'All the same, I wish you could go on! It was very interesting.'

'Not for two pretty women. Besides, the Emperor does not like to be kept waiting.'

Marianne felt a brief stab of remorse when she met Jolival's eye and remembered their planned expedition. But after all, there was no danger in the house.

'Another time,' she told him with a smile. 'I am ready, my lord duke.'

Jolival gave her a sidelong smile while continuing to stir the spoon gravely in his blue Sevres cup.

'But of course,' he said. 'There is no hurry.'

When the impassive Rustan opened the door of the Emperor's office for Marianne, Napoleon was sitting working at his big desk and did not look up, even when the door was shut. Marianne looked at him in astonishment, uncertain how she should react. The wind was completely taken out of her sails. She had come to him in happy haste, borne up on the wave of joy which the mere thought of her lover awoke in her. She had thought to find him in his own room, or at least waiting for her impatiently. She came, expecting to throw herself into arms wide open to receive her. She had come, in short, hurrying to meet the man she loved – and found the Emperor.

Hiding her disappointment as best she could, she let her knees give and, sinking into a deep curtsey, waited with bent head.

'Get up and sit down, mademoiselle. I will be with you in a moment.'

Oh, that terse, cold, impersonal voice. Marianne's heart contracted as she moved to sit down on the little yellow sofa placed in front of the desk at right angles to the fire where she had seen Fortunée for the first time. There, she sat quite still, not daring to move, practically holding her breath. The silence was so complete that the swift scratching of the imperial pen across the paper seemed to her to make a shattering noise. Napoleon went on writing, eyes down, amid an improbable pile of red folders, open and closed. The room was strewn with papers. A sheaf of rolled up maps stood in a corner. For the first time, Marianne saw him in uniform. For the first time, the thought came to her of the vast armies he commanded.

He was wearing his favourite olive green uniform of a colonel of the chasseur of the Guard but instead of the high uniform boots he wore white silk stockings and silver buckled shoes. As usual, his white Kerseymere breeches were ink stained and showed the marks of his pen. Across his white waistcoat lay the purple ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur, but what struck Marianne most of all were the locks of short brown hair plastered to his forehead by beads of sweat from the heat with which he worked. In spite of her disappointment, in spite of her vague feeling of anxiety, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a warm rush of tenderness. She was suddenly so sharply conscious of her love that she had to make an effort not to throw her arms about his neck. But, certainly an emperor was not a man like any other. The impulses which would have been so sweet and natural with an ordinary mortal, must be mastered until it suited his pleasure. No, Marianne thought with childish regret, truly it was not easy to love one of the giants of history.

Suddenly, the 'giant' threw down his pen and looked up. The eyes that met hers were as cold as steel.

'So, mademoiselle,' he said abruptly, 'it seems you dislike the style of my times? From what I hear, you wish to revert to the splendours of the past century?'

For a moment, surprise left her speechless. This was the last thing she had been expecting. But anger soon restored her voice. Did Napoleon, by any chance, mean to dictate every single act of her life, even her likes and dislikes? All the same, well knowing it was dangerous to cross swords with him, she forced herself to be calm and even managed to smile. After all, it was rather funny. Here she came running to him, all throbbing with love, and he was talking about decoration. The thing that seemed to vex him most was her apparent lack of enthusiasm for the style he had adopted as his own.

'I have never said I did not like your style, sire,' she said sweetly. 'I merely expressed a wish that the Hôtel d'Asselnat should look once more as it used to do—'

'What makes you think that when I gave it to you I desired such a resurrection? The house I gave you must be that of a famous Italian singer, belonging wholly to the present regime. There can be no question of turning it into a temple for your ancestors. Do you forget that you are no longer Marianne d'Asselnat?'

Oh, the tone was merciless and cutting! Why did there have to be two such contradictory natures to this man? Why, oh why did Marianne have to love him so desperately? She rose, white to the lips, and shaking with distress.

'Whatever name it may please your majesty to call me by, it cannot make me other than I am. I have killed a man for the honour of my name, sire, and you will not prevent my feeling for my parents the love and respect which is their due. For myself, if I belong to you body and soul, which you cannot for an instant doubt, I alone belong to you. My family is my own.'

