"Is there no possibility of your doing anything? You are so intimate with him, cannot you save me?"
"I fear not."
"But at least make one effort!"
"It is a hopeless case!" the Irishman assured him. Then, after consideration, he said: "Well, I will try, but upon one condition, and one only."
"Name it!" was the eager reply.
"That you give me carte-blanche to act as I see fit!"
The condemned man did not hesitate. He agreed readily to all the Irishman suggested; and the villain having given orders to the gendarmes to await his return, departed triumphantly. After an interval which appeared sufficiently long for him to have journeyed to Verdun and back, he reappeared and informed the poor youth, who meanwhile had been awaiting his verdict in a state of indescribable anxiety, that the mission had been successful. This had not, however, he explained, been accomplished without the greatest difficulty, as General Wirion trembled at the serious responsibility which he was about to incur in disobeying the Minister's express orders; nevertheless, the Governor would consent to spare the Englishman's life on condition of his paying down immediately the sum of £5000. The young man was startled by the largeness of the amount, but in the position in which he was placed, it required few arguments to convince him of the worthlessness of money when his existence was at stake. He accordingly consented to the proposal, signed a draft for the specified amount, and was set at liberty. When, however, in a calmer frame of mind he came to consider the transaction and to discuss it with his friends, he felt convinced that some trickery had been employed towards him. He thereupon wrote to his banker, cancelling the order for the money. But this only made matters worse for him; for the General, furious at such an attempt to defeat his machinations, enforced payment, not merely of the £5000 originally demanded, but of an additional £200, under pretext of having incurred that latter expense in trying to substantiate his lawful claim to the larger sum!
Needless to say, robberies of this description were perpetrated without the knowledge of the Ministers; but a rumour of some disgraceful transaction on the part of Wirion having at last reached them, he was summoned to Paris to undergo examination before a court of inquiry. In consequence of what then came to light, upon the next public occasion at which he was present, the Emperor turned his back upon the General. The latter understood the hint. He left the presence of Napoleon, got into a hackney coach, drove to the Bois de Boulogne, and there shot himself.
Occasionally, however, Napoleon himself was outwitted by the cunning of the villains in his employment. Wirion's successor at Verdun, Colonel Courcelles, a less daring but more clever scoundrel, found favour with the Emperor by a very simple expedient. He had lost one of his legs in partie de chasse, a loss which gave him the valuable air of a gallant veteran, and of which he knew how to take the best advantage. Passing through Verdun to join his army, the Emperor spied the apparently maimed hero, and at once honoured him with a special notice. "Monsieur le Colonel" he inquired with a note of respect, "où avez-vous perdu la jambe?" Courcelles, sufficiently quick-witted to convey the impression he desired without risking the utterance of any lie, replied truthfully: "Sire, j'étais à la bataille de Marengo!"
Courcelles succeeded in robbing the prisoners who were in his charge in a more cautious manner than his predecessor; he, in short, contrived to subtract something for himself from any remittances which reached them, and paid them francs for livres. But if in many instances the prisoners suffered at the hands of the French authorities, on one occasion the position was reversed, and a French commandant became the victim of a prisoner's cunning.