“What government do you imagine yourself to be serving?” interrupted the minister sharply.  After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D’Hubert answered: 

“The government of France.”

“That’s paying your conscience off with mere words, general.  The truth is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have been without country for twenty years.  Of men also who have just got over a very bad and humiliating fright....  Have no illusions on that score.”

The Duke of Otranto ceased.  He had relieved himself, and had attained his object of stripping some self-respect off that man who had inconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered court costume before a mirror.  But they were a hot-headed lot in the army, and it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general officer, received by him on the recommendation of one of the princes, were to go and do something rashly scandalous directly after a private interview with the minister.  In a changed voice he put a question to the point: 

“Your relation—­this Feraud?”

“No.  No relation at all.”

“Intimate friend?”

“Intimate... yes.  There is between us an intimate connection of a nature which makes it a point of honour with me to try...”

The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase.  When the servant had gone, after bringing in a pair of heavy silver candelabra for the writing desk, the Duke of Otranto stood up, his breast glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking a piece of paper out of a drawer held it in his hand ostentatiously while he said with persuasive gentleness: 

“You must not talk of breaking your sword across your knee, general.  Perhaps you would never get another.  The emperor shall not return this time.... Diable d’homme! There was just a moment here in Paris, soon after Waterloo, when he frightened me.  It looked as though he were going to begin again.  Luckily one never does begin again really.  You must not think of breaking your sword, general.”

General D’Hubert, his eyes fixed on the ground, made with his hand a hopeless gesture of renunciation.  The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him and began to scan deliberately the paper he had been holding up all the time.

“There are only twenty general officers to be brought before the Special Commission.  Twenty.  A round number.  And let’s see, Feraud.  Ah, he’s there!  Gabriel Florian. Parfaitement.  That’s your man.  Well, there will be only nineteen examples made now.”

General D’Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through an infectious illness.

“I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference a profound secret.  I attach the greatest importance to his never knowing...”