To keep his courage up, he dropped into a restaurant, ate four cutlets, a loaf of bread, a slice of cheese, and washed it all down with two bottles of wine.

The coffee and supplements brought him up to two o'clock, and that was the time he had set for himself.
He tipped his hat slightly over one ear, buttoned his buckskin gloves, coughed energetically two or three times before the sentinel at the _Rue de Rivoli_, and marched bravely into the gate.
"Monsieur," cried the porter, "what do you want ?" "The Emperor!" "Have you an audience letter ?" "Colonel Fougas does not need one.

Go and ask references of him who towers over the _Place Vendome_.

He'll tell you that the name of Fougas has always been a synonym for bravery and fidelity." "You knew the first Emperor ?" "Yes, my little joker; and I have talked with him just as I am talking with you." "Indeed! But how old are you then ?" "Seventy years on the dial-plate of time; twenty-four years on the tablets of History!" The porter raised his eyes to Heaven, and murmured: "Still another! This makes the fourth for this week!" He made a sign to a little gentleman in black, who was smoking his pipe in the court of the Tuilleries.

Then he said to Fougas, putting his hand on his arm: "So, my good friend, you want to see the Emperor ?" "I've already told you so, familiar individual!" "Very well; you shall see him to-day.