e for an outlaw. Gavard was a man
who was always in opposition. He had just completed his fiftieth year,
and he boasted that he had already passed judgment on four Governments.
He still contemptuously shrugged his shoulders at the thought of Charles
X, the priests and nobles and other attendant rabble, whom he had helped
to sweep away. Louis Philippe, with his bourgeois following, had been an
imbecile, and he could tell how the citizen-king had hoarded his coppers
in a woollen stocking. As for the Republic of '48, that had been a
mere farce, the working classes had deceived him; however, he no longer
acknowledged that he had applauded the Coup d'Etat, for he now looked
upon Napoleon III as his personal enemy, a scoundrel who shut himself
up with Morny and others to indulge in gluttonous orgies. He was never
weary of holding forth upon this subject. Lowering his voice a little,
he would declare that women were brought to the Tuileries in closed
carriages every evening, and that he, who was speaking, had one night
heard the echoes of the orgies while crossing the Place du Carrousel. It
was Gavard's religion to make himself as disagreeable as possible to any
existing Government. He would seek to spite it in all sorts of ways,
and laugh in secret for several months at the pranks he played. To begin
with, he voted for candidates who would worry the Ministers at the Corps
Legislatif. Then, if he could rob the revenue, or baffle the police, and
bring about a row of some kind or other, he strove to give the affair as
much of an insurrectionary character as possible. He told a great many
lies, too; set himself up as being a very dangerous man; talked as
though "the satellites of the Tuileries" were well acquainted with him
and trembled at the sight of him; and asserted that one half of them
must be guillotined, and the other half transported, the next time there
was "a flare-up." His violent political creed found food in boastful,
bragging talk of this sort; he displayed all the partiality for a
lark and a rumpus which prompts a Parisian shopkeeper to take down
his shutters on a day of barricade-fighting to get a good view of the
corpses of the slain. When Florent returned from Cayenne, Gavard opined
that he had got hold of a splendid chance for some abominable trick, and
bestowed much thought upon the question of how he might best vent his
spleen on the Emperor and Ministers and everyone in office, down to the
very lowest police