out what he thinks of my brother, and ask for his interest to help my
sister. Think of some place that is fit for her."
"The charitable ladies of Paris, in concert with the Archbishop, have
formed various beneficent associations; they employ superintendents,
very decently paid, whose business it is to seek out cases of real
want. Such an occupation would exactly suit dear Adeline; it would be
work after her own heart."
"Send to order the horses," said the Marshal. "I will go and dress. I
will drive to Neuilly if necessary."
"How fond he is of her! She will always cross my path wherever I
turn!" said Lisbeth to herself.
Lisbeth was already supreme in the house, but not with the Marshal's
cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants--for she had
allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in
taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in
every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as
Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and
she flattered him with amazing dexterity; for the last fortnight the
old man, whose house was better kept, and who was cared for as a child
by its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as a part of what he had
dreamed of.
"My dear Marshal," she shouted, following him out on to the steps,
"pull up the windows, do not sit in a draught, to oblige me!"
The Marshal, who had never been so cosseted in his life, went off
smiling at Lisbeth, though his heart was aching.
At the same hour Baron Hulot was quitting the War Office to call on
his chief, Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him.
Though there was nothing extraordinary in one of the Generals on the
Board being sent for, Hulot's conscience was so uneasy that he fancied
he saw a cold and sinister expression in Mitouflet's face.
"Mitouflet, how is the Prince?" he asked, locking the door of his
private room and following the messenger who led the way.
"He must have a crow to pluck with you, Monsieur le Baron," replied
the man, "for his face is set at stormy."
Hulot turned pale, and said no more; he crossed the anteroom and
reception rooms, and, with a violently beating heart, found himself at
the door of the Prince's private study.
The chief, at this time seventy years old, with perfectly white hair,
and the tanned complexion of a soldier of that age, commanded
attention by a brow so vast that imagination saw in it a field of
battle. Under this dome, crowned with snow, sparkled a pair of eyes,
of the Napoleon blue, usually sad-looking and full of bitter thoughts
and regrets, their fire overshadowed by the penthouse of the strongly
projecting brow. This man, Bernadotte's rival, had hoped to find his
seat on a throne. But those eyes could flash formidable lightnings
when they expressed strong feelings.
Then, his voice, always somewhat hollow, rang with strident tones.
When he was angry, the Prince was a soldier once more; he spoke the
language of Lieutenant Cottin; he spared nothing--nobody. Hulot d'Ervy
found the old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the
fireplace, his brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his
eyes apparently fixed on vacancy.
"Here! At your orders, Prince!" said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease
of manner.
The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during
the time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of
where the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God;
Hulot could not meet it; he looked down in confusion.
"He knows everything!" said he to himself.
"Does your conscience tell you nothing?" asked the Marshal, in his
deep, hollow tones.
"It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering
_razzias_ in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age,
and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have no
fortune.--You know the principles of the four hundred elect
representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every
distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers' pay--that says
everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!--What can you
expect of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the
Government legal officials?--who give thirty sous a day to the
laborers on the works at Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility
to live there and keep a family on less than forty sous?--who never
think of the atrocity of giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to
a thousand or twelve hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and
who want to secure our places for themselves as soon as the pay rises
to forty thousand?--who, finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a
piece of Crown property confiscated from the Crown in 1830--property
acquired, too, by Louis XVI. out of his privy purse!--If you had no
private fortune, Prince, you would be left high and dry, like my
brother, with your pay and not another sou, and no thought of your
having saved the army, and me with it, in the boggy plains of Poland."
"You have robbed the State! You have made yourself liable to be
brought before the bench at Assizes," said the Marshal, "like that
clerk of the Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity."
"But there is a great difference, monseigneur!" cried the baron. "Have
I dipped my hands into a cash box intrusted to my care?"
"When a man of your rank commits such an infamous crime," said the
Marshal, "he is doubly guilty if he does it clumsily. You have
compromised the honor of our official administration, which hitherto
has been the purest in Europe!--And all for two hundred thousand
francs and a hussy!" said the Marshal, in a terrible voice. "You are a
Councillor of State--and a private soldier who sells anything
belonging to his regiment is punished with death! Here is a story told
to me one day by Colonel Pourin of the Second Lancers. At Saverne, one
of his men fell in love with a little Alsatian girl who had a fancy
for a shawl. The jade teased this poor devil of a lancer so
effectually, that though he could show twenty years' service, and was
about to be promoted to be quartermaster--the pride of the regiment
--to buy this shawl he sold some of his company's kit.--Do you know what
this lancer did, Baron d'Ervy? He swallowed some window-glass after
pounding it down, and died in eleven hours, of an illness, in
hospital.--Try, if you please, to die of apoplexy, that we may not see
you dishonored."
