“Please do not think,” said the Count, “that I wish to interfere in any way in the plans you are making, but it occurred to me that your stay on the coast might be made safer if you assumed the role of a high official of the customs service.”

“I think it would, sir,” said Hornblower, patiently, “but I do not understand how I could do it.”

“You would have to announce yourself, if necessary, as a Dutchman,” said the Count. “Now that Holland is annexed to France and King Louis Bonaparte has fled, it is to be presumed that his employes will join the Imperial service. I think it is extremely likely that, say, a colonel of Dutch douaniers should visit Nantes to learn how to perform his duties—especially as it was over the enforcement of customs regulations that Bonaparte and his brother fell out. Your very excellent French would be just what might be expected of a Dutch customs officer, even though—please pardon my frankness—you do not speak quite like a native Frenchman.”

“But—but—” stammered Hornblower; it really seemed to him that the Count’s customary good sense had deserted him “—it would be difficult, sir—”

“Difficult?” smiled the Count. “It might be dangerous, but, if you will forgive my contradicting you so directly, it would hardly be difficult. In your English democracy you perhaps have had no opportunity of seeing how much weight an assured manner and a uniform carry with them in a country like this, which has already made the easy descent from an autocracy to a bureaucracy. A colonel of douaniers on the coast can go anywhere, command anything. He never has to account for himself—his uniform does that for him.”

“But I have no uniform, sir,” said Hornblower, and before the words were out of his mouth he guessed what the Count was going to say.

“We have half a dozen needlewomen in the house,” smiled the Count, “from Marie here to little Christine the cook’s daughter. It would be odd if between them they could not make uniforms for you and your assistants. I might add that Mr. Bush’s wound, which we all so much deplore, will be an actual advantage if you adopt the scheme. It is exactly consonant with Bonaparte’s methods to provide for an officer wounded in his service by giving him a position in the customs. Mr. Bush’s presence with you would add a touch of—shall we say realism?—to the effect produced by your appearance.”

The Count gave a little bow to Bush, in apology for thus alluding to Bush’s crippled condition, and Bush returned it awkwardly from his chair in bland ignorance of at least two thirds of what had been said.

The value of the suggestion was obvious to Hornblower at once, and for days afterwards the women in the house were at work cutting and stitching and fitting, until the evening came when the three of them paraded before the Count in their neat coats of blue piped with white and red, and their rakish képis – it was the making of these which had taxed Marie’s ingenuity most, for the képi was still at that time an unusual headdress in the French government services. On Hornblower’s collar glittered the eight-pointed stars of colonel’s rank, and the top of his képi bore the gold-lace rosette; as the three of them rotated solemnly before the Count the latter nodded approvingly.

“Excellent,” he said, and then hesitated. “There is only one addition which I can think of to add realism. Excuse me a moment.”

He went off to his study leaving the others looking at each other, but he was back directly with a little leather case in his hand which he proceeded to open. Resting on the silk was a glittering cross of white enamel, surmounted by a golden crown and with a gold medallion in the centre.

“We must pin this on you,” he said. “No one reaches colonel’s rank without the Legion of Honour.”

“Father!” said Marie—it was rare that she used the familiar mode of address with him—“that was Louis-Marie’s.”

“I know, my dear, I know. But it may make the difference between Captain Hornblower’s success or—or failure.”

His hands trembled a little, nevertheless, as he pinned the scarlet ribbon to Hornblower’s coat.

“Sir—sir, it is too good of you,” protested Hornblower.

The Count’s long, mobile face, as he stood up, was sad, but in a moment he had twisted it into his usual wry smile.

“Bonaparte sent it to me,” he said, “after—after my son’s death in Spain. It was a posthumous award. To me of course it is nothing—the trinkets of the tyrant can never mean anything to a Knight of the Holy Ghost. But because of its sentimental value I should be grateful if you would endeavour to preserve it unharmed and return it to me when the war is over.”

“I cannot accept it, sir,” said Hornblower, bending to unpin it again, but the Count checked him.

“Please, Captain,” he said, “wear it, as a favour to me. It would please me if you would.”

More than ever after his reluctant acceptance did Hornblower’s conscience prick him at the thought that he had seduced this man’s daughter-in-law while enjoying his hospitality, and later in the evening when he found himself alone with the Count in the drawing room the conversation deepened his sense of guilt.

“Now that your stay is drawing to an end, Captain,” said the Count, “I know how much I shall miss your presence after you have gone. Your company has given me the very greatest pleasure.”

“I do not think it can compare with the gratitude I feel towards you, sir,” said Hornblower.

The Count waved aside the thanks which Hornblower was endeavouring awkwardly to phrase.

“A little while ago we mentioned the end of the war. Perhaps there will come an end some day, and although I am an old man perhaps I shall live to see it. Will you remember me then, and this little house beside the Loire?”

“Of course, sir,” protested Hornblower. “I could never forget.”

He looked round the familiar drawing room, at the silver candelabra, the old-fashioned Louis Seize furniture, the lean figure of the Count in his blue dress-coat.

“I could never forget you, sir,” repeated Hornblower.

“My three sons were all young when they died,” said the Count. “They were only boys, and perhaps they would not have grown into men I could have been proud of. And already when they went off to serve Bonaparte they looked upon me as an old-fashioned reactionary for whose views they had only the smallest patience—that was only to be expected. If they had lived through the wars we might have become better friends later. But they did not, and I am the last Ladon. I am a lonely man, Captain, lonely under this present regime, and yet I fear that when Bonaparte falls and the reactionaries return to power I shall be as lonely still. But I have not been lonely this winter, Captain.”

Hornblower’s heart went out to the lean old man with the lined face sitting opposite him in the uncomfortable armchair.

“But that is enough about myself, Captain,” went on the Count. “I wanted to tell you of the news which has come through—it is all of it important. The salute which we heard fired yesterday was, as we thought, in honour of the birth of an heir to Bonaparte. There is now a King of Rome, as Bonaparte calls him, to sustain the Imperial throne. Whether it will be any support I am doubtful—there are many Bonapartists who will not, I fancy, be too pleased at the thought of the retention of power indefinitely in a Bonaparte dynasty. And the fall of Holland is undoubted—there was actual fighting between the troops of Louis Bonaparte and those of Napoleon Bonaparte over the question of customs enforcement. France now extends to the Baltic—Hamburg and Lubeck are French towns like Amsterdam and Leghorn and Trieste.”

Hornblower thought of the cartoons in the English newspapers which had so often compared Bonaparte with the frog who tried to blow himself up as big as an ox.

“I fancy it is symptomatic of weakness,” said the Count. “Perhaps you do not agree with me? You do? I am glad to have my suspicions confirmed. More than that; there is going to be war with Russia. Already troops are being transferred to the East, and the details of a new conscription were published at the same time as the proclamation of a King of Rome. There will be more refractories than ever hiding about the country now. Perhaps Bonaparte will find he has undertaken a task beyond his strength when he comes to grips with Russia.”