"Colonel Despienne was shot, sire," I stammered.
"And Captain Tremeau cut down. Had I been a few minutes earlier, I might have saved him. The other escaped across the fields."
I remembered that I had seen a horseman a moment before I had met the Emperor. He had taken to the fields to avoid me, but if I had known, and Violette been unwounded, the old soldier would not have gone unavenged. I was thinking sadly of his sword-play, and wondering whether it was his stiffening wrist which had been fatal to him, when Napoleon spoke again.
"Yes, Brigadier," said he, "you are now the only man who will know where these papers are concealed."
It must have been imagination, my friends, but for an instant I may confess that it seemed to me that there was a tone in the Emperor's voice which was not altogether one of sorrow. But the dark thought had hardly time to form itself in my mind before he let me see that I was doing him an injustice.
"Yes, I have paid a price for my papers," he said, and I heard them crackle as he put his hand up to his bosom. "No man has ever had more faithful servants—no man since the beginning of the world."
As he spoke we came upon the scene of the
