"They were both
brave men. I never saw this D'Hubert--a sort of intriguing dandy, I
understand. But I can well believe what I've heard Feraud say once 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 be lost in 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 shadowy forms of writing
desk, chairs, and tables, between two bunches of wax candles blazing in
sconces, he beheld a figure in a splendid coat posturing before a tall
mirror. The old _Conventional_ Fouche, ex-senator of the empire, traitor
to every man, every principle and motive of human conduct, Duke of
Otranto, and the wily artisan of the Second Restoration, was trying the
fit of a court suit, in which his young and accomplished _fiancee_ had
declared her wish to have his portrait painted on porcelain.
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