'No, Sire. A humble priest but, owing to my knowledge of latin, I was engaged some years since to tutor the children of Count Rostopchin in that noble language, and also in French.'

'A language no less noble, Monsieur l'Abbé. So you were a member of the household of one who, I am told, although I cannot believe it, is an incendiary?'

'And yet you must believe it, Sire. I am in a position to assure your Majesty that those were indeed the governor's orders. The city was to be razed to the ground, and the Kremlin also.'

'But this is absurd! It is pure madness!'

'No, Sire. It is the Russian way. There is only one way for your Majesty to save this ancient and renowned city.'

'And what is that?'

'Leave it. Withdraw from it immediately. There is still time. Abandon your intention to remain here and go back to France, and then the fires will stop.'

'How can you be sure of this?'

'I heard the Count give his orders. He has left certain trusted men who know where to find the fire engines. It could all be over in an hour… if your Majesty were to announce your immediate withdrawal.'

Clasping her hands tightly together, Marianne listened breathlessly to this exchange which, to her, was totally incomprehensible. She could not imagine why her godfather should be trying to save the imperial army on pretence of saving Moscow. At the same time something which the Duc de Richelieu had said in Odessa recurred unbidden to her mind: 'He is going to Moscow where a great task awaits him, should the wretched Corsican ever get so far…'

The Corsican was here. And here, facing him, the man whose secret power he could not know, a man sworn to a great task, and a man who had vowed to bring about his ruin. And now it was the cardinal's calm, quiet voice that filled Marianne with foreboding, far more than the Emperor's curt, incisive tones, although it was he who was speaking now, and with a note of menace.

'My immediate withdrawal? Announce it to whom?'

'To the night, Sire. A simple command or two from the Kremlin walls would be enough. It would be understood.'

The silence that followed was so absolute that it seemed to Marianne that her own heartbeats must be heard by everyone.

'Monsieur l'Abbé, you seem to me to be remarkably well-informed for a humble priest. You are a Frenchman, surrounded by Frenchmen. We have conquered and you should be proud. Yet you talk shamefully of flight.'

'There is no shame in a flight from the elements, Sire, even for a conqueror. I am a Frenchman, yes, but I am also a man of God and I am thinking of how many men of yours will perish if you persist in opposing God.'

'Are you going to tell me God is a Russian?'

'God is the God of all nations. You have defeated the armies of this one but there are still the people, and the people reject you with all their might, even to destroying themselves with you. Believe me and go!'

The last word rang out so imperiously that Marianne trembled. Gauthier de Chazay must have taken leave of his senses to address the Emperor of the French in such a tone, nor could she imagine what he hoped to achieve by it. Did he really believe that Napoleon would abandon Moscow just because he told him to? One look at that pale face, with its pinched nostrils and hard jaw-line, was enough to show that the situation was becoming dangerous.

Sure enough, Napoleon jerked up his chin and spoke suddenly, with great vehemence.

'I respect your cloth, Monsieur, but you are mad! Get out of my sight before I lose patience with you.'

'No. I will not go. Not until I have made you understand, for once in your life, before your pride leads you into the abyss, and all your followers with you. Once, in time past, you took France, soiled and bleeding from the excesses of the Revolution, eaten away by the leprosy of jobbery and profiteering under the Directorate, and you stood her on her feet, swept and garnished, and you grew in stature with her. Yes, even I, who was never of your faction, I tell you you were great.'

'And am I so no longer?' the Emperor asked haughtily.

'You ceased to be so on the day you ceased to serve France and made her serve you. You had yourself made by a crime and since then to establish your sacrilegious power on a firmer footing you have taken from her, year by year, the best of her children and sent them to perish on every battlefield in Europe.'

'It is to Europe, Monsieur, that you should address your complaint. It is Europe who could never bear to see France become France again, but greater and more powerful than before.'

'Europe would have borne it had France remained France as you say. But you have swollen her belly with a host of kingdoms and annexations she had no need of. But you had to have thrones for your brothers, did you not, and fortunes for those who followed you? And to set up these paper kings you have ruined and destroyed the oldest families in Europe.'

