"

"To take leave, never to see each other more," said the emperor, sadly.
"I shall never be able to admire you in your great _roles_ again, Talma.
I am about to depart, never to return again. You will play the emperor
on many an evening, but not I, Talma! My part is at an end!"

"No, sire, you will always remain the emperor!" exclaimed Talma, with
generous enthusiasm; "the emperor, although without the crown and the
purple robe."

"And also the emperor without a people," said Napoleon.

"Sire, you have a people that will ever remain yours, and a throne that
is imperishable! It is the throne that you have erected for yourself on
the battle-fields, that will be recorded in the books of history. And
every one, no matter to what nation he may belong, who reads of your
great deeds, will be inspired by them, and will acknowledge himself to
be one of your people, and bow down before the emperor in reverence."

"I have no people," murmured Napoleon, gloomily; "they have all
deserted--all betrayed me, Talma!"

"Sire, they will some day regret, as Alexander of Russia will also one
day regret, having deserted the great man he once called brother!" And,
in his delicate and generous endeavor to remind Napoleon of one of his
moments of grandeur, Talma continued: "Your majesty perhaps remembers
that evening at Tilsit, when the Emperor of Russia made you so tender a
declaration of his love, publicly and before the whole world? But no,
you cannot remember it; for you it was a matter of no moment; but I--I
shall never forget it! It was at the theatre; we were playing 'Oedipus.'
I looked up at the box in which your majesty sat, between the King of
Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second
Alexander of Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft
and saw you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship
of a great man is a gift of the gods!' And as I said this, the Emperor
Alexander a