Convinced of the impossibility of Bonaparte's triumph, du Bousquier staked the greater part of his property on a fall in the Funds, and kept two couriers on the field of battle.The first started for Paris when Melas' victory was certain; the second, starting four hours later, brought the news of the defeat of the Austrians.Du Bousquier cursed Kellermann and Desaix; he dared not curse Bonaparte, who might owe him millions.This alternative of millions to be earned and present ruin staring him in the face, deprived the purveyor of most of his faculties: he became nearly imbecile for several days; the man had so abused his health by excesses that when the thunderbolt fell upon him he had no strength to resist.The payment of his bills against the Exchequer gave him some hopes for the future, but, in spite of all efforts to ingratiate himself, Napoleon's hatred to the contractors who had speculated on his defeat made itself felt; du Bousquier was left without a sou.The immorality of his private life, his intimacy with Barras and Bernadotte, displeased the First Consul even more than his manoeuvres at the Bourse, and he struck du Bousquier's name from the list of the government contractors.
Out of all his past opulence du Bousquier saved only twelve hundred francs a year from an investment in the Grand Livre, which he had happened to place there by pure caprice, and which saved him from penury.A man ruined by the First Consul interested the town of Alencon, to which he now returned, where royalism was secretly dominant.Du Bousquier, furious against Bonaparte, relating stories against him of his meanness, of Josephine's improprieties, and all the other scandalous anecdotes of the last ten years, was well received.
About this time, when he was somewhere between forty and fifty, du Bousquier's appearance was that of a bachelor of thirty-six, of medium height, plump as a purveyor, proud of his vigorous calves, with a strongly marked countenance, a flattened nose, the nostrils garnished with hair, black eyes with thick lashes, from which darted shrewd glances like those of Monsieur de Talleyrand, though somewhat dulled.
He still wore republican whiskers and his hair very long; his hands, adorned with bunches of hair on each knuckle, showed the power of his muscular system in their prominent blue veins.He had the chest of the Farnese Hercules, and shoulders fit to carry the stocks.Such shoulders are seen nowadays only at Tortoni's.This wealth of masculine vigor counted for much in du Bousquier's relations with others.And yet in him, as in the chevalier, symptoms appeared which contrasted oddly with the general aspect of their persons.The late purveyor had not the voice of his muscles.We do not mean that his voice was a mere thread, such as we sometimes hear issuing from the mouth of these walruses; on the contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw cutting into soft and moistened wood,--the voice of a worn-out speculator.
In spite of the claims which the enmity of the First Consul gave Monsieur du Bousquier to enter the royalist society of the province, he was not received in the seven or eight families who composed the faubourg Saint-Germain of Alencon, among whom the Chevalier de Valois was welcome.He had offered himself in marriage, through her notary, to Mademoiselle Armande, sister of the most distinguished noble in the town; to which offer he received a refusal.He consoled himself as best he could in the society of a dozen rich families, former manufacturers of the old point d'Alencon, owners of pastures and cattle, or merchants doing a wholesale business in linen, among whom, as he hoped, he might find a wealthy wife.In fact, all his hopes now converged to the perspective of a fortunate marriage.He was not without a certain financial ability, which many persons used to their profit.Like a ruined gambler who advises neophytes, he pointed out enterprises and speculations, together with the means and chances of conducting them.He was thought a good administrator, and it was often a question of making him mayor of Alencon; but the memory of his underhand jobbery still clung to him, and he was never received at the prefecture.All the succeeding governments, even that of the Hundred Days, refused to appoint him mayor of Alencon,--a place he coveted, which, could he have had it, would, he thought, have won him the hand of a certain old maid on whom his matrimonial views now turned.
Du Bousquier's aversion to the Imperial government had thrown him at first into the royalist circles of Alencon, where he remained in spite of the rebuffs he received there; but when, after the first return of the Bourbons, he was still excluded from the prefecture, that mortification inspired him with a hatred as deep as it was secret against the royalists.He now returned to his old opinions, and became the leader of the liberal party in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior.Du Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently, but inexhaustible.His hatred was that of a negro, so peaceful that it deceived the enemy.His vengeance, brooded over for fifteen years, was as yet satisfied by no victory, not even that of July, 1830.
