"The King has conferred on me the command of a military division, and it pleased him to award me the Cross of St. Louis. Tell me, sir, am I in your eyes because of that command and that decoration a traitor or a renegade? Answer, sir," demanded Oliver.
"Since you ask me, sir, I shall reply in all sincerity——"
At the moment when Plouernel would have finished the sentence, he was interrupted by the hilarious roar of a new personage who had burst into the room laughing fit to split his sides. It was his old friend the Marquis of St. Esteve, that intolerable would-be conspirator, whom the most serious moment could not check in his buffoonery. Powdered white, the Marquis's hair was dressed in 'pigeon-wings'; his little queue bobbed up and down on the collar of his bourgeois' coat with gold epaulets. He wore a court sword, knee breeches, and top boots; he was the epitome of that type of Emigrant dubbed 'Louis XV's tumblers.' On seeing Plouernel he at once ran toward him, clasped him in his arms, and all the while laughing fit to kill, exclaimed:
"Ah, Count! Hold me! I die! Oh, the idea! Ha, ha, ha! This time I shall split of it, surely! Oh, oh, oh! If you knew the funny sto—ry! Ah, the idea! I shall surely choke—let me laugh!"
Plouernel pushed him off, muttering "Devil take the nuisance!"
"Hang the Emigrant!" growled Oliver, on his part. "Interrupting just as I was about to slap that insolent fellow's face!"
"You don't know of it!" ran on the Marquis, continuing to shriek with laughter. "Ha, ha, ha! Bonaparte—has—has—oh! the idea!—has returned—has landed at the gulf—oh! oh!—at the gulf of Juan, near the town of Antibes! If that wouldn't make one split his sides laughing! Hi, hi, hi!"
"Gentlemen," cried an usher rushing in in a fright, and beside himself, "his Excellency has just been summoned to the King in haste by an important unforeseen matter. There is no need waiting—the audiences are off for another day!"
Following him hurriedly out of Blacas's cabinet, came Fouché, rubbing his hands. Glimpsing Desmarais, pale and distracted at the news of Napoleon's landing, he called to him: "If the tyrant does not have you shot on his return, Citizen Count Brutus, my faith, you will have fortune with you this time. Make your will!"
"Such a catastrophe! The designs of God are indeed impenetrable!" exclaimed the Cardinal to Fouché.