‘Old darling!’ she exclaimed; ‘why that sad face, and why that candle? What are you all doing? See!’ She pulled back the shutters of the window. ‘See! the sun has risen!’ So ended that long night. CHAPTER XII--THE NAPOLEON We have now to watch another aspect of the great struggle which for so many years had been maturing in secrecy and darkness, and the true nature of which was hidden from all save one man. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and in a vast bedroom of a house in Manchester Square a man lay with closed eyes. The house was one of those excessively plain dwellings of the very rich which are characteristic of the streets and squares of the West End of London. Its façade was relieved by no ornament. You saw merely a flat face of brick, with four rows of windows, getting smaller towards the roof, and a sombre green front-door in the middle of the lowest row. The house did not even seem large, but it was, in fact, extremely spacious, as anyone could see who put foot into the hall, where two footmen lounged from morn till night. The bedroom to which we have referred was on the first-floor. It occupied half the width of the house, and looked out on the square. Its three windows were made double, so that no sound from outside could penetrate that sacred apartment. Ventilation was contrived by means of two electric fans. The furniture consisted of the articles usual in an English bedroom, for the man in bed prided himself on being an Englishman who did not ape foreign ways. The said articles were, however, extraordinarily large, massive, and ornate. The pile of the immense carpet probably could not have been surpassed by any carpet in London. Across the foot of the carved oak bedstead was a broad sofa upholstered in softest silk. An English bracket-clock on the mantelshelf intoned the hour of seven with English solemnity, and instantly afterwards an electric bell rang about six inches over the head of the occupant of the bed. He opened his eyes wearily. He had not been asleep; indeed, he had spent most of the night in a futile wakefulness, which was a bad sign with a man who boasted that as a rule he could sleep at will, like Napoleon. Here was one detail out of many in which this man considered that he resembled Napoleon. He groaned, pulled his gray moustache, stroked his chin, which bristled with the night’s growth of beard, and ran his fingers through his gray hair. Then he touched an electric button. Within ten seconds a valet entered, bearing the morning papers--not merely a judicious selection of morning papers, but every morning paper published in London. ‘Put them on the sofa, Jack.’ ‘Yes, sir.’