"But, sire," asked M. Decazes, "why should not I myself go rather than entrust this commission to another?"
"Out of the question, mon enfant!" "Mon enfant" was the pet name by which the king called his favourite minister.
A trusted messenger was sent to the Royal Library: he opened St. Augustine at the given pages and found the paper described. It was a simple matter to take it away. The paper was a very thin, blank folio sheet oddly snipped here and there. While Louis XVIII. was searching for the mysterious revelations hidden in the jagged paper the secretary brought him a missive containing a leaf of the same size as that from the St. Augustine, but inscribed with apparently unintelligible letters. At the corner of the envelope in which this leaf came were written the two words: "Most urgent." The king understood that there was a connection between the two events and a likeness between the two leaves. He placed the cut sheet of paper over the written sheet and saw that the letters shown up through the holes in the upper leaf made sense. He dismissed the secretary and intimated to M. Decazes to leave him alone, and when both had gone, he made out the following lines:—
"King, thou art betrayed! Betrayed by thy minister and by the P.P. of thy S——.
"King, I alone can save thee. MARIANI."
The reader will understand that I do not hold myself responsible for this note any more than for the rest of the anecdote. The king did not mention this note to anyone; but, that evening, the Minister of the Police,[1] who was dismissed next day, issued orders to find a man named Mariani.
The following day, which was Sunday the 13th of February, the king on opening his prayer-book at mass found this note inside:—
"They have found out what I wrote; they are hunting for me. Do your utmost to see me, if you would avoid great misfortunes for your house. I shall know if you will receive me, by means of three wafers which you should stick inside the panes of your bedroom windows."
Although the king was greatly interested by this last letter of advice, he did not think it sufficiently urgent to attend to it as directed. He waited and hesitated, and then left matters till the morrow. That evening there was a special performance at the Opera, when Le Rossignol, les Noces de Gamache, and le Carnaval de Venise were played. The Duc and Duchesse de Berry were present. About eleven o'clock, at the close of the second act of the ballet, the duchess, feeling tired, told her husband that she wished to leave. The prince would not allow her to go alone, but himself conducted her out of the Opera House. When he reached their carriage, which stood in the rue Rameau, just as he was helping the princess up the step, and saying to her, "Wait for me, I will rejoin you in a moment," a man darted forward rapidly, passed like a flash of lightning between the sentinel on guard at the door of exit and M. de Clermont-Lodève, the gentleman-in-waiting, seized the prince by the left shoulder, leant heavily against his breast and plunged a thin, sharp small-sword, with a boxwood hilt, in his right breast. The man left the weapon in the wound, knocked three or four curious bystanders spinning and disappeared immediately round the corner of the rue de Richelieu and under the Colbert Arcade. For the moment nobody noticed that the prince was wounded; he himself had hardly felt any pain beyond the blow of a fist.
"Take care where you are going, you clumsy fellow!" M. de Choiseul, the prince's aide-de-camp, had exclaimed, pushing the assassin to one side, thinking he was simply an unduly inquisitive bystander. Suddenly the prince lost his breath, grew pale and tottered, crying out, as he put his hand to his breast—
"I have been assassinated!"