The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the
present century which we now call Empire. Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of
October so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were
beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte then declared
Consul for life a belief in which that man owes part of his prestige strange to say on the
day the sun failed him in 1812 his luck ceased! About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth
of November 1803 the sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops of
four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue and sparkling on the sand and grassy places of an
immense rondpoint such as we often see in the country where land is cheap enough to be
sacrificed to ornament. The air was so pure the atmosphere so tempered that a family was
sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket. Reprint of the
novel. Originally released in 1841.
