onal danger, if he had defied the General, would have been
by no means small. Simon was right; Ratoneau could have represented his
mild measures in such a light as to ruin him, along with those Angevin
gentlemen whom he was trying by gentle means to reconcile with the
Empire. At that precise moment he could not even punish the man he
suspected of betraying him. Ratoneau had protected his tool so far as to
leave him nameless; but in any case, from the imperial point of view, a
man who denounced Chouans was doing his duty. As to the fact of sending
up Mademoiselle de Sainfoy's name to the Emperor and suggesting for her
the very husband whom her father had refused to accept--the chief sin,
in the eyes of that day, was the unfriendly action towards her father.

The whole system was odious; it appeared more or less so, according to
the degree of refinement in the officials who had to work it; yet it
came from the Emperor, and could not be entirely set aside; also every
marriage, in one way or another, was an arranged thing; it must suit
family politics, if not the interests of the Empire. Nothing strange
from the outside--and all the world would look at it so--in the marriage
of the Comte de Sainfoy's daughter with the local General of division.
The lady's unwillingness was a mere detail, of which the laws of society
would take no cognizance. The sentimental view which called such a
marriage sacrilege was absurd, after all, and the Prefect knew it.
Indeed, after the first, the thought of Helene's face did not trouble
him so much as that of the _coup de patte_ in store for her father, the
stealthy blow to come from himself, the old, the trusted
fellow-countryman.

But the injury to Herve de Sainfoy weighed lightly, after all, when
balanced with the arrest and ruin of Joseph de la Mariniere and possibly
his young nephew, as well as of Monsieur des Barres, Monsieur de
Bourmont, the Messieurs d'Ombre, and other men more or less suspected of
conspiring against the Empire. Even if this, perhaps deserved, had been
all! but the Prefect knew very well that an enemy such as Ratoneau would
not be satisfied without his own degradation.

He had yet one resource, delay. There was the chance that Herve de
Sainfoy might arrange some other marriage for his daughter; and the
Prefect went so far as to consider the possibility of sending him a word
of warning, but then thought it too dangerous, not quite trusting
Herve's discretion, and gave