The Emperor had come to Paris from the Council at Saint Cloud, held the night before. I do not know whether the Empress accompanied him or not, but he was in the palace, and the great hall was thronged. The excitement of the streets was here, too, though in a more subdued form. Men were talking and laughing; everyone felt, or seemed to feel, that some great good fortune was impending. As a matter of fact, the war seemed to promise a "move up" all round. Honour to France, showers of gold and decorations from those painted skies which Hope rears so pleasantly above fools, and, above all, change. Most of these men were money-changers at heart; corrupt, vicious, ready to devour, true children of the Second Empire, descendants of the clique of rogues which manipulated the coup d'état, sent Hugo to exile, and flung France into the net spread by parasites, financiers, and corrupt politicians. France with her foot on the neck of Germany seemed to promise fabulous things to these. They had much, and they wanted more. They craved for change--and they got it. Amidst the crowd, which included some of the greatest names in France, it seemed hopeless for me to seek an audience. But I knew the place. I saw the Palace Prefect, Baron Vareigne. He had just shaken himself free from half a dozen men, and was making off down a corridor when I tacked myself on to him. "See him? Impossible! For a moment?--just to pay your respects? Oh, well, only for a moment, then. You will be a change from the others. He just said to me: 'For Heaven's sake, let in no more generals!'" And, with a click of a door-handle, there he was before me, seated in full uniform, which did not seem to fit him, the eternal cigarette smouldering between his lips, just the same old gentleman who had received my guardian and me so courteously that day; just the same useless, shuffling manner, the nasal voice, the half-closed eyes, crafty yet kindly--rising to meet me with a little, subdued laugh, half cynical, as though thanking God I were not another general. He bade me be seated, and told me he was not in a hurry, but being hurried, and looked over some papers that Vareigne handed him, and said: "Yes, yes," and flicked some cigarette-ash off his trousers. He talked to me for a few minutes, asking after the Vicomte de Chatellan, and then dismissed me, pushing me out of the cabinet with a kindly hand on my shoulder, and a kindly wish to see me again--après. This was the true Napoleon, the man kind to all, the injudicious man who made those unfortunate children half drunk at the children's party at Biarritz, the man who loved his little son so well, the man who would put a fistful of gold in a poor man's pocket, just because it was a poor man's pocket: I say, this was the true Napoleon. For what shall you measure a man by, when all is said and done, if not by his heart? Ah! how I would have loved that man if he had been my father!