Hulot looked with haggard eyes at the old warrior; and the Prince,
reading the look which betrayed the coward, felt a flush rise to his
cheeks; his eyes flamed.
"Will you, sir, abandon me?" Hulot stammered.
Marshal Hulot, hearing that only his brother was with the Minister,
ventured at this juncture to come in, and, like all deaf people, went
straight up to the Prince.
"Oh," cried the hero of Poland, "I know what you are here for, my old
friend! But we can do nothing."
"Do nothing!" echoed Marshal Hulot, who had heard only the last word.
"Nothing; you have come to intercede for your brother. But do you know
what your brother is?"
"My brother?" asked the deaf man.
"Yes, he is a damned infernal blackguard, and unworthy of you."
The Marshal in his rage shot from his eyes those fulminating fires
which, like Napoleon's, broke a man's will and judgment.
"You lie, Cottin!" said Marshal Hulot, turning white. "Throw down your
baton as I throw mine! I am ready."
The Prince went up to his old comrade, looked him in the face, and
shouted in his ear as he grasped his hand:
"Are you a man?"
"You will see that I am."
"Well, then, pull yourself together! You must face the worst
misfortune that can befall you."
The Prince turned round, took some papers from the table, and placed
them in the Marshal's hands, saying, "Read that."
The Comte de Forzheim read the following letter, which lay
uppermost:--
"To his Excellency the President of the Council.
"_Private and Confidential_.
"ALGIERS.
"MY DEAR PRINCE,--We have a very ugly business on our hands, as
you will see by the accompanying documents.
"The story, briefly told, is this: Baron Hulot d'Ervy sent out to
the province of Oran an uncle of his as a broker in grain and
forage, and gave him an accomplice in the person of a storekeeper.
This storekeeper, to curry favor, has made a confession, and
finally made his escape. The Public Prosecutor took the matter up
very thoroughly, seeing, as he supposed, that only two inferior
agents were implicated; but Johann Fischer, uncle to your Chief of
the Commissariat Department, finding that he was to be brought up
at the Assizes, stabbed himself in prison with a nail.
"That would have been the end of the matter if this worthy and
honest man, deceived, it would seem, by his agent and by his
nephew, had not thought proper to write to Baron Hulot. This
letter, seized as a document, so greatly surprised the Public
Prosecutor, that he came to see me. Now, the arrest and public
trial of a Councillor of State would be such a terrible thing--of
a man high in office too, who has a good record for loyal service
--for after the Beresina, it was he who saved us all by
reorganizing the administration--that I desired to have all the
papers sent to me.
"Is the matter to take its course? Now that the principal agent is
dead, will it not be better to smother up the affair and sentence
the storekeeper in default?
"The Public Prosecutor has consented to my forwarding the
documents for your perusal; the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, being resident
in Paris, the proceedings will lie with your Supreme Court. We
have hit on this rather shabby way of ridding ourselves of the
difficulty for the moment.
"Only, my dear Marshal, decide quickly. This miserable business is
too much talked about already, and it will do as much harm to us
as to you all if the name of the principal culprit--known at
present only to the Public Prosecutor, the examining judge, and
myself--should happen to leak out."
At this point the letter fell from Marshal Hulot's hands; he looked at
his brother; he saw that there was no need to examine the evidence.
But he looked for Johann Fischer's letter, and after reading it at a
glance, held it out to Hector:--
"FROM THE PRISON AT ORAN.
"DEAR NEPHEW,--When you read this letter, I shall have ceased to
live.
"Be quite easy, no proof can be found to incriminate you. When I
am dead and your Jesuit of a Chardin fled, the trial must
collapse. The face of our Adeline, made so happy by you, makes
death easy to me. Now you need not send the two hundred thousand
francs. Good-bye.
"This letter will be delivered by a prisoner for a short term whom
I can trust, I believe.
"JOHANN FISCHER."
"I beg your pardon," said Marshal Hulot to the Prince de Wissembourg
with pathetic pride.
"Come, come, say _tu_, not the formal _vous_," replied the Minister,
clasping his old friend's hand. "The poor lancer killed no one but
himself," he added, with a thunderous look at Hulot d'Ervy.
"How much have you had?" said the Comte de Forzheim to his brother.
"Two hundred thousand francs."
"My dear friend," said the Count, addressing the Minister, "you shall
have the two hundred thousand francs within forty-eight hours. It
shall never be said that a man bearing the name of Hulot has wronged
the public treasury of a single sou."
