had placed within reach, but it could hardly be expected that he
could long remain tranquil. His eyes soon wearied of the
circumscribed limits of Elba.

"It's all very well to be monarch of all you survey, Bertrand," said
he, mournfully, "but as for me, give me some of the things that can't
be seen. I might as well be that old dried-up fig of a P. T. Olemy
over there in Egypt as Emperor of a vest-pocket Empire like this.
Isn't there any news from France?"

"Yes," returned Bertrand, "Paris is murmuring again. Louis hasn't
stopped eating yet, and the French think it's time his dinner was
over."

"Ha!" cried Bonaparte in ecstasy. "I thought so. He's too much of a
revivalist to suit Paris. Furthermore, I'm told he's brought out his
shop-worn aristocracy to dazzle France again. They're all wool and a
yard wide, but you needn't think my handmade nobility is going to
efface itself just because the Montmorencies and the Rohans don't ask
it out to dine. My dukes and duchesses will have something to say, I
fancy, and if my old laundress, the Duchess of Dantzig, doesn't take
the starch out of the old regime I'll be mightily mistaken."

And this was the exact situation. As Bonaparte said, the old regime
by their hauteur so enraged the new regime that by the new year of
1815 it was seen by all except those in authority that the return of
the exile, Corporal Violet, as he was now called, was inevitable. So
it came about that on the 20th of February, his pockets stuffed with
impromptu addresses to the people and the army, Bonaparte, eluding
those whose duty it was to watch him, set sail, and on the 1st of