Chapter 12

HOW THE PREFECT'S DOG SNAPPED AT THE GENERAL

The shadows were lengthening when Urbain de la Marinière at last left the General's hotel, and walked thoughtfully across the square, past the Prefecture, down the street to find his carriage.

He had resisted the temptation of dining with the officers and playing cards afterwards, though he by no means disliked either a game of chance or a good dinner. It seemed to him that he had done as much in Madame de Sainfoy's interests as she could reasonably expect. Though there might be worse men, General Ratoneau could not be called a pleasant companion. His loud voice and swaggering manners could not be agreeable to a person of Monsieur Urbain's measured mind and self-controlled ways. He was a type, and in that way interesting. The strange likeness to his master lent him a touch of character, almost of distinction, neither of which really belonged to him; yet, somehow, by a certain appeal to the imagination, it made him a just possible husband for a girl of good family. Not a gentleman, or anything like one; yet not quite the ordinary _bourgeois_. Considering the times, it appeared to Urbain that his cousin de Sainfoy need not be actually ashamed of such a son-in-law. Anyhow, he had done his best to further the matter, with an earnest recommendation to the General to keep his name out of the affair.

"Why not?" said Ratoneau. "You only reminded me of what I knew before. In fact, it was through me you heard of it. I startled your brother with it; our dear Prefect would never have said a word on the subject--ha, ha! So I owe you no gratitude, monsieur. You have done nothing."

"Ah, but just a little gratitude, if you please," said Urbain, smiling. "Enough to shut your ears to any reports that may reach you about my brother Joseph."

Ratoneau looked at him sharply, and frowned.

"I can make no bargains as to my duty, monsieur. Let your brother be loyal."

"I do my utmost to make him so," said Urbain, still smiling, and they parted.

"He is right--the man is right--and by heaven, I respect him!" Urbain said to himself as he crossed the square.

Passing near the great gate of the Prefecture, he noticed a police officer loitering on the pavement, whose dark, keen, discontented face seemed not unknown to him.

As Urbain came nearer, this man raised his hand to his cap, and spoke with an impudent grin.

"Monsieur de la Marinière has been making peace with Monsieur le Général Ratoneau? It was a difficult matter, I bet! Monsieur has been successful?"

Urbain looked at the man steadily. He was not easily made angry.

"Who are you, my friend? and what do you mean?" he said.

"I am Simon, the police agent, monsieur. The affair rather interested me. I was there."

"What affair?"

"Your son's affair with the General. That droll adventure of the cattle in the lane--your cattle, monsieur, and it was your son's fault that the General was thrown. Monsieur heard of it, surely?"

"You are mistaken," Monsieur Urbain replied quietly. "It was an accident; it was not my son's fault. Nobody has ever thought of it or mentioned it since. It was nothing."

"General Ratoneau did not think it nothing. All we who were there, we saw the droll side of it, but he did not. He swore he would have his revenge on Monsieur Angelot, as they call him. He has not forgotten it, monsieur. Only last night, his servant told me, when he came back from dining at Lancilly, he was swearing about it again."

"Let him swear!" said Urbain, under his breath.

Then his eyes dwelt a moment on Simon, who looked the very incarnation of malice and mischief, and he smiled benignly.

"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 Général would not be a pleasant enemy." Then, as Urbain was walking on, he detained him. "Everybody must respect Monsieur Urbain de la Marinière," 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, sturdy, 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 Marinières! 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 pronounced as that of Anne de la Marinière 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 classically pillared summerhouse near the open windows of his library. Late roses climbed and clustered 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 _Itinéraire de Paris a Jérusalem_, 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.

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 Préfet, 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 Général?" 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 Préfet."

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

"At that rate, Monsieur le Préfet, 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 Marinière 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 coarse 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 Préfet," 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 amusement that the General looked slightly confused.

"_I_ made a suggestion; and Madame de Sainfoy accepted it very kindly. In fact, Monsieur le Préfet, I asked her for her daughter, Mademoiselle Hélène."

Monsieur de Mauves knew that he ought to have been prepared for this answer; yet, somehow, he was not. Fixing his eyes on the yellow marble mosaic under his feet, he realised once more the frightful contrast that had struck him a few hours before in the lighted salon at Lancilly. "La belle Hélène," as everybody called her; the pale, beautiful girl with the sad eyes and enchanting smile, walking through the long room with her boy cousin, himself in his slender _élancé_ beauty a perfect match for her, so that the eighteenth century might have painted them as two young deities from the Court of Olympus, come down to earth to show mortals a vision of the ideal! And General Ratoneau, the ponderous bully in uniform, the incarnation of the Empire's worst side!

"Sacrilege!"

Last night, the Prefect had thought the same. But he had then added "Impossible!" and now it seemed that the girl's mother did not agree with him. Could ambition carry a woman through such a slough as this? did she really mean to gain imperial favour by such a sacrifice?

For a moment or two the Prefect was lost in a dream; then he suddenly recovered himself.

"Pardon--and you say that Madame de Sainfoy accepted--"

"She thanked me for the honour," said the General, a little stiffly. "She expressed herself favourably. She only asked me to have patience till she could consult her husband. Between ourselves, madame knows that I could be of use to her at Court."

"Could you?"

"Certainly, Monsieur le Préfet. My friend, the Baron de Beauclair, is an equerry to Her Majesty the Empress."

"Oh!" Evidently the Prefect knew and cared little about the Baron de Beauclair. "But, Monsieur le Général," he said, with a puzzled frown, "I am still at a loss to understand you. Your course is apparently smooth. Why do you want the help of an imperial order which, if it did no other harm, would almost certainly set Monsieur de Sainfoy against you?"

Ratoneau's dark face flushed crimson. "Mille tonnerres, Monsieur le Préfet," he growled out, "Monsieur de Sainfoy is against me already, confound him! This afternoon he sent me a letter, flatly declining my proposal for his daughter."

"Is it possible!"

The Prefect had some difficulty in hiding the sincere, if inconsistent, joy that this news gave him.

"Well done!" he thought. "I should have expected nothing less. Ah! I see, I see," he said aloud. "Monsieur de Sainfoy does not quite share his wife's ambitions. It is unfortunate for you, certainly. But if you wish to marry into an old family, there are others--"

Ratoneau stared at him and laughed.

"What do you take me for? Am I beaten so easily? No, monsieur! Mademoiselle de Sainfoy is the woman I mean to marry. I admire that white skin, that perfect distinction. You will not put me off with some ugly little brown toad out of Brittany, I assure you!"

The Prefect laughed.

"But what is to be done? Unless you can gain her father's consent--"

"That is the favour you will do me, Monsieur le Préfet. You will write to headquarters, do you see, and an order will be sent down--yes, an order which her father would not disobey if he were a dozen dukes rolled into one, instead of being what he is, a poor emigrant count helped back into France by wiser men than himself! Voilà, monsieur! Do you understand me now?"

"Ah--yes, General, I understand you," said Monsieur de Mauves.

He leaned back in the corner of the marble seat, calm and deliberate, gently stroking the little dog on his knee. Those long white fingers had lifted the lid of Henriette's basket, those keen eyes, now thoughtfully lowered, had seen the hiding-place of the Chouans in Monsieur Joseph's wood; yet no harm had come to the Royalist conspirators. And now, when an official of the Empire asked his help in a private matter, help strictly legal, even within the limits of an imperial command, again this blameworthy Prefect would not stir a finger. He was running himself into greater danger than he knew, in the satisfaction of his gentle instincts, when he glanced up into the bold, angry, eager face beside him, and said with uncompromising clearness: "Do not deceive yourself, monsieur. I shall not write to headquarters on any such subject, and no such order will be sent down through any action or influence of mine. The Comte de Sainfoy is my friend, remember."

Ratoneau was choking with rage.

"You defy me, monsieur!" he snarled.

"Why--if such a desperate course is necessary," the Prefect murmured. "But I would rather reason with you."