Napoleon shrugged his shoulders. “Can you suppose me the dupe of such absurd pretences?” he exclaimed. “This Charney is a man of high faculties and the most dangerous principles—would you pass him upon me for a blockhead? The flower, the pavement, the whole romance, is a mere pretext. The fellow is getting up a plan of escape! It must be looked to. Menon! let a careful eye be kept upon the movements of those imprisoned for political offences in the citadel of Fenestrella. One Charney has presumed to address to me a memorial. How did he manage to forward his petition otherwise than through the hands of the commandant? Is such the discipline kept up in the state-prisons of the empire?” Again the Empress ventured to interpose in defence of her _protégé_. “Enough, madam, enough of this man!” exclaimed the commander-in-chief; and discouraged and alarmed by the displeasure expressed in his words and looks, Josephine cast down her eyes and was silent from confusion. General Menon, on the other hand, mortified by the public rebuke of the Emperor, was not sparing in the reprimand despatched to the captain-commandant of the citadel of Fenestrella; who, in his turn, as we have seen, vented his vexation on the prisoners committed to his charge. Even Girardi, in addition to the cruel sentence of separation from his daughter (who, on arriving full of hopes at the gate of the fortress, was commanded to appear there no more), had been subjected, like Charney, to a domiciliary visit, by which, however, nothing unsatisfactory was elicited. But emotions more painful than those resulting from the forfeiture of his manuscripts, now awaited the Count; as he traversed the courtyard on his way to the bastion with the commandant and his two acolytes, Captain Morand, who had either passed without notice on his arrival, the fences and scaffolding surrounding the plant, or was now stimulated by the arrogant contumacy of Charney to an act of vengeance, paused to point out to Ludovico this glaring breach of prison discipline manifested before his eyes. “What is the meaning of all this rubbish?” cried he. “Is _such_, sir, the order you maintain in your department?” “_That_, captain,” replied the jailer, in a half-hesitating, half-grumbling tone, drawing his pipe out of his mouth with one hand and raising the other to his cap in a military salute, “_that_, under your favour, is the plant I told you of—which is so good for the gout and all sorts of disorders.” [Illustration] Then, letting fall his arm by an imperceptible movement, he replaced his pipe in its usual place. “Death and the devil!” cried the captain, “if these gentlemen were allowed to have their own way, all the chambers and courts of the citadel might be made into gardens, menageries, or shops—like so many stalls at a fair. Away with this weed at once, and everything belonging to it!”