to the inevitable.

"Fouche," he said, sending for the exiled minister in his extremity,
"when I lost you I lost my leading man--the star of my enterprise.
During your absence the prompter's box has been empty, and I don't
know what to do. The world is against me--even France. I see but
one thing left. Do you think I could restore confidence by divorcing
Marie-Louise and remarrying Josephine? It strikes me that an annual
shaking-up of that nature would sort of liven matters up.

"No!" said Fouche, "it won't do. They've had one divorce. You
mustn't repeat yourself now. You forget the thing I've always tried
to impress upon you. Be New; not parvenu or ingenue, but plain up
and down New is what you need to be. It would have been just the
same if you'd thrashed Russia. They'd have forced you to go on and
conquer China; then they'd have demanded a war with Japan, after
which they'd have dethroned you if you didn't annex the Sandwich
Islands to the United States, and then bag the whole thing for
France. This is what you get for wanting to rule the French people.
You can't keep quiet--you've got to have a move on you constantly or
they won't have you. Furthermore, you mustn't make 'em laugh except
at the other man. You've had luck in that respect, but there's no
telling how long it will continue now that you have a son. He's
beginning to say funny things, and they're generally at your expense,
and one or two people hereabouts have snickered at you already."

"What do you mean?" said Napoleon, with a frown. "What has the boy
said about me?"

"He told the Minister of Finance the other night that now that you