Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/360

350 "I do not see the good of faith," Emile broke in passionately. "I don't mean religious faith, but faith of any kind. We had faith—oh, such intense, glorious, undoubting faith—in the Emperor and in his star. And we loved him so! You cannot understand it, Prince Ivan, but it is true. Do you remember Henri's friend, the Old 'Garde' Rougeard, who came to tell me of the Emperor's return? He fell at Waterloo; a comrade of his, who crept back wounded to die amongst his children, told me about it. When all was lost, the remnant of the Old Guard was called upon to surrender. 'La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas,' was the proud reply; and those brave men died where they stood. Poor Rougeard took the colours from the falling ensign, and with his dying hand wrapped them round his breast. 'Vive l'Empereur!' was his last word."

"And the Emperor lived, after such followers as these," said Ivan with tears in his eyes. Emile saw the tears, and they did him more good than a hundred admonitions. Ivan presently resumed: "Suppose, Emile, that when your Emperor dies some one were to try to persuade the world that he had never existed,—that his whole personality, life, and career was a fiction from first to last?"

"Any one who tried it would be laughed at for his pains."

"Of course. Every effect must have a cause. Men do not love, trust in, die for that which is not, and never has been."

"What are you trying to say?" asked Emile, a little surprised.

"That the existence of Christ is as certain as that of Napoleon."

"Was. There was once such a Person, I am sure."

"He is. In the year three thousand six hundred—if the world last so long—who do you think will die for the name of Napoleon Buonaparte? Who will love him, obey him, follow him as my Czar on his throne to-day is not ashamed to confess