I will startle her a
little!"
Marshal Hulot, being obliged to live in a style suited to the highest
military rank, had taken a handsome house in the Rue du Mont-Parnasse,
where there are three or four princely residences. Though he rented
the whole house, he inhabited only the ground floor. When Lisbeth went
to keep house for him, she at once wished to let the first floor,
which, as she said, would pay the whole rent, so that the Count would
live almost rent-free; but the old soldier would not hear of it.
For some months past the Marshal had had many sad thoughts. He had
guessed how miserably poor his sister-in-law was, and suspected her
griefs without understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in
his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his
house would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and
it was for them that he kept the first floor. The smallness of his
fortune was so well known at headquarters, that the War Minister, the
Prince de Wissembourg, begged his old comrade to accept a sum of money
for his household expenses. This sum the Marshal spent in furnishing
the ground floor, which was in every way suitable; for, as he said, he
would not accept the Marshal's baton to walk the streets with.
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