The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-18

was levee at the Mulini when the Em- peror astourded the company by frankly announcing that he should quit Elba that night. The island was already shut in, no boat having been permitted to leave or enter any of the ports for two days. Ali the while the grenadiers continued to pat down the loam in the garden. It was not until 5 in the afternoon that the erums beat to arms and an army of HOO men embarked for the conquest of France on a fiotilla comprising the big Inconstant of 300 tons and Is guns; the Lombard IEtoile of 80 tons and five feluccas of from 25 to 50 tons each.
 It was an enchanting evening, in one of the most beautiful harbors of all the Mediterranean. The Emperor stood on 7 tlle quarterback. The town band played the "Marseillaise The townspeople
 cbeered and the mayors tears fell upon the dock. But there was not d breath of eir for the sails. Withuot a breeze with out a tide, the brig. the lombard and the feluccas lay for hours, as idle as painted ships on a painted harbor, while Napoleon waited for fortune to wait him to glory again or to make him the jest of the nations by imprisoninG him in the
 calm until the British commissioner should return.
 Not far from midnight, however, the lookout on Fort Stella reported that strong wind was springing up in the south, whereupon sailors and soldiers took the oars and rowed Caesar to his for tunes out at the harbor mouth, where the vhitecaps were sporting on the blue
 How many times had wind and wave befriended the islander on this, his native seal They had borne him a fugitive from Corsica to Toulon, and to his first vic tory. and they had parted a lane for him through Neson's fleet as he went to find an mir in ba o,,a 4r find it in the west. The very south wind which now sped him back to his throne left Campbell sitting helplessly under the lazily fiappping sails of the British war ship Partridge, becamed in the harbor Of Leghorn
 The eagle had been in flight full day and half when the commissioner re- turned at last to find the rage empty. Had he sailed away to join King Murat in Italy? Had he gone to Corsica? Or had he headed for the Genoese coast and Piedmont? Who knew? Ever the Prin- cess Pauline vowed she did not know, and that the colonel might feel the agi- tation of her heart she took his hand and pressed it to that shapely bosom which Canova delighted to reproduce in marble But the phlegmatic Briton did not think tue beat was above normal, and being sure that the entire town was laughing at him. he; and the Partridge went scud- ding about the little neighboring islands, pee ring in at every cove.
 Meanwhile the runaway Emepror and his fleet were having an unexciting voy- age over their 150-mile course to the coast Of France, except for the appear ance of French warship. The Bourbon and the Napoleonic brigs drew so close together that Napoleon ordered his grenadiers to lie flat on the deck while the captin put on a guleless front and m of q speaking trumpet.
 And how is the great man?" the Frenchman cried.
 Wonderfully we'll" the captain of the Inconstant replied at the suggestion of the great man who sat at his elbow en- toying the humor of the situation There upon the two ships dipped their flags and went each its way.
 The Shore of France
 On the fourth day while the early aft ernoon sun was glowing on the terraced gardens of the French shore and gllsten- ing on the still snowy peaks of the Mari- time Alps. Napoleon sailed into the wide Gulf Juan. On one side of the bay he saw the Island of Marguerite, and as he glanced at its castle walls in their melan- choly beauty rising from tho waters he must have thought-as who does not?-- or the prisoner in the iron mask who mas left his mystery clingirg to them forever. Across the bay on the other side, the roofs of Antibes must have called to his recollection another prisoner himself, for there in the old gray fort he had sat in the shadow of the guilotine after the fall of Robespierre,
 How often the voyage of his life had brought him to that beautiful Riviera: now often the tide in his affairs had borne him in and out of it's lovely har- bors! In the west was Toulon, whither ne had come an exile from Corsica only two and twenty years before, where he fought his first battle and whence he embarked for Egypt. Only around the mountainous headland to his left was the port of Frejus, where he had been welcomed home from the orient and where he had entered upon his Elban Beyond the Antbcan Cape on his right lay Nice, where he had taken command of the army of Italy, and farther along was Savona, out of which the Little ACorporal sped in the night to burst into fame on the nights of Montenotte.
 On no other stage had he so often astonished the world. Now he was about to eclipse all the surprises that had gone before. Indeed he "reckoned upon the astonishment of the people" as he said. to save him from the logi- cal consequences of perhaps the rashest