ent with a woman who would swear to love only you
for all time?"

He remained anxious, with a wretched air. She was kind and she reassured
him:

"You know very well, my friend, that I am not fickle."

Almost at the end of the lane they said good-by. He kept the carriage
to return to the Rue Royale. He was to dine at the club and go to the
theatre, and had no time to lose.

Therese returned home on foot. Opposite the Trocadero she remembered
what the old flower-woman had said: "One can see that you are young."
The words came back to her with a significance not immoral but sad. "One
can see that you are young!" Yes, she was young, she was loved, and she
was bored to death.

CHAPTER III. A DISCUSSION ON THE LITTLE CORPORAL

In the centre of the table flowers were disposed in a basket of gilded
bronze, decorated with eagles, stars, and bees, and handles formed like
horns of plenty. On its sides winged Victorys supported the branches
of candelabra. This centrepiece of the Empire style had been given
by Napoleon, in 1812, to Count Martin de l'Aisne, grandfather of
the present Count Martin-Belleme. Martin de l'Aisne, a deputy to the
Legislative Corps in 1809, was appointed the following year member of
the Committee on Finance, the assiduous and secret works of which suited
his laborious temperament. Although a Liberal, he pleased the Emperor by
his application and his exact honesty. For two years he was under a
rain of favors. In 1813 he formed part of the moderate majority which
approved the report in which Laine censured power and misfortune, by
giving to the Empire tardy advice. January 1, 1814, he went with his
colleagues to the Tuileries. The Emperor received them in a terrifying
manner. He charged on their ranks. Violent and sombre, in the horror of
his present strength and of his coming fall, he stunned them with his
anger and his contempt.

He came and went through their lines, and suddenly took Count Martin by
the shoulders, shook him and dragged him, exclaiming: "A throne is four
pieces of wood covered with velvet? No! A throne is a man, and that man
is I. You have tried to throw mud at me. Is this the time to remonstrate
with me when there are two hundred thousand Cossacks at the frontiers?
Your Laine is a wicked man. One should wash one's dirty linen at home."
And while in his anger he twisted in his hand the embroidered collar of
the deputy, he said: "The people know me. They do not know you. I am th