"Yes," responded Fougas; "I'll reach it. Not only because I am the youngest of all the officers of my grade, and because I have been in the mightiest of wars and followed the lessons of the master of Bellona's fields, but above all because Destiny has marked me with her sign. Why did the bullets spare me in more than twenty battles? Why have I sped over oceans of steel and fire without my skin receiving a scratch? It is because I have a star, as He had. His was the grander, it is true, but it went out at St. Helena, while mine is burning in Heaven still! If Doctor Nibor resuscitated me with a few drops of warm water, it was because my destiny was not yet accomplished. If the will of the French people has re-established the imperial throne, it was to furnish me a series of opportunities for my valor, during the conquest of Europe which we are about to recommence! Vive l'Empereur, and me too! I shall be duke or prince in less than ten years, and ... why not? One might try to be at roll-call on the day when crowns are distributed! In that case, I will adopt Clementine's oldest son: we will call him Pierre Victor II., and he shall succeed me on the throne just as Louis XV. succeeded his grandfather Louis XIV.!"
As he was finishing this wonderful speech, a gendarme entered the dining room, asked for Colonel Fougas, and handed him a letter from the Minister of War.
"Gad!" cried the Marshal, "it would be pleasant to have your promotion arrive at the end of such a discourse. For once, we would prostrate ourselves before your star! The Magi kings would be nowhere compared with us."
"Read it yourself," said he to the Marshal, holding out to him the great sheet of paper. "But no! I have always looked Death in the face; I will not turn my eyes away from this paper thunder if it is killing me.
"Colonel:
"In preparing the Imperial decree which elevated you to the rank of brigadier general, I found myself in the presence of an insurmountable obstacle: viz., your certificate of birth. It appears from that document that you were born in 1789, and that you have already passed your seventieth year. Now, the limit of age being fixed at sixty years for colonels, sixty-two for brigadier generals and sixty-five for generals of division, I find myself under the absolute necessity of placing you upon the retired list with the rank of colonel. I know, Monsieur, how little this measure is justified by your apparent age, and I sincerely regret that France should be deprived of the services of a man of your capacity and merit. Moreover, it is certain that an exception in your favor would arouse no dissatisfaction in the army and would meet with nothing but sympathetic approval. But the law is express, and the Emperor himself cannot violate or elude it. The impossibility resulting from it is so absolute that if, in your ardor to serve the country, you were willing to lay aside your epaulettes for the sake of beginning upon a new career, your enlistment could not be received in a single regiment of the army. It is fortunate, Monsieur, that the Emperor's government has been able to furnish you the means of subsistence in obtaining from His Royal Highness the Regent of Prussia the indemnity which was due you; for there is not even an office in the civil administration in which, even by special favor, a man seventy years old could be placed. You will very justly object that the laws and regulations now in force date from a period when experiments on the revivification of men had not yet met with favorable results. But the law is made for the mass of mankind, and cannot take any account of exceptions. Undoubtedly attention would be directed to its amendment if cases of resuscitation were to present themselves in sufficient number.
"Accept, &c."
A gloomy silence succeeded the reading. The Mene mene tekel upharsin of the oriental legends could not have more completely produced the effect of thunderbolts. The gendarme was still there, standing in the position of the soldier without arms, awaiting Fougas' receipt. The Colonel called for pen and ink, signed the paper, gave the gendarme drink-money, and said to him with ill-suppressed emotion:
"You are happy, you are! No one prevents you from serving the country. Well," added he, turning toward the Marshal, "what do you say to that?"
"What would you have me say, my poor old boy? It breaks me all up. There's no use in arguing against the law; it's express. The stupid thing on our parts was not to think of it sooner. But who the Devil would have thought of the retired list in the presence of such a fellow as you are?"
The two colonels avowed that such an objection would never have entered their heads; now that it had been suggested, however, they could not see what to rebut it with. Neither of them would have been able to enlist Fougas as a private soldier, despite his ability, his physical strength and his appearance of being twenty-four years old.
"If some one would only kill me!" cried Fougas. "I can't set myself to weighing sugar or planting cabbages. It was in the career of arms that I took my first steps; I must continue in it or die. What can I do? What can I become? Take service in some foreign army? Never! The fate of Moreau is still before my eyes.... Oh Fortune! What have I done to thee that I should be dashed so low, when thou wast preparing to raise me so high?"