“I am surprised that your Excellency, so competent in the valuation of men of his time, should have thought it worth while to have that name put down on the list.”

“A rabid Bonapartist.”

“So is every grenadier and every trooper of the army, as your Excellency well knows.  And the individuality of General Feraud can have no more weight than that of any casual grenadier.  He is a man of no mental grasp, of no capacity whatever.  It is inconceivable that he should ever have any influence.”

“He has a well-hung tongue though,” interjected Fouche.

“Noisy, I admit, but not dangerous.”

“I will not dispute with you.  I know next to nothing of him.  Hardly his name in fact.”

“And yet your Excellency had the presidency of the commission charged by the king to point out those who were to be tried,” said General D’Hubert with an emphasis which did not miss the minister’s ear.

“Yes, general,” he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast room and throwing himself into a high-backed armchair whose overshadowed depth swallowed him up, all but the gleam of gold embroideries on the coat and the pallid patch of the face.  “Yes, general.  Take that chair there.”

General D’Hubert sat down.

“Yes, general,” continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue and betrayal, whose duplicity as if at times intolerable to his self-knowledge worked itself off in bursts of cynical openness.  “I did hurry on the formation of the proscribing commission and took its presidency.  And do you know why?  Simply from fear that if I did not take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the proscribed.  Such are the times in which we live.  But I am minister of the king as yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this obscure Feraud off the list?  You wonder how his name got there.  Is it possible that you know men so little?  My dear general, at the very first sitting of the commission names poured on us like rain off the tiles of the Tuileries.  Names!  We had our choice of thousands.  How do you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don’t matter to France, does not keep out some other name?...”

The voice out of the armchair stopped.  General D’Hubert sat still, shadowy, and silent.  Only his sabre clinked slightly.  The voice in the armchair began again.  “And we must try to satisfy the exigencies of the allied sovereigns.  The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially that his Majesty, the Emperor Alexander, was very disappointed at the small number of examples the government of the king intends to make—­especially amongst military men.  I tell you this confidentially.”

“Upon my word,” broke out General D’Hubert, speaking through his teeth, “if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidential information I don’t know what I will do.  It’s enough to make one break one’s sword over one’s knee and fling the pieces...”