Just before the end, too, as I have said, she wrote a number of letters. She forgot no one. Among the letters that she left one was addressed to the nurses of her school; and there was a message for a girl who was trying to break herself of the morphine habit--Miss Cavell had been trying to help her, and she sent her word to be brave, and that if God would permit she would continue to try to help her. [Sidenote: The petitioners fail.] Midnight came, and Gibson, with a dark face, and de Leval, paler than ever. There was nothing to be done. [Sidenote: Errand of Marquis Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval.] De Leval had gone to Gibson, and together they went in search of the Marquis, whom they found at Baron Lambert's, where he had been dining; he and Baron Lambert and M. Francqui were over their coffee. The three, the Marquis, Gibson and de Leval, then went to the Rue Lambermont. The little Ministry was closed and dark; no one was there. They rang, and rang again, and finally the _concierge_ appeared--no one was there, he said. They insisted. The _concierge_ at last found a German functionary who came down, stood staring stupidly; every one was gone; _son Excellence_ was at the theater. At what theater? He did not know. They urged him to go and find out. He disappeared inside, went up and down stairs two or three times, finally came out and said that he was at Le Bois Sacre. They explained that the presence of the Baron was urgent and asked the man to go for him; they turned over the motor to him and he mounted on the box beside Eugene. They reached the little variety theater there in the Rue d'Arenberg. The German functionary went in and found the Baron, who said he could not come before the piece was over. [Sidenote: The sad wait for der Lancken.] All this while Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval were in the salon at the Ministry, the room of which I have spoken so often as the yellow salon, because of the satin upholstery of its Louis XVI. furniture of white lacquer--that bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in the gayest, lightest tones, where so many little dramas were played. All three of them were deeply moved and very anxious--the eternal contrast, as de Leval said, between things and sentiments. Lancken entered at last, very much surprised to find them; he was accompanied by Count Harrach and by the young Baron von Falkenhausen. "What is it, gentlemen?" he said. "Has something serious happened?" They told him why they were there, and Lancken, raising his hands, said: "_Impossible!_" [Sidenote: Der Lancken believes the rumor false.] He had vaguely heard that afternoon of a condemnation for spying, but he did not know that it had anything to do with the case of Miss Cavell, and in any event it was impossible that they would put a woman to death that night. "Who has given you this information? Because, to come and disturb me at such an hour you must have actual information," he said.