“Thank you, and good-bye then!—­Come, monsieur,” he said to his brother.

The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so different in their demeanor, conduct, and character—­the brave man and the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the peculator—­and he said to himself: 

“That mean creature will not have courage to die!  And my poor Hulot, such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!”

He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field!  For in reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely essential in the battle-field.

Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings, the following paragraphs:—­

“Monsieur le Baron Hulot d’Ervy has applied for his retiring pension.  The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two employes, has had some share in this distinguished official’s decision.  On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic stroke in the War Minister’s private room.

“Monsieur Hulot d’Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim, has been forty-five years in the service.  His determination has been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his administrative capacity.  No one can have forgotten the devoted conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw, or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon in 1815.

  “One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage. 
  Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of
  the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office.”

“ALGIERS.—­The case known as the forage supply case, to which some of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been closed by the death of the chief culprit.  Johann Wisch has committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded, will be sentenced in default.

  “Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly
  respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe
  of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared.”

And in the Paris News the following paragraph appeared: