Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/375

Rh wont to indulge his habit of smoking at a safe distance from his grandmother.

Ivan showed him a piece of paper. "I shall not insult you by asking whether you know anything about this," he said.

It was the copy of a letter addressed to the Czar by a person who signed himself "Captain of Regicides," threatening him with instant death if he would not immediately proclaim Napoleon II.

"I should like to hear you do it!" cried Emile indignantly, as he flung the paper on the ground, and set his heel upon it. "I should like better still to find out the author of that precious document, and to treat him so," he added, grinding it beneath his foot. "Such scoundrels bring the good cause into disrepute. But the Emperor Alexander has too much courage and good sense to regard them."

"True; yet others may be forced to regard them for him. The threat has not been an empty one, Emile. They have tried to poison him."

"Never!" cried Emile, starting and changing colour.

"And nearly succeeded," Ivan continued sadly. "All our joy in the present, all our happy plans for the future, might to-day have been turned into mourning. And not ours only—"

"But how was it?" Emile interrupted.

"It occurred to his cook, contrary to his usual practice, to taste the wine laid ready for his master's use at dinner. The poor fellow's life has been saved with the utmost difficulty."

"That is abominable!" cried Emile. "If I but knew the miscreant who did it, I would spare the executioner a bad business. Peste! if we want a victim, we Imperialists—and perhaps it is not unnatural we should—we ought to take Gneisenau who proposed a scaffold for the Emperor, Talleyrand who deceived and betrayed everybody impartially all round, or old Louis himself who ran away from his throne without striking a blow.