Marianne had known, ever since Napoleon had told her that he held the criminal, that this was what she would hear. For her own part, she had known for so long that it was he who had killed Nicolas. Yet even now, she found it hard to believe that a man of his diabolical cunning could have allowed himself to be caught. Napoleon's last words, however, had thrown a blinding light even on this.

One doubt, stronger than all reason, Marianne had still:

'Sire! Are you sure that this time there is no mistake?'

He stiffened, embracing her in a glance that was suddenly ice-cold:

'You do not mean to ask me to pardon him, now?'

'God forbid, Sire!… if it is he, indeed!'

'Come. I will show him to you.'

They entered the keep, passed by the guard-room, its door shut for once, and climbed the fine spiral staircase up to the first floor where they emerged into a gothic chamber, the four bays of the roof supported on a massive central pillar. Here, a warder was on guard, and with him was Vidocq, whose tall figure bent double at the sight of the Emperor. At each corner of the room was a heavy, iron-bound door, leading to the cells which occupied the four corner turrets. Napoleon made a sign to the warder:

'Open the hatch. Try not to make a noise. This lady desires to see the prisoner.'

The man walked over to one of the corner turret doors, opened a small judas window and bowed.

'Go on,' Napoleon told Marianne. 'Look.'

She went, reluctantly, over to the door, both wanting and fearing what she would see, yet fearing most of all to find herself looking at a strange face, the face of some poor wretch who, by one of those sleights of hand at which they were so adept, had somehow been substituted for the real criminal.

The circular cell was lit by a lantern standing on a stool. A fire crackled cheerfully in the conical hearth, but the man who lay at full-length on the bed wore chains on his wrists and ankles. Marianne needed no second look to tell her that this was indeed the man whom she had both hoped and feared to see. It was Francis Cranmere, the man whose name she herself had once borne.

He was sleeping, but it was a restless, fevered sleep which recalled to her mind the little Spanish abbé in La Force. It was the sleep of a man who is afraid and whose fear stalks even in his dreams… A fine, white hand came down and closed the window before Marianne's wide, horror-stricken eyes.

'Well?' Napoleon asked. 'It is indeed he, this time?'

She nodded, unable to speak, and was forced to lean back against the wall for a moment, overcome by the turmoil of her feelings, made up of a combination of an awful gladness and at the same time a kind of horror, mingled with surprise at seeing the devil who had so nearly destroyed her own life caught at last. When she had recovered herself a little, she looked up and saw the Emperor standing before her, watching her anxiously, while farther off Vidocq stood motionless against the central pillar.

'So,' she said at last, 'it is for him… the thing I saw below?'

'Yes. And I say to you again: I hate that instrument. I have seen it murder too many innocent people. I am appalled by it and yet that man does not deserve to die, like a soldier, before a firing squad. It is not to you, or even to Nicolas Mallerousse, that I am offering up his head, but to the shades of my own men, slaughtered piecemeal by this butcher.'

'When – when is it to be?'

'Now. See, here comes the priest.'

An old man in a black soutane had emerged from the shadows of the staircase. He held a breviary in his hand. Marianne shook her head:

'He will not want him. He is not a Catholic.'

'I know, but it was not possible to procure a Protestant minister. Besides, what does it matter in the moment of death whose are the lips that speak of God and of the hope of His mercy, so long as the words are spoken?'

The priest gave a little bow and then passed on to the closed door, the warder hurrying before him. Marianne gripped Napoleon's arm nervously:

'Sire!… Must we stay here? I—'

'You do not wish to see? I am not surprised. In any case, it was no part of my intention to oblige you to witness such a scene. I only wanted you to be quite sure that this time justice has not miscarried, and that nothing can halt its course now. Let us go down – unless you wish to bid him farewell.'

She shook her head and almost ran towards the stairs. No, she did not wish to see Francis Cranmere again. She would not triumph over him as he went to his death, if only for fear of seeing the last thoughts of the man she had once loved, a man whose name she had borne, turn to hatred at the sight of her. If repentance were possible for such a man as Francis Cranmere, she would not have its blessed course turned aside for any action of hers.

