mist organ, in which he read, under the heading of
ELECTIONS, the following article:

The staff of the National Guard and the Jockey Club, which had
various representatives in the last Chamber, have just sent one of
their shining notabilities to the one about to open. Colonel
Franchessini, so well known for his ardor in punishing the
refractories of the National Guard, has been elected almost
unanimously in one of the rotten boroughs of the civil list. It is
supposed that he will take his seat beside the phalanx of other
henchmen, and show himself in the Chamber, as he has elsewhere,
one of the firmest supporters of the policy of the _present order
of things_.

As Maxime finished reading the article, the colonel entered.

After serving the Empire for a very short time, Colonel Franchessini
had become one of the most brilliant colonels of the Restoration; but
in consequence of certain mists which had risen about the perfect
honorableness of his character he had found himself obliged to send in
his resignation, so that in 1830 he was fully prepared to devote himself
in the most ardent manner to the dynasty of July. He did not re-enter
military service, because, shortly after his misadventure he had met
with an Englishwoman, enormously rich, who being taken with his beauty,
worthy at that time of the Antinous, had made him her husband, and the
colonel henceforth contented himself with the epaulets of the staff
of the National Guard. He became, in that position, one of the most
exacting and turbulent of blusterers, and through the influence of that
quality combined with the fortune his wife had given him, he had
just been elected, as the paper stated, to the Chamber of deputies.
Approaching the fifties, like his friend de Trailles, Colonel
Franchessini had still some pretensions to the after-glow of youth,
which his slim figure and agile military bearing seemed likely to
preserve to him for some time longer. Although he had conquered the
difficulty of his gray hair, reducing its silvery reflections by
keeping it cut very close, he was less resigned to the scantiness of his
moustache, which he wore in youthful style, twirled to a sharp point by
means of a Hungarian cosmetic, which also preserved to a certain degree
its primitive color. But whoso wants to prove too much proves nothing,
and in the black which the colonel used there was noticeably a raw tone,
and an equality of shade too perfect for truth