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 of Police of the second Restoration was anxious to gratify. For that man, often compared in wiliness of conduct to a fox, but whose ethical side could be worthily symbolized by nothing less emphatic than a skunk, was as much possessed by his love as General D’Hubert himself.
Startled to be discovered thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this little vexation with the characteristic impudence which had served his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career. Without altering his attitude a hair’s-breadth, one leg in a silk stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left shoulder, he called out calmly, “This way, General. Pray approach. Well? I am all attention.”
While General D’Hubert, ill at ease as if one of his own little weaknesses had been exposed, presented his request as shortly as possible, the Duke of Otranto went on feeling the fit of his collar, settling the lapels before the glass, and buckling his back in an effort to behold the set of the gold embroidered coat-skirts behind. His still face, his attentive eyes, could not have expressed a more complete interest in those matters if he had been alone.
“Exclude from the operations of the Special Court a certain Feraud, Gabriel Florian, General of brigade of the promotion of 1814?” he repeated, in a slightly wondering tone, and then turned away from the glass. “Why exclude him precisely?”
“I am surprised that your Excellency, so competent in the evaluation of men of his time, should have thought worth while to have that name put down on the list.”
“A rabid Bonapartist!”
“So is every grenadier and every trooper of the army, as your Excellency well knows. And the individuality of General Feraud can have no more weight than that of any casual grenadier. He is a man of no mental grasp, of no capacity whatever. It is inconceivable that he should ever have any influence.”
“He has a well-hung tongue, though,” interjected Fouche.
“Noisy, I admit, but not dangerous.”
“I will not dispute with you. I know next to nothing of him. Hardly his name, in fact.”
“And yet your Excellency has the presidency of the Commission charged by the king to point out those who were to be tried,” said General D’Hubert, with an emphasis which did not miss the minister’s ear.
“Yes, General,” he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast room, and throwing himself into a deep armchair that swallowed him up, all but the soft gleam of gold embroideries and the pallid patch of the face — “yes, General. Take this chair there.”
General D’Hubert sat down.
“Yes, General,” continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue and betrayals, whose duplicity, as if at times intolerable to his self-knowledge, found relief in bursts of cynical openness. “I did hurry on the formation of the proscribing Commission, and I took its presidency. And do you know why? Simply from fear that if I did not take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the proscribed. Such are the times in which we live. But I am minister of the king yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there! Is it possible that you should know men so little? My dear General, at the very first sitting of the Commission names poured on us like rain off the roof of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don’t matter to France, does not keep out some other name?”
The voice out of the armchair stopped. Opposite General D’Hubert sat still, shadowy and silent. Only his sabre clinked slightly. The voice in the armchair began again. “And we must try to satisfy the exigencies of the Allied Sovereigns, too. The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander’s dissatisfaction at the small number of examples the Government of the king intends to make — especially amongst military men. I tell you this confidentially.”
“Upon my word!” broke out General D’Hubert, speaking through his teeth, “if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidential information I don’t know what I will do. It’s enough to break one’s sword over one’s knee, and fling the pieces . . . .”
“What government you imagined yourself to be serving?” interrupted the minister, sharply.
After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D’Hubert answered, “The Government of France.”
“That’s paying your conscience off with mere words, General. The truth is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have been without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just got over a very bad and humiliating fright. . . . Have no illusions on that score.”
The Duke of Otranto ceased. He had relieved himself, and had attained his object of stripping some self-respect off that man who had inconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered court costume before a mirror. But they were a hot-headed lot in the army; it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general officer, received in audience on the recommendation of one of the Princes, were to do something rashly scandalous directly after a private interview with the minister. In a changed tone he put a question to the point: “Your relation — this Feraud?”
“No. No relation at all.”
“Intimate friend?”
“Intimate . . . yes. There is between us an intimate connection of a nature which makes it a point of honour with me to try. . .”
The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase. When the servant had gone out, after bringing in a pair of heavy silver candelabra for the writing-desk, the Duke of Otranto rose, his breast glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking a piece of paper out of a drawer, held it in his hand ostentatiously while he said with persuasive gentleness: “You must not speak of breaking your sword across your knee, General. Perhaps you would never get another. The Emperor will not return this time. . . . Diable d’homme! There was just a moment, here in Paris, soon after Waterloo, when he frightened me. It looked as though he were ready to begin all over again. Luckily one never does begin all over again, really. You must not think of breaking your sword, General.”
General D’Hubert, looking on the ground, moved slightly his hand in a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him, and scanned deliberately the paper he had been holding up all the time.
“There are only twenty general officers selected to be made an example of. Twenty. A round number. And let’s see, Feraud. . . . Ah, he’s there. Gabriel Florian. Parfaitement. That’s your man. Well, there will be only nineteen examples made now.”
General D’Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through an infectious illness. “I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference a profound secret. I attach the greatest importance to his never learning. . .”
“Who is going to inform him, I should like to know?” said Fouche, raising his eyes curiously to General D’Hubert’s tense, set face. “Take one of these pens, and run it through the name yourself. This is the only list in existence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one will be able to tell what was the name struck out. But, par exemple, I am not responsible for