"The Princess took them with her this morning," Pippa vouchsafed officiously.
"Ah!" the Prince drew in his breath. "It is of no consequence," he added. "General Murat will require but one and will doubtless lend me the other. Quick, Celio, our horses. The Princess has only an hour the start of us. We will overtake them at Mondragone."
They passed her in fact at Frascati where they saw her carriage standing unharnessed before the inn. "She is resting," said the Prince, "we will not disturb her until after our business at Mondragone is finished."
At the gate an astonished servant took their horses, and as the Prince walked through the shady cypress avenue his brain cooled and he formed a resolution differing from the one that had brought him to the villa. Upon the fountain terrace they saw the man they had come to seek. Not the galliard of his last visit, but a hunted refugee, his gaudy hussar uniform soiled and torn, the ballas ruby which had buckled his aigrette shot from his hat, and a tiny rill of blood trickling from his matted hair upon the golden bees that ornamented the sky-blue velvet tunic. Stretched prone upon a marble bench, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, his sword-arm beneath his head, the other trailing relaxed upon the ground, he was entirely at the mercy of the man who looked down upon his haggard face.
The Prince studied it for a moment in silence, then, with finger on lip, drew Celio into the loggia. "Let him rest," he whispered, "time enough when he awakes."
Ere that happened footsteps were heard and the voice of the Princess calling, "Joachim, where are you?"
Murat sprang up instantly.
"Paulette, is it you?"
"It is I. O mon Dieu; how you have changed! but we heard you were killed. Thank God, that is not true."
"I am beaten, which is worse," he said bitterly. "You were right, you see, quite right, all is lost—why do you not say 'I told you so'?"