"I will go to the War Office," said he, "and see the Prince, to find 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?"
