]
"There!" he would say, "that shall be a kingdom!" And it was a kingdom.
Ah, that was a great time! Colonels became generals while you were
looking at them; generals became marshals, and marshals became kings.
There's one of those kings still left, to remind Europe of that time;
but he is a Gascon, and has betrayed France in order to keep his crown.
He doesn't blush for the shame of it, either; because crowns, you
understand, are made of gold! Finally, even sappers, if they knew how to
read, became nobles all the same. I myself have seen in Paris eleven
kings and a crowd of princes, surrounding Napoleon like rays of the sun.
Every soldier had a chance to see how a throne fitted him, if he was
worthy of it, and when a corporal of the Guard passed by he was an
object of curiosity; because all had a share in the glory of the
victories, which were perfectly well known to everybody through the
bulletins.
And what a lot of battles there were! Austerlitz, where the army
maneuvered as if on parade; Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a
lake as if Napoleon had blown them in with a single puff; Wagram, where
we fought three days without flinching.
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