This bit of nonsense, 'that the right thing is done,' was a list of dead words I tacked on to the end of the sentence because I did not know what to say, and was losing my nerve. For even when I stood beneath the Emperor's palace in Vienna, waiting to feel the blade of a Janissary's scimitar biting into my neck, I had not felt so uncertain as I did there. But I think the very vagueness of my words had a great effect on this captain, for he stepped back from the window and bowed deeply, and proclaimed that he would send word of my arrival to his superiors without delay.