'
I thought of the helpless, gentle, pompous Louis whom my father had once
taken me to visit, and I understood that France, after her convulsions
and her sufferings, did indeed require another and a stronger head.
'Do you not think so, Monsieur de Laval?' asked the Emperor. He had
halted for a moment by the fire, and was grinding his dainty
gold-buckled shoe into one of the burning logs.
'You have come to a very wise decision,' said he when I had answered his
question. 'But you have always been of this way of thinking, have you
not? Is it not true that you once defended me when some young
Englishman was drinking toasts to my downfall at an inn in this village
in which you lived?'
I remembered the incident, although I could not imagine how it had
reached his ears.
'Why should you have done this?'
'I did it on impulse, Sire.'
'On impulse!' he cried, in a tone of contempt. 'I do not know what
people mean when they say that they do things upon impulse.
In Charenton things are doubtless done upon impulse, but not amongst
sane people.
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