In later years I hunted up good little Madame de Saint-Aubin, who would be about thirty-eight when I first saw her, and therefore now would be between eighty-two and eighty-three years of age, and I retailed to her every detail of that evening in the August of 1805: one of them was a matter personal to herself: Virginia was far advanced in pregnancy. Poor Saint-Aubin could not remember anything about it. So vivid an impression did that night make on my memory that its events are perfectly present to me to-day: the changes of scene representing Madame Latour's house buried among orange-trees with their golden fruit, the angry sea and the lightning which struck and destroyed the _Saint-Géran._ CHAPTER XI Brune and Murat--The return to Villers-Cotterets--L'hôtel de l'Épée--Princess Pauline--The chase--The chief forester's permission--My father takes to his bed never to rise again--Delirium--The goldheaded cane--Death. He next day Murat and Brune lunched with us. Luncheon was served in a room on the first floor; from the window of this room Montmartre could be seen, and I remember that I was watching a huge kite floating gracefully in the air above some windmills, when my father called me to him, put Brune's sword between my legs, Murat's hat on my head, and made me gallop round the table. "Do not ever forget, my child," he said to me, "how to-day you have ridden round that table on Brune's sword, and had Murat's hat on your head, also that you were kissed yesterday by Madame de Montesson, widow of the duc d'Orléans, the regent's grandson." See, my father, how well I have remembered all the incidents you bade me recollect. And since I came to years of discretion my memories of you have lived in me like a sacred lamp, illuminating everything and every person you ever laid a finger on, although time has destroyed those things, and death has taken away those persons. Moreover, I paid my tribute of respect to the memory of both these men, to the one at Avignon and to the other at Pizzo, when, ten years later, they were both assassinated, within two months of each other. Alas! who would have foretold that the child of three years old who capered so gaily round them was one day to recount their death, to see the place where they were killed, and to put his fingers in the very hole made by the bullets which pierced their bodies and indented the wall behind? What dark and bloody secrets the mysterious future hides from us! When they are unfolded, may men realise that it is by the good providence of God they were kept in ignorance of them until the appointed time!