The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so different in their demeanor, conduct, and character—the brave man and the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the peculator—and he said to himself:
"That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot, such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!"
He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely essential in the battle-field.
Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings, the following paragraphs:—
"Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy has applied for his retiring
pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which
has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two
employes, has had some share in this distinguished official's
decision. On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he
had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic
stroke in the War Minister's private room.
"Monsieur Hulot d'Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim,
has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has
been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know
Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his
administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted
conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw,
or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for
the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon
in 1815.
"One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage.
Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of
the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office."
"ALGIERS.—The case known as the forage supply case, to which some
of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been
closed by the death of the chief culprit. Johann Wisch has
committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded,
will be sentenced in default.
"Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly
respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe
of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared."
And in the Paris News the following paragraph appeared:
"Monsieur le Marechal the Minister of War, to prevent the
recurrence of such scandals for the future, has arranged for a
regular Commissariat office in Africa. A head-clerk in the War
Office, Monsieur Marneffe, is spoken of as likely to be appointed
to the post of director."
"The office vacated by Baron Hulot is the object of much ambition.
The appointment is promised, it is said, to Monsieur le Comte
Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Deputy, brother-in-law to Monsieur le
Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Appeals, will fill
his seat on the Council of State, and Monsieur Claude Vignon
becomes Master of Appeals."
Of all kinds of false gossip, the most dangerous for the Opposition newspapers is the official bogus paragraph. However keen journalists may be, they are sometimes the voluntary or involuntary dupes of the cleverness of those who have risen from the ranks of the Press, like Claude Vignon, to the higher realms of power. The newspaper can only be circumvented by the journalist. It may be said, as a parody on a line by Voltaire:
"The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe."