"Why should you mind Camillo's sulks since I do not? He and Madame Mere have such amusing ideas. It was not so much Caroline's correspondence with your 'dear Metternich' which offended them and my brother, too. They have never forgotten that little affair of the silver lemon squeezer. Ah, _mon ami_! you had had too much champagne when you brewed that bowl of punch at the officers' dinner." "I never said that it was the Empress who taught me the recipe and gave me the lemon squeezer," he retorted, flushing. "Oh! no; nor told you that oranges and not lemons were used with Jamaica rum in the islands; nor why pretty creoles were like lemons." "Do you mean to provoke me?" Murat exclaimed, rising quickly. "No, _mon ami_, though I shared in that suspicion, too, for they called me a creole on my return from San Domingo." Murat's jaw fell. "Do you mean that your husband thought I meant _you_?" he asked. "Prince Borghese is too polite a man to voice such a suspicion, and I am too clever a woman to show that I have guessed it, but that is reason enough why I cannot accept my sister's invitation to take possession of the entrancing Neapolitan villa which you so kindly offer me." "You are like your mother. You refuse my peace-offerings; you will not visit us?" "Peace-offerings, yes; but make me some offerings of war, that fine army, for instance; and, by the way, if you will give me a yacht instead of the villa I may consent to be your guest. Meantime we understand each other. I will give immediate orders to my people that no fire is on any account to be lighted in the Pope's kitchens, as the chimneys are unsafe. Should I perceive a column of smoke rising from them I shall know that you are here, and I will come to you. If, on the other hand, I hear that you are in this vicinity on the business of which we spoke, I shall make Mondragone my residence; and should you perceive my smoke signal----" "Then," he interrupted, speaking very low, but so distinctly that Celio's heart froze as he listened--"then, Paulette, be the danger what it may, heaven nor hell shall keep me from you." They parted in the most commonplace manner, the Princess returning to Rome after the conclusion of the repast, but, though she appeared to sleep all the way, Celio marked when she alighted that her face, illuminated by the strong glare that blazed from the open door of the villa, was haggard as from long vigils. Deeply distressed, the poor dragon spent a sleepless night, but towards morning an inspiration came to him. He saw his way to saving his lady without arousing the suspicions of her husband. She had forbidden the use of the Pope's chimneys to the guardian of the villa, plainly that they should serve solely as signals between herself and Murat. But the reason which she had given for their disuse, that they were unsafe, furnished the secretary with his pretext, and he wrote his master urging that they should be taken down.