We always won the day, but the English were always on our track,
putting nonsense into other nations' heads, and stirring them up to
revolt. In short, we cleared a way through all these mobs of nations;
for wherever the Emperor appeared, we made a passage for him; for on
the land as on the sea, whenever he said, "I wish to go forward," we
made the way.

There comes a final end to it at last. We are back in France; and in
spite of the bitter weather, it did one's heart good to breathe one's
native air again, it set up many a poor fellow; and as for me, it put
new life into me, I can tell you. But it was a question all at once of
defending France, our fair land of France. All Europe was up in arms
against us; they took it in bad part that we had tried to keep the
Russians in order by driving them back within their own borders, so
that they should not gobble us up, for those Northern folk have a
strong liking for eating up the men of the South, it is a habit they
have; I have heard the same thing of them from several generals.

So the Emperor finds his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had
made crowned kings, and the rabble of princes to whom he had given
back their thrones, were all against him. Even Frenchmen and allies in
our own ranks turned against us, by orders from high quarters, as at
Leipsic. Common soldiers would hardly be capable of such abominations;
yet these princes, as they called themselves, broke their words three
times a day! The next thing they do is to invade France. Wherever our
Emperor shows his lion's face, the enemy beats a retreat; he worked
more miracles for the defence of France than he had ever wrought in
the conquest of Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia; he has a
mind to bury every foreigner in French soil, to give them a respect