I think I've acted like a decent beggar. I know Fournier and Solignac. In May Eighteen-sixteen Didier and Sarlovèze Conspire and fail. I see the child Miard Perish, and David the old man, and weep; They'd have beheaded me, but I am missing. Good. I come back to Paris with an alias; I smash a footstool on a royal guard Because he'd trodden on my favorite corn. I take the chair at noisy drinking bouts, Spend thirty pence a month. I nurse a hope That in the Var that Other still may land. I swagger in a Bonapartist hat And call whoever stares at me a vampire. I fight some thirty duels. I conspire At Béziers; fail. They'd have beheaded me, But I am missing. Good. I join at once The plot at Lyons. All are seized. I fly. They'd have beheaded me, but I am missing. So I come back to Paris, where, by chance, I find myself mixed up in the Bazaar plot. Lefèvre-Desnouettes is in America. I join him there. "What's up, my General?" Says I. Says he, "Come back." We start; we're wrecked. My General's drowned, but I know how to swim; And so I swim, bewailing Desnouettes. Good. Very good. Sun--azure waves--and sea-mews. A ship. They fish me up. I land in time To be among the plotters of Saumur. We fail again. They'd have beheaded me, But I am missing. So I make for Greece, To rub the rust off, thrashing dirty Turks. One morning in July I'm back in France. I see them heaping paving stones. I help. I fight. At night the tricolor is hoisted. Instead of the while banner of the King, But as I think there still is something lacking To crown the point of that disloyal staff; You know--the golden thing that beats its wings. I leave, to plot in the Romagna. Fail. A relative of yours-- THE DUKE. Named? FLAMBEAU. Camerata-- Makes me her fencing master-- THE DUKE. Ah! FLAMBEAU. In Tuscany. So we conspire with singlestick and rapier. Next there's a post of danger vacant here; They give me forged credentials; here I am. I'm here; but every day I see the Countess, For I have found the cave your Highness dug With your preceptor Colin in the garden To play at little Robinson. All right! I hide in it. I find it has two openings: This in an ant-heap; that, a bed of nettles. I wait. Your cousin brings her sketch-book, and There in the shadow of the Roman thingummies, She on her camp-stool, I amid the mud, She looking like an English tourist sketching, I whispering from my cavern like a prompter, We plan the means to make you Emperor. THE DUKE. And for such loyalty, so long maintained, What do you ask of me? FLAMBEAU. Just pull my ear. THE DUKE. What? FLAMBEAU. As your Father used to when we'd pleased him. THE DUKE. But I-- FLAMBEAU. I'm waiting. Come. The thumb and index. [THE DUKE _pulls his ear._] That's not the way to pull an ear, my Lord! You don't know how: you're much too gentlemanly. THE DUKE.