"What nonsense!" said the Prince. "I know where the money is, and I
can get it back.--Send in your resignation and ask for your pension!"
he went on, sending a double sheet of foolscap flying across to where
the Councillor of State had sat down by the table, for his legs gave
way under him. "To bring you to trial would disgrace us all. I have
already obtained from the superior Board their sanction to this line
of action. Since you can accept life with dishonor--in my opinion the
last degradation--you will get the pension you have earned. Only take
care to be forgotten."
The Minister rang.
"Is Marneffe, the head-clerk, out there?"
"Yes, monseigneur."
"Show him in!"
"You," said the Minister as Marneffe came in, "you and your wife have
wittingly and intentionally ruined the Baron d'Ervy whom you see."
"Monsieur le Ministre, I beg your pardon. We are very poor. I have
nothing to live on but my pay, and I have two children, and the one
that is coming will have been brought into the family by Monsieur le
Baron."
"What a villain he looks!" said the Prince, pointing to Marneffe and
addressing Marshal Hulot.--"No more of Sganarelle speeches," he went
on; "you will disgorge two hundred thousand francs, or be packed off
to Algiers."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, you do not know my wife. She has spent it
all. Monsieur le Baron asked six persons to dinner every evening.
--Fifty thousand francs a year are spent in my house."
"Leave the room!" said the Minister, in the formidable tones that had
given the word to charge in battle. "You will have notice of your
transfer within two hours. Go!"
"I prefer to send in my resignation," said Marneffe insolently. "For
it is too much to be what I am already, and thrashed into the bargain.
That would not satisfy me at all."
And he left the room.
"What an impudent scoundrel!" said the Prince.
Marshal Hulot, who had stood up throughout this scene, as pale as a
corpse, studying his brother out of the corner of his eye, went up to
the Prince, and took his hand, repeating:
"In forty-eight hours the pecuniary mischief shall be repaired; but
honor!--Good-bye, Marshal. It is the last shot that kills. Yes, I
shall die of it!" he said in his ear.
"What the devil brought you here this morning?" said the Prince, much
moved.
"I came to see what can be done for his wife," replied the Count,
pointing to his brother. "She is wanting bread--especially now!"
"He has his pension."
"It is pledged!"
"The Devil must possess such a man," said the Prince, with a shrug.
"What philtre do those baggages give you to rob you of your wits?" he
went on to Hulot d'Ervy. "How could you--you, who know the precise
details with which in French offices everything is written down at
full length, consuming reams of paper to certify to the receipt or
outlay of a few centimes--you, who have so often complained that a
hundred signatures are needed for a mere trifle, to discharge a
soldier, to buy a curry-comb--how could you hope to conceal a theft
for any length of time? To say nothing of the newspapers, and the
envious, and the people who would like to steal!--those women must rob
you of your common-sense! Do they cover your eyes with walnut-shells?
or are you yourself made of different stuff from us?--You ought to
have left the office as soon as you found that you were no longer a
man, but a temperament. If you have complicated your crime with such
gross folly, you will end--I will not say where----"
"Promise me, Cottin, that you will do what you can for her," said the
Marshal, who heard nothing, and was still thinking of his
sister-in-law.
"Depend on me!" said the Minister.
"Thank you, and good-bye then!--Come, monsieur," he said to his
brother.
The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so
different in their demeanor, conduct, and character--the brave man and
the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the
peculator--and he said to himself:
"That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot,
such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!"
He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches
from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a
leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in
reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the
icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely
essential in the battle-field.
Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings,
the following paragraphs:--
"Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy has applied for his retiring
pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which
has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two
employes, has had some share in this distinguished official's
decision. On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he
had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic
stroke in the War Minister's private room.
"Monsieur Hulot d'Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim,
has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has
been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know
Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his
administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted
conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw,
or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for
the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon
in 1815.
"One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage.
Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of
the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office."
"ALGIERS.--The case known as the forage supply case, to which some
of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been
closed by the death of the chief culprit. Johann Wisch has
committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded,
will be sentenced in default.
"Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly
respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe
of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared."
And in the _Paris News_ the following paragraph appeared:
"Monsieur le Marechal the Minister of War, to prevent the
recurrence of such scandals for the future, has arranged for a
regular Commissariat office in Africa. A head-clerk in the War
Office, Monsieur Marneffe, is spoken of as likely to be appointed
to the post of director."
"The office vacated by Baron Hulot is the object of much ambition.
The appointment is promised, it is said, to Monsieur le Comte
Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Deputy, brother-in-law to Monsieur le
Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Appeals, will fill
his seat on the Council of State, and Monsieur Claude Vignon
becomes Master of Appeals."
