oss country. He had taken
off the famous top-coat; and his equally famous green uniform, crossed
by the red cordon of the Legion of honor and heightened by the white of
his kerseymere breeches and of his waistcoat, brought out vividly
his pale and terrible Caesarian face. One hand was on a map which lay
unfolded on his knees. Berthier stood near him in the brilliant uniform
of the vice-constable of the Empire. Constant, the valet, was offering
the Emperor his coffee from a tray.

"What do you want?" said Napoleon, with a show of roughness, darting his
eye like a flash through Laurence's head. "You are no longer afraid to
speak to me before the battle? What is it about?"

"Sire," she said, looking at him with as firm an eye, "I am Mademoiselle
de Cinq-Cygne."

"Well?" he replied, in an angry voice, thinking her look braved him.

"Do you not understand? I am the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, come to ask
mercy," she said, falling on her knees and holding out to him the
petition drawn up by Talleyrand, endorsed by the Empress, by Cambaceres
and by Malin.

The Emperor raised her graciously, and said with a keen look: "Have you
come to your senses? Do you now understand what the French Empire is and
must be?"

"Ah! at this moment I understand only the Emperor," she said, vanquished
by the kindly manner with which the man of destiny had said the words
that foretold to her ears success.

"Are they innocent?" asked the Emperor.

"Yes, all of them," she said with enthusiasm.

"All? No, that bailiff is a dangerous man, who would have killed my
senator without taking your advice."

"Ah, Sire," she said, "if you had a friend devoted to you, would you
abandon him? Would you not rather--"

"You are a woman," he said, interrupting her in a faint tone of
ridicule.

"And you, a man of iron!" she replied with a passionate sternness which
pleased him.

"That man has been condemned to death by the laws of his country," he
continued.

"But he is innocent!"

"Child!" he said.

He took Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by the hand and led her from the hut
to the plateau.

"See," he continued, with that eloquence of his which changed even
cowards to brave men, "see those three hundred thousand men--all
innocent. And yet to-morrow thirty thousand of them will be lying dead,
dead for their country! Among those Prussians there is, perhaps, some
great mathematician, a man of genius, an idealist, who will be mown
down. On our side we sha