“I still wish I had Roger here,” cried the Prince, as Mitouflet, his groom of the chambers, came in.  “I was just going to send for him!  —­You may go, Mitouflet.—­Go you, my dear old fellow, go and have the nomination made out; I will sign it.  At the same time, that low schemer will not long enjoy the fruit of his crimes.  He will be sharply watched, and drummed out of the regiment for the smallest fault.—­You are saved this time, my dear Hector; take care for the future.  Do not exhaust your friends’ patience.  You shall have the nomination this morning, and your man shall get his promotion in the Legion of Honor.—­How old are you now?”

“Within three months of seventy.”

“What a scapegrace!” said the Prince, laughing.  “It is you who deserve a promotion, but, by thunder! we are not under Louis XV.!”

Such is the sense of comradeship that binds the glorious survivors of the Napoleonic phalanx, that they always feel as if they were in camp together, and bound to stand together through thick and thin.

“One more favor such as this,” Hulot reflected as he crossed the courtyard, “and I am done for!”

The luckless official went to Baron de Nucingen, to whom he now owed a mere trifle, and succeeded in borrowing forty thousand francs, on his salary pledged for two years more; the banker stipulated that in the event of Hulot’s retirement on his pension, the whole of it should be devoted to the repayment of the sum borrowed till the capital and interest were all cleared off.

This new bargain, like the first, was made in the name of Vauvinet, to whom the Baron signed notes of hand to the amount of twelve thousand francs.

On the following day, the fateful police report, the husband’s charge, the letters—­all the papers—­were destroyed.  The scandalous promotion of Monsieur Marneffe, hardly heeded in the midst of the July fetes, was not commented on in any newspaper.

Lisbeth, to all appearance at war with Madame Marneffe, had taken up her abode with Marshal Hulot.  Ten days after these events, the banns of marriage were published between the old maid and the distinguished old officer, to whom, to win his consent, Adeline had related the financial disaster that had befallen her Hector, begging him never to mention it to the Baron, who was, as she said, much saddened, quite depressed and crushed.

“Alas! he is as old as his years,” she added.

So Lisbeth had triumphed.  She was achieving the object of her ambition, she would see the success of her scheme, and her hatred gratified.  She delighted in the anticipated joy of reigning supreme over the family who had so long looked down upon her.  Yes, she would patronize her patrons, she would be the rescuing angel who would dole out a livelihood to the ruined family; she addressed herself as “Madame la Comtesse” and “Madame la Marechale,” courtesying in front of a glass.  Adeline and Hortense should end their days in struggling with poverty, while she, a visitor at the Tuileries, would lord it in the fashionable world.