His captors took him to the castle:  he was pushed into the common prison, the door was shut upon him, and the king found himself among thieves and murderers, who, not knowing him, took him for a companion in crime, and greeted him with foul language and hoots of derision.

A quarter of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander Mattei came in:  he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and folded arms.  There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with mud.  Mattei bowed before him.

“Commander,” said Murat, recognising his rank by his epaulettes, “look round you and tell me whether this is a prison for a king.”

Then a strange thing happened:  the criminals, who, believing Murat their accomplice, had welcomed him with vociferations and laughter, now bent before his royal majesty, which had not overawed Pellegrino and Trenta Capelli, and retired silently to the depths of their dungeon.

Misfortune had invested Murat with a new power.

Commander Mattei murmured some excuse, and invited Murat to follow him to a room that he had had prepared for him; but before going out, Murat put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold and let it fall in a shower in the midst of the gaol.

“See,” he said, turning towards the prisoners, “it shall not be said that you have received a visit from a king, prisoner and crownless as he is, without having received largesse.”

“Long live Joachim!” cried the prisoners.

Murat smiled bitterly.  Those same words repeated by the same number of voices an hour before in the public square, instead of resounding in the prison, would have made him King of Naples.

The most important events proceed sometimes from such mere trifles, that it seems as if God and the devil must throw dice for the life or death of men, for the rise or fall of empires.

Murat followed Commander Mattei:  he led him to a little room which the porter had put at his disposal.  Mattei was going to retire when Murat called him back.

“Commander,” he said, “I want a scented bath.”

“Sire, it will be difficult to obtain.”

“Here are fifty ducats; let someone buy all the eau de Cologne that can be obtained.  Ah—­and let some tailors be sent to me.”

“It will be impossible to find anyone here capable of making anything but a peasant’s clothes.”

“Send someone to Monteleone to fetch them from there.”

The commander bowed and went out.

Murat was in his bath when the Lavaliere Alcala was announced, a General and Governor of the town.  He had sent damask coverlets, curtains, and arm-chairs.  Murat was touched by this attention, and it gave him fresh composure.  At two o’clock the same day General Nunziante arrived from Santa-Tropea with three thousand men.  Murat greeted his old acquaintance with pleasure; but at the first word the king perceived that he was before his judge, and that he had not come for the purpose of making a visit, but to make an official inquiry.