"Old comrade, you will not do that?"

"I shall do it, praying God to strike me dead in the moment I lay hands
on you!"

"That's you all over, Brune. You have been able to remain a good, loyal
fellow. He did not give you a kingdom, he did not encircle your brow
with a band of iron which men call a crown and which drives one mad; he
did not place you between your conscience and your family. So I must
leave France, begin my vagabond life again, and say farewell to Toulon,
which recalls so many memories to me! See, Brune," continued Murat,
leaning on the arm of the marshal, "are not the pines yonder as fine as
any at the Villa Pamfili, the palms as imposing as any at Cairo, the
mountains as grand as any range in the Tyrol? Look to your left, is not
Cape Gien something like Castellamare and Sorrento--leaving out Vesuvius?
And see, Saint-Mandrier at the farthest point of the gulf, is it not like
my rock of Capri, which Lamarque juggled away so cleverly from that idiot
of a Sir Hudson Lowe? My God! and I must leave all this! Is there no
way of remaining on this little corner of French ground--tell me, Brune!"

"You'll break my heart, sire!" answered the marshal.

"Well, we'll say no more about it. What news?"

"The Emperor has left Paris to join the army. They must be fighting
now."

"Fighting now and I not there! Oh, I feel I could have been of use to
him on this battlefield. How I would have gloried in charging those