“Too late to warn your majesty from this lady, who has evidently come to carry out some criminal enterprise.”
“Ah, bah! she was, perhaps, going to assassinate me?”
“Sire, that is what M. de Vincennes asserts.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Napoleon, turning once more toward Constant, “did you not tell me that she was deeply enamoured of me? Is the governor here still?”
“Yes, sire; he wants to know whether he shall not immediately arrest the lady and closely question her.”
Napoleon was silent for a moment, and seemed to reflect.
“Constant,” he then said, “tell M. de Vincennes to come hither. I myself want to speak to him.”
Constant went at once into the anteroom and returned in a minute, to introduce the governor of Vienna, M. de Vincennes.
Napoleon hastily went to meet him. “You have come to warn me,” he said, sternly. “What are your reasons for doing so?”
“Sire, the intentions of this lady are extremely suspicious. Since I have been in Vienna she has been incessantly watched by my agents, because she is the intellectual head of all the dangerous and hostile elements of the city. All the enemies of your majesty, all the so-called German patriots, meet at her house, and by closely watching HER, we could learn all our enemies’ plans and actions. Hence, it was necessary for us to find an agent in her house who would report to me every day what had been going on there, and I was so fortunate as to enlist the services of her mistress of ceremonies.”