“Savary will be disgraced for this,” said I to the Abbé, who leaned over my shoulder while I read the paper; “Bonaparte can never forgive him.”
“You mistake, my dear sir,” replied he, with a strange expression I could not fathom. “The Consul is the most forgiving of men; he never bears malice.”
“But here was a dreadful event,—a crime, perhaps.”
“Only a fault,” resumed he. “By the bye, Colonel, this order about closing the barriers will be excessively inconvenient to the good people of Paris.”
“I have been thinking over that, too,” said an overdressed, affected-looking youth, whose perfumed curls and studied costume formed a strange contrast with the habits of his fellow-prisoners. “If they shut up the Barriére de de l'Étoile, what are they to do for Longchamps?”
“Parbleu! that did not strike me,” interposed the colonel, tapping his forehead with his finger. “I 'll wager a crown that they haven't thought of that themselves.”
“The Champs Éllysés are surely long enough for such tomfoolery,” said the quartermaster, in a gruff, savage tone.
“Not one half,” was the imperturbable reply of the youth; “and Longchamps promised admirably this year. I had ordered a calèche,—light blue, with gilt circles on the wheels, and a bronze carving to the pole,—like an antique chariot.”
“Parbleu! you are more likely to take your next airing in a simpler conveyance,” said the quartermaster with a grin.
“I was to have driven la Comtesse de Beauflers to the Bois de Boulogne.”