"Colonel Baron Pontmercy." He had only an old blue coat, and he never
went out without fastening to it his rosette as an officer of the Legion
of Honor. The Attorney for the Crown had him warned that the authorities
would prosecute him for "illegal" wearing of this decoration. When this
notice was conveyed to him through an officious intermediary, Pontmercy
retorted with a bitter smile: "I do not know whether I no longer
understand French, or whether you no longer speak it; but the fact is
that I do not understand." Then he went out for eight successive days
with his rosette. They dared not interfere with him. Two or three times
the Minister of War and the general in command of the department wrote
to him with the following address: "A Monsieur le Commandant Pontmercy."
He sent back the letters with the seals unbroken. At the same moment,
Napoleon at Saint Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives
of Sir Hudson Lowe addressed to General Bonaparte. Pontmercy had ended,
may we be pardoned the expression, by having in his mouth the same
saliva as his Emperor.

In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused
to salute Flaminius, and who had a little of Hannibal's spirit.

One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of
Vernon, stepped up to him, and said: "Mr. Crown Attorney, am I permitted
to wear my scar?"

He had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of squadron. He had
hired the smallest house which he could find at Vernon. He lived there
alone, we have just seen how. Under the Empire, between two wars, he
had found time to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The old bourgeois,
thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent with a sigh,
saying: "The greatest families are forced into it." In 1815, Madame
Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every sense, by the way, lofty in
sentiment and rare, and worthy of her husband, died, leaving a
child. This child had been the colonel's joy in his solitude; but the
grandfather had imperatively claimed his grandson, declaring that if
the child were not given to him he would disinherit him. The father had
yielded in the little one's interest, and had transferred his love to
flowers.

Moreover, he had renounced everything, and neither stirred up mischief
nor conspired. He shared his thoughts between the innocent things which
he was then doing and the great things which he had done. He passed his
time in expecting a pink o