Spreading his legs wide apart and blowing up his cheeks, the oculist
beat upon his breast. With a wave of his hand he dismissed the man in
the chair.

"You but slobber and make a foul noise," he declared. "I know your
kind. I spit upon you. The Congress at Washington is full of such
fellows as is also the House of Commons in England. In France they
were once in charge. They ran things in France until the coming of a
man such as myself. They were lost in the shadow of the great
Napoleon."

The oculist as though dismissing the dandified man from his mind
turned to address Beaut. He talked in French and the man in the chair
fell into a troubled sleep. "I am like Napoleon," the drunkard
declared, breaking again into English. Tears began to show in his
eyes. "I take the money of these miners and I give them nothing. The
spectacles I sell to their wives for five dollars cost me but fifteen
cents. I ride over these brutes as Napoleon rode over Europe. There
would be order and purpose in me were I not a fool. I am like Napoleon
in that I have utter contempt for men."

* * * * *

Again and again the words of the drunkard came back into the mind of
the McGregor boy influencing his thoughts. Grasping nothing of the
philosophy back of the man's words his imagination was yet touched by
the drunkard's tale of the great Frenchman, babbled into his ears, and
it in some way seemed to give point to his hatred of the disorganised
ineffectiveness of the life about him.