cause he was not like some bigwigs who
loved only themselves. The Royalists knew they could never make anything
of him. He loved The Other too well.

The Other was the Man of St. Helena. The two officers nodded and touched
glasses before they drank to an impossible return. Then the same who
had spoken before, remarked with a sardonic laugh, "His adversary showed
more cleverness."

"What adversary?" asked the younger, as if puzzled.

"Don't you know? They were two hussars. At each promotion they fought a
duel. Haven't you heard of the duel going on ever since 1801?"

The other had heard of the duel, of course. Now he understood the
allusion. General Baron D'Hubert would be able now to enjoy his fat
king's favour in peace.

"Much good may it do to him," mumbled the elder. "They were both brave
men. I never saw this D'Hubert--a sort of intriguing dandy, I am told.
But I can well believe what I've heard Feraud say of him--that he never
loved the Emperor."

They rose and went away.

General D'Hubert experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes
up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a
quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his
way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from
his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been
or hoped to be would taste of bitter ignominy unless he could manage to
save General Feraud from the fate which threatened so many braves. Under
the impulse of this almost morbid need to attend to the safety of his
adversary, General D'Hubert worked so well with hands and feet (as the
French saying is), that in less than twenty-four hours he found means of
obtaining an extraordinary private audience from the Minister of Police.

General Baron D'Hubert was shown in suddenly without preliminaries. In
the dusk of the Minister's cabinet, behind the forms of writing-desk,
chairs, and tables, between two bunches of wax candles blazing in
sconces, he beheld a figure in a gorgeous coat posturing before a tall
mirror. The old conventionnel Fouche, Senator of the Empire, traitor
to every man, to every principle and motive of human conduct. Duke of
Otranto, and the wily artizan of the second Restoration, was trying
the fit of a court suit in which his young and accomplished fiancee had
declared her intention to have his portrait painted on porcelain. It was
a caprice, a charming fancy which the first Minister o