One of the characteristics of the Bonapartist temperament is a firm belief in the power of the sword, and confidence in the superiority of the military over civilians.  Hulot laughed to scorn the Public Prosecutor in Algiers, where the War Office is supreme.  Man is always what he has once been.  How can the officers of the Imperial Guard forget that time was when the mayors of the largest towns in the Empire and the Emperor’s prefects, Emperors themselves on a minute scale, would come out to meet the Imperial Guard, to pay their respects on the borders of the Departments through which it passed, and to do it, in short, the homage due to sovereigns?

At half-past four the baron went straight to Madame Marneffe’s; his heart beat as high as a young man’s as he went upstairs, for he was asking himself this question, “Shall I see her? or shall I not?”

How was he now to remember the scene of the morning when his weeping children had knelt at his feet?  Valerie’s note, enshrined for ever in a thin pocket-book over his heart, proved to him that she loved him more than the most charming of young men.

Having rung, the unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master.  Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of his private room.

“You are too exclusively Hulot, Monsieur Hulot!” said he.

The Baron tried to pass him, Marneffe took a pistol out of his pocket and cocked it.

“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “when a man is as vile as I am—­for you think me very vile, don’t you?—­he would be the meanest galley-slave if he did not get the full benefit of his betrayed honor.—­You are for war; it will be hot work and no quarter.  Come here no more, and do not attempt to get past me.  I have given the police notice of my position with regard to you.”

And taking advantage of Hulot’s amazement, he pushed him out and shut the door.

“What a low scoundrel!” said Hulot to himself, as he went upstairs to Lisbeth.  “I understand her letter now.  Valerie and I will go away from Paris.  Valerie is wholly mine for the remainder of my days; she will close my eyes.”

Lisbeth was out.  Madame Olivier told the Baron that she had gone to his wife’s house, thinking that she would find him there.

“Poor thing!  I should never have expected her to be so sharp as she was this morning,” thought Hulot, recalling Lisbeth’s behavior as he made his way from the Rue Vanneau to the Rue Plumet.

As he turned the corner of the Rue Vanneau and the Rue de Babylone, he looked back at the Eden whence Hymen had expelled him with the sword of the law.  Valerie, at her window, was watching his departure; as he glanced up, she waved her handkerchief, but the rascally Marneffe hit his wife’s cap and dragged her violently away from the window.  A tear rose to the great official’s eye.