Chapter XI: Elba--The Return--Waterloo--St. Helena. 1814-1815 - Page 2

is a canvas-back duck. I think we can make something of it, particularly as the people seem glad to see me."

This was indeed the truth. The Elbese were delighted to have Bonaparte in their midst. They realized that excursion steamers which had hitherto passed them by would now come crowded from main- top to keel with persons desirous of seeing the illustrious captive. Hotel rates rose 200 per cent., and on the first Sunday of his stay on the island the receipts of the Island Museum, as it was now called, were sufficient to pay its taxes to the French government, which had been in arrears for some time, ten times over.

"I feel like an ossified man or a turtle-boy," said the Emperor to Bertrand, as the curious visitors gaped awe-stricken at the caged lion. "If I only had a few pictures of myself to sell these people I could buy up the national debt, foreclose the mortgage, and go back to France as its absolute master."

The popularity of Bonaparte as an attraction to outsiders so endeared him to the hearts of his new subjects that he practically had greater sway here than he ever had in the palmy days of the Empire. The citizens made him master of everything, and Bonaparte filled the role to the full. Provided with guards and servants, he surrounded himself with all the gaud and glitter of a military despotism, and, in default of continents to capture, he kept his hand in trim as a commander by the conquest of such small neighboring islands as nature 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