Hulot resolved on the spot to thwart Corentin in
every way that did not conflict essentially with the success of the
government, and to give the Gars a fair chance of dying honorably,
sword in hand, before he could fall a prey to the executioner, for
whom this agent of the detective police acknowledged himself the
purveyor.
"If the First Consul would listen to me," thought Hulot, as he turned
his back on Corentin, "he would leave those foxes to fight
aristocrats, and send his solders on other business."
Corentin looked coldly after the old soldier, whose face had
brightened at the resolve, and his eyes gleamed with a sardonic
expression, which showed the mental superiority of this subaltern
Machiavelli.
"Give an ell of blue cloth to those fellows, and hang a bit of iron at
their waists," he said to himself, "and they'll think there's but one
way to kill people." Then, after walking up and down awhile very
slowly, he exclaimed suddenly, "Yes, the time has come, that woman
shall be mine! For five years I've been drawing the net round her, and
I have her now; with her, I can be a greater man in the government
than Fouche himself. Yes, if she loses the only man she has ever
loved, grief will give her to me, body and soul; but I must be on the
watch night and day."
A few moments later the pale face of this man might have been seen
through the window of a house, from which he could observe all who
entered the cul-de-sac formed by the line of houses running parallel
with Saint-Leonard, one of those houses being that now occupied by
Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
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