General Bonaparte.

"What do those wagons contain?" shouted the crowd. "We want to know
it, and we must know it!"

"If you must know it, why did you not ask the soldiers themselves?"
shouted a sneering voice in the crowd.

"Yes, yes," said another voice, "why did you not approach the wagons
and knock at the trunks?--may be the devil would have jumped out and
shown you his pretty face!"

The people paid no attention to these sneering remarks. The painful
uncertainty, the anxious excitement continued unabated, and
everybody made surmises concerning the contents of the wagons.

"The trunks contain perhaps the coffins of the imperial ancestors,
which have been removed from the Kapuzinergruft, in order to save
them from the French," said an honest tailor to his neighbor, and
this romantic idea rolled immediately, like an avalanche, through
the vast crowd.

"They are removing the remains of the old emperors from Vienna!"
wailed the crowd. "Even the tombs are no longer safe! They are
saving the corpses of the emperors, but they are forsaking us--the
living! They abandon us to the tender mercies of the enemy! All who
have not got the money to escape are lost! The French will come and
kill us all!"

"We will not permit it!" shouted a stentorian voice. "We want to