her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it--equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press--and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he