Words like these won him the Presidential elbow-chair on the platform behind the tribune, placed in his neat white hand the coveted little bell with the horizontal handle; procured for him, who had been reduced to pawning-straits to pay the rent of his London lodging, palatial quarters in the Palace of the Élysée at the end of the Faubourg Saint Honoré.
The taking of the Presidential Oath exorcised that haunting specter, arrayed in the rags of the Imperial mantle,—adorned with the fleurons from the caparison of Childeric’s steed of war. Banished, the grisly phantom sank down into its gorgeous sepulchre. Calumny was silenced, suspicion was changed into confidence, France reposed her ringleted head in chaste abandonment upon the irreproachable waistcoat of her First Citizen, who waited for nothing but the laying of the submarine cable between Calais and Dover, the passing of the Bill restoring to the President of the National Assembly the right of absolute command over the military and naval forces of the country, to toss the trustful fair one over his saddle-bow, leap up behind her, and gallop—with his swashbuckling, roystering band of freebooters thundering upon his heels, with the shouts and pistol-shots of indignant pursuers dying upon the distance—away into the frosty December night.
France was to lose her Cap of Liberty as the result of that furious ride of the night of the coup d’État, and something more besides....
But in the meanwhile she was content, suspecting no designs against her honor, and the Prince-President, established at the Palace of the Élysée, made himself very much at home.
Not that he cared about the place—he infinitely preferred the Tuileries. But by day the audience-rooms were packed with gold-encrusted uniforms and irreproachable dress-coats: and by night the whole place blazed with gaslight. Soirées, concerts, dinners, balls, and hunting-parties at St. Cloud or Fontainebleau, succeeded balls, dinners, concerts and soirées; and after the crush had departed there were suppers, modeled on the Regency pattern, lavish, luxurious, meretricious, at which the intimate male friends of the host were privileged to be dazzled by a galaxy of beauties dressed to slay; scintillating with jewels; lovely women who recalled the vanished splendors, as they reproduced the frailties, of the Duchesse de Berry and Madame de Phalaris.
His “flying squadron” he was wont to term them. They were of infinite use to him in the seduction and entanglement of young and gifted, or wealthy and influential men. With what enchanting grace and stateliness they rode the ocean, broke upon the breeze their sable flag of piracy, unmasked their deadly bow-chasers, and brought their broadside batteries to bear. How prettily they sacked and plundered their grappled, helpless prizes. With what magnificent indifference they saw their livid prisoners walk the plank that ended in the salt green wave and the gray shark’s maw.
The Henriette, that clipping war-frigate, had brought much grist to the mills of Monseigneur.
Therefore could he deny her this simple favor, the speedy removal of an inconvenient husband? When the soft caressing voice murmured the plaintive entreaty, Monseigneur stroked the chin-tuft that had not yet become an imperial, and thought the thing might be arranged.