"I've got something
better for you."
"Thunder!" cried Philippe to Giroudeau. "He's no fool, that nephew of
yours. I never once thought of making something, as he calls it, out
of my position."
That night at the cafe Lemblin and the cafe Minerve Colonel Philippe
fulminated against the Liberal party, which had raised subscriptions,
sent heroes to Texas, talked hypocritically of Soldier-laborers, and
left them to starve, after taking the money they had put into it, and
keeping them in exile for two years.
"I am going to demand an account of the moneys collected by the
subscription for the Champ d'Asile," he said to one of the frequenters
of the cafe, who repeated it to the journalists of the Left.
Philippe did not go back to the rue Mazarin; he went to Mariette and
told her of his forthcoming appointment on a newspaper with ten
thousand subscribers, in which her choregraphic claims should be
warmly advanced.
Agathe and Madame Descoings waited up for Philippe in fear and
trembling, for the Duc de Berry had just been assassinated. The
colonel came home a few minutes after breakfast; and when his mother
showed her uneasiness at his absence, he grew angry and asked if he
were not of age.
"In the name of thunder, what's all this! here have I brought you some
good news, and you both look like tombstones. The Duc de Berry is
dead, is he?--well, so much the better! that's one the less, at any
rate. As for me, I am to be cashier of a newspaper, with a salary of
three thousand francs, and there you are, out of all your anxieties on
my account.
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