Before a table with the remains of dinner, and before a fire made of green wood which smoked, Napoleon was seated in a clumsy chair.  His muddy boots gave evidence of a long tramp across country.  He had taken off the famous top-coat; and his equally famous green uniform, crossed by the red cordon of the Legion of honor and heightened by the white of his kerseymere breeches and of his waistcoat, brought out vividly his pale and terrible Caesarian face.  One hand was on a map which lay unfolded on his knees.  Berthier stood near him in the brilliant uniform of the vice-constable of the Empire.  Constant, the valet, was offering the Emperor his coffee from a tray.

“What do you want?” said Napoleon, with a show of roughness, darting his eye like a flash through Laurence’s head.  “You are no longer afraid to speak to me before the battle?  What is it about?”

“Sire,” she said, looking at him with as firm an eye, “I am Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.”

“Well?” he replied, in an angry voice, thinking her look braved him.

“Do you not understand?  I am the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, come to ask mercy,” she said, falling on her knees and holding out to him the petition drawn up by Talleyrand, endorsed by the Empress, by Cambaceres and by Malin.

The Emperor raised her graciously, and said with a keen look:  “Have you come to your senses?  Do you now understand what the French Empire is and must be?”

“Ah! at this moment I understand only the Emperor,” she said, vanquished by the kindly manner with which the man of destiny had said the words that foretold to her ears success.

“Are they innocent?” asked the Emperor.

“Yes, all of them,” she said with enthusiasm.

“All?  No, that bailiff is a dangerous man, who would have killed my senator without taking your advice.”

“Ah, Sire,” she said, “if you had a friend devoted to you, would you abandon him?  Would you not rather—­”

“You are a woman,” he said, interrupting her in a faint tone of ridicule.

“And you, a man of iron!” she replied with a passionate sternness which pleased him.

“That man has been condemned to death by the laws of his country,” he continued.

“But he is innocent!”

“Child!” he said.

He took Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by the hand and led her from the hut to the plateau.

“See,” he continued, with that eloquence of his which changed even cowards to brave men, “see those three hundred thousand men—­all innocent.  And yet to-morrow thirty thousand of them will be lying dead, dead for their country!  Among those Prussians there is, perhaps, some great mathematician, a man of genius, an idealist, who will be mown down.  On our side we shall assuredly lose many a great man never known to fame.  Perhaps even I shall see my best friend die.  Shall I blame God?  No.  I shall bear it silently.  Learn from this, mademoiselle, that a man must die for the laws of his country just as men die here for her glory.”  So saying, he led her back into the hut.  “Return to France,” he said, looking at the marquis; “my orders shall follow you.”