Only St. Genis has looked on all this scene with horror and contempt. His royalist opinions are well known, his urgent appeal to Delessart a while ago to "shoot the brigand and his hordes" still rings in every soldier's ear. He is half-crazy with rage and there is quite an element of terror in the confused thoughts which crowd in upon his brain. Already the sapeurs and infantrymen have joined the ranks of the Old Guard, and Napoleon, with that inimitable verve and inspiring eloquence of which he was pastmaster, was haranguing his troops. Just then three horsemen, dressed in the uniform of officers of the National Guard and wearing enormous tricolour cockades as large as soup-plates on their shakos, are seen to arrive at a break-neck gallop down the pass from Grenoble. St. Genis recognised them at a glance: they were Victor de Marmont, Surgeon-Captain Emery and their friend the glovemaker, Dumoulin. The next moment these three men were at the feet of their beloved hero. "Sire," said Dumoulin the glovemaker, "in the name of the citizens of Grenoble we hereby offer you our services and one hundred thousand francs collected in the last twenty-four hours for your use." "I accept both," replied the Emperor, while he grasped vigorously the hands of his three most devoted friends. St. Genis uttered a loud and comprehensive curse: then he pulled his horse abruptly round and with such a jerk that it reared and plunged madly forward ere it started galloping away with its frantic rider in the direction of Grenoble. III And Grenoble itself was in a turmoil. In the barracks the cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" were incessant; Général Marchand was indefatigable in his efforts to still that cry, to rouse in the hearts of the soldiers a sense of loyalty to the King. "Your country and your King," he shouted from barrack-room to barrack-room. "Our country and our Emperor!" responded the soldiers with ever-growing enthusiasm. The spirit of the army and of the people were Bonapartist to the core. They had never trusted either Marchand or préfet Fourier, who had turned their coats so readily at the Restoration: they hated the émigrés--the Comte de Cambray, the Vicomte de St. Genis, the Duc d'Embrun--with their old-fashioned ideas of the semi-divine rights of the nobility second only to the godlike ones of the King. They thought them arrogant and untamed, over-ready to grab once more all the privileges which a bloody Revolution had swept away. To them Napoleon, despite the brilliant days of the Empire, despite his autocracy, his militarism and his arrogance, represented "the people," the advanced spirit of the Revolution; his downfall had meant a return to the old regime--the regime of feudal rights, of farmers general, of heavy taxation and dear bread. "Vive l'Empereur!" was cried in the barracks and "Vive l'Empereur!" at the street corners.