“Yes, General,” he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast room, and throwing himself into a deep armchair that swallowed him up, all but the soft gleam of gold embroideries and the pallid patch of the face—­“yes, General.  Take this chair there.”

General D’Hubert sat down.

“Yes, General,” continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue and betrayals, whose duplicity, as if at times intolerable to his self-knowledge, found relief in bursts of cynical openness.  “I did hurry on the formation of the proscribing Commission, and I 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 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 should know men so little?  My dear General, at the very first sitting of the Commission names poured on us like rain off the roof 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.  Opposite 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, too.  The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander’s dissatisfaction 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 break one’s sword over one’s knee, and fling the pieces. . . .”

“What government you imagined 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; it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general officer, received in audience on the recommendation of one of the Princes, were to do something rashly scandalous directly after a private interview with the minister.  In a changed tone he put a question to the point:  “Your relation—­this Feraud?”