whose regrettable tendencies I mentioned
just now, he might naturally share more deeply still the ideas,
the prejudices, and the infatuations of the court; in person he was
ridiculous (a serious princely defect in France); he bore the brunt of a
new and untried regime; he succeeded a government which had intoxicated
the people with that splendid gilded smoke called glory; and if he was
not actually brought back to France by foreigners, at any rate he came
as the result of the armed invasion of Europe. Now, shall I tell you
why, in spite of all these defects and disadvantages, in spite, too, of
the ceaseless conspiracy kept up against his government, it was given to
him to die tranquilly in his bed at the Tuileries?"

"Because he had made himself a constitutional king," said Rastignac,
with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But do you mean to say that we
are not that?"

"In the letter, yes; in the spirit, no. When Louis XVIII. gave his
confidence to a minister, he gave it sincerely and wholly. He did
not cheat him; he played honestly into his hand,--witness the famous
ordinance of September 5, and the dissolution of the Chamber, which was
more Royalist than himself,--a thing he had the wisdom not to desire.
Later, a movement of public opinion shook the minister who had led him
along that path; that minister was his favorite, his son, as he called
him. No matter; yielding to the constitutional necessity, he bravely
sent him to foreign parts, after loading him with crosses and
titles,--in short, with everything that could soften the pain of his
fall; and he did not watch and manoeuvre surreptitiously to bring him
back to power, which that minister never regained."

"For a man who declares he does not hate us," said Rastignac, "you
treat us rather roughly. According to you we are almost faithless to the
constitutional compact, and our policy, to your thinking ambiguous and
tortuous, gives us a certain distant likeness to Monsieur Doublemain in
the 'Mariage de Figaro.'"

"I do not say that the evil is as deep as that," replied Sallenauve;
"perhaps, after all, _we_ are simply a _faiseur_,--using the word, be it
understood, in the sense of a meddler, one who wants to have his finger
in everything."

"Ah! monsieur, but suppose we are the ablest politician in the country."

"If we are, it does not follow that our kingdom ought not to have the
chance of becoming as able as ourselves."

"_Parbleu_!" cried Rastignac, in th