“Those young men are fools,” he said.  “A lawyer like Malin will escape any deed they may force him to sign under violence.  Watch those nobles, and discover the means they take to set the Comte de Gondreville at liberty.”

He ordered the affair to be conducted with the utmost celerity, regarding it as an attack on his own institutions, a fatal example of resistance to the results of the Revolution, an effort to open the great question of the sales of “national property,” and a hindrance to that fusion of parties which was the constant object of his home policy.  Besides all this, he thought himself tricked by these young nobles, who had given him their promise to live peaceably.

“Fouche’s prediction has come true,” he cried, remembering the words uttered two years earlier by his present minister of police, who said them under the impressions conveyed to him by Corentin’s report as to the character and designs of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.

It is impossible for persons living under a constitutional government, where no one really cares for that cold and thankless, blind, deaf Thing called public interest, to imagine the zeal which a mere word of the Emperor was able to inspire in his political or administrative machine.  That powerful will seemed to impress itself as much upon things as upon men.  His decision once uttered, the Emperor, overtaken by the coalition of 1806, forgot the whole matter.  He thought only of new battles to fight, and his mind was occupied in massing his regiments to strike the great blow at the heart of the Prussian monarchy.  His desire for prompt justice in the present case found powerful assistance in the great uncertainty which affected the position of all magistrates of the Empire.  Just at this time Cambaceres, as arch-chancellor, and Regnier, chief justice, were preparing to organize tribunaux de premiere instance (lower civil courts), imperial courts, and a court of appeal or supreme court.  They were agitating the question of a legal garb or costume; to which Napoleon attached, and very justly, so much importance in all official stations; and they were also inquiring into the character of the persons composing the magistracy.  Naturally, therefore, the officials of the department of the Aube considered they could have no better recommendation than to give proofs of their zeal in the matter of the abduction of the Comte de Gondreville.  Napoleon’s suppositions became certainties to these courtiers and also to the populace.

Peace still reigned on the continent; admiration for the Emperor was unanimous in France; he cajoled all interests, persons, vanities, and things, in short, everything, even memories.  This attack, therefore, directed against his senator, seemed in the eyes of all an assault upon the public welfare.  The luckless and innocent gentlemen were the objects of general opprobrium.  A few nobles living quietly on their estates deplored the affair among themselves but dared