These gentlemen ask this pardon of your august clemency, in the hope that they may enter your army and meet their death in battle before your eyes; and thus praying, they are, of your Imperial and Royal Majesty, with reverence, etc.
"None but princes can do such prompt and graceful kindness," said the Marquis de Chargeboeuf, taking the precious draft of the petition from the hands of Bordin that he might have it signed by the four gentlemen; resolving in his own mind that he would also obtain the signatures of several august names.
"The life of your young relatives, Monsieur le marquis," said the minister, "now depends on the turn of a battle.

Endeavor to reach the Emperor on the morning after a victory and they are saved." He took a pen and himself wrote a private and confidential letter to the Emperor, and another of ten lines to Marechal Duroc.

Then he rang the bell, asked his secretary for a diplomatic passport, and said tranquilly to the old lawyer, "What is your honest opinion of that trial ?" "Do you know, monseigneur, who was at the bottom of this cruel wrong ?" "I presume I do; but I have reasons to wish for certainty," replied Talleyrand.

"Return to Troyes; bring me the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, here, to-morrow at the same hour, but secretly; ask to be ushered into Madame de Talleyrand's salon; I will tell her you are coming.

If Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, who shall be placed where she can see a man who will be standing before me, recognizes that man as an individual who came to her house during the conspiracy of de Polignac and Riviere, tell her to remember that, no matter what I say or what he answers me, she must not utter a word nor make a gesture.