The retreat of Napoleon, after the battle of Leipsic, was as disastrous to him as his retreat from Moscow. On the 9th of November, 1813, he reached Paris, and on the 21st of the following month the allied armies crossed the Rhine, and carried the war into France. Soon after, the English, under Wellington, defeated the French, under Soult—“the bravest of the brave,” in several engagements in the South of France, until the knell of Napoleon’s arms was sounded in the bloody battle of Toulouse, fought on Easter Sunday, the 11th of April, 1814. Six days before the battle, Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau. If the electric telegraph had been known in those days, all the lives lost in that fearful fight might have been saved. But that would have been a small matter to Napoleon.

The war was ended. That long, weary war—so wanton, so unnecessary, save for Europe’s liberty, and England’s existence—that had left its trail of blood almost everywhere, and desolated so many thousands of homes, was ended.

To many and many a poor prisoner, the year 1814 must have been like the blessed year of jubilee. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen were set free in Russia alone: but they had not been in confinement for very long. In continental countries there must have been many more. Some fifty thousand were located in various parts of England and Scotland, of whom a large number had been imprisoned for several years, and they were no doubt the most joyous of all.

But it must have been anything but an easy matter even to get rid of such numbers of men, all in a state of more or less excitement, intoxicated with a sense of newly gained liberty. Without proper precautions an emancipation on so large a scale would have led to much disorder, at least in the neighbourhood where prisoners had been confined. To avoid this they were marched off in detachments to the sea-coast, where ships were ordered to attend and embark them for conveyance to their own dear France.

Such necessary arrangements of course took time, and it was not until August that the last batch of prisoners left Norman Cross.

Of course, the poor fellows were aware of the great change in their condition that was coming by what they gathered from the current news of the day; yet, whenever the actual proclamation of liberty reached them, we can but faintly imagine the delirium of excitement that followed. Then, in the place where for so many years the sighing of the prisoners had been heard, mingled, it might be, with the sound of revelry, in which the wretched tried to drown their misery, pealed forth the shouts of those who sang for very joy and gladness of heart.

Poivre was still among them. That man of the revolution, like many others of the older prisoners, had learned something by his captivity. He used to think, and with too much reason, that the rich and high-born were the vultures that preyed on the poor; but now he had discovered that one risen from the ranks might be as heartless and oppressive as “Monsieur” of old, and be utterly indifferent how many lives were lost, and how many imprisoned for years, to gain his own selfish ends.

They were sitting together at supper, some of them, a few evenings before their turn came to leave, when the remark was made that “the little corporal” would never have another chance, but was driven into a hole at last.

“Think you so?” replied Poivre; “I am not so sure of that. It must be a curious hole that man cannot get out of sooner or later. He has the cleverness of the devil, if there be one.”

“Would you fight again for him, Poivre, if he did come out of his hole?”

“Not I,” said he, “if I could help it. Some of us have had enough of him. We begin to think we have not been fighting for “France and glory,” but for him, and he does not care two pins for us. But there are thousands of fellows who are such fools that, if the emperor were only able to shew himself again, they would flock to him, and be ready to become food for powder the next moment. I am going to prophecy, my friends. Mark what I say. When all our countrymen have been set free, Napoleon will have an army, a grand army, ready to hand. Depend on it, he has his eye on this, and will make use of the opportunity; but he will not find Marc Poivre in the ranks!”

Human prophecies are acute guesses, and when they come true, correct guesses. Such was Poivre’s prophecy. But was it not a fatal mistake, though, perhaps, one that could not be avoided, to place an army within Napoleon’s grasp, even as we had given him back the sailors that manned his navy by the bogus peace of Amiens?

This at least is certain, that the volcano which had desolated Europe for so many years but had become quiescent when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau, burst forth again with an awful blaze in 1815, and was only extinguished for ever at Waterloo. So, some at least of the prisoners at Norman Cross may again have fought gallantly against us.

Captain Tournier, like the rest, was longing to see once more his old home, but had first to pay a farewell visit to his friends at the Manor House. He was with them only a couple of nights, and Villemet was invited to stay also. The meeting could not be otherwise than mingled with sadness to each of them. They had known each other now for nearly six years, and those years had been made interesting by intercourse of no ordinary kind.

