As no one in the capital could possibly know anything of the
episode in the stable he was received there with distinction. Military
to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession
consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence,
which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the
rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the
man who had never loved the Emperor--a sort of monster essentially worse
than a mere betrayer.
General D'Hubert shrugged his shoulders without anger at this ferocious
prejudice. Rejected by his old friends, and mistrusting profoundly the
advances of Royalist society, the young and handsome general (he was
barely forty) adopted a manner of cold, punctilious courtesy, which
at the merest shadow of an intended slight passed easily into harsh
haughtiness. Thus prepared, General D'Hubert went about his affairs in
Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness
of a man very much in love.
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