Haji followed the noblemen and women into the Bois de Boulogne.
He did not dare go too far. The forest was very different from a twenty-first-century park; it was primitive everywhere, with no signposts or directions. Venturing too deeply inside could easily get one lost.
As a public space, hunting was originally forbidden, because ordinary citizens who wandered in might easily be injured by mistake. It really was not a suitable place to bring children. But these aristocrats had brought many soldiers with them. They had set up a security perimeter in advance, which made hunting possible.
Anyone who ran into it would certainly feel uncomfortable, but these boundaries were not permanent. Once the soldiers withdrew, civilians could continue using this green space. London often had to close roads when foreign heads of state arrived as well, though these young people were not heads of state.
Haji found a tree, squatted beside it, and smoked. It was a habit he had retained from before. He was not as lucky as Napoleon Bonaparte, whom bullets seemed not to recognize, nor was he like Tsar Alexander, who believed bullets would not hit him. At the very least, he needed cover; even if someone saw the smoke, their bullets could not reach him.
Haji had always thought of Napoleon as a historical figure. He had never imagined that he would live to see such a day.
The decline of the last ruler of a dynasty had always been inseparable from the rule of not knowing the people's hardships. In the past, when he heard young couples breaking up and saying, "We are simply not from the same world," he had not quite understood. Now he did. Living like Marie Antoinette in the Bagatelle Garden, one really could say something like, "If commoners cannot