That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing
that all was lost down there, "I know that I am the saviour of France,
and to France I must go."

But you must clearly understand that the army did not know of his
departure; for if they had, they would have kept him there by force to
make him Emperor of the East. So there we all are without him, and in
low spirits, for he was the life of us. He leaves Kleber in command, a
great watchdog who passed in his checks at Cairo, murdered by an
Egyptian whom they put to death by spiking him with a bayonet, which
is their way of guillotining people out there; but he suffered so
much, that a soldier took pity on the scoundrel and handed his flask
to him; and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all
the pleasure in life. But there is not much fun for us about this
little affair. Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere
nothing of a skiff, called the _Fortune_, and in the twinkling of an
eye, and in the teeth of the English, who were blockading the place
with vessels of the line and cruisers and everything that carries
canvas, he lands in France for he always had the faculty of taking the
sea at a stride. Was that natural? Bah! as soon as he landed at
Frejus, it is as good as saying that he has set foot in Paris.
Everybody there worships him; but he calls the Government together.

"What have you done to my children, the soldiers?" he says to the
lawyers. "You are a set of good-for-nothings who make fools of other
people, and feather your own nests at the expense of France. It will
not do. I speak in the name of every one who is discontented."

Thereupon they want to put him off and to get rid of him; but not a
bit of it! He locks them up in the barracks where they used to argufy