Next day, at about four o’clock, Philippe made his way to the Rue du Sentier, and up to a small room on the entresol, where he found Giroudeau shut up like a wild beast in a sort of hen-coop with a wicket; it contained a little stove, a little table, two little chairs, and some little billets for the fire. The whole apparatus was dignified by these magical words, Office for Subscribers
, painted on the outside door in black letters, and the word Cashier
in running hand on a board hung on the bars of the cage. Along the wall opposite the old trooper’s coop was a bench, on which an old soldier was eating a snack; he had lost an arm, and Giroudeau addressed him as Coloquinte (Colocynth), by reason, no doubt, of the Egyptian hue of his face.
“Sweetly pretty!” said Philippe, looking about him. “What business have you here—you who rode in poor Colonel Chabert’s charge at Eylau? In the devil’s name! In all the devils’ names! A superior officer …”
“Why, yes! Roo‑ty too‑too! A superior officer signing receipts in a newspaper office,” said Giroudeau, settling his black silk skullcap. “And what is more, I am the responsible editor of that rhodomontade,” and he pointed to the paper.
“And I, who once went to Egypt, now go to the Stamp Office,” said the pensioner.
“Silence, Coloquinte,” said Giroudeau. “You are in the presence of a brave man who carried the Emperor’s orders at the battle of Montmirail!”
“Pre‑sent arms!” cried Coloquinte. “I lost my missing arm there.”
“Coloquinte, mind the shop; I am going upstairs to my nephew.”
The two soldiers went up to the fourth floor, to an attic at the end of a passage, and found a young man with cold, colorless eyes stretched on a shabby sofa. The civilian did not disturb himself, though he offered cigars to his uncle and his uncle’s friend.
“My dear fellow,” said Giroudeau, in a meek and gentle voice, “here is the valiant Major of whom I spoke.”
“What then?” said Finot, looking Philippe from head to foot, while the officer lost all his spirit, like Giroudeau, in the presence of the diplomat of the press.
“My dear boy,” said Giroudeau, trying to play the uncle, “the Colonel has just come from Texas.”
“Oh! you were caught for Texas and the Champ d’Asile? You were very young, too, to turn soldier-ploughman.”
The sting of this witticism can be appreciated only by those who can remember the flood of prints, screens, clocks, bronzes, and casts to which the idea of the soldier-ploughman gave rise, as a great allegory of the fate of Napoleon and his veterans, which at last found vent in various satirical songs. The idea was worth a million at least; you may still see the soldier-ploughman on wallpapers in the depths of the provinces.
If this young man had not been Giroudeau’s nephew, Philippe would have smacked his cheeks.
“Yes, I was caught for it; and I lost twelve thousand francs and my time,” replied he, trying to force a smile.
“And you still love the Emperor?”
“He is my God!” replied Philippe Bridau.
“You are a Liberal?”
“I shall always side with the Constitutional Opposition. Oh, Foy! Manuel! Laffitte! There are men for you. They will rid us of these wretches who have sneaked in at the heels of the foreigners.”
“Well, then,” said Finot coldly, “you must take the benefit of your misfortunes, for you are a victim to the Liberals, my good fellow. Remain a Liberal if you are set on your opinions; but threaten the Liberals with divulging the madness of the Texas scheme. You never got a farthing of the national subscription, I suppose? Well, then, you are in a splendid position: ask for the accounts of the fund. This is what will happen: A fresh newspaper is now being started by the Opposition under the auspices of the deputies of the Left; you will be made cashier with a thousand crowns a year, a place for life. You have only to find twenty thousand francs as security; get them, and in a week you will have a berth. I will advise them to silence you by making them offer you the place—but cry out, and cry loud!”
Giroudeau allowed Philippe to go down a few steps before him, pouring out thanks as he went, and said to his nephew: “Well, you are a pretty fellow, you are! You let me hang on here with twelve hundred francs a year—”
“The paper will not live a year,” replied Finot. “I have something better for you.”
“By heaven!” said Philippe to Giroudeau, “that nephew of yours is no fool. I had never thought of taking the benefit of my position, as he puts it.”
That evening, at the Café Lemblin and the Café Minerve, Colonel Philippe broke out in abuse of the Liberals who sent a man to Texas, who talked gammon about the soldier-ploughman, who left brave men to starve in misery after squeezing twenty thousand francs out of them, and driving them for two years from pillar to post.
“I mean to ask for an account of the money subscribed for the Champ d’Asile,” he said to one of the regular customers at the Café Minerve, who repeated it to the journalists of the Left.
Philippe did not go home to the Rue Mazarine; he went to tell Mariette that he was about to be employed on a paper with ten thousand subscribers, in which her Terpsichorean ambitions should be ardently supported. Agathe and Madame Descoings sat up for him in an agony of terror, for the Duc de Berry
