him
under their protection, and giving him an arm on each side, defended
him in their turn against the people. Thus he crossed the square as a
prisoner where an hour before he had walked as a king.

His captors took him to the castle: he was pushed into the common
prison, the door was shut upon him, and the king found himself among
thieves and murderers, who, not knowing him, took him for a companion in
crime, and greeted him with foul language and hoots of derision.

A quarter of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander
Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and
folded arms. There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this
half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with
mud. Mattei bowed before him.

"Commander," said Murat, recognising his rank by his epaulettes, "look
round you and tell me whether this is a prison for a king."

Then a strange thing happened: the criminals, who, believing Murat their
accomplice, had welcomed him with vociferations and laughter, now bent
before his royal majesty, which had not overawed Pellegrino and Trenta
Capelli, and retired silently to the depths of their dungeon.

Misfortune had invested Murat with a new power.

Commander Mattei murmured some excuse, and invited Murat to follow him
to a room that he had had prepared for him; but before going out, Murat
put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold and let it
fall in a shower in the midst of the gaol.

"See," he said, turning towards the prisoners, "it shall not be said
that you have received a visit from a king, prisoner and crownless as he
is, without having received largesse."

"Long live Joachim!" cried the prisoners.

Murat smiled bitterly. Those same words repeated by the same number of
voices an hour before in the public square, instead of resounding in the
prison, would have made him King of Naples.

The most important events proceed sometimes from such mere trifles, that
it seems as if God and the devil must throw dice for the life or death
of men, for the rise or fall of empires.

Murat followed Commander Mattei: he led him to a little room which the
porter had put at his disposal. Mattei was going to retire when Murat
called him back.

"Commander," he said, "I want a scented bath."

"Sire, it will be difficult to obtain."

"Here are fifty ducats; let someone buy all the eau de Cologne that can
be obtained. Ah--and let som