a great mind to pick a quarrel with the low scoundrel
myself and send him to the shades; I wish I had, and then the
bourgeois wouldn't have seen the spectacle of the Guard against the
Guard. In war times, I don't say anything against it. Two heroes of
the Guard may quarrel, and fight,--but at least there are no civilians
to look on and sneer. No, I say that big villain never served in the
Guard. A guardsman would never behave as he does to another guardsman,
under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible! Ah! it's all wrong;
the Guard is disgraced--and here, at Issoudun! where it was once so
honored."

"Come, Potel, don't worry yourself," answered Max; "even if you do not
see me at the banquet--"

"What! do you mean that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?"
cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a
coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau? No, no! The
unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the
dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some other way and be
there!"

"One more to send to the shades!" said Max. "Well, I think I can
manage my business so as to get there--For," he thought to himself,
"that power of attorney ought not to be in my name; as old Heron says,
it would look too much like theft."

This lion, tangled in the meshes Philippe Bridau was weaving for him,
muttered between his teeth as he went along; he avoided the looks of
those he met and returned home by the boulevard Vilatte, still talking
to himself.

"I will have that money before I fight," he said. "If I die, it shall
not go to Philippe. I must put it in Flore's name. She will follow my
instructions, and go straight to Paris. Once there, she can marry, if
she chooses, the son of some marshal of France who has been sent to
the right-about. I'll have that power of attorney made in Baruch's
name, and he'll transfer the property by my order."

Max, to do him justice, was never more cool and calm in appearance
than when his blood and his ideas were boiling. No man ever united in
a higher degree the qualities which make a great general. If his
career had not been cut short by his captivity at Cabrera, the Emperor
would certainly have found him one of those men who are necessary to
the success of vast enterprises. When he entered the room where the
hapless victim of all these comic and tragic scenes was still weeping,
Max asked the meaning of such distress; seemed surprise