for me. I am at your orders, gentlemen."

At these words the two sailors seized the king end hoisted him on to
their shoulders, and carried him into the sea; in another moment he was
on board. Langlade and Blancard sprang in behind him. Donadieu remained
at the helm, the two other officers undertook the management of the boat,
and began their work by unfurling the sails. Immediately the pinnace
seemed to rouse herself like a horse at touch of the spur; the sailors
cast a careless glance back, and Murat feeling that they were sailing
away, turned towards his host and called for a last time--

"You have your route as far as Trieste. Do not forget my wife!...
Good-bye-good-bye----!"

"God keep you, sire!" murmured Marouin.

And for some time, thanks to the white sail which gleamed through the
darkness, he could follow with his eyes the boat which was rapidly
disappearing; at last it vanished altogether. Marouin lingered on the
shore, though he could see nothing; then he heard a cry, made faint by
the distance; it was Murat's last adieu to France.

When M. Marouin was telling me these details one evening on the very spot
where it all happened, though twenty years had passed, he remembered
clearly the slightest incidents of the embarkation that night. From that
moment he assured me that a presentiment of misfortune seized him; he
could not tear himself away from the shore, and several times he longed
to call the king back, but, like a man in a dream, he opened his mouth
without being able to utter a sound. He was afraid of being thought
foolish, and it was not until one o'clock that is, two and a half hours