Hulot d'Ervy
found the old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the
fireplace, his brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his
eyes apparently fixed on vacancy.
"Here! At your orders, Prince!" said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease
of manner.
The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during
the time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of
where the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God;
Hulot could not meet it; he looked down in confusion.
"He knows everything!" said he to himself.
"Does your conscience tell you nothing?" asked the Marshal, in his
deep, hollow tones.
"It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering
_razzias_ in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age,
and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have no
fortune.--You know the principles of the four hundred elect
representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every
distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers' pay--that says
everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!--What can you
expect of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the
Government legal officials?--who give thirty sous a day to the
laborers on the works at Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility
to live there and keep a family on less than forty sous?--who never
think of the atrocity of giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to
a thousand or twelve hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and
who want to secure our places for themselves as soon as the pay rises
to forty thousand?--who, finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a
piece of Crown property confiscated from the Crown in 1830--property
acquired, too, by Louis XVI.
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