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. He had been
at Fontainebleau when Napoleon bade farewell to the Old Guard, saying:
"For twenty years I have ever found you in the path of honour and glory.
Adieu, my children! I would I were able to press you all to my heart--
but I will at least press your eagle. I go to record the great deeds we
have done together."
When the gossip came to Lagroin, as he sat in his doorway, babbling of
Grouchy and Lannes and Davoust, the Little Corporal outflanking them all
in his praise, his dim blue eyes flared out from the distant sky of youth
and memory, his lips pursed in anger, and he got to his feet, his stick
fiercely pounding the ground.
"Tut! tut!" said he. "A lie! a pretty lie! I knew all the Napoleons--
Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Caroline, Eliza, Pauline--all! I have
seen them every one.
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