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In the first secret conversation which he held with the octogenarian, they agreed that Philippe must not awaken Max's suspicions; for the game would be lost if Flore and Max were to carry off their victim, though no further than Bourges. Once a week the colonel dined with Mignonnet; another day with Carpentier; and every Thursday with Monsieur Hochon.
Moreover, this Goddet, who was formerly head-surgeon to the 3rd regiment of the line, has been privately advised by my staunch friends, Mignonnet and Carpentier; so he is now playing the hypocrite with his other patient. He says to Mademoiselle Brazier, as he feels her pulse, "You see, my child, that there's a God after all.
Major Mignonnet, a lean little man, full of dignity, busied himself with the problems which the steam-engine requires us to solve, and lived in a modest way, taking his social intercourse with Monsieur and Madame Carpentier.
Now that is what I wanted to whisper in your ear Good-morning, gentlemen," he said to Mignonnet and Carpentier, who came up at the moment; "I am taking my uncle for a walk, as you see, and trying to improve him; for we are in an age when children are obliged to educate their grandparents." They all bowed to each other. "You behold in my dear uncle the effects of an unhappy passion.
Mignonnet, brought up at the Ecole Polytechnique, had served in a corps which held itself superior to all others. In the Imperial armies there were two shades of distinction among the soldiers themselves. A majority of them felt a contempt for the bourgeois, the "civilian," fully equal to the contempt of nobles for their serfs, or conquerors for the conquered.
"We will appoint you to preside, and sit ourselves on either side of you. Max, as vice-president, will of course sit opposite," said Mignonnet. "Oh! the scoundrel will have Potel and Renard with him," said Carpentier. "In spite of all that Issoudun now knows and says of his midnight maraudings, those two worthy officers, who have already been his seconds, remain faithful to him."
The letter secured him Carpentier's good-will, and the latter presented him to his friend Mignonnet as a man of great merit and the highest character.
So, although Major Potel and Captain Renard, two officers living in the Rome suburb, were friends to Maxence Gilet "through thick and thin," Major Mignonnet and Captain Carpentier took sides with the bourgeoisie, and thought his conduct unworthy of a man of honor.
" on Mignonnet and Carpentier," answered Philippe, cutting short Max's sentence, and motioning towards his two neighbors. "Now," said Max, "let us go on with the toasts." The two adversaries had not raised their voices above the tone of ordinary conversation; there was nothing solemn in the affair except the dead silence in which it took place.
Delighted to attract Max's ridicule by behaving with the propriety of a Mignonnet, he went further, and endeavored to lull Gilet's suspicions by deceiving him as to his real character. He was bent on being taken for a fool by appearing generous and disinterested; all the while drawing a net around his adversary, and keeping his eye on his uncle's property.
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