Very unwillingly indeed had Napoleon, whilst Marianne thus spoke, put his hand into his pocket, as if to draw out the money which his sorrowing sister needed, but remembering his own poverty, his hand dropped at his side; a deep glow of anger overspread his cheeks, and wildly stamping down with the foot he turned away and walked to the window, perhaps to allow none to notice the nervous agitation of his countenance and his tears of vexation and shame.
But what Napoleon could not do, that did Madame de Permont. She gave to the weeping young girl the twelve francs she needed to take a part in the festivity, and Marianne, less proud and less disdainful than her brother, accepted gladly, without opposition and without the need of a falsehood, the little sum offered.
Napoleon allowed this to take place without contradiction, and hindered not his sister to receive from Madame de Permont the alms which he himself had so arrogantly refused.
But they had barely left the reception-room and entered the carriage, than his suffering heart burst into a sarcastic philippic against the contemptible administration of such royal establishments as St. Cyr and the military school.
M. de Permont, who had at first patiently and with a smile listened to these raving invectives, felt himself at last wounded by them; and the supercilious and presumptuous manner in which the young man of barely seventeen years spoke of the highest offices of the state, and of the king himself, excited his anger.
“Hush, Napoleon!” said he, reluctantly. “It does not beseem you, who are educated upon the king’s bounty, to speak thus.”
Napoleon shrank within himself as if he had been bitten by a serpent, and a deadly pallor overspread his cheeks.
“I am not the pupil of the king, but of the state!” exclaimed he, in a boisterous voice, trembling with passion.
“Ah, that is indeed a fine distinction which you have made there, Napoleon,” said M. de Permont, laughing. “It is all the same whether you are the pupil of the state or of the king; moreover, is not the king the state also? However it may be, it beseems you not to speak of your benefactor in such inappropriate terms.”
Napoleon concentrated all his efforts into self-control, and mastered himself into a grave, quiet countenance.