Of all kinds of false gossip, the most dangerous for the Opposition
newspapers is the official bogus paragraph. However keen journalists
may be, they are sometimes the voluntary or involuntary dupes of the
cleverness of those who have risen from the ranks of the Press, like
Claude Vignon, to the higher realms of power. The newspaper can only
be circumvented by the journalist. It may be said, as a parody on a
line by Voltaire:
"The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe."
Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, who took the front seat,
respectfully leaving the whole of the back of the carriage to his
senior. The two men spoke not a word. Hector was helpless. The Marshal
was lost in thought, like a man who is collecting all his strength,
and bracing himself to bear a crushing weight. On arriving at his own
house, still without speaking, but by an imperious gesture, he
beckoned his brother into his study. The Count had received from the
Emperor Napoleon a splendid pair of pistols from the Versailles
factory; he took the box, with its inscription. "_Given by the Emperor
Napoleon to General Hulot_," out of his desk, and placing it on the
top, he showed it to his brother, saying, "There is your remedy."
Lisbeth, peeping through the chink of the door, flew down to the
carriage and ordered the coachman to go as fast as he could gallop to
the Rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she had brought back
Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal's threat to his brother.
The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his
factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.
"Beau-Pied," said he, "fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my
niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now
half-past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs
--and go faster than _that_!" he added, a republican allusion which
in past days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that
had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom
on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See _Les Chouans_.)
"You shall be obeyed, Marechal," said Beau-Pied, with a military
salute.
Still paying no heed to his brother, the old man came back into his
study, took a key out of his desk, and opened a little malachite box
mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander.
By Napoleon's orders he had gone to restore to the Russian Emperor the
private property seized at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for
which Napoleon hoped to get back Vandamme. The Czar rewarded General
Hulot very handsomely, giving him this casket, and saying that he
hoped one day to show the same courtesy to the Emperor of the French;
but he kept Vandamme. The Imperial arms of Russia were displayed in
gold on the lid of the box, which was inlaid with gold.
The Marshal counted the bank-notes it contained; he had a hundred and
fifty-two thousand francs. He saw this with satisfaction. At the same
moment Madame Hulot came into the room in a state to touch the heart
of the sternest judge. She flew into Hector's arms, looking
alternately with a crazy eye at the Marshal and at the case of
pistols.
"What have you to say against your brother? What has my husband done
to you?" said she, in such a voice that the Marshal heard her.
"He has disgraced us all!" replied the Republican veteran, who spoke
with a vehemence that reopened one of his old wounds. "He has robbed
the Government! He has cast odium on my name, he makes me wish I were
dead--he has killed me!--I have only strength enough left to make
restitution!
"I have been abased before the Conde of the Republic, the man I esteem
above all others, and to whom I unjustifiably gave the lie--the Prince
of Wissembourg!--Is that nothing? That is the score his country has
against him!"
He wiped away a tear.
"Now, as to his family," he went on. "He is robbing you of the bread I
had saved for you, the fruit of thirty years' economy, of the
privations of an old soldier! Here is what was intended for you," and
he held up the bank-notes. "He has killed his Uncle Fischer, a noble
and worthy son of Alsace who could not--as he can--endure the thought
of a stain on his peasant's honor.
"To crown all, God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to
choose an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of
having an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked
her in sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for
street-hussies, for ballet-girls, actresses--Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe!
--And that is the brother I treated as a son and made my pride!
"Go, wretched man; if you can accept the life of degradation you have
made for yourself, leave my house! I have not the heart to curse a
brother I have loved so well--I am as foolish about him as you are,
Adeline--but never let me see him again. I forbid his attending my
funeral or following me to the grave. Let him show the decency of a
criminal if he can feel no remorse."
The Marshal, as pale as death, fell back on the settee, exhausted by
his solemn speech. And, for the first time in his life perhaps, tears
gathered in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
"My poor uncle!" cried Lisbeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes.
"Brother!" said Adeline, kneeling down by the Marshal, "live for my
sake. Help me in the task of reconciling Hector to the world and
making him redeem the past."
"He!" cried the Marshal. "If he lives, he is not at the end of his
crimes. A man who has misprized an Adeline, who has smothered in his
own soul the feelings of a true Republican which I tried to instill
into him, the love of his country, of his family, and of the poor
--that man is a monster, a swine!--Take him away if you still care for
him, for a voice within me cries to me to load my pistols and blow his
brains out. By killing him I should save you all, and I should save
him too from himself."
The old man started to his feet with such a terrifying gesture that
poor Adeline exclaimed:
"Hector--come!"