If you have complicated your crime with such
gross folly, you will end--I will not say where----"
"Promise me, Cottin, that you will do what you can for her," said the
Marshal, who heard nothing, and was still thinking of his
sister-in-law.
"Depend on me!" said the Minister.
"Thank you, and good-bye then!--Come, monsieur," he said to his
brother.
The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so
different in their demeanor, conduct, and character--the brave man and
the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the
peculator--and he said to himself:
"That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot,
such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!"
He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches
from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a
leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in
reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the
icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely
essential in the battle-field.
Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings,
the following paragraphs:--
"Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy has applied for his retiring
pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which
has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two
employes, has had some share in this distinguished official's
decision.
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