The Polish woman had come to love
him; the little actress would have followed him to his lonely island.
Others, too many others, had confessed his power.
He was ashamed of such a past, yet read it with a guilty relish. He
recalled the flapper who had so boldly met his glance. He thought she
would have been less bold if she could have known the man she looked at.
He placed "Napoleon, Man and Lover" at the bottom of his trunk beside
the scarlet cravat he had feared to wear. It was not a book to "leave
around."
"The Hundred Days," which he read the following night, was a much less
discouraging work. It told of defeat, but of how glorious a defeat! The
escape from Elba, the landing in France and the march to Paris,
conquering, where he passed, by the sheer magnetism of his personality!
His spirit bounded as he read of this and of the frightened exit of that
puny usurper before the mere rumour of his approach. Then that audacious
staking of all on a throw of the dice--Waterloo and a deathless
ignominy. He heard the sob-choked voices of the Old Guard as they bade
their leader farewell--felt the despairing clasp of their hands!
Alone in his little room, high above the flaring night streets, the
timid boy read of the Hundred Days, and thrilled to a fancied memory of
them. The breath that checked on his lips, the blood that ran faster in
his veins at the recital, went to nourish a body that contained the
essential part of that hero--he was reading about himself! He forgot his
mean surroundings--and the timidities of spirit that had brought him
thus far through life almost with the feelings of a fugitive.
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