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Updated: June 6, 2025
"I shall write immediately to his majesty the emperor and request him to permit me to withdraw from the service of the state without delay." Count Colloredo sighed mournfully; Count Saurau smiled, and Count Lehrbach laughed in Thugut's face with the mien of a hyena. "And do you know who will be your successor?" asked the latter.
"I thank you, my friends," said Bonnier, with a happy smile; "I now stand again before you with a clear conscience, and without a blush of shame on my cheeks. You have accepted my atonement. As for this woman, we will inflict no further punishment on her. She was only a tool in Thugut's hands; that was all.
Amidst the disasters of 1797 he seemed the only man able to retrieve the past, and to be shut out from command by Thugut's insane jealousy of his "transcendent abilities."
She was the mysterious strange lady whose appearance had created so great a sensation in the drawing-rooms of Rastadt for the last few weeks; she was the lady whom Bonnier was following as though he were her shadow. She had come to him as a refugee, as a persecuted woman, with tears in her eyes. She had told him a tragic story of Thugut's tyranny and wanton lust.
He only looked at the small bell, and seemed to expect a signal from it in breathless suspense. But Germain had long since finished the decoration of the room and withdrawn again, and yet the bell was silent. A cloud passed over Thugut's brow, and the smile disappeared from his lips. "She was not there, perhaps, and consequently did not hear my signal," he murmured.
For Thugut's stubbornness had not been broken yet, and he still obstinately refused to conclude the peace so urgently desired by the whole Austrian people, nay, by the emperor himself. "No, no, no peace!" he muttered, when he had perused the dispatches. "We will fight on, even though we should be buried under the ruins of Austria!
Yesterday I promised her to deliver to her to-day the papers that endanger Thugut's position at the head of the Austrian government, and prove him to be a hireling of England. In the evening Count Lehrbach sent a courier to Vienna; then we retaliated, caused the courier to be arrested and took his papers from him. He had, however, only a small note, addressed to Minister Thugut. Here it is.
"Your excellency," he said, timidly, "Counts Colloredo, Saurau, and Lehrbach have just arrived, and desire to obtain an interview with your excellency." Not a muscle moved in Thugut's face to betray his surprise, and he ordered the servant in a perfectly calm voice to admit the gentlemen immediately. He then hastily walked to the door for the purpose of meeting them.
"I will ring the bell once more." He stretched out his hand toward the golden knob in the wall, when suddenly a clear, pure sound was heard. It was the small bell that had been rung. Thugut's countenance lighted up in the sunshine of happiness, and he looked up to the bell again in silent suspense. For a few minutes it hung motionless again, but then it resounded quickly three times in succession.
Suddenly, however, two men appeared on the landing, who were little calculated to allay the apprehensions of the rioters, for they wore the uniform of that dreaded and inexorable police who, under Thugut's administration, had inaugurated a perfect reign of terror in Vienna.
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