"And nothing would make you do so, I suppose," sneered the General. "Come, monsieur, you should forget your aristocracy now and then, and remember that you are a servant of the Emperor. People will begin to say that His Majesty might be better served."
Monsieur de Mauves shrugged his shoulders, and reflected that if the Emperor had wished to punish him for some crime, he could not have done it better than by giving him this person for a colleague. Fortunately he had a splendid temper; Urbain de la Marinière himself was not endowed with a larger share of sweet reasonableness. Most men would not have endured the General's insolence for five minutes. The Prefect's love of peace and sense of public duty, united with extreme fairness of mind, helped him to make large allowances for his fellow-official. He knew that Ratoneau's vapouring talk was oftener in coarse joke than in sober earnest. He had, in truth, a very complete scorn of him, and hardly thought him worthy of a gentleman's steel. As to veiled threats such as that which had just fallen from his lips, the Prefect found them altogether beneath serious notice.
"Let us arrive at understanding each other, General," he said coldly, but very politely. "You began by asking me to do you a favour. Then you branched off to a duty I had neglected. You now give me a friendly warning. Is it, perhaps, because you fear to lose me as a colleague, that you have become anxious about my reports to His Majesty?" he smiled. "Or, how, I ask again, does the matter interest you?"
"In this way, Monsieur le Préfet," said Ratoneau. He pulled himself together, keeping his bullying instincts in check. After all, he knew he would be a fool to quarrel with the Prefect or to rouse his active opposition. "No offence?" he said gruffly. "You know me—you know my rough tongue."
The Prefect bowed courteously, and handed him his snuff-box.
"You saw last night at Lancilly," said Ratoneau, much more quietly, "that I had a long talk with Madame la Comtesse."
"A charming woman," said Monsieur de Mauves. "Certainly—you told me the subject of your talk, if you remember. Did you arrive then at any conclusion? What was our hostess's advice on that interesting subject? Did she suggest—the name of any lady, for instance?"
He noticed with a touch of amusement that the General looked slightly confused.
"I made a suggestion; and Madame de Sainfoy accepted it very kindly. In fact, Monsieur le Préfet, I asked her for her daughter, Mademoiselle Hélène."
Monsieur de Mauves knew that he ought to have been prepared for this answer; yet, somehow, he was not. Fixing his eyes on the yellow marble mosaic under his feet, he realised once more the frightful contrast that had struck him a few hours before in the lighted salon at Lancilly. "La belle Hélène," as everybody called her; the pale, beautiful girl with the sad eyes and enchanting smile, walking through the long room with her boy cousin, himself in his slender élancé beauty a perfect match for her, so that the eighteenth century might have painted them as two young deities from the Court of Olympus, come down to earth to show mortals a vision of the ideal! And General Ratoneau, the ponderous bully in uniform, the incarnation of the Empire's worst side!