CHAPTER I.
Mushrooms "La celebrite est comme le feu, qui brule de pres et illumine de loin." Under a glorious sky, in the year 1869, Paris gathered to rejoice in the centenary of the birth of the First Napoleon.

A gathering this of mushroom nobility, soldiery and diplomacy, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the greatest mushroom that ever sprang to life in the hotbed of internecine strife.
"Adventurers all," said John Turner, the great Paris banker, with whom I was in the Church of the Invalides; "and yonder," he added, indicating the Third Napoleon, "is the cleverest." We had pushed our way into the gorgeous church, and now rubbed elbows with some that wore epaulettes on peaceful shoulders.

There were ladies present, too.

Did not the fair beings contribute to the rise and fall of that marvellous Second Empire?
Representatives of almost every European power paid homage that day to the memory of a little Corsican officer of artillery.
As for me, I went from motives of curiosity, as, no doubt, went many others, if indeed all had so good a call.

In my neighbourhood, for instance, stood a stout gentleman in court uniform, who wept aloud whenever the organ permitted his grief to be audible.
"Who is that ?" I inquired of my companion.
"A Legitimist, who would perhaps accept a Napoleonic post," replied John Turner, in his stout and simple way.
"And is he weeping because the man who was born a hundred years ago is dead ?" "No! He is weeping because that man's nephew may perchance note his emotion." One could never tell how dense or how acute John Turner really was.
His round, fat face was always immobile and fleshy--no wrinkle, no movement of lip or eyelid, ever gave the cue to his inmost thought.