"Sire, I would give the few short days remaining to me if God would grant that His Holy Spirit should fall upon you in your last hour."
"Well," said Murat, "hear my confession. I accuse myself of having been disobedient to my parents as a child. Since I reached manhood I have done nothing to reproach myself with."
"Sire, will you give me an attestation that you die in the Christian faith?"
"Certainly," said Murat.
And he took a pen and wrote: "I, Joachim Murat, die a Christian, believing in the Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman."
He signed it.
"Now, father," continued the king, "if you have a third favour to ask of me, make haste, for in half an hour it will be too late."
Indeed, the castle clock was striking half-past three. The priest signed that he had finished.
"Then leave me alone," said Murat; and the old man went out.
Murat paced his room for a few moments, then he sat down on his bed and let his head fall into his hands. Doubtless, during the quarter of an hour he remained thus absorbed in his thoughts, he saw his whole life pass before him, from the inn where he had started to the palace he had reached; no doubt his adventurous career unrolled itself before him like some golden dream, some brilliant fiction, some tale from the Arabian Nights.