Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline; that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon's wish, however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great deal to catch the Sphinx's whisper at all. Besides, he owed his elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal. "Berthe," he said at last, "there's just one man who can interfere where Mademoiselle d'Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the Emperor of France." The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. "My dear mistress!" she sobbed. There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was brushed aside. "Perhaps," came a softly ironical voice, "a woman might so much as veto our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho." Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband's secret was never one for her. "Step into this little room," she said to Berthe, opening a door. "It will not take long," she added, an assured light in her dark Spanish eyes. "You will save him, madame? You----" "Against all the marshals of France, child. Go, wait in there." The marshal of France present smiled on his bride indulgently, admiringly, as she closed the door and faced him. She was less than half his age, the girl wife of a gray-haired veteran, and as his wife she was second lady of the land. A Mexican aristocrat, small and slender, of a subtle, winsome beauty, with the prettiest mouth and the most pyramidal of crinolines, she had reminded Bazaine of his first wife, and he had courted her. At the wedding Maximilian had stood padrino for the groom, and Charlotte madrina for the bride. The imperial gift to groom and bride was Buena Vista, as the white mansion and gardens in San Cosme were called. Naturally, then, Madame la Marechale approved of Napoleon's _official_ instructions, which directed that Monsieur le Marechal was to establish the Mexican empire solidly and for all time.