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One day, in the midst of a Council of State, Napoleon grossly insults Beugnot, treating him as one might an unmannerly valet. The effect produced, he goes up to him and says, "Well, stupid, have you found your head again?"
Pitch into Beugnot and Syrieys de Mayrinhac and the rest. You might have the sketches ready in advance, and we shall have something to fall back upon." "How if we invented one or two cases of refusal of burial with aggravating circumstances?" asked Hector. "Do not follow in the tracks of the big Constitutional papers; they have pigeon-holes full of ecclesiastical canards," retorted Vernou.
He was, however, not the man for Parliamentary Government, being too careless in business, and trying to gain his ends more by clever tricks than straightforward measures. As for the state into which he let the Government fall, it was happily characterised by M. Beugnot. "Until now," said he, "we have only known three sorts of governments the Monarchical, the Aristocratic, and the Republican.
After six hours of rather stormy conversation, it was agreed that Pozzo di Borgo should repair to Cateau, and persuade the Duke of Wellington to take some step which should put an end to this strange misunderstanding; and that MM. de Jaucourt, Louis, and Beugnot should at the same time say to the King, that the men in whom he appeared to confide entertained ideas and projects so diametrically opposed to theirs, that it was impossible they could serve him usefully, and therefore requested permission to retire.
Madame de Lamotte also was foolishly allowed sufficient time after she heard of the arrest of the Cardinal to burn all the letters she had received from him. Assisted by Beugnot, she completed this at three the same morning that she was: arrested at four.
Chaptal, Minister of the Interior, Beugnot, Prefect of the Department, and Cambaceres, Archbishop of Rouen, came to meet the First Consul at some distance from the city. The Mayor Fontenay waited at the gates, and presented the keys.
This the divine steadily denied. There was no shadow of proof that they were even on familiar terms, except a number of erotic letters, which Jeanne showed to a friend, Beugnot, saying that they were from the Cardinal, and then burned. The Cardinal believed all things, in short, and verified nothing, in obedience to his dominating idea the recovery of the Queen's good graces.
When the day's work was done, "Let us see," said Talleyrand; "what did Monsieur say? After repeated attempts, rejected by Talleyraud, Beugnot at last produced, "No more divisions. Peace and France! At last I see her once more, and nothing in her is changed, except that here is one more Frenchman." This remark promised much. The Comte Artois next proceeded on horseback to the barrier St. Martin.
In fact, he was with her when she burnt the correspondence of the Cardinal, in the interval the Court foolishly allowed between his arrest and her capture, and De Beugnot believed he had met at her house, at the moment of their return from their successful trick, the whole party engaged in deluding the Cardinal.
Whereupon Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, and the little man raising his hand, takes the tall one by the ear, "an intoxicating sign of favour," writes Beugnot, "the familiar gesture of the master who waxes gracious." Such examples give a clear idea of the degree of base platitude that prestige can provoke.
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