"
"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 had 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 high-backed armchair whose overshadowed
depth swallowed him up, all but the gleam of gold embroideries on the
coat and the pallid patch of the face. "Yes, general. Take that chair
there."
General D'Hubert sat down.
"Yes, general," continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue
and betrayal, whose duplicity as if at times intolerable to his
self-knowledge worked itself off in bursts of cynical openness. "I
did hurry on the formation of the proscribing commission and 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.
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