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"Only a sentence, monsieur le secretaire-general, just one sentence which I will ask your leave to complete. When Napoleon I fell from power, the Restoration placed a certain number of officers on half-pay. These officers were suspected by the authorities and kept under observation by the police.
Caleb Gordon sat within arm's reach, nursing his knee, diligently saying nothing. It was Tom, undoubtedly, but a Tom who had become a citizen of another world, a newer world than the one the ex-artilleryman knew and lived in. He Caleb had freely predicted a riot as the result of the half-pay proposal; yet Tom had applied the match and there was no explosion.
The first knight was William Hogarth, whose commission bore the date of 1757, so that he had been nearly forty years a lieutenant; while the next three had been thirty years lieutenants. In the same year the masters in the navy received an increase of half-pay, and their position was otherwise improved.
"Always, sir; I feel much interested in its success," replied McShane; "for I know the lady who keeps it well, and have a high respect for her." "I saw her as I passed by a fine woman, sir! Pray may I ask who is Major McShane, who I observe lives in the rooms above?" "He is a major in the army, sir now on half-pay." "Do you know him?"
"Yes, yes, wife, and as it happens, more than you think, since Vespasian, being gracious and pleased with my report, has granted me half-pay for all my life, to say nothing of a gratuity and a share of the spoil, whatever that may bring. Still I grieve, who can never hope to lift spear more." "Grieve not, for thus I would have had it, Gallus. But what of this maid?"
Then a mighty shout arises from the throng of jubilant half-pay officers as the well-known figure alights: he passes in, and is half carried up the grand staircase, "his eyes half closed," says Lavalette, "his hands extended before him like a blind man, and expressing his joy only by a smile."
But the picture of her mother was vivid to his eyes, the outlawed mother, shunned instinctively by the women, noisy and shrill, and making her companions of the would-be fashionable loiterers and the half-pay officers run to seed. That she bore it ill her last words had shown him. They had thrown a stray ray of light upon a dark place which seemed a place of not much happiness.
As soon, however, as peace was proclaimed, he retired on half-pay, and, with his wife and daughter, emigrated to Oceania. He assumed his old post of admiral on Shark's Island, where a commodious house had been erected.
But they were soon quelled by the overwhelming imperialism not only of the regular army, but of vast numbers of disbanded soldiers and half-pay officers, dispersed throughout France, and disgusted with their treatment under the restored monarchy. Even among the bourgeoisie Napoleon had an advantage which he never possessed before.
His demission of office was almost immediately followed by a relaxation of discipline, and by a looseness in the management of the public business. As the years passed by, the Province became the resort of numerous office-seekers from beyond sea half-pay officers and scions of good English, Scotch and Irish families, who sought to better their fortunes by expatriation.
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