Let us leave our four hunters on their way to Lagny—where, thanks to the passports they owed to the obligingness of certain clerks in citizen Fouché’s employ, they exchanged their own horses for post-horses and their coachman for a postilion—and see why the First Consul1 had sent for Roland.
After leaving Morgan, Roland had hastened to obey the general’s orders. He found the latter standing2 in deep thought before the fireplace. At the sound of his entrance General Bonaparte raised his head.
“What were you two saying to each other?” asked Bonaparte, without preamble3, trusting to Roland’s habit of answering his thought.
“Why,” said Roland, “we paid each other all sorts of compliments, and parted the best friends in the world.”
“How does he impress you?”
“As a perfectly4 well-bred man.”
“How old do you take him to be?”
“About my age, at the outside.”
“So I think; his voice is youthful. What now, Roland, can I be mistaken? Is there a new royalist generation growing up?”
“No, general,” replied Roland, shrugging his shoulders; “it’s the remains5 of the old one.”
“Well, Roland, we must build up another, devoted6 to my son—if ever I have one.”
Roland made a gesture which might be translated into the words, “I don’t object.” Bonaparte understood the gesture perfectly.
“You must do more than not object,” said he; “you must contribute to it.”
A nervous shudder7 passed over Roland’s body.
“In what way, general?” he asked.
“By marrying.”
Roland burst out laughing.
“Good! With my aneurism?” he asked.
Bonaparte looked at him, and said: “My dear Roland, your aneurism looks to me very much like a pretext8 for remaining single.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes; and as I am a moral man I insist upon marriage.”
“Does that mean that I am immoral,” retorted Roland, “or that I cause any scandal with my mistresses?”
“Augustus,” answered Bonaparte, “created laws against celibates9, depriving them of their rights as Roman citizens.”
“Augustus—”
“Well?”
“I’ll wait until you are Augustus; as yet, you are only Cæsar.”
Bonaparte came closer to the young man, and, laying his hands on his shoulders, said: “Roland, there are some names I do not wish to see extinct, and among them is that of Montrevel.”
“Well, general, in my default, supposing that through caprice or obstinacy10 I refuse to perpetuate11 it, there is my little brother.”
“What! Your brother? Then you have a brother?”
“Why, yes; I have a brother! Why shouldn’t I have brother?”
“How old is he?”
“Eleven or twelve.”
“Why did you never tell me about him?”
“Because I thought the sayings and doings of a youngster of that age could not interest you.”
“You are mistaken, Roland; I am interested in all that concerns my friends. You ought to have asked me for something for your brother.”
“Asked what, general?”
“His admission into some college in Paris.”
“Pooh! You have enough beggars around you without my swelling12 their number.”
“You hear; he is to come to Paris and enter college. When he is old enough, I will send him to the Ecole Militare, or some other school which I shall have founded before then.”
“Faith, general,” said Roland, “just as if I had guessed your good intentions, he is this very day on the point of, starting for Paris.”
“What for?”
“I wrote to my mother three days ago to bring the boy to Paris. I intended to put him in college without mentioning it, and when he was old enough to tell you about him—always supposing that my aneurism had not carried me off in the meantime. But in that case—”
“In that case?”
“Oh! in that case I have left a bit of a will addressed to you, and recommending to your kindness my mother, and the boy and the girl—in short, the whole raft.”
“The girl! Who is she?”
“My sister.”
“So you have a sister also?”
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
“Pretty?”
“Charming.”
“I’ll take charge of her establishment.”
Roland began to laugh.
“What’s the matter?” demanded the First Consul.
“General, I’m going to put a placard over the grand entrance to the Luxembourg.”
“What will you put on the placard?”
“‘Marriages made here.’”
“Why not? Is it any reason because you don’t wish to marry for your sister to remain an old maid? I don’t like old maids any better than I do old bachelors.”
“I did not say, general, that my sister should remain an old maid; it’s quite enough for one member of the Montrevel family to have incurred13 your displeasure.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Only that, as the matter concerns my sister, she must, if you will allow it, be consulted.”
“Ah, ha! Some provincial14 love-affair, is there?”
“I can’t say. I left poor Amélie gay and happy, and I find her pale and sad. I shall get the truth out of her; and if you wish me to speak to you again about the matter, I will do so.”
“Yes, do so—when you get back from the Vendée.”
“Ah! So I am going to the Vendée?”
“Why, is that, like marriage, repugnant, to you?”
“Not in the least.”
“Then you are going to the Vendée.”
“When?”
“Oh, you need not hurry, providing you start to-morrow.”
“Excellent; sooner if you wish. Tell me what I am to do there.”
“Something of the utmost importance, Roland.”
“The devil! It isn’t a diplomatic mission, I presume?”
“Yes; it is a diplomatic mission for which I need a man who is not a diplomatist.”
“Then I’m your man, general! Only, you understand, the less a diplomatist I am, the more precise my instructions must be.”
“I am going to give them to you. Do you see that map?”
And he showed the young man a large map of Piedmont stretched out on the floor............