nnot," he said drily.

And he disappeared among the groups humbly bowing in the hall. Some one
who witnessed the scene relates that the Emperor was very much moved
when reading the petition. "He changed colour several times, tears were
in his eyes and his voice trembled." The Duke of Rovigo asserted that
pardon would be granted; the Emperor's heart had already pronounced it,
but he was very angry with the minister of police, who after having made
a great fuss over this affair and got all the credit, left him supreme
arbiter without having given him any information concerning it.

"If the case is a worthy one," said Napoleon, "why did he not send me
word of it? and if it is not, why did he give passports to a family whom
I am obliged to send away in despair?"

The poor children had indeed to return to France, knowing that they
took, as it were, her death sentence to their mother. Each relay that
brought them nearer to her was a step towards the scaffold; nothing
could now save the poor woman, and she waited in resignation. Never,
since Le Chevalier's death, had she lost the impassive manner that had
astonished the spectators in court. Whether solitude had altered her
ardent nature, or whether she looked on death as the only possible end
to her adventurous existence, she seemed indifferent as to her fate, and
thought no longer of the future. Licquet had long abandoned her; he had
been "her last friend." Of all the survivors of the affair of Quesnay
she was the only one left in the conciergerie, the others having gone to
serve their terms in Bicetre or other fortresses.

Whilst it had seemed possible that Mme. Acquet's friends might obtain
the Emperor's interest in her case, she had received great care and
attention, but since the return of her daughters from Vienna things had
changed. She had become once more "the woman Acquet," and the interest
that had been taken in her gave place to brutal indifference. On August
23d (and this date probably accords with the return of the children and
their aunt) Chapais-Marivaux, in haste to end the affair, sent three
health-officers to examine her, but these good people, knowing the
consequence of their diagnosis, declared that "the symptoms made it
impossible for them to pronounce an opinion on the state of the
prisoner."

Chapais-Marivaux took a month to find doctors who would not allow pity
to interfere with their professional duty, and on October 6th the
prefect wrote to Real