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NAPOLEON (angrily, with the French pronunciation). Bonaparte, madame, Bonaparte. The papers, if you please.

LADY. But I assure you– (He snatches the handkerchief rudely from her.) General! (Indignantly.)

NAPOLEON (taking the other handkerchief from his breast). You were good enough to lend one of your handkerchiefs to my lieutenant when you robbed him. (He looks at the two handkerchiefs.) They match one another. (He smells them.) The same scent. (He flings them down on the table.) I am waiting for the despatches. I shall take them, if necessary, with as little ceremony as the handkerchief. (This historical incident was used eighty years later, by M. Victorien Sardou, in his drama entitled “Dora.”)

LADY (in dignified reproof). General: do you threaten women?

NAPOLEON (bluntly). Yes.

LADY (disconcerted, trying to gain time). But I don’t understand. I–

NAPOLEON. You understand perfectly. You came here because your Austrian employers calculated that I was six leagues away. I am always to be found where my enemies don’t expect me. You have walked into the lion’s den. Come: you are a brave woman. Be a sensible one: I have no time to waste. The papers. (He advances a step ominously).

LADY (breaking down in the childish rage of impotence, and throwing herself in tears on the chair left beside the table by the lieutenant). I brave! How little you know! I have spent the day in an agony of fear. I have a pain here from the tightening of my heart at every suspicious look, every threatening movement. Do you think every one is as brave as you? Oh, why will not you brave people do the brave things? Why do you leave them to us, who have no courage at all? I’m not brave: I shrink from violence: danger makes me miserable.

NAPOLEON (interested). Then why have you thrust yourself into danger?

LADY. Because there is no other way: I can trust nobody else. And now it is all useless–all because of you, who have no fear, because you have no heart, no feeling, no– (She breaks off, and throws herself on her knees.) Ah, General, let me go: let me go without asking any questions. You shall have your despatches and letters: I swear it.

NAPOLEON (holding out his hand). Yes: I am waiting for them. (She gasps, daunted by his ruthless promptitude into despair of moving him by cajolery; but as she looks up perplexedly at him, it is plain that she is racking her brains for some device to outwit him. He meets her regard inflexibly.)

LADY (rising at last with a quiet little sigh). I will get them for you. They are in my room. (She turns to the door.)

NAPOLEON. I shall accompany you, madame.

LADY (drawing herself up with a noble air of offended delicacy).I cannot permit you, General, to enter my chamber.

NAPOLEON. Then you shall stay here, madame, whilst I have your chamber searched for my papers.

LADY (spitefully, openly giving up her plan). You may save yourself the trouble. They are not there.

NAPOLEON. No: I have already told you where they are. (Pointing to her breast.)

LADY (with pretty piteousness). General: I only want to keep one little private letter. Only one. Let me have it.

NAPOLEON (cold and stern). Is that a reasonable demand, madam?

LADY (encouraged by his not refusing point blank). No; but that is why you must grant it. Are your own demands reasonable? thousands of lives for the sake of your victories, your ambitions, your destiny! And what I ask is such a little thing. And I am only a weak woman, and you a brave man. (She looks at him with her eyes full of tender pleading and is about to kneel to him again.)

NAPOLEON (brusquely). Get up, get up. (He turns moodily away and takes a turn across the room, pausing for a moment to say, over his shoulder) You’re talking nonsense; and you know it. (She gets up and sits down in almost listless despair on the couch. When he turns and sees her there, he feels that his victory is complete, and that he may now indulge in a little play with his victim. He comes back and sits beside her. She looks alarmed and moves a little away from him; but a ray of rallying hope beams from her eye. He begins like a man enjoying some secret joke.) How do you know I am a brave man?