either to overhear or interrupt the foregoing conversation, had
fortunately chosen the former alternative. And here, perchance, should
the story end, for the after-history of Joachim Murat is a tragical
addendum to that happy denouement.

Pauline overestimated her brother's magnanimity, Napoleon coldly refused
the profferred services of his brother-in-law, confessing afterwards
that this implacability lost him the battle of Waterloo, for Ney could
not equal Murat in his skilful manoeuvring of horse.

Murat, desperate, took refuge in Corsica, where he raised a little band
of two hundred and fifty men, and landed near Naples, believing that his
old troops would rally to his standard. Indifferent, or perhaps unable
to help him, they abandoned him to his fate.

He faced his executioners with unbandaged eyes and himself gave the
order to fire.

According to the account of an eye-witness, he first kissed the
miniature of his wife, which he carried within the case of his watch,
and with the request, "Spare my face," directed the aim of the soldiers
to his breast.

Their firmness did not equal his own, and he was obliged to twice give
the command before it was obeyed.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

THE ADVENTURE OF THE KNIGHT OF THE BRANDISHED LANCE

I

THE QUEST

Robert Devreux, Earl of Essex, was in one of his worst moods as he
strode the deck of his flag-ship in Cadiz Bay on a certain June morning
in 1596.

And yet this favourite of Fortune stood then at the summit of his
career, having by a brilliant assault taken the city for England, while
a letter whose seal he had just broken assured him of the doting
infatuation of England's Queen.

It was precisely this letter, as he now explained to his friend, which
occasioned his dissatisfaction.

"You will not refuse me, Will," he pleaded, "since I can not undertake
the quest, you must go in my stead. These papers contain negotiations
of such delicacy that Henry of Navarre dared not send them overland
through France, and my word is pledged to him to deliver them personally
into the hands of the Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, at his villa in
Rome.

"When I met the King at Boulogne, on our first night out, this seemed an
easy thing to do, for I had reason to believe that our cruise would
extend to Italy. But now in the hour of my victory, when I have sacked
Cadiz, I open the Queen's letter (which was not to be read until the
accomplishment of that t