With what measure she had meted out, it was being measured back to her again.
The cup of trembling, filled with bitterness, was being held to her shrinking lips, and she must perforce drain it to the dregs.

After all Napoleon's far-flung campaigns, after all his overwhelming victories, after the vast outpouring of blood and treasure, after all his glory and all his fame, the end was at hand.
The prostrate Emperor stared out through the low window into the gray sky with its drift of snow across the panes.

He heard faintly the tumult outside.

Disaster, ruin, despair entered his heart.

The young conscripts were disheartened by defeat, the steady old veterans were pitifully few in number, thousands of them were in foreign prisons, many more thousands of them were dead.