aid.
No; he might as well keep his napoleons in his pocket.

"I really have no time to discuss the subject," he said. "The police,
like every one else, must do their duty according to their lights.
Good-day, Monsieur Simon."

He touched his hat and walked on. Simon looked after him, muttering
viciously.

After some minutes, a clash of arms from the opposite hotel archway drew
his attention. The sentries were saluting the General as he came out,
now in full uniform, and followed by two orderlies, while a third went
before to announce him at the Prefecture.

Ratoneau looked every inch a soldier, broad, sturdy, and swaggering, as
he clanked across the square. Simon noticed with surprise that his face
was bright with most unusual good-humour.

"Why, what can that grinning monkey have been saying to him?" Simon
asked himself. "Licking the dust off his boots somehow, for that is what
he likes, the parvenu! They are like cats, those La Marinieres! they
always know how to please everybody, and to get their own way. It seems
to me they want a lesson."

He moved a little nearer to the great gates, and watched the General as
he walked in. The bell clanged, the sentries saluted, the gates were set
open ceremoniously. With all his frank, soldierly ways, Ratoneau was
extremely jealous of his position and the respect due to it. The
Prefect, on the contrary, aimed at simplicity and liked solitude. His
wife had died some years before, not surviving the death of her parents,
guillotined in the Terror. If she had lived, her influence being very
great, Monsieur de Mauves might never have held his present appointment;
for her royalism was quite as pronounced as that of Anne de la Mariniere
and might have overpowered her husband's admiration for Napoleon. And
this would have been a pity, for no part of France, at this time, had a
wiser or more acceptable governor.

On that calm and sunny autumn afternoon, the Prefect was sitting in a
classically pillared summerhouse near the open windows of his library.
Late roses climbed and clustered above his amiable head; lines of orange
trees in square green boxes were set along the broad gravel terrace
outside, and there was a pleasant view down a walk to a playing fountain
with trees about it, beyond which some of the high grey roofs of Sonnay
shone in the sunlight.

The Prefect never smoked; his snuff-box and a book were enough for him.
Monsieur de Chateaubriand's _Itineraire de Paris a Jer