PART I



CHAPTER I

JUDAS

The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of
that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain
had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees
were still green and leafy in November. The French people were
beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and
Bonaparte, then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man
owes part of his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed
him, in 1812, his luck ceased!

About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the
sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops
of four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the
sand and grassy places of an immense _rond-point_, such as we often
see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to
ornament. The air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a
family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in
a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of
the same stuff, and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the
knee, was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives
to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor
game-bag, nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure for