“I am told, M. Hugo, that during the recent reign of the barricades, no milk-and-butter carts could penetrate into Paris, and that her citizens were obliged to be content with chocolate made with water,—dry rolls, and café noir. Well!—let us see to it that not only milk and butter, but wine and honey flow during the New Era, and that the streets shall be repaved with hams and sausages. And in place of the planes and acacias that have been decapitated, let us plant fig-trees, olives and vines.”
He bowed with much grace, considering his disadvantages of figure, and moved onwards, stepping deliberately as Agag, with the little high-arched feet in the wonderfully-polished boots that were no bigger than those of a pretty girl. It stamps him—who was undeniably possessed of a mordant power of irony,—as being devoid of the saving grace of humor, that he should, during the period of his American exile, have conferred upon a throbbing feminine devotee and partisan one of these shiny leather boots of his—which the possessor employed alternately as a receptacle for flowers, or as a repository for embroidery-silks; or merely as an object of peculiar veneration, preserved under a glass-case.
He said in the ear of Madame de Roux, as exclamations, comments, ejaculations, broke out on all sides, in tones of consternation, satisfaction, exasperation, not to be repressed:
“What do you say, dear friend? Is not the ax laid to the root of the Violet with a vengeance? Shall we not cultivate our cabbages henceforth in tranquillity and peace?”
He added, as with an ineffable air of conquering gallantry he handed the beautiful woman to a sofa, and placed himself beside her:
“Tell me that I have kept my promise, given that day when you walked with a poor prisoner on the ramparts of the Fortress of Ham.... ‘If ever I return to France,’ I said, ‘I will hold this little hand upon my arm as I receive the congratulations of my friends.”
“Ah! but, Monsieur,” said Henriette, all pale and quivering, “your words were, ‘When I return to France in triumph!’ and this——”
She broke off. He ended the sentence, saying with a shallow, glittering look:
“And this is not triumph, but humiliation. I understand!” He pulled at the flowing goatee, and added, in his mildest drawl:
“Let me remind you that the ancient Roman triumphs, as represented at the theater, invariably begin with a procession of captives and spoils. Imagine yourself at the Français, seated in a box. And consider that though it hardly befits an Emperor to play the part of a slave, unless at the feet of a lovely woman, yet the slave may be promoted to the part of Leading Citizen. And from the armchair upon the platform behind the tribune, might be wielded, on occasion, the lightnings that slay from a throne.”