and when he was quite near her, with the light shining full on his face from the door, he began to rub his hands and say, trying to recall the tone and manner of the days of his early youth, when he came to the peasant's house, "Come, Mother Marguerite, some milk and fresh eggs; we are famishing." The good old woman seemed trying to revive her memories, and began to observe the Emperor with the closest attention. "Oh, yes, Mother, you were so sure a while ago of knowing Bonaparte again. Are we not old acquaintances, we two?" The peasant, while the Emperor was addressing these last words to her, had fallen at his feet; but he raised her with the most touching kindness, and said to her, "The truth is, Mother Marguerite, I have still a schoolboy's appetite. Have you nothing to give me?" The good woman, almost beside herself with happiness, served his Majesty with eggs and milk; and when this simple repast was ended, his Majesty gave his aged hostess a purse full of gold, saying to her, "You know, Mother Marguerite, that I believe in paying my bills.
Adieu, I shall not forget you." And while the Emperor remounted his horse, the good old woman, standing on the threshold of her door, promised him, with tears of joy, to pray to the good God for him.
One morning, when he awoke, his Majesty was speaking of the possibility of finding some of his old acquaintances; and an anecdote concerning General Junot was related to him, which amused him greatly. The General finding himself, on his return from Egypt, at Montbard, where he had passed several years of his childhood, had sought with the greatest care for his companions in school and mischief, and had found several, with whom he had talked gayly and freely of his early frolics and his schoolboy excursions. As they went together to revisit the different localities, each of which awakened in them some memory of their youth, the general saw an old man majestically promenading on the public square with a large cane in his hand. He immediately ran up to him, threw his arms around him, and embraced him many times, almost suffocating him.
The promenader disengaged himself with great difficulty from his warm embraces, regarded General Junot with an amazed air, and remarked that he was ignorant to what he could attribute such excessive tenderness from a soldier wearing the uniform of a superior officer, and all the indications of high rank. "What," cried he, "do you not recognize me?"--
"Citizen General, I pray you to excuse me, but I have no idea"--
"Ah, morbleu, my dear master, have you forgotten the most idle, the most lawless, the most incorrigible of your scholars?"--"A thousand pardons, you are Monsieur Junot."--"Himself!" replied Junot, renewing his embraces, and laughing with his friends at the singular characteristics by which he had caused himself to be recognized. As for his Majesty the Emperor, if any of his old masters had failed to recognize him, it could not be by reminiscences of this kind that he could have recalled himself to them; for every one knows that he was distinguished at the military school for his application to work, and the regularity and sobriety of his life.
A meeting of the same nature, saving the difference in recollections, awaited the Emperor at Brienne. While he was visiting the old military school, now falling to ruin, and pointing out to the persons who surrounded him the situation of the study halls, dormitories, refectories, etc., an ecclesiastic who had been tutor of one of the classes in the school was presented to him. The Emperor recognized him immediately; and, uttering an exclamation of surprise, his Majesty conversed more than twenty minutes with this gentleman, leaving him full of gratitude.
The Emperor, before leaving Brienne to return to Fontainebleau, required the mayor to give him a written account of the most pressing needs of the commune, and left on his departure a considerable sum for the poor and the hospitals.
Passing through Troyes, the Emperor left there, as everywhere else, souvenirs of his generosity. The widow of a general officer, living in retirement at Joinville (I regret that I have forgotten the name of this venerable lady, who was more than an octogenarian), came to Troyes, notwithstanding her great age, to ask aid from his Majesty. Her husband having served only before the Revolution, the pension which she had enjoyed had been taken from her under the Republic, and she was in the greatest destitution. The brother of General Vouittemont, mayor of a commune in the suburbs of Troyes, was kind enough to consult me as to what should be done in order to present this lady to the Emperor; and I
advised him to have her name placed on the list of his Majesty's private audiences. I myself took the liberty of speaking of Madame de to the Emperor; and the audience was granted, though I do not pretend to attribute the merit of it to myself, for in traveling the Emperor was always very accessible.
When the good lady came to attend the audience with M. de Vouittemont, to whom his municipal scarf gave the right of entrance, I happened to meet them, and she stopped to thank me for the little service which she insisted I had rendered her, and mentioned that she had been obliged to pawn the six silver plates which alone remained to her, in order to pay the expenses of her journey; that, having arrived at Troyes in a poor farm wagon, covered with a cloth thrown over a hoop, and which had shaken her terribly, she could find no place in the inns, all of which were filled on account of the arrival of their Majesties; and she would have been obliged to sleep in her wagon had it not been for the kind consideration of M. de Vouittemont, who had given up his room to her, and offered his services. In spite of her more than eighty years, and her distress, this respectable lady related her story with an air of gentle gayety, and at the close threw a grateful glance at her guide, on whose arm she was leaning.