"When the little fellow saw me, he opened his glassy pale eyes as wide as possible, and a melancholy smile played on his white lips; he seemed to recognise me again, stretched his shrunken little hand towards me, and gently rattled--'Old friend!' "It was, in fact, a sad condition in which I found the man who, in his eighth year, had had a long conversation with Louis XVI., whom the Czar Alexander had fed with bon-bons, whom the Princess von Kyritz had taken on her lap, who had ridden on the Duke of Brunswick's dogs, whom the King of Bavaria had read his poems to, who had smoked out of the same pipe with German princes, whom the Pope had idolised, and Napoleon never loved! This last circumstance troubled him on his death-bed, or, as I said, in his death-cradle, and he wept over the tragic fate of the great Emperor, who had never loved him, but who died in such a sorrowful way at Saint Helena--'just as I am dying,' he added, 'solitary, misunderstood, forsaken by all kings and princes, a caricature of former magnificence!' "Although I could not rightly understand how a dwarf who died among giants could compare himself with a giant who died among dwarfs, I was nevertheless moved by poor Turlutu's words and by his forsaken condition at the last moment. I could not help expressing my astonishment that Mademoiselle Laurence, who was now so grand, gave herself no trouble about him. I had scarcely uttered this name than the dwarf in the cradle was seized by the most fearful spasms, and he whispered with his white lips--'Ungrateful child! that I brought up, that I would elevate to be my wife, that I taught to move and behave among the great of this world, how to smile, how to bow at court, how to act--you have used my instructions well, and you are now a great lady, and you have a coach and footmen, and plenty of money, and plenty of pride, and no heart. You leave me here to die--to die alone and in misery, as Napoleon died at Saint Helena! O Napoleon! you never loved me.' What he added I could not catch. He raised his head, made some movements with his hand, as if fighting against somebody, perhaps against death. But that is an opponent whose scythe neither a Napoleon nor a Turlutu can withstand. No skill in fencing avails here. Faint, as if overcome, the dwarf let his head sink down again, looked at me a long time with an indescribable, ghostly stare, suddenly crowed like a cock, and expired.