‘Alas! yes, she orders’——
‘Well, speak, sir! What does she order? I am a man; I have courage. Speak!’
‘Alas! my dear sir, she orders—— If it had not been by herself that the command had been given, I declare to you, my dear Mr Sutherland, that I would not have believed it.’
‘But you make me die a thousand times. Let me see, sir, what has she ordered you to do?’
‘She has ordered me to have you STUFFED!’
The poor banker uttered a cry of distress; then looking the master of the police in the face, said: ‘But, Your Excellency, it is monstrous what you say to me; you must have lost your reason.’
‘No, sir; I have not lost my reason; but I will certainly lose it during the operation.’
‘But how have you—you who have said you are my friend a hundred times—you, in short, to whom I have had the honour to render certain services—how have you, I say, received such an order without endeavouring to represent the barbarity of it to Her Majesty?’
‘Alas! sir, I have done what I could, and certainly what no one would have dared to do in my place. I besought Her Majesty to renounce her design, or at least to charge another than myself with the execution of it; and that with tears in my eyes. But Her Majesty said to me with that voice which you know well, and which does not admit of a reply: “Go, sir, and do not forget that it is your duty to acquit yourself without a murmur of the commissions with which I charge you.”’
‘And then?’