"Your Majesty cannot doubt my zeal and activity. My devotion to the cause has been demonstrated. I have never vacillated in critical moments, never weakly yielded to circumstances. But in spite of my efforts and circumspection, a catastrophe stares us in the face."
The King listened attentively and the Minister went on.
"I have endeavored to spare your Majesty the annoyance of listening to these alarms. I come now to appeal for your help, for only you may avert the danger.
"One of my deputies, the most resourceful of all, my right hand, indeed, by name Volpetti, who for a time was in the service of Caroline, Queen of Sicily;—this Volpetti has for years tracked that—that dangerous creature. So far he has subjected him to living in a position in which mischief was impossible of accomplishment. He has been incapacitated for the attaining of any real advantage—This Volpetti was bequeathed me by Fouché. He was employed in the surveillance of the individual in question when I became Minister. During Napoleon's ascendancy, Volpetti kept this individual well concealed in a Vincennes dungeon; but the Empress Josephine, with the end of employing him as a weapon in view of the contingent divorce, adopted the policy of befriending and, finally of liberating him. After leaving Vincennes, our individual turns up in Prussia. As he had no civil status, he could give no trouble. He was nobody. At that time, Volpetti conceived a brilliant idea, that of playing the friend. He lent him a passport bearing a fictitious name and authorizing him to reside in Spandau. The individual has never been able to shuffle off his name. O there is no prison so secure as a name."
"Nevertheless," interposed the King, "when one possesses documents proving one's identity—"
"I am coming to that," said the Minister, waving his hand in order to dispel apprehension.
"The preservation of those documents, thro all these years of vicissitudes is the knot which I cannot unravel. Whence come they? I conjecture they procede from Barras (with his mania for collections), and that he gave them to Josephine. She in turn placed them with Montmorin, who planned his escape and who was subsequently killed in a skirmish. Those papers constituted an infernal magazine which threatened to explode at any moment. Volpetti rested not in his search for them, but they were skilfully concealed. As a last resort, he insinuated into the life of the individual a woman, excellent hearted and who was persuaded that she rendered a veritable service by advising him to deliver the papers to Le Coq."
"And did he?" inquired the King in graceful irony. "I wager that the woman attained her ends."
"Yes, your Majesty, he delivered certain papers, but the most important ones he kept—the devil knows where. He preserves them to this day in a casket."
"Next to woman, the gravest perils to man are documents," murmured the King in persistent irony.