“What’s the matter with you, Potel?”

“My dear fellow, the Imperial Guard is being black-guarded all over the town!  These civilians are crying you down! and it goes to the bottom of my heart.”

“What are they complaining of?” asked Max.

“Of what you do at night.”

“As if we couldn’t amuse ourselves a little!”

“But that isn’t all,” said Potel.

Potel belonged to the same class as the officer who replied to the burgomasters:  “Eh! your town will be paid for, if we do burn it!” So he was very little troubled about the deeds of the Order of Idleness.

“What more?” inquired Gilet.

“The Guard is against the Guard.  It is that that breaks my heart.  Bridau has set all these bourgeois on you.  The Guard against the Guard! no, it ought not to be!  You can’t back down, Max; you must meet Bridau.  I had a great mind to pick a quarrel with the low scoundrel myself and send him to the shades; I wish I had, and then the bourgeois wouldn’t have seen the spectacle of the Guard against the Guard.  In war times, I don’t say anything against it.  Two heroes of the Guard may quarrel, and fight,—­but at least there are no civilians to look on and sneer.  No, I say that big villain never served in the Guard.  A guardsman would never behave as he does to another guardsman, under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible!  Ah! it’s all wrong; the Guard is disgraced—­and here, at Issoudun! where it was once so honored.”

“Come, Potel, don’t worry yourself,” answered Max; “even if you do not see me at the banquet—­”

“What! do you mean that you won’t be there the day after to-morrow?” cried Potel, interrupting his friend.  “Do you wish to be called a coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau?  No, no!  The unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the dragoons of the Guard.  Arrange your business in some other way and be there!”

“One more to send to the shades!” said Max.  “Well, I think I can manage my business so as to get there—­For,” he thought to himself, “that power of attorney ought not to be in my name; as old Heron says, it would look too much like theft.”

This lion, tangled in the meshes Philippe Bridau was weaving for him, muttered between his teeth as he went along; he avoided the looks of those he met and returned home by the boulevard Vilatte, still talking to himself.

“I will have that money before I fight,” he said.  “If I die, it shall not go to Philippe.  I must put it in Flore’s name.  She will follow my instructions, and go straight to Paris.  Once there, she can marry, if she chooses, the son of some marshal of France who has been sent to the right-about.  I’ll have that power of attorney made in Baruch’s name, and he’ll transfer the property by my order.”