‘Napoleon likes the smell of burning aloes,’ said she.  ’There was never anyone who had such a nose as he, for he can detect things which are quite hidden from me.’

‘The Emperor has an excellent nose for many things,’ said Talleyrand.  ‘The State contractors have found that out to their cost.’

’Oh, it is dreadful when he comes to examine accounts—­dreadful, Monsieur de Talleyrand!  Nothing escapes him.  He will make no allowances.  Everything must be exact.  But who is this young gentleman, Monsieur de Talleyrand?  I do not think that he has been presented to me.’

The minister explained in a few words that I had been received into the Emperor’s personal service, and Josephine congratulated me upon it with the most kindly sympathy.

’It eases my mind so to know that he has brave and loyal men round him.  Ever since that dreadful affair of the infernal machine I have always been uneasy if he is away from me.  He is really safest in time of war, for it is only then that he is away from the assassins who hate him.  And now I understand that a new Jacobin plot has only just been discovered.’

’This is the same Monsieur de Laval who was there when the conspirator was taken,’ said Talleyrand.

The Empress overwhelmed me with questions, hardly waiting for the answers in her anxiety.

‘But this dreadful man Toussac has not been taken yet,’ she cried.  ’Have I not heard that a young lady is endeavouring to do what has baffled the secret police, and that the freedom of her lover is to be the reward of her success?’

’She is my cousin, your Imperial Majesty.  Mademoiselle Sibylle Bernac is her name.’

‘You have only been in France a few days, Monsieur de Laval,’ said Josephine, smiling, ’but it seems to me that all the affairs of the Empire are already revolving round you.  You must bring this pretty cousin of yours—­the Emperor said that she is pretty—­to Court with you, and present her to me.  Madame de Remusat, you will take a note of the name.’

The Empress had stooped again to the basket of aloes wood which stood beside the fireplace.  Suddenly I saw her stare hard at something, and then, with a little cry of surprise, she stooped and lifted an object from the carpet.  It was the Emperor’s soft flat beaver with the little tricolour cockade.  Josephine sprang up, and looked from the hat in her hand to the imperturbable face of the minister.

‘How is this, Monsieur de Talleyrand,’ she cried, and the dark eyes began to shine with anger and suspicion.  ’You said to me that the Emperor was out, and here is his hat!’

‘Pardon me, your Imperial Majesty, I did not say that he was out.’

‘What did you say then?’

‘I said that he left the room a short time before.’

‘You are endeavouring to conceal something from me,’ she cried, with the quick instinct of a woman.

‘I assure you that I tell you all I know.’