Title: The Yellow Poppy

Author: D. K. Broster

BOOK I

THE WEDDING GIFT

“And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,

?Took up his life, as if it were for death

?(Just capable of one heroic aim),

?And threw it in the thickest of the world.”

Aurora Leigh.

NOTE

Any reader familiar with the figure of the gallant and unfortunate Louis de Frotté will realise why neither he nor the Normandy which he led so well play any part in these pages—not indeed that he has served as prototype for any character in them, but because to have introduced him also would have been to overblacken the reputation of Bonaparte. Yet that which is here laid to the First Consul’s charge is no libel, for the deeds done at Alen?on and Verneuil in mid-February, 1800, are written in history.