But he, at least, knew how to fall nobly.
He passed, without even a change of countenance, from almost omnipotence to a position so compromising that his very life was endangered.
On seeing his ante-chambers, formerly thronged with flatterers and office-seekers, empty and deserted, he laughed, and his laugh was unaffected.
“The ship is sinking,” said he; “the rats have deserted it.”
He did not even pale when the noisy crowd came to hoot and curse and hurl stones at his windows; and when Otto, his faithful valet de chambre, entreated him to assume a disguise and make his escape through the gardens, he responded:
“By no means! I am simply odious; I do not wish to become ridiculous!”
They could not even dissuade him from going to a window and looking down upon the rabble in the street below.
A singular idea had just occurred to him.
“If Jean Lacheneur is still alive,” he thought, “how much he would enjoy this! And if he is alive, he is undoubtedly there in the foremost rank, urging on the crowd.”
And he wished to see.