"Make him tell you where it is."
"I mean, Sire, that it is my belief that M. le Comte's sister and daughter will undertake to take the money to Paris, hoping by their sex and general air of innocence to escape suspicion in connection with the money."
"Don't worry me with all these details, de Marmont," broke in Napoleon with a frown of impatience. "I told you to take a company with you and to get me the Empress' money. See to it that this is done and leave me in peace."
He hated arguing, hated opposition, the very suggestion of any difficulty. His followers and intimates knew that; already de Marmont had repented that he had allowed his tongue to ramble on quite so much. Now he felt that silence must redeem his blunder—silence now and success in his undertaking.
He bent the knee, for this homage the great Corsican adventurer and one-time dictator of civilised Europe loved to receive: he kissed the hand which had once wielded the sceptre of a mighty Empire and was ready now to grasp it again. Then he rose and gave the military salute.
"It shall be done, Sire," was all that he said.
His heart was full of enthusiasm, and the task allotted to him was a congenial one: the baffling and discomfiture of those who had insulted him. If—as he believed—Crystal would be accompanying her aunt on the journey toward Paris, then indeed would his own longing for some sort of revenge for the humiliation which he had endured on that memorable Sunday evening be fully gratified.
It was with a light and swinging step that he ran down the narrow stairs of the hotel. In the little entrance hall below he met Clyffurde.
In his usual impulsive way, without thought of what had gone before or was likely to happen in the future, he went up to the Englishman with outstretched hand.
"My dear Clyffurde," he said with unaffected cordiality, "I am glad to see you! I have been wondering what had become of you since we parted on Sunday last. My dear friend," he added ecstatically, "what glorious events, eh?"