At dinner, Cosin was the most cheerful of them all. He was really very sorry to part with his friends, especially with Tournier, whom he loved as a brother; but he could not for the life of him make out why two men who had just obtained the freedom they had so long pined for, and were on the point of starting for the homes they had dreamt of every night for years, should be so awfully down. And least of all, like a stupid fellow that he was, and as most men are in such matters, could he imagine why Alice should take upon herself to look so supremely wretched, and hardly open her mouth all dinner time.

Nothing could exceed the minute attention which Villemet paid to her, though all in good taste, but with an anxious, if not mournful air, as if he were appointed to watch over her health, and was not quite happy about it.

Alice received his attentions with perfect politeness, but her ears were evidently occupied with something else.

Tournier took no more notice of her than any gentleman would naturally do to the lady of the house at a party of four. Almost all his conversation was addressed to Cosin, and consisted chiefly of references to happy days gone by, during their intercourse with each other. Each allusion ended with a sort of sigh, as if to say, “Ah, there will be no more of that now!”

“Upon my word, Cosin,” he cried, “if it were not for my sweet old mother, I would almost be a prisoner again to live near you.”

The blue eyes brightened a little. And there was someone who noticed it, and, oh! how he wished he had made the same remark.

To understand Tournier’s enthusiasm, we must know something of how a deeply sensitive nature is drawn toward the one who has saved his soul from death.

“Come, my friends,” said Cosin, “let us be merry while we can, which to my thinking is always, if we cast our future upon God. There is no happiness unalloyed with sorrow in this world. We must wait for that. I drink to the perpetual amity of our two countries. God has made us neighbours: why should we quarrel? We have been fighting, but we have not been quarrelling. Let French and English be better friends than ever. And when the devil of ambition next arises in either country, and tempts us to disagree, let us bid him leave his foul work alone, for we, the people, are fast friends for ever.”

Next morning, the four went out for their last ride together. Alice and Villemet went first, and the others followed. As they passed the familiar spot where Villemet had spent so many weary days and nights, Alice remarked, how glad he must be that he was a free man once more.

“Yes, Miss Cosin,” he replied in a very dissatisfied tone; “yet I am not free altogether, my body is, but I shall leave my heart behind me.”

“Oh, that will never do,” said Alice, with more vivacity than he quite liked: “you will want your heart. You could never be a heartless man I am quite sure,” and she looked archly at the handsome young fellow as she said it, and smiled so provokingly.

“It is true however,” he said, but in such a melancholy way, that Alice felt sure something serious was coming.

“If I might only leave my heart with you,” he added, “I should be quite content to go away without it.”

“But what on earth should I do with it?” she said, purposely disregarding the sentimental, and sticking to the literal meaning of his words.

“Keep it close to your own,” was his reply.

“Then should I be queen of hearts indeed!”

“You are that already to me.”

It was time, she thought, to put a stop to this; so, after riding on a little further, Alice said very demurely, “I thought, sir, you were more in jest than earnest, but, at all events, I am altogether in earnest when I say, that you must never repeat to me what you uttered just now. I wish always to regard you as a friend—a friend found under circumstances of deep interest to my brother and myself—but nothing more; never anything more! Let us join the others.”

And she turned her horse’s head, and met her brother and Tournier, her face slightly flushed; while Villemet rode after her much more disturbed than ever he had been when charging a whole battery of guns.

They too had been talking together as they followed the others along the familiar road that passed by the barracks. It was on the old subject that Tournier seemed never to weary of.

“There,” he said, pointing to the spot where he had first met Cosin, “that is where I first set eyes on your sunny English face. I remember it by that blighted tree in the hedge-row. I often thought, when I passed it afterwards, that it was exactly like me at that time—half-dead for want of God—fungus everywhere.”

Then, as they passed the barracks, he said, “Stop a moment, Cosin. Look at that gate yonder. How well I remember coming out of that gate in an awful state of mind—nearly mad—determined, as a last resource, to see if you, or anybody, really believed in God; and I found you did, for you lived as if you did. And then began those blessed years of teaching, not so much by words as by example, which have made me a happy man, though, God knows, and you know too well, a very faulty one.”

“Say no more, my good friend,” replied Cosin; “only let not our separation now be an end to our intercourse. You shall ever be to us a welcome visitor.”

“And I, for my part, shall ever be delighted to renew my acquaintance with the place which has been at once, the saddest and the happiest in my life.”

The others had now joined them.

“Tournier will soon be here again!” cried Cosin to his sister, unable to repress the pleasure that he felt, but entirely, dull fellow that he was, on his own account.

And all, saving Villemet, finished their ride in the best of spirits.

Next day came the parting.