"Nothing easier."
"Tell me how."
"Listen."
"I am listening."
"It is not unlikely that there may be a great battle fought near here in a couple of days. Take a hundred determined men, whom you can clothe in the uniform of the Guards, mingle with the troops at Fontainebleau, and it will be quite easy, either before or during or after the battle, to render us the service I am commissioned to ask of you."
Maubreuil shook his head.
"Do you refuse?" asked Roux-Laborie quickly.
"Not so. I am only thinking that a hundred men would be difficult to find: luckily one would not need a hundred; a dozen would be sufficient. I shall perhaps be able to find them in the army, but I must have power to advance them two or three ranks, and to give them pecuniary recompense, in proportion to the service they will have to undertake."
"You shall have whatever you want. What do ten or a dozen colonels, more or less, matter to us?"
"That's all right."