"And she, wife of a hero, was in common intrigue
with Hippolyte Charles at the time! She had a conqueror, a splendid
adventurer, and coming emperor, for a husband, and she loved him not.
I--I could have knelt to him--worshipped him. I"--With a little
hysterical, disdainful laugh, as of the soul at itself, she leaned upon
the window, looking into the village below, alternately smiling and
frowning at the thought of this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze.
"Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start," she said.
"Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful." But again
she laughed, as at an absurdity.
During the next few days Valmond was everywhere--kind, liberal, quaint,
tireless, at times melancholy; "in the distant perspective of the stage,"
as Monsieur De la Riviere remarked mockingly. But a passing member of the
legislature met and was conquered by Valmond, and carried on to
neighbouring parishes the wondrous tale.
He carried it through Ville Bambord, fifty miles away; and the story of
how a Napoleon had come to Pontiac reached the ears of old Sergeant
Eustache Lagroin of the Old Guard, who had fought with the Great Emperor
at Waterloo, and in his army on twenty other battle-fields.
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