A quarter of an hour
afterwards, accompanied by 250 Chasseurs de Vincennes, he took possession
of the ministry of the Interior, startled M. de Thorigny in his bed, and
handed him brusquely a letter of thanks from Monsieur Bonaparte. Some
days previously honest M. De Thorigny, whose ingenuous remarks we have
already cited, said to a group of men near whom M. de Morny was passing,
"How these men of the Mountain calumniate the President! The man who
would break his oath, who would achieve a _coup d'etat_ must necessarily
be a worthless wretch." Awakened rudely in the middle of the night, and
relieved of his post as Minister like the sentinels of the Assembly, the
worthy man, astounded, and rubbing his eyes, muttered, "Eh! then the
President _is_ a ----."

"Yes," said Morny, with a burst of laughter.

He who writes these lines knew Morny. Morny and Walewsky held in the
quasi-reigning family the positions, one of Royal bastard, the other of
Imperial bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer,
but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot
possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette
table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas
with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means to wear a
gracious smile with bad teeth, leading a life of pleasure, dissipated but
reserved, ugly, good-tempered, fierce, well-dressed, intrepid, willingly
leaving a brother prisoner under bolts and bars, and ready to risk his
head for a brother Emperor, having the same mother as Louis Bonaparte,
and like Louis Bonaparte, having some father or other, being able to call
himself Beauharnais, being able to call himself Flahaut, and yet calling
himself Morny, pursuing literature as far as light comedy, and politics,
as far as tragedy, a deadly free liver, possessing all the frivolity
consistent with assassination, capable of being sketched by Marivaux and
treated of by Tacitus, without conscience, irreproachably elegant,
infamous, and amiable, at need a perfect duke. Such was this malefactor."

It was not yet six o'clock in the morning. Troops began to mass
themselves on the Place de la Concorde, where Leroy-Saint-Arnaud on
horseback held a review.

The Commissaries of Police, Bertoglio and Primorin ranged two companies
in order under the vault of the great staircase of the Questure, but did
not ascend that way. They were accompanied by agents of police, wh