"Merci, Monsieur Simon," he said. "We are fortunate in having you to watch over us. But do not let this anxiety trouble you. I have just been spending some time with General Ratoneau, as you appear to know. We are the best of friends, and if my son irritated him the other day, I think he has forgotten it."

"So much the better," grinned Simon, "for Monsieur le General would not be a pleasant enemy." Then, as Urbain was walking on, he detained him.

"Everybody must respect Monsieur Urbain de la Mariniere," he said. "He has a difficult position. If certain eyes were not wilfully shut, serious things might happen in his family. And we sometimes ask ourselves, we of the police, whether closed eyes at headquarters ought to mean a silent tongue all round. How does it strike you, monsieur?"

Urbain hesitated a moment. He had done a certain amount of bribery in his day, for the sake of those he loved, but his native good sense and obstinacy alike arose against being blackmailed by a police spy, a subordinate official at best. The fellow could not do Joseph much harm, he thought, the Prefect being friendly, and the General likely to be a connection. And Joseph must in the future be loyal, as the General said.

No; he might as well keep his napoleons in his pocket.

"I really have no time to discuss the subject," he said. "The police, like every one else, must do their duty according to their lights.

Good-day, Monsieur Simon."

He touched his hat and walked on. Simon looked after him, muttering viciously.

After some minutes, a clash of arms from the opposite hotel archway drew his attention. The sentries were saluting the General as he came out, now in full uniform, and followed by two orderlies, while a third went before to announce him at the Prefecture.

Ratoneau looked every inch a soldier, broad, st.u.r.dy, and swaggering, as he clanked across the square. Simon noticed with surprise that his face was bright with most unusual good-humour.

"Why, what can that grinning monkey have been saying to him?" Simon asked himself. "Licking the dust off his boots somehow, for that is what he likes, the parvenu! They are like cats, those La Marinieres! they always know how to please everybody, and to get their own way. It seems to me they want a lesson."

He moved a little nearer to the great gates, and watched the General as he walked in. The bell clanged, the sentries saluted, the gates were set open ceremoniously. With all his frank, soldierly ways, Ratoneau was extremely jealous of his position and the respect due to it. The Prefect, on the contrary, aimed at simplicity and liked solitude. His wife had died some years before, not surviving the death of her parents, guillotined in the Terror. If she had lived, her influence being very great, Monsieur de Mauves might never have held his present appointment; for her royalism was quite as p.r.o.nounced as that of Anne de la Mariniere and might have overpowered her husband's admiration for Napoleon. And this would have been a pity, for no part of France, at this time, had a wiser or more acceptable governor.

On that calm and sunny autumn afternoon, the Prefect was sitting in a cla.s.sically pillared summerhouse near the open windows of his library.

Late roses climbed and cl.u.s.tered above his amiable head; lines of orange trees in square green boxes were set along the broad gravel terrace outside, and there was a pleasant view down a walk to a playing fountain with trees about it, beyond which some of the high grey roofs of Sonnay shone in the sunlight.

The Prefect never smoked; his snuff-box and a book were enough for him.

Monsieur de Chateaubriand's _Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_, just published in three volumes, lay on a marble table beside him, and he was enjoying an hour of unusual peace and quietness, his only companions two little greyhounds sleeping at his feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AN ORDER FROM THE EMPEROR!" HE REPEATED.]

It was with a touch of mental annoyance, therefore, that he received the announcement of General Ratoneau's visit. But he was far too well bred to show a sign of such feeling. He left that to the little dogs, who barked their disapproval. He closed his book, went to meet the General in the library, and invited him out to his favourite seat in the summer-house. They were an odd contrast as they sat there together; the quiet, graceful gentleman in ordinary morning dress of an easy description, the soldier, impatient and rough in manner, flashing at every point with gold lace and polished leather.

"Monsieur le Prefet, I have a favour to ask," Ratoneau began.

He did not often speak so civilly, and the Prefect felt relieved, for he had had more than one bad quarter of an hour with this colleague of his.

"How can I oblige you, Monsieur le General?" he asked, smiling.

"By doing your duty," said Ratoneau, with a grin.

The Prefect shrugged his shoulders slightly, raised his eyebrows and looked at him.

"I ought not," he said, "to need the additional inducement of doing you a favour. I was not aware of having neglected any duty. To what, pray, do you refer?"

"I refer to an order from the Emperor which you have not obeyed."

"Indeed?"

The Prefect's smile had now quite faded. "An order from the Emperor!" he repeated.

"Yes. His Majesty ordered you to report to him the names and particulars of all young girls of good family in the department."

"And what of that, monsieur?"

"I am quite sure you have not done so."

Something in the General's tone was so displeasing to one of the Prefect's little dogs, that it suddenly sprang up and snapped at him.

Its master just saved it from a kick by catching it up on his knee.

"A bas, Toutou!" he said, softly stroking it, and took a pinch of snuff, regarding the General with a curiously patient expression.

"I know you have done nothing of the sort!" Ratoneau repeated.

"And how, may I ask, does the matter interest you?"

The Prefect spoke slowly and gently; yet something in his manner irritated the General. He made an impatient movement and rattled his sword.

"It does interest me," he said. "How can you disobey an order from the Emperor?"

"As to that, my dear colleague, I am responsible. You know the view I take of that order. I am not alone. Several of my brother Prefects agree with me. It is impolitic, and worse, offensive. The Emperor is reasonable, and does not expect a blind obedience which would really do harm to the Empire."

"Do not make too sure of that, Monsieur le Prefet."

"If the old provincial families are to be brought round _en ma.s.se_ to the Empire, it must be done by diplomacy, not by a tyrannical domestic legislation."

"At that rate, Monsieur le Prefet, the work will take a hundred years.

They laugh at your diplomacy, these infernal old families. Propose a soldier as a husband for one of their daughters, and you will see."

"I have not done so," the Prefect said very drily, and the glance that shot from under his quiet eyelids might have made a thin-skinned person uncomfortable.

"And nothing would make you do so, I suppose," sneered the General.

"Come, monsieur, you should forget your aristocracy now and then, and remember that you are a servant of the Emperor. People will begin to say that His Majesty might be better served."

Monsieur de Mauves shrugged his shoulders, and reflected that if the Emperor had wished to punish him for some crime, he could not have done it better than by giving him this person for a colleague. Fortunately he had a splendid temper; Urbain de la Mariniere himself was not endowed with a larger share of sweet reasonableness. Most men would not have endured the General's insolence for five minutes. The Prefect's love of peace and sense of public duty, united with extreme fairness of mind, helped him to make large allowances for his fellow-official. He knew that Ratoneau's vapouring talk was oftener in coa.r.s.e joke than in sober earnest. He had, in truth, a very complete scorn of him, and hardly thought him worthy of a gentleman's steel. As to veiled threats such as that which had just fallen from his lips, the Prefect found them altogether beneath serious notice.

"Let us arrive at understanding each other, General," he said coldly, but very politely. "You began by asking me to do you a favour. Then you branched off to a duty I had neglected. You now give me a friendly warning. Is it, perhaps, because you fear to lose me as a colleague, that you have become anxious about my reports to His Majesty?" he smiled. "Or, how, I ask again, does the matter interest you?"

"In this way, Monsieur le Prefet," said Ratoneau. He pulled himself together, keeping his bullying instincts in check. After all, he knew he would be a fool to quarrel with the Prefect or to rouse his active opposition. "No offence?" he said gruffly. "You know me--you know my rough tongue."

The Prefect bowed courteously, and handed him his snuff-box.

"You saw last night at Lancilly," said Ratoneau, much more quietly, "that I had a long talk with Madame la Comtesse."

"A charming woman," said Monsieur de Mauves. "Certainly--you told me the subject of your talk, if you remember. Did you arrive then at any conclusion? What was our hostess's advice on that interesting subject?

Did she suggest--the name of any lady, for instance?"

He noticed with a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt that the General looked slightly confused.

"_I_ made a suggestion; and Madame de Sainfoy accepted it very kindly.

In fact, Monsieur le Prefet, I asked her for her daughter, Mademoiselle Helene."