Perhaps he led the King to suppose that the Marquis de Courtornieu might have provoked the outbreak by undue severity. He had served under Napoleon, and possibly had thought it necessary to make a display of his zeal. There have been such cases.
So far as he himself was concerned, he deeply deplored the mistakes into which he had been led by the ambitious marquis, upon whom he cast most of the responsibility for the blood which had been shed.
The result of all this was, that when the Marquis de Courtornieu’s report reached Paris, it was answered by a decree depriving him of the office of grand prevot.
This unexpected blow crushed him.
To think that a man as shrewd, as subtle-minded, as quick-witted, and adroit as himself—a man who had passed through so many troubled epochs, who had served with the same obsequious countenance all the masters who would accept his services—to think that such a man should have been thus duped and betrayed!
“It must be that old imbecile, the Duc de Sairmeuse, who has manoeuvred so skilfully, and with so much address,” he said. “But who advised him? I cannot imagine who it could have been.”
Who it was Mme. Blanche knew only too well.
She recognized Martial’s hand in all this, as Marie-Anne had done.
“Ah! I was not deceived in him,” she thought; “he is the great diplomatist I believed him to be. At his age to outwit my father, an old politician of such experience and acknowledged astuteness! And he does all this to please Marie-Anne,” she continued, frantic with rage. “It is the first step toward obtaining pardon for the friends of that vile creature. She has unbounded influence over him, and so long as she lives there is no hope for me. But, patience.”
She was patient, realizing that he who wishes to surely attain his revenge must wait, dissimulate, prepare an opportunity, but not force it.