Supper, at that late hour, was brought to the sitting-room and consisted of some magnificent peaches and some light creams and pastries, as well as a superb Brie of which Talleyrand was known to be particularly fond, washed down with an unusually fine old burgundy.

Conversation soon languished, however, owing to the manifest weariness of the guests. It revived only slightly when Crawfurd remarked, as though announcing a fact of no great importance: 'It appears that Champagny has sent a note to ambassador Armstrong.'

Talleyrand raised one eyebrow, while Marianne roused abruptly from her sleepy doze at the mere mention of the American diplomat's name.

'A note eh?' the prince said. 'And what does it say?'

'How should I know? All I can tell you is that there was a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – and that the ambassador's expression has been a trifle less harassed ever since the – the fifth of August, I think it was, when the note arrived.'

'Less harassed? What do you think, Crawfurd? Does it mean the Emperor has decided to treat the Beaufort business leniently? It would be quite easy, of course, simply to let him go…'

'Don't you believe it. The matter is past hushing up now. The seaman, Perez, who, quite between ourselves, seems singularly well-informed as regards political affairs for an ignorant seaman, declares that Beaufort intended to put in at Portsmouth to unload some of his cargo of champagne and is demanding a third of the value as a reward for his evidence, by virtue of the Milan decree. Which reminds me, it's a curious thing how, although the affair was to be kept a deadly secret, every interested department seems to have got wind of it. I wonder what the Emperor thinks…'

'That,' Talleyrand said energetically, rising to his feet and striking the table with the flat of his hand, 'is what we have to find out. The whole business seems to have got thoroughly out of hand, and we are hearing a great deal too much about this seaman, Perez. Don't be alarmed, Marianne,' he added, seeing her pale face and widening eyes suddenly bright with tears, 'I will try to see the Emperor, and if I fail there I will write to him. It is time a few honest voices made themselves heard. But go and get some sleep now, my child. You can scarcely keep your eyes open. Your hostess will take good care of you and I will tell your friends where you are first thing in the morning.'

This was true. Marianne was wholly exhausted. While the Prince of Benevento sought his coach for the remainder of his journey to the Hôtel Matignon, she suffered herself to be led meekly away by Eleonora Crawfurd to a pretty bedchamber hung with rose-coloured chintz on the second floor of the house. The room had two windows which looked out on to a quiet garden not unlike Marianne's own.

Mrs Crawfurd turned down the bed with deft hands and then turned to light the lamp under a tisanière which stood on the table by the bed.

'A little camomile will do you good,' she said. 'It is a sovereign remedy for the nerves. Shall I help you to undress?'

Marianne shook her head with a tired smile of thanks. She was impatient, now, to be left alone but her hostess seemed in no hurry to depart. She was walking about the room, altering the position of a flower in a vase, checking that the curtains ran smoothly in their rings, shifting a chair slightly, as if she were trying to prolong their tête à'tête indefinitely. Marianne, her nerves on edge, was on the point of committing the ultimate rudeness of asking point-blank to be left alone when Mrs Crawfurd turned suddenly and regarded her guest with an expression half perplexed and half compassionate.

'You poor, poor child,' she said in a tone whose sympathy did not, to Marianne's ears, ring altogether true. 'I had so hoped that you, at least, might have found happiness!'

'Why me at least?'

'Because you are so sweet and fresh and lovely, so – oh, I swear to God that when I heard of your marriage I prayed, I prayed with all my heart that the curse which seems to haunt the princesses of Sant'Anna might spare you!'

Th-the curse?' Marianne gasped with difficulty, for even in her present state of anxiety the idea of a curse seemed to be going rather too far. 'What curse? If you mean Donna Lucinda—'

'Oh, your unfortunate husband's grandmother was no more than – than an instance of the dreadful state of affairs which goes back to the fourteenth century. Ever since a Sant'Anna brutally murdered his wife in revenge for adultery all the women of the family – or nearly all, have died violent deaths. It takes courage, or a great love, to marry any of that illustrious name – but you did not know this?'

'No. I did not know,' Marianne said, wide awake now and wondering very much what her hostess could be at. It seemed to her extremely odd that the Cardinal de Chazay should have kept such a tragic legend as this from her, unless, with his fanatical hatred of all superstition, he had simply dismissed it as a horrible, childish tale.

Deciding that this last theory was probably correct, Marianne added: 'But it would have made no difference had I known. I believe in ghosts – but not in curses which attach themselves to innocent people. Besides,' she went on, ruthlessly editing the truth, 'I did not even meet a ghost at the Villa dei Cavalli!' This whole conversation, coming out of the blue at a time when all she wanted was to go to sleep, struck her as fantastic, and that seemed as good a way as any of putting an end to it. But Mrs Crawfurd was not a woman to be easily put off, although it was not easy to see what her object might be in introducing the subject of the Sant'Annas.

'No ghosts?' she said now, with a sceptical smile. 'I am surprised! Even if it were only—'

'Only who?'

'Oh, no one,' Eleonora said suddenly. She came to Marianne and kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'We will talk about all this another time. For the moment, you are asleep on your feet.'

'No, no!' Marianne protested, quite sincerely now, for she was dying to hear more. 'I can sleep later. Tell me—'

'Nothing at all, child. It is a long story and – well, I too am sleepy. It would be a mistake to begin. But don't tell me that you did not know that when your husband, Prince Corrado, was born his father, Don Ugolino, killed his mother…'

With that, Eleonora left the room, as softly as one of the ghosts in which she, too, appeared to believe and closed the door behind her, leaving Marianne wide awake and thoroughly confused. She understood this woman less and less. Why had she introduced the subject if she did not wish to explain fully? If it had been to distract Marianne's thoughts from their constant, agonized preoccupation with Jason's fate, she had only partly succeeded because there was no story, however exciting, which could have distracted her from her fears for the man she loved. But if she had meant to give her a sense of uneasiness and insecurity, then she had achieved her object to perfection. How could she help thinking that this curse which had attached itself to the women of her name might extend to those she loved? And what connection was there between the murder of Corrado's mother, Donna Adriana, and the prince's own tragic destiny?

Unable to sleep, she lay turning the problem over and over in her overexcited brain, looking at it from every direction yet without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. The murder seemed to give substance to the theory that Corrado was a monster, yet when she recalled the lithe, powerful figure of the nocturnal horseman the idea became unthinkable. Then was it the face, perhaps, which was repulsive? But a man did not kill his wife on account of a face, however hideous. He might kill in anger – or brutality – or for jealousy. Suppose the child Corrado had borne some striking likeness to another man? But Marianne did not on the whole place much faith in striking resemblances applied to new-born babies. With the exercise of a little imagination, a baby could be made to look like almost anybody. And besides, in that case, why the sequestered existence, why the mask? To preserve for ever from the least breath of scandal the memory of a mother whom the prince had never known and whose memory he could therefore hardly be expected to cherish? No, it was quite impossible…

When it began to get light, at about four o'clock, Marianne, seated in a chair by the open window, had still not closed her eyes, nor had she found any answer to her questions. Her head ached and she was deadly tired. Dragging herself up, she leaned out. All was very quiet. Only the first birds were beginning to sing and tiny forms flitted from branch to branch, without stirring a leaf. The sky was pink and orange with streaks of coral and gold which told that the sun would soon be up. Out in the street, the metal-shod wheels of a cart clanked over the cobblestones and a charcoal-vendor's cry echoed nostalgically. Then, from across the Seine, came the sound of a cannon being fired and at that precise moment up came the sun into a sky filled with belfries chiming the first notes of the Angelus.

This glorious din, which was to last all morning, announced to the good people of Paris that on that day their Emperor was forty-one years old and that today was a holiday and everyone should behave accordingly.

But there was no holiday for Marianne and so as to be sure of hearing nothing of the general celebrations which would gradually take possession of the capital, she carefully closed and shuttered the windows, drew the curtains and, utterly exhausted, flung herself at last fully dressed on her bed and fell instantly asleep.


***

Marianne's meeting with Arcadius on the evening of the fifteenth of August, while all over Paris people were drinking in the streets and squares and dancing under the street lamps to Napoleon's good health, was almost tragic. His face drawn from the fatigue of several sleepless nights spent haunting every locality where he hoped to find some trace of Lord Cranmere, Jolival reproached Marianne with a good deal of bitterness for what he called her lack of confidence in him:

'Why did you have to come back? What do you hope to do? Bury yourself in this house along with an old fool surrounded by memories of his dead queen and that scheming old woman, still mourning for her murdered lover and her own vanished youth? What are you afraid of? That I won't do all that is humanly possible? Well, don't worry. I am doing it. I'm searching – desperately. I'm searching for news of Mrs Atkins. I spend my nights roaming about Chaillot and the Boulevard du Temple, haunting the Homme Armé and the Epi-Scié. I spend hours in disguise, in the hope of catching a glimpse of one of Fanchon's men, or of Fanchon herself. But I am wasting my time… Do you think I need anything more to worry about – such as knowing that you are here, in hiding, at the mercy of anyone who might denounce you?'

Marianne waited until the storm had blown over. She understood her friend's weariness and discouragement too well to blame him for his outburst, which was prompted purely by his affection for her. To placate him, she was meek, almost humble.

'Please don't be cross with me, Arcadius. I could not stay there, living quietly in the country, while you were working yourself to death here, and while Jason was – was—'

'In prison,' Jolival finished for her tartly. 'A political prisoner. It's not the hulks, you know! And I know he is being treated well.'

'I know. I know all that… or I suppose so, but I was going mad! And when the prince told me he had to come back to Paris, I couldn't stand it. I begged him to take me with him.'

'He should not have done so. But women can always get round him. Well, what are you going to do now? Spend your days listening to Crawfurd extolling the virtues of Marie-Antoinette, telling you in detail all about the Affair of the Necklace or the horrors of the Temple and the Conciergerie? Unless you prefer to hear his wife's life story?'

'I shall certainly listen to anything that she may be able to tell me, because she was born at Lucca and seems to know the history of the Sant'Annas better than anyone; but my real reason for coming back, Arcadius dear, is so that I shall be able to hear any news there is as soon as it is known, and be able to decide what to do… Monsieur de Talleyrand says that things are going very badly and he will tell you—'

'I know. I have just seen him. He told me he was going to seek an audience with the Emperor to try and throw some light on this dreadful business. But I am afraid he won't find it easy to get a hearing. His position is not very encouraging just at present.'