This bearing was remarked at last by the emperor himself, for Colonel D’Hubert, attached now to the Major-General’s staff, came on several occasions under the imperial eye.  But it exasperated the higher strung nature of Colonel Feraud.  Passing through Magdeburg on service this last allowed himself, while seated gloomily at dinner with the Commandant de Place, to say of his lifelong adversary:  “This man does not love the emperor,”—­and as his words were received in profound silence Colonel Feraud, troubled in his conscience at the atrocity of the aspersion, felt the need to back it up by a good argument.  “I ought to know him,” he said, adding some oaths.  “One studies one’s adversary.  I have met him on the ground half a dozen times, as all the army knows.  What more do you want?  If that isn’t opportunity enough for any fool to size up his man, may the devil take me if I can tell what is.”  And he looked around the table with sombre obstinacy.

Later on, in Paris, while feverishly busy reorganising his regiment, Colonel Feraud learned that Colonel D’Hubert had been made a general.  He glared at his informant incredulously, then folded his arms and turned away muttering: 

“Nothing surprises me on the part of that man.”

And aloud he added, speaking over his shoulder:  “You would greatly oblige me by telling General D’Hubert at the first opportunity that his advancement saves him for a time from a pretty hot encounter.  I was only waiting for him to turn up here.”

The other officer remonstrated.

“Could you think of it, Colonel Feraud!  At this time when every life should be consecrated to the glory and safety of France!”

But the strain of unhappiness caused by military reverses had spoiled Colonel Feraud’s character.  Like many other men he was rendered wicked by misfortune.

“I cannot consider General D’Hubert’s person of any account either for the glory or safety of France,” he snapped viciously.  “You don’t pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do—­who have been with him half a dozen times on the ground—­do you?”

His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced.  Colonel Feraud walked up and down the room.

“This is not a time to mince matters,” he said.  “I can’t believe that that man ever loved the emperor.  He picked up his general’s stars under the boots of Marshal Berthier.  Very well.  I’ll get mine in another fashion, and then we shall settle this business which has been dragging on too long.”

General D’Hubert, informed indirectly of Colonel Feraud’s attitude, made a gesture as if to put aside an importunate person.  His thoughts were solicited by graver cares.  He had had no time to go and see his family.  His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure, because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper’s favour which later on could have an adverse influence upon his career.  He wrote to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his promotion by favour.  As to his career he assured her that he looked no farther forward into the future than the next battlefield.