, and the Old Guard waded out into the Seine. Those
were days. Thanks, mademoiselle; an old soldier salutes you!" And the
time-bent, withered form grew tall.

Fitzgerald cleared his throat, for just then something hard had formed
there. Why, God bless her! She was the kind of girl who became the
mother of soldiers.

With her departure his present interest here began to wane. He
wondered who she might be and what part of his native land she adorned
when not gracing European capitals. Well, this was no time for
mooning. He had arrived from London the day proceeding, and was
leaving for Corfu on the morrow, and perforce he must crowd many things
into this short grace of time. He was only moderately fond of Paris as
a city; the cafes and restaurants and theaters amused him, to be sure;
but he was always hunting for romance here and never finding it. The
Paris of his Dumas and Leloir no longer existed. In one way or
another, the Louvre did not carry him back to the beloved days; he
could not rouse his fancy to such height that he could see D'Artagnan
ruffling it on the staircase, or Porthos sporting a gold baldric, which
was only leather, under his cloak. So then, the tomb of Napoleon and
the articles of clothing and warfare which had belonged to him and the
toys of the poor little king of Rome were far more to him than all the
rest of Paris put together. These things of the first great empire
were tangible, visible, close to the touch of his hand. Therefore,
never he came to Paris that he failed to visit the tomb and the two
museums.