Jack was startled, and he instinctively stood up very straight, as he always did when surprised.
Under the Emperor's crimson képi, heavy with gold, the old, old eyes, half closed, peered at him, as a drowsy buzzard watches the sky, with filmy, changeless gaze. His face was the colour of clay, the loose folds of the cheeks hung pallid over a heavy chin; his lips were hidden beneath a mustache and imperial, unkempt but waxed at the ends. From the shadow of his crimson cap the hair straggled forward, half hiding two large, wrinkled, yellow ears.
With a smile and a slight gesture exquisitely courteous, the Emperor said: "Pray do not allow me to interrupt you, monsieur; old soldiers are of small account when a nation's newspapers wait."
"Sire!" protested Jack, flushing.
Napoleon III.'s eyes twinkled, and he picked up his letter again, still smiling.
"Such good news, monsieur, should not be kept waiting. You are English? No? Then American? Oh!"
The Emperor rolled a cigarette, gazing into vacancy with dreamy eyes, narrow as slits in a mask. Jack sat down again, pencil in hand, a little flustered and uncertain.
The Emperor struck a wax-match on a gold matchbox, leaning his elbow on the table to steady his shaking hand. Presently he slowly crossed one baggy red-trouser knee over the other and, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the sunshine, said: "I suppose your despatch will arrive considerably in advance of the telegrams of the other correspondents, who seem to be blocked in Saarbrück?"
He glanced obliquely at Jack, grave and impassible.
"I trust so, sire," said Jack, seriously.
The Emperor laughed outright, crumpled the letter in his gloved hand, tossed the cigarette away, and rose painfully, leaning for support on the table.
Jack rose, too.
"Monsieur," said Napoleon, playfully, as though attempting to conceal intense physical suffering, "I am in search of a motto--for reasons. I shall have a regiment or two carry 'Saarbrück' on their colours. What motto should they also carry?"
Jack spoke before he intended it--he never knew why: "Sire, the only motto I know is this: 'Tiens ta Foy!'"
The Man of December turned his narrow eyes on him. Then, bowing with the dignity and grace that he, of all living monarchs, possessed, the Emperor passed slowly through the garden and entered the little hôtel, the clash of presented carbines ringing in the still air behind him.
Jack sat down, considerably exercised in his mind, thinking of what he had said. The splendid old crusader's motto, "Keep thy Faith," was scarcely the motto to suggest to the man of the Coup d'État, the man of Rome, the man of Mexico. The very bones of Victor Noir would twist in their coffin at the words; and the lungs of that other Victor, the one named Hugo, would swell and expand until the bellowing voice rang like a Jersey fog-siren over the channel, over the ocean, till the seven seas vibrated and the four winds swept it to the four ends of the earth.