three sisters, he said to us, just as it might be by way of
conversation, in the order of the day:

"Children, is it fitting that your Emperor's relations should beg
their bread? No; I want them all to be luminaries, like me in fact!
Therefore, it is urgently necessary to conquer a kingdom for each one
of them, so that the French nation may be masters everywhere, so that
the Guard may make the whole earth tremble, and France may spit
wherever she likes, and every nation shall say to her, as it is
written on my coins, 'God protects you.'"

"All right!" answers the army, "we will fish up kingdoms for you
with the bayonet."

Ah! there was no backing out of it, look you! If he had taken it into
his head to conquer the moon, we should have had to put everything in
train, pack our knapsacks, and scramble up; luckily, he had no wish
for that excursion. The kings who were used to the comforts of a
throne, of course, objected to be lugged off, so we had marching
orders. We march, we get there, and the earth begins to shake to its
centre again. What times they were for wearing out men and shoe-leather!
And the hard knocks that they gave us! Only Frenchmen could have stood
it. But you are not ignorant that a Frenchman is a born philosopher;
he knows that he must die a little sooner or a litter later. So we used
to die without a word, because we had the pleasure of watching the
Emperor do _this_ on the maps.

[Here the soldier swung quickly round on one foot, so as to trace a
circle on the barn floor with the other.]