Chapter XII: 1815-1821-1895 - Page 2

Emperor. That's my name, Emperor N. Bonaparte."

"And I beg that you will not call me Sir Harlem," returned the governor, irritated by the Emperor's manner. "My name is Hudson, not Harlem."

"Pray excuse the slip," said the Emperor, scornfully. "I knew you were named after some American river, I didn't know which. However, I imagined that the Harlem was nearer your size than the Hudson, since the latter has some pretensions to grandeur. Now please flow down to the sea and lose yourself, I'm getting sleepy again."

So, in constant conflict with Sir Hudson, who refused to call him by his title, and whom in consequence he refused to call by his proper name, answering such epithets as "Corporal" and "Major" with a savagely-spoken "Delaware" or an ironically respectful "Mohawk," Bonaparte dwelt at St. Helena until the 5th of May, 1821, when, historians tell us, he died. This is an error, for upon that date Bonaparte escaped. He had fought death too many times to succumb to him now, and, while the writers of history have in a sense stated the truth when they say that he passed away in the night, their readers have gained a false impression. It is the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte, like Dante and Virgil, passed over the dark river Styx as the honored leader of the rebellious forces of Hades. He did pass away in the night, but he went as he went from Elba, and, as we shall see, with more successful results.

For years the Government of Erebus had been unsatisfactory to many of its subjects, mainly on account of the arbitrary methods of the Weather Department.

"We are in a perpetual broil here," Caesar had said, "and I for one am getting tired of it. The country demands a change. This administration doesn't give us anything but dog-days."

For this the Roman warrior had been arrested and kept in an oven at the rear of the Erebian Tuileries, as Apollyon's Palace was called, for two centuries.

"The next rebel gets a gridiron, and the third will be served to Cerberus en brochette," cried Apollyon.

Thus matters had gone on for five or six hundred years, and no one had ventured to complain further, particularly in view of Caesar's comments upon the horrid details of his incarceration published several years after his release, under the title of "Two Centuries in an Oven; or, Four Thousand and Six in the Shade."

At the end of the eighteenth century, however, the aspect of affairs had changed. Apollyon had spent a great deal of his time abroad, and had failed to note how the revolution in America, the Reign of Terror in France, and the subsequent wars in Europe had materially increased the forces of the Republican Party in Hades. The French arrivals alone should have been sufficient to convince Apollyon that his attention to domestic affairs was