General D'Hubert sat down.
"Yes, General," continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue
and betrayals, whose duplicity, as if at times intolerable to his
self-knowledge, found relief in bursts of cynical openness. "I did
hurry on the formation of the proscribing Commission, and I took its
presidency. And do you know why? Simply from fear that if I did not
take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the
proscribed. Such are the times in which we live. But I am minister of
the king yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this
obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there! Is it
possible that you should know men so little? My dear General, at the
very first sitting of the Commission names poured on us like rain off
the roof of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do
you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matter
to France, does not keep out some other name?"
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