'And mine too, remember! All Frenchmen, past present and to come, belong to me, by which I mean they are my subjects. You are somewhat too apt to forget that I am the Emperor!'

'How could I forget it?' Marianne said bitterly. 'Your majesty gives me little chance! As for my parents—'

'I have no wish to prevent you mourning them, discreetly, but you must understand that I have little love for the fanatics of the old régime. I have a good mind to take that house back and give you another.'

'I want no other, sire. Your majesty may withdraw your architects if it offends them to work in an outmoded style, only leave me the house. I prefer the Hôtel d'Asselnat as it is, ruined, mutilated and pitiful, to the most sumptuous house in Paris! As for the noble subjects of the king – I thought your majesty had been one of them!'

'Do not be insolent. It will do you no good with me. The reverse, in fact. It seems to me, that you have too much pride of caste, to be a loyal subject. I hoped to find more submission and obedience in you. Know that what I value most in a woman is gentleness, a quality in which you seem to be singularly lacking!'

'The life I have led hitherto has scarcely taught me gentleness! I am deeply sorry I must offend your majesty, but I am as I am. I cannot change my nature!'

'Not even to please me?'

The tension was increasing. What game was Napoleon playing? Why this sarcasm, this attitude almost of hostility? Was he truly such a despot as to demand from her a submission that would make her blind, deaf and dumb? Was it the servile obedience of a slave in a harem that he wanted? If so, it was too bad. Marianne had fought too hard simply to preserve her dignity as a woman to bend now. Even if it meant tearing the heart out of her breast, she would not yield. Her eyes did not fall before that terrible blue gaze as, with infinite gentleness, she said:

'Not even to please you, sire! And yet, as God is my witness, I have no more earnest desire than to please your majesty.'

'You are going the wrong way about it,' he said with a sneer.

'But not at the price of my self-respect! If you had deigned, sire, to tell me that all you looked for in me was a servile creature, a mere consenting slave, going in perpetual terror of your majesty, then I should have begged you to let me leave France as I had meant to do. Because, for me, to love so is not to love at all.'

He took two steps towards her and with a quick movement untied the velvet ribbons holding her cloak. The heavy folds slid to the ground. He gazed at her for an instant, standing very straight before him. The candlelight fell softly on her beautiful shoulders and on the swell of her bare breasts, gilding them like summer fruits in their basket of white lace. Her face was very pale under the heavy helmet of midnight-coloured hair but her long green eyes were bright with bravely unshed tears. She looked, in that moment, breathtakingly lovely. He had only to make a single movement, to take her in his arms and wipe away the pain from her face. But he was in one of those tyrannical moods when no human power could have made him yield to that desire. She dared to stand up to him and that was enough to rouse in him a cruel determination to break her.

'And what if that is how I wish to be loved?' he said slowly without taking his merciless eyes off her.

'Then I do not believe you! You cannot wish for a love that is crawling, terrified, debased – not you!'

He ignored the cry of protest, in spite of all the love it held. His hand was on her breast, hot, ungentle fingers working upwards to the slender column of her neck.

'What I love in you,' he said with brutal sarcasm, 'is your matchless voice and your beauty. You are a wonderful singing bird with the body of a goddess. It is my intention to enjoy both to the full. I am not concerned with feelings. Go and wait for me in my room. Take your clothes off and get into bed. I will come to you in a moment.'

Marianne's high cheek-bones flamed suddenly as though he had hit her. She recoiled instantly, and her two hands flew to her uncovered breast. Her throat dried suddenly and her eyes burned with shame. All at once, she remembered the gossip overheard in the rue de Varennes. The story of Mademoiselle Dudresnoy whom he had dismissed without so much as a word of explanation after getting her into his bed. The episode of the little girl he was betrothed to in Marseilles, got rid of by a curt letter on the patently false excuse that she had not asked her parents for her own hand. And, finally, the well known story of the Polish countess whom he had so maltreated that she became unconscious, of which he then took advantage to rape her and then afterwards send her back to her native Poland to bear his child. Was it possible that all this could be true? Marianne was beginning to think so. At all events, not at any price, even that of her love, would she consent to be treated so. Love did not give him the right to everything.