laid on that June evening in the boudoir of the ministry of foreign affairs, the night before the battle of Marengo.  Those who have the means of judging, and who have known persons who were well-informed, are fully aware that Bonaparte was handled like a child by Talleyrand and Fouche, who were determined to alienate him irrevocably from the House of Bourbon, whose agents were even then, at the last moment, endeavoring to negotiate with the First Consul.”

“Talleyrand was playing whist in the salon of Madame de Luynes,” said a personage who had been listening attentively to de Marsay’s narrative.  “It was about three o’clock in the morning, when he pulled out his watch, looked at it, stopped the game, and asked his three companions abruptly and without any preface whether the Prince de Conde had any other children than the Duc d’Enghien.  Such an absurd inquiry from the lips of Talleyrand caused the utmost surprise.  ’Why do you ask us what you know perfectly well yourself?’ they said to him.  ’Only to let you know that the House of Conde comes to an end at this moment.’  Now Monsieur de Talleyrand had been at the hotel de Luynes the entire evening, and he must have known that Bonaparte was absolutely unable to grant the pardon.”

“But,” said Eugene de Rastignac, “I don’t see in all this any connection with Madame de Cinq-Cygnes and her troubles.”

“Ah, you were so young at that time, my dear fellow; I forgot to explain the conclusion.  You all know the affair of the abduction of the Comte de Gondreville, then senator of the Empire, for which the Simeuse brothers and the two d’Hauteserres were condemned to the galleys,—­an affair which did, in fact, lead to their death.”

De Marsay, entreated by several persons present to whom the circumstances were unknown, related the whole trial, stating that the mysterious abductors were five sharks of the secret service of the ministry of the police, who were ordered to obtain the proclamations of the would-be Directory which Malin had surreptitiously taken from his house in Paris, and which he had himself come to Gondreville for the express purpose of destroying, being convinced at last that the Empire was on a sure foundation and could not be overthrown.  “I have no doubt,” added de Marsay, “that Fouche took the opportunity to have the house searched for the correspondence between Malin and Louis XVIII., which was always kept up, even during the Terror.  But in this cruel affair there was a private element, a passion of revenge in the mind of the leader of the party, a man named Corentin, who is still living, and who is one of those subaltern agents whom nothing can replace and who makes himself felt by his amazing ability.  It appears that Madame, then Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, had ill-treated him on a former occasion when he attempted to arrest the Simeuse brothers.  What happened afterwards in connection with the senator’s abduction was the result of his private vengeance.