would follow his Majesty to this residence. God is my witness that I had no other wish than to consecrate all my life to the service of the Emperor; therefore I did not need a moment's reflection to reply that this could not be a matter of doubt; and I occupied myself almost immediately with preparations for the sojourn, which proved to be not a long one, but the duration of which no human intelligence could then have been able to foretell.
Meanwhile, in the retirement of his chamber, the Emperor became each day more sad and careworn; and when I saw him alone, which often occurred, for I tried to be near him as much as possible, I remarked the extreme agitation which the reading of the dispatches he received from Paris caused him; this agitation was many times so great that I noticed he had torn his leg with his nails until the blood flowed, without being aware of it. I then took the liberty of informing him of the fact as gently as possible, with the hope of putting an end to this intense preoccupation, which cut me to the heart. Several times also the Emperor asked Roustan for his pistols; fortunately I had taken the precaution, seeing his Majesty so unnerved, to recommend him not to give them to him, however much the Emperor might insist. I thought it my duty to give an account of all this to the Duke of Vicenza, who entirely approved of my conduct.
One morning, I do not recall whether it was the 10th or 11th of April, but it was certainly on one of those days, the Emperor, who had said nothing to me in the morning, had me called during the day. I had hardly entered his room when he said to me, in a tone of most winning kindness, "My dear Constant, there is a hundred thousand francs waiting for you at Peyrache's; if your wife arrives before our departure, you will give them to her; if she should not, put them in the corner of your country-place, note the exact location of the spot, which you will send to her by some safe person. When one has served me well he should not be in want. Your wife will build a farm, in which she will invest this money; she will live with your mother and sister, and you will not have the fear of leaving her in need." Even more moved by the provident kindness of the Emperor, who thus deigned to consider the interests of my family affairs, than delighted with the great value of the present he had made me, I
could hardly find words to express to him my gratitude; and such was, besides, my carelessness of the future, so far from me had been the thought that this great Empire could come to an end, that this was the first time I had really considered the embarrassed condition in which I
would have left my family, if the Emperor had not thus generously provided for them. I had, in fact, no fortune, and possessed in all the world only my pillaged house, and the fifty thousand francs destined to repair it.
Under these circumstances, not knowing when I should see my wife again, I
made arrangements to follow the advice his Majesty had been kind enough to give me; converted my hundred thousand francs into gold, which I put into five bags; and taking with me the wardrobe boy Denis, whose honesty was above suspicion, we followed the road through the forest to avoid being seen by any of the persons who occupied my house. We cautiously entered a little inclosure belonging to me, the gate of which could not be seen on account of the trees, although they were now without foliage;
and with the aid of Denis I succeeded in burying my treasure, after taking an exact note of the place, and then returned to the palace, being certainly very far from foreseeing how much chagrin and tribulation those hundred thousand francs would cause me, as we shall see in the succeeding chapters.