Chapter XI: Elba--The Return--Waterloo--St. Helena. 1814-1815

Bonaparte's spirits rose as the party proceeded. There were remarkable evidences all along the line of march that his greatness, while dimmed in one sense, had not diminished in others. A series of attacks upon him had been arranged, much to the fallen Emperor's delight.

"If you want to make a fellow popular, Bertrand," he remarked after one of them, "kick him when he's down. I'll wager I am having a better time now than Louis XVIII., and, after all, I regard this merely as a vacation. I'll have a good rest at Elba while Louis is pushing the button of government at Paris. After a while I'll come back and press the buttons and Louis will do the rest. There's some honey in the old Bees yet."

At Valence, however, the Emperor had a bitter cup to drain. Meeting Augereau there, with whom he had fallen out, he addressed him in his old-time imperial style, asking him what right he had to still live, and requesting him to stand out of his light. Augereau, taking advantage of the Emperor's fallen estate, replied in a spirited manner, calling Napoleon an ex-Emperor and a tin soldier, as well as applying several other epithets to his dethroned majesty which might be printed in a French book, but can have no place in this.

"We shall meet again," retorted Bonaparte, with a threatening gesture.

"Not if I see you first," replied Augereau. "If we do, however, it will be under a new system of etiquette."

"I'll bet you a crown you'll be singing a new tune inside of a year," cried the exasperated Bonaparte.

"I'll go you," said Augereau, snapping his fingers. "Put up your crown."

Napoleon felt keenly the stinging satire of this retort. Bowing his head with a groan, he had to acknowledge that he had no crown, but in an instant he recovered.

"But I have a Napoleon left in my clothes!" he cried, with a dry laugh at his own wit. "I'll bet it against your income for the next forty centuries, which is giving you large odds, that I shall return, and when I do, Monsieur Augereau, your name will be Denis."

The appreciation of those about them of this sally so enraged Augereau that he was discomfited utterly, and he left Bonaparte's presence muttering words which are fortunately forgotten.

Arrived at Cannes, Bonaparte had his choice of vessels upon which to make his voyage to Elba, one English and one French. "I'll take the English. I shall not trust my life to a Bourbon ship if I know myself. I'd rather go to sea in a bowl," said he.

Hence it was that an English vessel, the Undaunted, had the honor of transporting the illustrious exile to his island dominion. On the 4th of May he landed, and immediately made a survey of his new kingdom.

"It isn't large," he observed, as he made a memorandum of its dimensions, "but neither