down. Adieu, my dear
Gerard, and at your next journey alight at my door." Noirtier left the
room when he had finished, with the same calmness that had characterized
him during the whole of this remarkable and trying conversation.
Villefort, pale and agitated, ran to the window, put aside the curtain,
and saw him pass, cool and collected, by two or three ill-looking men at
the corner of the street, who were there, perhaps, to arrest a man with
black whiskers, and a blue frock-coat, and hat with broad brim.

Villefort stood watching, breathless, until his father had disappeared
at the Rue Bussy. Then he turned to the various articles he had left
behind him, put the black cravat and blue frock-coat at the bottom of
the portmanteau, threw the hat into a dark closet, broke the cane into
small bits and flung it in the fire, put on his travelling-cap, and
calling his valet, checked with a look the thousand questions he was
ready to ask, paid his bill, sprang into his carriage, which was ready,
learned at Lyons that Bonaparte had entered Grenoble, and in the
midst of the tumult which prevailed along the road, at length reached
Marseilles, a prey to all the hopes and fears which enter into the heart
of man with ambition and its first successes.

Chapter 13. The Hundred Days.

M. Noirtier was a true prophet, and things progressed rapidly, as he had
predicted. Every one knows the history of the famous return from Elba,
a return which was unprecedented in the past, and will probably remain
without a counterpart in the future.

Louis XVIII. made but a faint attempt to parry this unexpected blow;
the monarchy he had scarcely reconstructed tottered on its precarious
foundation, and at a sign from the emperor the incongruous structure
of ancient prejudices and new ideas fell to the ground. Villefort,
therefore, gained nothing save the king's gratitude (which was rather
likely to injure him at the present time) and the cross of the Legion of
Honor, which he had the prudence not to wear, although M. de Blacas had
duly forwarded the brevet.

Napoleon would, doubtless, have deprived Villefort of his office had
it not been for Noirtier, who was all powerful at court, and thus the
Girondin of '93 and the Senator of 1806 protected him who so lately
had been his protector. All Villefort's influence barely enabled him to
stifle the secret Dantes had so nearly divulged. The king's procureur
alone was deprived of his office, being suspe