If you
want to keep your place, you must make a bed for yourself, and instead
of asking the Marshal to give Coquet's place to Marneffe, in your
place I would beg him to use his influence to reserve a seat for me on
the General Council of State; there you may die in peace, and, like
the beaver, abandon all else to the pursuers."
"What, do you think the Marshal would forget--"
"The Marshal has already taken your part so warmly at a General
Meeting of the Ministers, that you will not now be turned out; but it
was seriously discussed! So give them no excuse. I can say no more. At
this moment you may make your own terms; you may sit on the Council of
State and be made a Peer of the Chamber. If you delay too long, if you
give any one a hold against you, I can answer for nothing.--Now, am I
to go?"
"Wait a little. I will see the Marshal," replied Hulot, "and I will
send my brother to see which way the wind blows at headquarters."
The humor in which the Baron came back to Madame Marneffe's may be
imagined; he had almost forgotten his fatherhood, for Roger had taken
the part of a true and kind friend in explaining the position. At the
same time Valerie's influence was so great that, by the middle of
dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more
cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless man
was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find
himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed
out by his friend--compelled, in short, to choose between Madame
Marneffe and his official position.
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