A stir which must have been widening through the house as a ripple widens on a lake, struck us, and turned our faces with all others to a man who stood in front of the chimney. He was not large in person, but as an individual his presence was massive--was penetrating. I could have topped him by head and shoulders; yet without mastery. He took snuff as he slightly bowed in every direction, shut the lid with a snap, and fidgeted as if impatient to be gone. He had a mouth of wonderful beauty and expression, and his eyes were more alive than the eyes of any other man in the assembly. I felt his gigantic force as his head dipped forward and he glanced about under his brows. "There is the emperor," De Chaumont told Eagle; and I thought he made indecent haste to return and hale her away before Napoleon. The greatest soldier in Europe passed from one person to another with the air of doing his duty and getting rid of it. Presently he raised his voice, speaking to Madame de Ferrier so that, all in the room might hear. "Madame, I am pleased to see that you wear leno. I do not like those English muslins, sold at the price of their weight in gold, and which do not look half as well as beautiful white leno. Wear leno, cambric, or silk, ladies, and then my manufactures will flourish." I wondered if he would remember the face of the man pushed against his wheel and called an assassin, when the Marquis du Plessy named me to him as the citizen Lazarre. "You are a lucky man, Citizen Lazarre, to gain the marquis for your friend. I have been trying a number of years to make him mine." "All Frenchmen are the friends of Napoleon," the marquis said to me. I spoke directly to the sovereign, thereby violating etiquette, my friend told me afterwards, laughing; and Bonaparte was a stickler for precedent. "But all Frenchmen," I could not help reminding the man in power, "are not faithful friends." He gave me a sharp look as he passed on, and repeated what I afterward learned was one of his favorite maxims: "A faithful friend is the true image." VIII "Must you go to Mittau?" the Marquis du Plessy said when I told him what I intended to do. "It is a long, expensive post journey; and part of the way you may not be able to post. Riga, on the gulf beyond Mittau, is a fine old town of pointed gables and high stone houses. But when I was in Mittau I found it a mere winter camp of Russian nobles. The houses are low, one-story structures. There is but one castle, and in that his Royal Highness the Count of Provence holds mimic court." We were riding to Versailles, and our horses almost touched sides as my friend put his hand on my shoulder. "Don't go, Lazarre. You will not be welcome there." "I must go, whether I am welcome or not." "But I may not last until you come back." "You will last two months. Can't I post to Mittau and back in two months?" "God knows." I looked at him drooping forward in the saddle, and said: