'
'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.
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