'You have said it! Old, dead, worn-out, finished! What is it about my crown that irks you? Are you one of those who would have had me seek the foolish glory of a Monk? Who want to see the decrepit line of the Bourbons restored to the throne?'

'No!'

That one, emphatic cry left Marianne if anything more bewildered than before. What was happening? Was Gauthier de Chazay, secret agent of the Comte de Provence, who called himself Louis XVIII, now denying his master? She had not long to wonder.

'No,' the cardinal said again. 'I do not deny that I wished it once. That I do so no longer is a matter for myself alone. I might even have come to accept you. But you have ceased to do your country good. You think only of your conquests and if you were allowed to do so would unpeople France for the glory of doing as Alexander the Great and reaching for the Indies to place the crown of Akbar on your head! No! It is enough! Go! Go, while there is yet time! Before God wearies of you!'

'Leave God out of it! I have heard enough! You are a mad old man. Get out before I have you put under guard!'

'Arrest me if you will. You will not arrest the wrath of God. Look, all of you!'

Such was the passion that inhabited the frail body that all those present turned, automatically, and followed the direction of his pointing hand.

'See! The fire from heaven is upon you. Unless you quit this city by tonight there will be no stone left upon another and you will all be buried in the ruins! Truly, I say unto you—'

'Enough!'

Napoleon, white-faced, bore down on his antagonist with clenched fists.

'Your impudence is equalled only by your folly. Who sent you here? What is your purpose?'

'No one sent me – no one but God! And I have spoken for your good—'

'Indeed? Who do you expect will believe that tale? You were with Rostopchin, were you not? You must know a great deal more than you have told. And you thought, you and those who paid you, that you had only to come here and pour your curses into my ears and I would pick up my skirts and run, like some foolish old woman, and make myself a laughing-stock for you? Well, abbé, I am not an old woman and the terrors you may rouse in simple souls in the darkness of your confessionals cannot touch me. I am not going. I have conquered Moscow and I mean to keep it.'

'Then you will lose your Empire. And your son, the son you fathered, sacrilegiously, upon that unhappy princess who thinks herself your wife but who is nothing but your concubine, will never reign. And so much the better, for if he ever reigned it would be over a desert.'

'Duroc!'

The stunned and obscurely frightened onlookers gave way automatically to allow the Grand Marshal of the Palace to approach.

'Sire?'

'Arrest this man! Lock him up well! He is a spy in Russian pay. Let him be locked up to await my orders. He shall die before I leave this palace.'

'No!'

Marianne's cry of anguish was lost in the general hubbub. Immediately, the cardinal was surrounded by guards and his hands tied behind his back. He was led away, still shouting.

'You are on the edge of an abyss, Napoleon Bonaparte! Fly before it opens under your feet and drags you down, you and all those with you!'

Napoleon, cursing furiously, made for his own apartments, accompanied by various members of his suite expressing shock and indignation at what had passed. Marianne hurried after them and caught up with the Emperor just as he was entering his bedchamber. She slipped in after him before the door closed on them both.

'Sire,' she cried, 'I must speak to you!'

Half-way across the room, he swung round and Marianne found herself shivering at the blackness of the look he bent on her.

'I have heard a great deal of speech this morning, Madame. A deal too much, indeed! I had thought my command to you was to go back to your bed. Do as I bid you and leave me in peace.'

She half knelt, as if she would have thrown herself at his feet, and clasped her hands in an instinctive gesture of supplication.

'Sire! I beseech you! Do as the priest bade you and begone from here!'

'Ha! Not you too? Will no one give me any peace? I wish to be alone, do you hear me? Alone!'

Seizing the first object which came to hand, which happened to be a Chinese vase, he hurled it violently across the room. As ill luck would have it, Marianne was just that instant rising. The vase caught her on the temple and with a little moan she subsided on to the carpet.

The bitter reek of sal volatile and a shattering headache were Marianne's first indications of returning consciousness. They were followed almost immediately by the voice of the invaluable Constant, speaking in soft and deferential reassurance.