At the door of the hotel, wild and drenched, he ran upon young Varano, and, clutching him by the shoulders, glared into his eyes. “Quick!” he panted. “He is up there on the hill--I have seen him--and without his fetish. Quick! Our opportunity has arrived.” Varano nodded pallidly. “I know,” he whispered. “I was coming to look for you.” Together they stole up to the Maestro’s chamber; opened the unlatched door like thieves; entered, and discovered the forgotten bag lying upon a chair. Dreading he knew not what terrific revelation, Baronte pressed the snap and disclosed---- Down in the vestibule a moment later they ran upon the landlord. “_Benedetto, mi’ amico_,” said Varano smoothly, “can you tell us what is ‘Leroy’?” “Of a verity, Signore,” answered the man. “‘Leroy’ is a quack remedy, a sedative, and very good for relieving pain. You should ask the great Maestro Paganini, whom it is my distinction to lodge, and who applies it to a bowel complaint from which he has long suffered terribly. He is never without a bottle or two of it in his little black bag.” Napoleon It was the 4th of July, 1809, and a thunderous, close evening. In Lobau, the largest of the five islands on the Danube, where were the imperial headquarters, the huge machinery of war, human and insentient, was getting up steam, so to speak, for the morrow’s milling, and eliciting, as its flywheel slowly revolved, an automatic response in all its myriad parts from Pressburg to Vienna. The occasion, it might be said, was an emergency occasion. If the Emperor, himself commanding, had not been thrashed by the Austrians, under the Archduke Charles, a couple of months earlier at Aspern, his retreat upon the islands had looked so much like a defeat, that for the moment his supremacy, moral and material, hung in the balance. For the first time the Grand Army had suffered a shock to its _amour-propre_ and its hitherto invincible faith in its leader. A little might turn the scale, and send all its disintegrated legions scuttling back to Strasburg.