Half an hour later, arm-in-arm with my guardian, I was taking a digestion walk down the Boulevard des Italiens. The old gentleman was pleased, very pleased, for it seems I had conducted myself in a modest and becoming manner, and the few words I had said had been well said; and you might have thought that he was discussing a children's party as he strolled by my side, saluting every person of distinction that he met, and being saluted in return. I really believe that this man was as innocent at heart as any child, yet he was an old roué, a duellist, a gambler, all that a bad man could be. Yet, though always hard up, he had jealously guarded my patrimony, which he could have plundered if he had chosen with impunity. His charity was boundless if you tapped it; and though he spoke of women in a light way, _I never heard him speak a bad word of any man_. And he loved animals, stopping to stroke a cat in the Rue de Rivoli, and pausing, as he led me across to the Tuileries, to admire the sparrows taking their dust-baths in the Royal precincts. "Where are we going?" I asked, with a sudden apprehension. "It is your eighteenth birthday," replied the Vicomte. And, still with his arm in mine, he led me past the Cent-Gardes, up the steps, and into the hall of the Palace. One might have thought that the Palace of the Tuileries belonged to the Vicomte de Chatellan, so perfectly at home did he seem. That he was a well-known and respected visitor was evident from the manner of the ushers. I was left in an anteroom, whilst the old gentleman, led by the usher, disappeared for a moment; then he came back, and, motioning me to follow him, he led the way into a room, where, at a desk-table, with a cigarette between his lips and a pen in his hand, sat Napoleon. He threw the pen down and rose to greet us. How wrinkled he looked! And how different, seen close and familiarly, from what he appeared in his carriage, amidst a cloud of dust, a glitter of sabres, and surrounded by his guards and gentlemen! Quite an unfearful person; old, and rather shuffling, easy-going, and putting you at your ease, rather dreamy, and speaking with a slightly nasal voice, rolling an armchair for you to sit in with his own august hands, offering cigarettes with a little shake of the box to loosen them and make your acceptance of one more easy, searching for a matchbox amidst the papers on the desk: a true gentleman, though an unfortunate Emperor.