Berthier--conqueror and Prince of Wagram--spoke very earnestly and with head uncovered, but more abruptly and harshly than he had been wont to do of yore in the salons of the Tuileries or on the glory-crowned battlefields at the close of a victorious day. "I am coming! I am coming!" said the Emperor with a quick sigh of impatience. "I only wanted to be alone a moment--to think things out--to . . ." "There is nothing quite so urgent, Sire, as your safety," retorted the Prince of Wagram drily. The Emperor did not--or did not choose to--heed his great Marshal's marked want of deference. Perhaps he was accustomed to the moods of these men whom his bounty had fed and loaded with wealth and dignities and titles in the days of his glory, and who had proved only too ready, alas!--even last year, even now--to desert him when disaster was in sight. Without another word he turned on his heel and pushing open the cottage door he disappeared into the darkness of the tiny room beyond. With an impatient shrug of the shoulders Berthier prepared to follow him. Colonel Bertrand busied himself with tethering the horses, then he too followed Berthier into the building. It was deserted, of course, as all isolated cottages and houses had been in the vicinity of Quatre Bras or Mont Saint Jean. Bertrand struck a tinder and lighted a tallow candle that stood forlorn on a deal table in the centre of the room. The flickering light revealed a tiny cottage kitchen--hastily abandoned but scrupulously clean--white-washed walls, a red-tiled floor, the iron hearth, the painted dresser decorated with white crockery, shiny tin pans hung in rows against the walls and two or three rush chairs. Napoleon sat down. "I again entreat you, Sire--" began Berthier more earnestly than before. But the Emperor was staring straight out before him, with eyes that apparently saw something beyond that rough white wall opposite, on which the flickering candle-light threw such weird gargantuan shadows. The precious minutes sped on: minutes wherein death or capture strode with giant steps across the fields of Flanders to this lonely cottage where the once mightiest ruler in Europe sat dreaming of what might have been. The silence of the night was broken by the thunder of flying horses' hoofs, by the cries of "Sauve qui peut!" and distant volleys of artillery proclaiming from far away that Death had not finished all his work yet. Bertrand and Berthier stood by, with heads uncovered: silent, moody and anxious. Suddenly the dreamer roused himself for a moment and spoke abruptly and with his usual peremptory impatience: "De Marmont," he said. "Has either of you seen him?" "Not lately, Sire," replied Colonel Bertrand, "not since five o'clock at any rate." "What was he doing then?" "He was riding furiously in the direction of Nivelles. I shouted to him. He told me that he was making for Brussels by a circuitous way."