She went down the stairs, the Emperor following, and across the plank bridge without a glance for the dreadful instrument below, and found herself before long in the great, white desert of the courtyard. The wind, buffeting her body, revived her and she turned her burning face to it. It had begun to snow again and a few flakes touched her lips. She put out her tongue and licked them gratefully and then turned and waited until Napoleon, less nimble than herself, caught up with her. He took her arm and they walked back, as they had come but more slowly now, to the Pavilion de la Reine.

'What of the others?' Marianne asked suddenly. 'Have you caught them as well?'

'Old Fanchon and her crew? You need have no fear. They are under lock and key and there is enough evidence against them to hang them a hundred times over, or send them to rot in prison for the remainder of their lives, without so much as mentioning this business. They will stand trial and pay the penalty in the ordinary way. For him, that was not possible. He knew too much and the English might even now have found a way to free him. Secrecy was vital.'

They were back in the empty room where Rustan was stirring up the fire. Napoleon sighed and removed his hat, from which the melting snow was running in thin streams.

'Now it is time to talk of you. When the roads are somewhat better, you will return to Italy. I must accede to your husband's requests because they are perfectly reasonable. It is not in the Emperor's power to withhold the Prince Sant'Anna's wife from him.'

'But I am not his wife!' Marianne protested wildly. 'You know quite well that I am not, Sire! You know the reason why I married him! The child is no more… therefore there is no longer anything to bind me to this – this… shadow!'

'You are his wife, even if only in name. I do not understand you, Marianne. It is not like you to turn your back on your duty. I thought you so gallant. You accepted the aid of this poor devil… for so he must be in the conditions by which he has chosen to live… and now that you can no longer fulfil your part of the contract, you have not even courage enough to face him honestly. I am surprised at you…'

'Say disappointed, rather! But I can't help it, Sire. I am afraid! Yes, I am afraid of that house, of what it contains, of that man whom no one ever sees and the evil which hangs about him. All the women of that family have died violent deaths. I want to live, and be with Jason again!'

'There was a time when you wanted to live for me,' Napoleon observed with a touch of sadness. 'How things change! How women change… I think, in the end, my love was greater than yours, for all my feelings for you are not yet dead, and if you would…'

Marianne lifted her hand quickly to stop what he would have said. 'No, Sire! In a moment you are going to offer me the – the solution to my problem that Fortunée Hamelin suggested to me once. It might satisfy Prince Sant'Anna, but I mean to keep myself now for the man I love… whatever risks that may involve.'

'Very well.' Napoleon sighed. 'We will speak no more of it.' From the curtness of his tone, Marianne knew that she had vexed him. Perhaps, in his masculine pride, he had thought that an hour with him might help to soften her longings for Jason and bring her back, chastened and obedient, to the path which he had no doubt designed for her.

After a brief silence, he resumed: 'You must go back, Marianne. Both honour and policy demand it. You must go back to your husband. But do not be afraid. Nothing will happen to you.'

'How do you know?' Marianne said, more bitterly than politely.

'I shall be watching. You shall not go alone. Apart from this curious old fellow who seems to have adopted you, you shall have an escort… an armed escort which will remain with you and act as you think fit.'

Marianne's eyes opened wide:

'An escort? For me? But on what pretext?'

'Shall we say… as Ambassadress Extraordinary? In fact I am sending you not to Lucca but to Florence, to my sister Elisa. You may easily sort out your differences with your husband without incurring the least danger because I will charge you with messages for the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. I mean my protection to extend to you there, and to have it known.'

'Ambassadress? I? But I am only a woman?'

'I have frequently employed women on other occasions. My sister Pauline knows something of that! And I should not wish to hand you over bound hand and foot to the man you have – yourself – chosen to marry.'

The implication was sufficiently obvious. She was to understand that had she, Marianne, showed more sense, she would have trusted her then lover to provide for her and not gone plunging off into impossible adventures… Judging it better to make no reply, she merely bowed and then sank into the ritual curtsy.