g fellow left with only twenty napoleons in his
possession; and the mayor gave him a place in his office with a salary
of six hundred francs. Max kept it a few months, then gave it up of his
own accord, and was replaced by a captain named Carpentier, who, like
himself, had remained faithful to Napoleon.

By this time Gilet had become grand master of the Knights of Idleness,
and was leading a life which lost him the good-will of the chief people
of the town; who, however, did not openly make the fact known to him,
for he was violent and much feared by all, even by the officers of the
old army who, like himself, had refused to serve under the Bourbons,
and had come home to plant their cabbages in Berry. The little affection
felt for the Bourbons among the natives of Issoudun is not surprising
when we recall the history which we have just given. In fact,
considering its size and lack of importance, the little place contained
more Bonapartists than any other town in France. These men became, as is
well known, nearly all Liberals.

In Issoudun and its neighborhood there were a dozen officers in Max's
position. These men admired him and made him their leader,--with the
exception, however, of Carpentier, his successor, and a certain Monsieur
Mignonnet, ex-captain in the artillery of the Guard. Carpentier, a
cavalry officer risen from the ranks, had married into one of the best
families in the town,--the Borniche-Herau. Mignonnet, brought up at the
Ecole Polytechnique, had served in a corps which held itself superior to
all others. In the Imperial armies there were two shades of distinction
among the soldiers themselves. A majority of them felt a contempt for
the bourgeois, the "civilian," fully equal to the contempt of nobles for
their serfs, or conquerors for the conquered. Such men did not always
observe the laws of honor in their dealings with civilians; nor did they
much blame those who rode rough-shod over the bourgeoisie. The others,
and particularly the artillery, perhaps because of its republicanism,
never adopted the doctrine of a military France and a civil France,
the tendency of which was nothing less than to make two nations. So,
although Major Potel and Captain Renard, two officers living in the Rome
suburb, were friends to Maxence Gilet "through thick and thin," Major
Mignonnet and Captain Carpentier took sides with the bourgeoisie, and
thought his conduct unworthy of a man of honor.

Major Mignonnet, a lean l