"Why, what can that grinning monkey have been saying to him?" Simon asked himself. "Licking the dust off his boots somehow, for that is what he likes, the parvenu! They are like cats, those La Marinières! they always know how to please everybody, and to get their own way. It seems to me they want a lesson."
He moved a little nearer to the great gates, and watched the General as he walked in. The bell clanged, the sentries saluted, the gates were set open ceremoniously. With all his frank, soldierly ways, Ratoneau was extremely jealous of his position and the respect due to it. The Prefect, on the contrary, aimed at simplicity and liked solitude. His wife had died some years before, not surviving the death of her parents, guillotined in the Terror. If she had lived, her influence being very great, Monsieur de Mauves might never have held his present appointment; for her royalism was quite as pronounced as that of Anne de la Marinière and might have overpowered her husband's admiration for Napoleon. And this would have been a pity, for no part of France, at this time, had a wiser or more acceptable governor.
On that calm and sunny autumn afternoon, the Prefect was sitting in a classically pillared summerhouse near the open windows of his library. Late roses climbed and clustered above his amiable head; lines of orange trees in square green boxes were set along the broad gravel terrace outside, and there was a pleasant view down a walk to a playing fountain with trees about it, beyond which some of the high grey roofs of Sonnay shone in the sunlight.
The Prefect never smoked; his snuff-box and a book were enough for him. Monsieur de Chateaubriand's Itinéraire de Paris a Jérusalem, just published in three volumes, lay on a marble table beside him, and he was enjoying an hour of unusual peace and quietness, his only companions two little greyhounds sleeping at his feet.
"AN ORDER FROM THE EMPEROR!" HE REPEATED.
It was with a touch of mental annoyance, therefore, that he received the announcement of General Ratoneau's visit. But he was far too well bred to show a sign of such feeling. He left that to the little dogs, who barked their disapproval. He closed his book, went to meet the General in the library, and invited him out to his favourite seat in the summer-house. They were an odd contrast as they sat there together; the quiet, graceful gentleman in ordinary morning dress of an easy description, the soldier, impatient and rough in manner, flashing at every point with gold lace and polished leather.
"Monsieur le Préfet, I have a favour to ask," Ratoneau began.
He did not often speak so civilly, and the Prefect felt relieved, for he had had more than one bad quarter of an hour with this colleague of his.
"How can I oblige you, Monsieur le Général?" he asked, smiling.