'"Bah!" he says. "Nothing's stronger than a man. Me, for example! Less than two years ago I was blown up in the _Orient_ in Aboukir Bay, but I descended again and hit the water like a fairy. Look at me now," he says. He wasn't much to look at, for he'd only one leg and one eye, but the cheerfullest soul that ever trod shoe-leather. "That's worse than a hundred and eleven hogshead of 'baccy," he goes on. "You're young, too! What wouldn't I give to be young in France at this hour! There's nothing you couldn't do," he says. "The ball's at your feet--kick it!" he says. He kicks the old fire bucket with his peg-leg. "General Buonaparte, for example!" he goes on. "That man's a babe compared to me, and see what he's done already. He's conquered Egypt and Austria and Italy--oh! half Europe!" he says, "and now he sails back to Paris, and he sails out to St. Cloud down the river here--_don't_ stare at the river, you young fool!--and all in front of these pig-jobbing lawyers and citizens he makes himself Consul, which is as good as a King. He'll _be_ King, too, in the next three turns of the capstan--King of France, England, and the world! Think o' that!" he shouts, "and eat your herring." 'I says something about Boney. If he hadn't been fighting England I shouldn't have lost my 'baccy--should I? '"Young fellow," says Maingon, "you don't understand." 'We heard cheering. A carriage passed over the bridge with two in it. '"That's the man himself," says Maingon. "He'll give 'em something to cheer for soon." He stands at the salute. '"Who's t'other in black beside him?" I asks, fairly shaking all over. '"Ah! he's the clever one. You'll hear of him before long. He's that scoundrel-bishop, Talleyrand." '"It is!" I said, and up the steps I went with my fiddle, and run after the carriage calling, "Abbé, abbé!" 'A soldier knocked the wind out of me with the back of his sword, but I had sense to keep on following till the carriage stopped--and there just was a crowd round the house-door! I must have been half-crazy else I wouldn't have struck up "_Si le Roi m'avait donné, Paris la grande ville!_" I thought it might remind him. '"That is a good omen!" he says to Boney sitting all hunched up; and he looks straight at me. '"Abbé--oh, abbé!" I says. "Don't you remember Toby and Hundred and Eighteen Second Street?" 'He said not a word. He just crooked his long white finger to the guard at the door while the carriage steps were let down, and I skipped into the house, and they slammed the door in the crowd's face. '"You go there," says a soldier, and shoves me into an empty room, where I catched my first breath since I'd left the barge. Presently I heard plates rattling next door--there were only folding doors between--and a cork drawn. "I tell you," some one shouts with his mouth full, "it was all that sulky ass Sieyès' fault. Only my speech to the Five Hundred saved the situation."