daughter, and the young girls named her their sister. They entreated
that, when the day was known on which the prisoners were to set off for
their banishment, a courier might be despatched to Moscow with the news.
I accordingly told my servant to hold himself in readiness to start, to
his no small satisfaction; for the Count's mother had given him a
thousand rubles for his first trip, and he trusted the second might be
equally well rewarded.

There had not been an execution in St Petersburg for sixty years, and
the curiosity and excitement caused by the anticipation of this one,
were proportionably great. The day was not fixed beforehand, and the
inhabitants of the capital got up each morning, expecting to hear that
the bloody tragedy had been enacted. I had requested a young Frenchman
attached to Marshal Marmont's special mission, and who was on that
account likely to have early information, to let me know when it was to
take place; and on the evening of the 23d of July, he sent me word that
the marshal and his suite had been invited to repair by four o'clock the
following morning to the hotel of the French embassy, the windows of
which commanded the place of execution.

I hastened to communicate this intelligence to Louise. All her fears
returned. Was it certain that Alexis was pardoned? Might not the
commutation of punishment announced in the _Gazette_ be a ruse to
conceal the truth from the people? These, and a thousand other doubts,
arose in her mind; but I at last succeeded in tranquillizing her, and
returned home to take some repose till the hour of the execution. Before
doing so, however, my servant was sent off to Moscow, to inform the
Countess W---- that the following day her son would leave St Petersburg
for his place of exile.