Old Nonesuch burst out laughing, and pounded the pavement with his heavy cane. "To call the emperor a man!" he exclaimed; "and what, then, will you call me?" "You? why, what should we?" said the Corsican veteran; "old Father Nonesuch, old 'Not Entire,' otherwise, Corporal Francis Haut of Brienne." "Ah, bah!" cried the persistent veteran; "I do not mean my name, stupid! I mean my quality, my--my title, my--well--my sex,--indeed, what am I?" "Well, what is left of you, I suppose," laughed the Corsican, "we might call a man." "A man! there you have it exactly!" cried old Nonesuch. "I am a man; and so are you, Corsican, and you, Stephen, and you,--almost so,--youngster. But my emperor--the Emperor Napoleon! was he a man? Away with you! It was the English who invented that story; they did not know what he was capable of, those English! The emperor a man? Bah!" "What was he, then? A woman?" queried the Corsican. "Ah, stupid one! where are your wits?" cried old Nonesuch, shaking pipe and cane excitedly. "Are you, then, as dull as those English? Why, the emperor was--the emperor! It is we, his soldiers, who were men." The Corsican veteran shook his head musingly. "It may be so; it may be so, good Nonesuch. I do not say no to you," he said. "Ah, my dear emperor! I have seen him often. I knew him when he was small; I knew him when he was grown. I saw him born; I saw him die"--"Halt there!" cried old Nonesuch; "let me stop you once more, good comrade Corsican. Do not make these other 'Not Entires' swallow such impossible and indigestible things. The emperor was never born; the emperor never died; the emperor has always been; the emperor always will be. To prove it," he added quickly, holding up his cane, as he saw that the Corsican was about to protest at this surprising statement, "to prove it, let me tell you. He fought at Constantine; he fought at St. Jean d'Ulloa; he fought at Sebastopol, and was conqueror." "Come, come, Father Nonesuch!" broke in "the youngster," and others of that group of veterans, "you are surely wandering. It was not the Emperor Napoleon who fought at those places. That was long after he was dead. It was the son of Louis Philippe, the Duke of Nemours, who fought at Constantine; it was the Prince of Joinville who led at Ulloa; and, at Sebastopol, the"-- [Illustration: "_Pif! paf! pouf! That is the way I read"--Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. (From the Painting by Horace Vernet_.)] "Bah!" broke in the old veteran. "You are all owls, you! What if they did? I will not deny either the Duke of Nemours nor the Prince of Joinville, nor Louis Philippe himself. But what then? You need not deny, you youngster, nor you, the other shouters, that when the cannons boom, when the battles rage, when, above all, one is conqueror for France, there is something of my emperor in that. Could they have conquered except for him? Ten thousand bullets! I say. He is everywhere."