Fontainebleau and abdicate. I will go into exile at Elba. Exiles
are most interesting people, and it may be that I'll have another
chance."

This course was taken, and on the 20th of April, 1814, Bonaparte
abdicated. His speech to his faithful guard was one of the most
affecting farewells in history, and had much to do with the encore
which Napoleon received less than a year after. Escorted by four
commissioners, one from each of the great allied powers, Austria,
Russia, England, and Prussia, and attended by a few attached friends
and servants, Bonaparte set out from Paris. The party occupied
fourteen carriages, Bonaparte in the first; and as they left the
capital the ex-Emperor, leaning out of the window, looked back at the
train of conveyances and sighed.

"What, Sire? You sigh?" cried Bertrand.

"Yes, Bertrand, yes. Not for my departed glory, but because I am a
living Frenchman, and not a dead Irishman."

"And why so, Sire?" asked Bertrand.

"Because, my friend, of the carriages. There are fourteen in this
funeral. Think, Bertrand," he moaned, in a tone rendered doubly
impressive by the fact that it reminded one of Henry Irving in one of
his most mannered moments. "Think how I should have enjoyed this
moment had I been a dead Irishman!"