"My orders are imperative," said the usher.
Indignant the Cardinal turned to his brother. "Well, brother," he said, "there we are! By the navel of the Pope, I'd like to knock the interloper down!"
For all answer Rodin again mutely and humbly inclined towards the Cardinal. Then he made a sign to the usher to precede him, and vanished through a door on the opposite side of the room from where he had entered.
The latter entrance again swung open, and admitted Lieutenant General Count Oliver, in the garish uniform of his rank and decorated with the Legion of Honor and several foreign orders. He wore the great red ribbon on his scarf, the order of the Iron Crown over his shoulder, and the Cross of St. Louis in one of the buttonholes of his coat, which glittered with braid. John Lebrenn's old apprentice was now thirty-eight; his moustache still held its blackness, but his hair was streaked with grey; his face still was handsome and martial. A total stranger to the other personages in the audience chamber, he seated himself a little distance off from the group formed by the Cardinal, the Count of Plouernel, and Monsieur Hubert. Count Desmarais had withdrawn into the alcove of a window.
"That Jesuit, that scamp, that priestlet, introduced to Monsieur Blacas before me!" stormed the Cardinal to the Count, his brother. "Me, a Prince of the Church! I declare, as things are going, helped along by that execrable charter of 1814, we are marching towards another '93! France is lost!"
"The Restoration has done a great deal for the clergy, Monsieur Cardinal," declared Hubert. "You are very wrong to cast reproaches at the King and the government."
"I am of my brother's opinion as to what concerns the nobility," said the Count of Plouernel. "I blame the King strongly for giving the command of two regiments of his guards to ex-Marshals of the Empire, clodhoppers, men of no account, like all these plebeians, hardly scraped clean by the nobility Napoleon covered them with." General Oliver, so far unnoticed by the Count of Plouernel, here moved indignantly, but the Count proceeded: "The King should never have entrusted commands to these barrack-heroes, smelling of the pipe and the bottle, bumpkins whom we must elbow out of our way at the Tuileries, we, old Emigrants, who fought them under the Republic. We sacrificed all for our masters, and they do us the outrage to treat these upstarts as our equals! These specimens, during their Emperor's time, expressed themselves most insultingly toward the house of Bourbon; and to-day they accept services, favors, and commands from the King. It is only to betray him some day; at least that would not be the last word in the renegades' baseness, and they would not even be conscious of their apostasy!"
At this General Oliver rose, pale with anger, and striding roughly up to Plouernel said in a voice of concentrated rage:
"Sir, you will regret, I am convinced, your last words, when you learn that I, Lieutenant General, Count Oliver, have served the Emperor, to whom I owe my rank and title. For I have the honor to be a soldier of fortune, sir. I shall know how to chastise any insolence that may be addressed to me!"
Disdainfully looking General Oliver over from head to foot, the Count of Plouernel made answer: "Well, sir! I, Gaston, Count of Plouernel, second in command in his Majesty's Black Musketeers, have the honor never to have served any but my masters. I followed them into exile, and I returned to France in 1814. You have my opinion of traitors and turn-coats."