He awoke in the early light, stretched legs and arms luxuriously and
again walked. He saw it was five o'clock. He was thrilled now by the
morning beauty of the Corsican's city, all gray and green in the
flooding sun. And the streets had filled with a voluble traffic that
affected him pleasantly. Every one seemed to speak gayly to every one.
Two cab-drivers exchanged swift incivilities, but in a quite perfunctory
way, with evident good-will.
Walking aimlessly as yet--it was too early for tombs--he came again to
that hotel on the circle. They were asleep in there. Little they'd
worried--glad to be so easily rid of him.
Then he noticed at the circle's centre a lofty column wrought in bronze
with infinite small detail. Surmounting that column was the figure of
the Corsican. An upstart who had prevailed!
He left the circle, lest he be apprehended by the Breedes. Soon he was
again in that vast avenue of the park-places where he had slept. And
now, far off on this splendid highway, he descried a mighty arch.
Sternly gray and beautiful it was. And when, standing under it, he
looked aloft to its mighty facade, its grandeur seemed threatening to
him. He knew what that arch was--another monument imposed upon the city
by the imperial assassin--without royal lineage since the passing of
Ram-tah.
"Some class to _that_ upstart!" he muttered. And if Napoleon had been no
one, was it not probable that Bean had not been even Napoleon.
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