“Tiny, swarthy, thin. A deceptive thinness. In the morning, in a high-necked dress, she looked a mere wisp. At table in the evening, in a low-necked dress with flowers in her bosom, very charming.”
“But morally, marshal?”
“Morally. … I am not an imbecile, am I, now? Well! I have never understood anything about a woman’s morals. All that I can tell you is that Madame Pélisson passed for a sentimentalist. They said she had a warm heart for handsome men.”
“She gave you a hint to that effect, my dear marshal?”
“Not the least in the world. She said to me at dessert, ‘I dote on eloquence. A noble speech carries me away.’ I could not apply that remark to myself. It is true that I had that morning delivered an address. But I had got my aide-de-camp, a short-sighted artillery officer, to write it out for me. He had written so small that I could not read it. … Don’t you know? …”
They had reached the Place Vendôme. Delarbre held out his little withered hand to the marshal, and stole under the archway of the Ministry.
The following week, at the breaking up of the Council, when the ministers were already withdrawing, the Emperor laid his hand on the shoulder of the Keeper of the Seals.
“My dear Monsieur Delarbre,” said he to him, “I have heard by chance—in my position, one never learns anything save by chance—that there is a deputy magistrate’s post vacant at the Nantes bar. I beg that you will consider for that post a very deserving young doctor of law, who has written a remarkable treatise on Trade Unions. His name is Chanot, and he is the nephew of Madame Ramel. He is to beg an audience of you this very day. Should you propose him to me for it, I shall sign his nomination with pleasure.”
The Emperor had pronounced the name of his foster-sister tenderly, for he had never lost his affection for her, although, a republican of republicans, she repelled his advances, refused, poor widow as she was, the master’s offers, and raged openly in her garret against the coup d’état. But yielding at last, after fifteen years, to the persistent kindness of Napoleon III., she had come to beg, as earnest of reconciliation, a favour from the prince—not for herself, but for her nephew young Chanot, a doctor of law, and, according to his professors, an honour to the Schools. Even now it was an austere favour that Madame Ramel demanded of her foster-brother; admission to the open court for young Chanot could scarcely be considered an act of partiality. But Madame Ramel was keenly anxious that her nephew should be sent to Loire-Inférieure, where his relatives lived. This fact recurred to Napoleon’s mind, and he impressed it on the Minister of Justice.